You are obvious

So without an actual directory map, a "you are here" sign is kinda pointless, yes?

Heatwave

For those of you still suffering from the heat, here's a handy-dandy animation from our friendly neighborhood NOAA that shows the travels of the recent heat spell across this great nation. It won't make the heat go away, but it's fun to watch.

Outta here -bert

The globe there qualifies this episode of Dilbert by Scott Adams for our map-related comics blog.

Migration two-fer

Last week my wife found this Family Circus by Jeff and Bill Keane in the newspaper that my visiting Father-in-law had been reading.  Why a migration joke would run in July is beyond me.

...But while we're at it we'll make it a two-fer because I recently found this old Sheldon webcomic by Dave Kellet from 2002 that also mentions migration:

...

Gravity anomaly

This is another from the webcomic Abstruse Goose.Seems like a reasonable explanation, no?

Travel scratch-it Win

Here's a fun map on which the user can scratch off the waxy stuff to reveal the colorized nations they have visited.  Fun!

iPhone fireflies

What happens when you animate the locations of 880 iPhones in Europe over the course of a month? ... and then edit the film to make it look like fireflies moving around in the night?

Michael Kreil conveniently provides us with the answer over at the Crowdflow.net blog.  A few more videos and animations at this particular blog post. It appears to be an interesting location-based services blog.

You Are B.G.: Before Gore

A "You are here" gag from BC by Johnny Hart, along with an atlas joke. Together those are two of the most common map-themed gags in comics.

Cable map two-fer

Here is a map of telegraph cables, mostly undersea, for the Eastern Telegraph Company System.  This reminds me of the post a few weeks ago about the animated map of how fast Android devices were registered around the world.

It also reminds me of this updated (and interactive) map of modern undersea telecommunications cables (link here):

Heavenly Parents

 

I very much believe in the concept of Heavenly Parents and I very much like that Wiley Miller has now depicted Heavenly Mother in cartoon form in newspapers across the nation in his Non Sequitur strip. I also like God's male-symbol-shaped Pangaea continent that he's got going there on the pre-Eve-Eden proto-Earth.

Apple world

This is impressive.  It'd be petty to suggest that Antarctica could have been rendered better or that the topography of the ocean floor could have been rendered at all, so I won't mention those things.

I will, however, mention that they obviously used a Mercater projection to do this, which was a silly thing to do on this spheroidal platform.

Virtual collateral damage

This video shows a 3D plot of 11.3 million player deaths in the virtual landscape of the Just Cause 2 video game.  This comes from an article on Fast Company about this infographic. having a map of where players die could be very valuable in designing new virtual landscapes.

Spiritual social network -bert

This post of a map-related Dilbert cartoon by Scott Adams is more maps-in-comics-related because at least there's something that looks like a globe.

Steinberg forever Two-fer

Today's Two-fer is a smorgasbord of parodies of that iconic drawing by Saul Steinberg from March 29, 1976 entitled "View of the World from 9th Avenue". All of them come with lots of details and a combination of inside jokes and, usually, somewhat self-deprecating humor. And, in order to see the details, it will be helpful to click on the image to make it bigger so as to see the details:


Let's start with an actual sketch by Steinberg himself: It's a drawing Steinberg did in 1981 re-creating his original drawing with somewhat different labelling. From the note in the corner it looks like it might have been customized for a specific fan:






After that we have a variation on the theme for Atlanta, GA:




... then Amsterdam in the Netherlands...




...and Tel Aviv, Israel...




Next we switch to the more politically charged with a parody from editorial cartoonist Ted Rall, who also did a "View of the World from 9th Avenue" parody about Obama's predecessor, Gearge W. Bush:

After that we have another editorial cartoonist, Ruben Bolling and his "Tom the Dancing Bug" series with a "Post 9-11 View of the World from 9th Avenue" featuring ground zero in the foreground.




And here's the cover of a Politico magazine from July of 2009 by M. Wuerker, this one, like the one from Ted Rall, based on Washington D.C., not so much New York City:



And finally there's this one by RJ Matson of the St. Louis Post Dispatch that is more true to the Steinberg original, but has a Global Warming bent to it:




That's it for now. Of course, let me know if you find any others on this theme.

Not in Maine

Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial cartoonist Clay Bennett drew this cartoon in 2009 after a same-sex marriage referendum in Maine repealed the law that allowed same-sex marriage was signed into law earlier in the year.

For those keeping track, this is not the first time Maine was specifically mentioned in a post on this blog.  The total number of states specifically mentioned in this blog stands at 22.

Google mapped

Everybody recognizes this as a place marker from Google Maps.  This would be a thoroughly awesome "attract peoples' attention" product for business subscribers/participants of Google Places to use.  I'd recommend that Google have a bunch of these made using the pop-up-tent technology or (more frustratingly, but still gets-the-job-done) the same wires/pop-up system many fold-up sunscreens-for-windshields-in-cars use.  Or, actually, given the considerations for wind, these giant Google Maps markers would have to be more secure like the banner-flag things many businesses already use.

...unless, of course, Bing Maps or Mapquest can do it first... but I just don't think their map markers are as recognizable?

Does this count as an IRL "You are here" gag?

Franken-map

Whatever you might think about Senator Al Franken, his talent to draw feehand from memory a map of the 50 United States is impressive.

Here's another example of Franken's cartographic prowess: a map of Minnesota and its environs complete with a lot of commentary from Franken about the map. This brings the total number of states specifically mentioned in the blog to 24. Click to make it larger and more legible.

The coolest of the four Carolinas

This example from Jim Toomey's Sherman's Lagoon strip from November of 2009 makes fun of Sherman's abysmal geographic education... or his abysmal education in general.

It's also the first time South Carolina gets a mention in this blog, so that puts us at a total of 23 states specifically mentioned in the blog.

Flag maps two-fer

Here is a map of the world made out of flags. Each flag is scaled to match the size of the nation it represents.  There are many versions of this on the internet.  Most of them cut out the flags to be the shape of the nations they represent.  I like this one the best because it includes the official flag for Antarctica:

There's others, of course, which are specific to the United States, showing the states as their respective maps:

Oh, wait! That's not it.  This is a map showing the states as the flags of the various nations around the world that have similar-sized populations (so please no trolling from any of you Texans thinking I'm confusing y'all with North Korea). This is from (among other places) the Strange Maps blog's post on this subject.  That Strange Maps blog post also links to several other maps showing US states (and other things) labeled (not with flags) of nations that have similar numbers for various statistics. 

No, here's the actual state-flag-map of the United States (is it me or is there a LOT of blue in state flags?):

The United States of Jello

The United States made out of jello... or in this case jelly, as the Brits call it, since this was made by some British arists, as this article in BoingBoing points out... which came from this other post in Turnstyle.

New Mexico soap fail

I'm not sure who should be more offended here: the Texans or the New Mexicans.