Weather's fine

Unicycle of Violence has a cartoon with a map in it.  Beware of the obscenities.

Gates bet

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has a video with claymation-style animations that represent Africa in a variety of clever ways:

GIF-iti

Is this the world's largest animated GIF?  British street artist INSA created what he's calling the world’s largest animated GIF.  The piece was created at the end of last year in Rio De Janeiro with a team of 20 people. It took about 4 days to complete the 57,515 square-meter image which consisted of four different paintings.

Introducing The Nib

As some of y'all recover from the blizzard, Amanda brings us a weather map in The Nib by Matt Lubchansky,

Not Smart

Form Scott Kurtz' Player vs. Player webcomic there's the guys experiencing car sharing for the first time.  

His name is Mimal

Sorry to intrude on your Monday, Amanda, but I want to update a previous post from 2 years ago today about the chef that's hidden in the Mississippi River area states: His name is Mimal, after the states that make him up: Minnesota (hat), Iowa (head), Missouri (shirt), Arkansas (pants), and Louisiana (boots). Fittingly, the chicken is Kentucky and the tin pan is Tennessee.

More Historical Caricatures!

During some recent research, I came across a collection of caricature anthologies that feature "great men" from various geographic areas. Many of the caricatures from these collections included globes.

Here we have Joseph Harris on page 510 of Chicagoans As We See 'Em, circa 1904:

- Amanda Murphyao

Planets vs. Python: Sing-off

Here's a song from Comedy Central that explains the meaning of life.  Earth's in it, but doesn't sing.



 What do you think, does Monty Python do it better?

Tectonics explained

I know that Minute Earth has dozens of animations that include animated globes and maps and such.  But this one is about plate tectonics and I have a special place in my heart for plate tectonics:

...every night, Pinky.

Friend-of-blog Susan has contributed this item: 

A confession: I used to do the same thing when I was a kid.

Einstein's miracle year

Here's another TedEd video clip, this time explaining Einstein's "Miracle Year" where he published four universe-shattering academic papers. First, the clip shows the mappy bit.  Then, after that, is the full video:

Orange you glad it's Japan

Each of the pieces of peel is in the correct shape of each local administrative prefecture

A-maze-ing directions

A New Yorker cartoon by Benjamin Schwartz

More Historical Caricatures!

During some research, I came across a collection of caricature anthologies that feature "great men" from various geographic areas. Many of the caricatures from these collections included globes.

Here we have George A. Martin on page 515 of Chicagoans As We See 'Em, circa 1904:

You can still spot that same logo, with paint covering the planet, on Sherwin-Williams trucks today:

Gary, Indiana, self-proclaimed "City of the Century," also uses this trope (according to this image -- which I imagine may be molten steel covering the planet -- I found on the Internet while looking for something else, as is often the case):

- Amanda Murphyao

First geologic map

Two hundred years ago, the geology of an entire country came to life for the first time. Created solely by English surveyor William Smith, the map shows the distribution of rock types in vivid color.

Great Battles

Would you like a book that elegantly diagrams and explains great battles throughout history?  Of course you would.  Get it over at Winkbooks

Australian Progress

So there's the iconic original painting by John Gast personifying the goddess Columbia (who used to do a LOT more stand-ins representing the USA than the often sour-pussed Uncle Sam) and is often associated with the concept of Manifest Destiny.

And then there's this recent version by Australian cartoonist David Pope, who apparently takes a rather dimmer opinion of expansionism in his country.

Now try writing your name

Look, I know we've posted plenty of map-related comics where the "map" is simply the blue marble Earth hovering over the horizon of the Moon.  But while the "map"-ishness of that is arguably weak, the artists do tend to render the shapes that are more-or-less recognizable as Earth's continents and that's map enough for me.

And they're useful cues for usually funny punchlines.  So deal with it.

From Twistedspeedo by Henrik Tomenius/

W.'s map

We had a post some time ago showing a Ted Rall play on the Steinberg classic. Here's another in a very similar vein by Lalo Alcaraz. This "view of the world" gag for geographically-oriented cartoons is still one of the most common to the form.

I couldn't agree more

This sentiment expressed in an xkcd panel by Randall Munroe is so thoroughly agreeable.  And, to take it a step farther, it can be noted that many of the most beautiful/desirable places on the planet to live also happen to be geologically active/dangerous... because it's the geology that makes them pretty.

That said, "title-text" at the actual webcomic says:

The place I'd least like to live is the farm in the background of those diagrams showing how tornadoes form

Historical Caricatures (con't)

During some recent research, I came across a collection of caricature anthologies that feature "great men" from various geographic areas. Here are some of the caricatures from these collections that included globes.

We have Ralph Temple on page 479 in Chicagoans As We See 'Em, circa 1904:

- Amanda Murphyao

The Stolen States of America

A new interactive map from the science and humanities magazine Aeon tells a vital story about how the US stole land from Native Americans.

La stupide

I'll gladly acknowledge that English is a morass of sadistically convoluted rules and conventions with the consistency of a squirrel on crack. By comparison, most other Romantic (i.e. Latin-based) languages tend to "behave": here's the rules and we're gonna stick to them. But one thing I think English gets right (and maybe it's the only thing English gets right) is genderless articles.  I'm reasonably fluent in Spanish, but I suck at remembering the gender of nouns.  Oh, sure, nouns that end in "-o" or "-a" are simple enough (...usually... except for the completely nonsensical exceptions... I'm looking at you day, water, Pope, etc.) and there's fairly consistent rules about nouns that end in "-ad" or "-ión".

My grievance is that such gender differentiation exists at all.  I know language teachers say not to think about noun genders like anatomical genders... but that's like telling people not to think about a pink elephant. While I can believe that if one grows up with a language that engenders its nouns that can blunt thoughts of feminizing of masculating the objects of those nouns... but I find it difficult to believe that any speaker of any language with gendered nouns doesn't harbor at least subconscious thoughts of the anatomical analogs of those nouns. I mean English virtually abandoned gendered nouns centuries ago, and yet ships are still "her" as are most countries.

So as a demonstration of this absurdity, here we have a map that color-codes the nations of the Earth according to how their names are gendered in French. Granted, this is French, which practically fetishizes the practice of needlessly decorating words and phrases with pointless flourishes, but this is particularly ridiculous.  There's absolutely no good reason to have assigned genders to every country, regardless of how much everybody is supposed to ignore any physiological correlation;

Stop digging

David Fitzsimmons with an editorial cartoon about Arizona's debt.  Has he seen Kansas.

Darwin award, geography category

Protecting the gene pool:

Earth image issues

I think regular guest Amanda and I both like The Doghouse Diaries (by Rafaan Anvari, Ray Yamartino, and William Samari):

The mouseover at the original comic says: "This really puts things into ... perspective."

Cryptozoology of the USA

The folks over at Hog Island Press have a map for you showing the locations of sightings of cryptozoological specimens in the USA.

Historical Caricatures (con't)

During some recent research, I came across a collection of caricature anthologies that feature "great men" from various geographic areas. For the next few weeks, I'll be posting the caricatures from these collections that included globes.

Here are real estate agents Willard T. Orr and George Birkhoff, Jr. from page 314 in Chicagoans As We See 'Em, circa 1904:

- Amanda Murphyao

And yet still better at it than the Yanks

Buzzfeed's London staff was challenged to label the 50 States, challenged being the operative word:

And you thought Mercator exaggerated Greenland

Rebecca suggested this item from Benjamin Hennig, the creator of the website Views Of The World where you can find an inordinate supply of cartograms and geographic visualizations.  This one happens to show the loneliest (and most crowded) places on the planet, in terms of human habitation anyway. This is one way for Greenland to get some attention... or not.

Latte art with map

You know all those photos on the internet of art made from latte foam? Here's a stop-motion animation made from that flavor of art, complete with a map/globe at about the 57-second mark:


Not from the animation, but you get the idea:

Balls

Here's a Lonnie Millsap comic for those after-Christmas sales