Movie geography

I'm beginning to think that Randall Munroe makes xkcd panels specifically for this blog. This one reminds me of the map showing which parts of California Hollywood uses to shoot locations that it doesn't have to budget to film in. And it'd be interesting to examine how much correlation there is between this map and the plot geography map.

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

At the boundary between each zone, stories blend together. Somewhere in the New Mexico desert, the Roadrunner is pursued by a tireless Anton Chigurh.

Orientation

We've seen gags where the map of the Earth is upside-down.  This xkcd panel by Randall Munroe is a different take on that theme.

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

Due to their proximity across the channel, there's long been tension between North Korea and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Southern Ireland.

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

Neutrinos & GPS

Here's a GPS mention in an older xkcd strip by Randall Munroe

The "title-text" at the actual webcomic says:

I can't speak to the paper's scientific merits, but it's really cool how on page 10 you can see that their reference GPS beacon is sensitive enough to pick up continential drift under the detector (interrupted halfway through by an earthquake).

And while we're at it, we should mention that the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to some scientists who discovered how the brain understands where the body is, i.e. the brain's GPS.

Map nerd sniping

This is another map from XKCD's "What If" page that investigates how quickly one could visit each of the 50 states and ends up looking at the fewest satellite orbits needed to pass over every state. It is an excellent example of nerd sniping which is a sport that should be more extensively developed.

Start here

XKCD book launch

xkcd's Randall Munroe is doing a book launch for his book based on his brilliant "What if?" crazy science explanations blog. So of course he hid a globe in the day's comic.

The "title-text" at the actual webcomic says (for obvious reasons you'll understand when you see the comic):

It's turtles all the way down

4-dimensional map of California drought

This is an insanely innovative map.  And timely.  As if any other evidence was even need to prove xkcd's Randall Munroe is a cartographic genius.

The "title-text" at the actual webcomic says:

58% of the state has gone into plaid

Worst. Hurricane. Ever.

Randall Munroe's xkcd: Producing a mind-puddlingly wonderful map-based webcomic about once per month so as to make the world a better place. The "title-text" at the actual webcomic says:

'Finding a 105-year-old who's lived in each location and asking them which hurricane they think was the worst' is left as an exercise for the reader.

What else would the Space Needle be for anyway?

Just when you thought Randall Munroe's xkcd would always get cooler, it does: Here's a map-like diagram comparing the sizes of the various surfaces of solid surfaces. The "title-text" at the actual webcomic says:

This isn't an informational illustration; this is a thing I think we should do. First, we'll need a gigantic spool of thread. Next, we'll need some kind of ... hmm, time to head to Seattle.

About time

Randall Munroe's xkcd continues to provide us with mappy delights.  This one was from last week and is an automatically updated image of time zones around the world.  The "title-text" at the actual webcomic says:

This image stays roughly in sync with the day (assuming the Earth continues spinning) Shortcut: xkcd.com/now.

Click on the image to enlargify

Gravity well

There simply is an endless supply of map-ish xkcds by Randall Munroe. this one does a beautiful job of illustrating gravity wells. The "title-text" at the actual webcomic says:

This doesn't take into account the energy imparted by orbital motion (or gravity assists or the Oberth effect) all of which can make it easier to reach outer planets.

Click on the image to enlargify.

XKCD's Actually

xkcd by Randall Munroe that touches on a fundamental concept behind geodetics.  The "title-text" at the actual webcomic says:

Protip: You can win every exchange just by being one level more precise than whoever talked last. Eventually, you'll defeat all conversational opponents and stand alone.

Zeppelin or love: New heights

This is an early xkcd comic by Randall Munroe.  It's clearly more ambitious than his usual stick figures, but, lacking an obvious means to propel the blimp, lacks some of the wonderful detail which has become more characteristic in his more recent work. The "title-text" at the actual webcomic says:

Quick, try it with 'LOVE'!

Cliche monster

xkcd by Randall Munroe:

The "title-text" at the actual webcomic has one last cliche in it:

It was finally destroyed with a nuclear weapon carrying the destrucive power of the Hiroshima bomb.

XKCD's epic "Time" is map-centric

We've done a lot of xkcd by Randall Munroe on this blog (how could we not?).  But Munroe recently finished an overwhelmingly epic work entitled "Time".  It started with a simple image of a pair of people and a title text that said "Wait for it".  Then the image was updates, and updated again, and slowly, very slowing the people began building a sandcastle. One updated image at a time the story unfolded from a leisurely day at the riverbank into saga that was much more expansive and compelling, even including an entirely new language composed specifically for this extremely slow stop-motion work.  And as the plot developed the characters mentioned maps, and then the maps became a central plot device until maps were used in the big reveal near the story's climax.

For those who did not have the patience to wait for the almost 3,100 frames posted occasionally over the course of four months, Jack Pryor built a website xkcd 1190 - Time at your own pace that lets users interactively step through every frame one-at-a-time or automatically, even with pauses to read dialog.

Randall Munroe explains the backstory here. It's truly an impressive work. While he does that I'll post some of the map-related images from the story.  I'll leave the links only for the images that would be spoilers.

This is just before the big reveal. You can kind of see what it's all about if you know what to look for.  To avoid spoilers I'm only going to post the link to it.

Stratographic two-fer

Here's a pair with a comic and humorous images on the theme of geology and plate tectonics.  First xkcd by Randall Munroe:

The "title-text" at the actual webcomic says:

All we have are these stupid tantalizing zircons and the scars on the face of the Moon.

 Next we have plate tectonics as illustrated by an Oreo cookie:

Google Earth resolution

xkcd by Randall Munroe. The "title-text" at the actual webcomic has an additional GPS-related joke in it:

2031: Google defends the swiveling roof-mounted scanning electron microscopes on its Street View cars, saying the 'don't reveal anything that couldn't be seen by any pedestrian scanning your house with an electron microscope.'.

I think the flaw here is that humans can't actually look at the Earth at Plank Length resolution.  We are actually at least a dozen orders of magnitude away from being able to detect things that small in any way as this wonderful interactive tool shows.  So we're probably much closer tot hat intersection than this graph indicates.  Professionally I've already worked with 2-inch resolution imagery and that was at least 5 years ago.

Who is Kolmogorov?

This item from xkcd by Randall Munroe is titled Kolmogorov Directions.  What does Kolmogorov have to do with maps?  Probably his mathematical work regarding topology, or the relationship of the location of things to one another.  

The "title-text" at the actual webcomic has an additional GPS-related joke in it:

People get really grumpy when they realize you're giving them directions for how to go to the store and buy a GPS.

Travelling Salesman two-fer

While there are still a lot more items to post about the Apple Maps troubles, we'll take a break from that this week and post a two-fer from everybody's favorite science/math/tech themed webcomic: xkcd by  Randall Munroe.  Today's two-fer has to do with the "travelling salesman" problem which is a central component of geospatial network and logistics analysis.   

The connection to mapping in this first example is relatively obvious as the representation of the problem is roughly the shape of the U.S.A.  http://xkcd.com/399/

The "title-text" at the actual webcomic says:

What's the complexity class of the best linear programming cutting-plane techniques? I couldn't find it anywhere. Man, the Garfield guy doesn't have these problems ...

The second one is more about just the traveling salesman problem as applied to relationships. Title text:  

It's like the traveling salesman problem, but the endpoints are different and you can't ask your friends for help because they're sitting three seats down.

Update:
I originally meant to post this one to tie into the xkcd comic.  It's from Matthew Inman at The Oatmeal (click on it to make it big enough to read):

Endless wings

Recently from Randall Munroe's XKCD we have this depiction of "endless wings"

At the actual webcomic, hovering over the image reveals this additional message in the "title-text":

Try our bottomless drinks and fall forever!