Maps in Calvin & Hobbes 13: Secret code

Here's Hobbes being the cartographer again from the same story arc as last week... and again having issues with map scale, this time at the opposite end of the scale spectrum.

Maps in Calvin & Hobbes 12: Cartographer Hobbes

In this ambitious, diabolical and nefarious plan Hobbes wants to be the cartographer. THAT'S SO COOL! Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes

Redistricting.... again

There aren't that many states still fighting out the redistricting battle. Texas, of course, is still in the thick of it... and the result of that epic fight are still playing a role in this cycle election circus. So here's a few more redistricting-themed cartoons:

Nick Anderson does a typical approach for Texas

It doesn't look like Chan Lowe has a particular state in mind, just the process in general.

Matt Davies has another take on the process.

And then Calvin Grondahl has his version for Utah.

Redistricting two-fer

'Tis the season of redistricting.  There's a great guy, John Milem, up in my neck of the woods who was recently recognized for his volunteer work on the redistricting in Washington State. So today is a redistricting-themed two-fer in honor of him and to recognize that the redistricting battles in the states around this Union are winding down (either the states have their redistricting done or, if they don't, the court battles begin).  There are some promising signs that with the burgeoning digital cartographic tools available so much more broadly to so many more people the days of the gerrymander may be numbered.

Please, if you've see any more redistricting cartoons let me know.

This one is by Jeff Parker, noting the struggles Florida is having with redistricting:

This bit of cartographic poetry is from Tom Toles:

Also, this is the first cartoon in this blog to specifically feature Maryland so that brings our total of states mentioned to 29.  I suspect that this primary season will be perfect for collecting several more state-map-themed cartoons.  Let me know if you find any.

Here's some links to previous redistricting-themed map-related cartoons:
The power of the redistricting cartographer
Israel's redistricting issues under Sharon
Same thing under Olmert
The classic Gerrymander cartoon that started it all

Your favorite projection

When a map-related comic is this massively obvious it'd be a travesty not to post it on this kind of blog.  Of course this very-inside-baseball riff on projections is from Randall Munroe's XKCD (click on the image to make it larger and more legible... It's very worth it!)

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

What's that? You think I don't like the Peters map because I'm uncomfortable with having my cultural assumptions challenged?  Are you sure you're not ... ::puts on sunglasses:: ... projecting?

That's just brilliant!

Here, by the way, is a fun video clip about the Peters projection from The West Wing:

A map in memorium to Bil Keane

You already knew that I would definitely have to post a Family Circus pun map in memory of the passing last week of its creator, Bil Keane.  Take a moment, won't you, and enjoy both his pun maps and the kids' dotted trails.  We will always remember Mr. Keane's contributions to cartooning cartography (even though it was actually his son Jeff who likely invented both).

New Zealand ... for realsies?

Here's a recent episode of the Sheldon webcomic by Dave Kellet that features New Zealand

Very confusing two-fer

In 2004 I saw this cartoon on the Comics I Don't Understand blog. It was drawn by one Robert Esmay for a strip he called "Case in Point".  The CIDU blog is a place where visitors can submit hard-to-understand comics and the blogger and/or the other visitors can try to explain them

Nobody had the faintest idea what this was about. 

In 2006 Robert Esmay changed the strip to “Days of Thunder” and began to occasionally work under the name “Robert Lovely”. In 2008 this comic showed up on the CIDU blog:

Again, nobody had the faintest idea what this could possibly be about.

But, if you happen to be/know a quirky cartographer named "George", this is the comic for you/him.

If you happen to understand this comic... well I'd love to know the explanation.

To job security

Brevity by Guy Endore-Kaiser & Rodd Perry.  On this Labor Day, here's to job security in the cartography business... although Albania is not so much likely to split in two as possibly annex Kosovo... but that'd still accomplish the same level of job security.

Southern half

Yes, I know, it's XKCD by Randall Munroe again. But, honestly, if he keeps throwing up examples like this, how can I help but post 'em? As per usual, go to this actual webcomic, hover over the image, and there will be an additional message in the "title-text" . This one says:

Also, if you read his speech at Rice, all his arguments for going to the moon work equally well as arguments for blowing up the moon, sending cloned dinosaurs into space, or constructing a towering penis-shaped obelisk on Mars.

We can actually put this XKCD right there next to this other one, where Munroe complains about yet another confounding cartographic convention.

I relish callipygian posteriors and I am unable to prevaricate

This is Jef Mallet again giving us another brilliant map-related Frazz strip (click on the image to make it larger and more legible). It kinda shares its concerns about the state of geography education with other posts I've made about geography education. To save you a little bit of trouble with Google, here's Callipygia (kinda useful word, no?)... which means this post is most related to this more apocalyptic one.

Gotta love it!

Online communities II

I posted about an older version of this "Online Communities" map from xkcd by Randall Munroe some time ago.  There is a new version and it's even more breath-taking in its scope than before.  Clicking on it will make it bigger and more legible, however it may be necessary to just go to go to the xkcd site and look at it there. Of course when there, hover over the image, and there will be an additional message in the "title-text" . This one says:

Best trivia I learned while working on this: 'Man, Farmville is so huge! Do you realize it's the second-biggest browser-based social-networking-centered farming game in the WORLD?' Then you wait for the listener to do a double-take.

I had to look this one up. Due to its dominance in China and Taiwan, "Happy Farm" is bigger than "Farmville". It's hosted on the massive instant messenger service in Asia, Tencent QQ which has capped new members to 2 million per day.

It's beginning to look a lot like isthmus

Mike Peters' Mother Goose and Grimm. I'm sorry.

Merry Christmas!

(This is still my favorite map-related Christmas comic)

Santa Clara is coming to town

To help get us in the mood of the season, here's a Christmas-themed map-related comic from the always surreal Dan Piraro's Bizarro.

Jarvis Atlas

This is from a story arc in Jim Meddick's Monty where Monty's "Little Lord Fauntleroy" stereotype rich, bratty next-door neighbor who has dug up a Neanderthal but thinks it's a Bohemian artist.  His Butler Jarvis is posing as Atlas.  There have already been a number of other "Atlas"-themed posts here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, including the beach ball suggestion Jarvis has made.

Cartographers of York

The artist "Kes" is having fun with nursery rhymes.  I like this kind of fun.

Portables

This is another fun episode of Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson. I found this particular item funny for 2 reasons (which are actually the same reason from 2 different perspectives):

1. I went to elementary school in the Las Vegas, Nevada area.  During that time it was in a rapid growth phase.  Every year it seemed there were another crop of portable classrooms going up at every school. Towards the end of my senior year I found out that there were about 6,000 people moving in to the city every month.  The school district didn't have a prayer of keeping up with that pace.
2. Just a few years ago I was working on a project that involved finding up-to-date maps of school attendance boundaries, i.e. maps that showed which school a child would attend based on where they lived.  It was very hard to find school districts that had such maps.  Clark County School District had them, which is where las Vegas is.  Those maps were being updated online every week.  

So there could be more truth to Petey's dilemma here than his mother realizes.

Amerigo for the steal

 

 In this episode of the webcomic Sheldon, by Dave Kellet from December of 2008, Arther the Duck and Grandpa mull over the oddity that is the naming of America.  The thing is, No matter how bummed Columbus may have been about the naming of the continent, I suspect the Native Americans were rather less happy about things. 

And, by the way, here's another webcomic which plays with the naming of Amerigo's America, map comics about the various Americas (North, Central, South), and Bugs Bunny's hilarious take on the Columbus story. 

Sunny 20's

This is a cover for The New Yorker from June of 1927 by H.O. Hofman.  Some of those sort-of-UFO-looking things are blimps/zeppelins/airships... with little biplanes in amongst them.  Here in the midst of the Roaring 20's we have much of the rest of the solar system there, giving a "sky's the limit" kind of sentiment.

Electoral College

This Bizarro strip by Dan Piraro ran at the end of November 2008, during the aftermath of the historic 2008 presidential election.  This is the well drawn low-hanging-fruit pun off of the term "electoral college".  This map takes many of the terms and phrases which became prominent during that long, long election cycle, mostly terms that came from the GOP side of things... mostly from Palin actually.   Click on the image to see a more legible version.