The Map Room

Twitter has a couple of interesting visualizations of tweets, replies and retweets to and from Japan immediately following the March 11 earthquake. “On Twitter, we saw a 500 percent increase in Tweets from Japan as people reached out to friends, family and loved ones in the moments after the earthquake. The video below shows the volume of @replies traveling into and out of Japan in a one-hour period just before and then after the earthquake.”

A second video, displaying “worldwide retweets of Tweets originating in Japan for one hour after the earthquake,” is also available.

Previously: Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Maps.

Another year, another Icelandic volcano with a difficult-to-pronounce name. Here’s Earth Observatory’s satellite image of Grímsvötn’s ash cloud (above) and Ogle Earth’s post about visualizing said ash cloud in Google Earth. Here’s an ESA article on the ash plume that includes animations of its spread (via GIS Lounge).

At the end of last month, the New York Times published a map called Where to Live to Avoid a Natural Disaster, measuring the risk to 379 U.S. metro areas from hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes. Matt Rosenberg doesn’t like this map: “This map is irresponsible as it gives a false sense of security to those who live in extremely hazardous cities and overstates the hazard in tornado-prone regions. Perhaps the map is simply a reflection of recent disasters in the news. Regardless, no city west of the Rocky Mountains should be listed as low risk as the entire Western United States is seismically active. They definitely could have done better.”

A choropleth map from the Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics blog showing the state-by-state rate of food stamp usage in the United States: it’s worst in Mississippi and Oregon, at 20.6 percent and 20 percent respectively. Via Google Maps Mania.

Using Google Earth or Google Maps to spot the compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan in which Osama Bin Laden was hiding (until, um, yesterday) is, it turns out, a bit problematic, since the compound is more recent than the available satellite imagery: Google Earth Blog, Google Maps Mania and (especially) Ogle Earth explore the question.

Update, 6 PM:

Defense department maps and imagery of the Bin Laden compound has been released; see galleries here and here, among others. See also the New York Times’s interactive map. And then there’s this recent satellite image of Abbottabad from Digital Globe [edit: since removed] which Ogle Earth’s Stefan Geens has made into a Google Earth overlay.

And finally, a high resolution image of Abbottabad from GeoEye.

The U.S. National Nuclear Safety Administration has produced a map (as part of a presentation) showing the estimated first-year, long-term radiation dose in and around the Fukushima nuclear plant. “In the red swath of land northwest of the plant…  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has a number of satellite images of the spring flooding in the Canadian Prairie Provinces and the U.S. Upper Midwest. The most recent image, above, is a MODIS image combining visual and infrared views of the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Manitoba Floods and Saskatchewan Floods are Ushaidi-powered “citizen flood maps” that aggregate reports about the spring floods in each province. Via @map_maker….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via Catholicgauze, links to this and other maps of the post-election conflict in Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire). See also this blog dedicated to maps of Ivory Coast during the crisis….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Google has updated Google Earth’s base layer imagery with new high-resolution imagery from the Sendai, Japan area. The imagery was collected on Sunday and Monday, so this is an incredibly fast turnaround. The imagery will also be available in Google…  •  Continue reading this entry.

MapAction has a number of maps relating to the current situation in Japan, including maps showing the evacuated population and search and rescue maps. The New York Times maps the evacuation zones around the Fukushima reactors. Google Maps Mania…  •  Continue reading this entry.

If I keep posting links to the New York Times’s online maps I’m going to run up against their paywall limit in no time. Even so, here’s their day-by-day situation map of the Libyan uprising, showing the daily state…  •  Continue reading this entry.

An article on Poynter explores the use of interactive maps on online news sites — basically, why they are so useful from a journalistic perspective, particularly in the context of recent major news stories (i.e., Libya and Japan). Via @googlemaps….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Speaking of the New York Times, they published an interactive map last week that had me fuming. It was a map that showed the forecast spread of radiation from Fukushima, Japan — or, more precisely, “how weather patterns this…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Snopes debunks a fake map that has apparently been making the rounds. The map and accompanying message claims that lethal doses of radiation will blanket the northern Pacific Ocean and western North America following a Japanese reactor meltdown. Via @BadAstronomer….  •  Continue reading this entry.

This post collects links to maps of the 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan and the ensuing tsunami. It may be updated if new maps are made available. Earthquake. USGS maps of the quake. USGS real-time earthquakes layer for Google Earth (KML)….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The public version of the Libya Crisis Map is now online. The CrisisMappers Standby Task Force has been undertaking a mapping of social media, news reports and official situation reports from within Libya and along the borders at the request…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Richard Florida’s Index of Potential Unrest attempts to predict “unrest and revolutionary activism” in the Middle East and elsewhere: With the help of my colleague Charlotta Mellander, we pulled together statistics from 152 nations and sorted them according to eight…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Let’s keep some perspective about Facebook’s influence on the democratic uprisings in the Middle East. An interactive map from CNN looks at the comparative penetration rates of Facebook, the Internet, and mobile phones in North Africa and the Middle East….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo: “With the battle going on in Wisconsin, we wanted to ask: How many states have collective bargaining with public employees’ unions? How many forbid it? Check out our map. It’s pretty revealing.”…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Times’s interactive map tracks each day of the protests in Cairo. Esri’s Egypt Events Map “pulls in social media related to the protests that have occurred in Egypt since January 25, 2011” — which is to say,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has a number of high-resolution satellite images of the floods in Queensland, Australia. Nearmap managed to get an even closer look at the flooding, with two-centimetre-resolution imagery taken on January 13 and 14. ABC News (Australia)…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via @bruces comes a link to this rather well-done map, by Arun Ganesh of the National Institute of Design, Bangalore, showing the extent of Somali pirate attacks over the past five years. (Misspelled “Ethiopia,” though.)…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A map was at the centre of a major news story in the United States this week. Within hours of the news that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (among others, to be sure) had been shot at a constituency meeting in…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Speaking of Africa, BBC News has put together a page of maps of Sudan that illustrate the differences between northern and southern Sudan. Southern Sudan is at the moment voting on whether to declare independence from the north. Via @HodderGeography….  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA’s Earth Observatory: “This image shows rainfall amounts over California from December 18 to 20, 2010. The heaviest rainfall — more than 200 millimeters or 7.8 inches — appears in dark blue.”…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This image maps sulphur dioxide emissions from the erupting Mount Merapi volcano in Indonesia: “This image shows concentrations of sulfur dioxide on November 4–8, 2010, as observed by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura spacecraft. Sulfur dioxide…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Oh, so that’s what hit us. This image of the “weather bomb” that surprised the U.S. Midwest and much of central and western Canada — it knocked out our power a couple of times earlier this week — was…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Google has announced that recent GeoEye imagery of the toxic sludge spill in hungary, taken on October 7, is now available as a KML overlay for Google Earth. The overlay view can be toggled between before- and after-the-spill views of…  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA has released movies showing the carbon monoxide levels present in the air as a result of the recent wildfires in Russia. “They show three-day running averages of daily measurements of carbon monoxide present at an altitude of 5.5…  •  Continue reading this entry.

These dramatic Landsat 5 images show a portion of southern Pakistan before and after the second wave of flooding hit; the images were taken only three days apart. More satellite images of the flooding in Pakistan here. Via Daily…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This map illustrates a CNNMoney article on increasing levels of debt taken on by U.S. state governments; the map shows the amount of debt per state resident. It’s not as much as you might think: “The median state debt…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Google hasn’t completely abandoned China; high-resolution imagery taken after last week’s earthquake in Qinghai is now available through Google Earth (KML link)….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Ben Hennig’s cartogram showing each country’s debt-to-GDP ratio really emphasizes just how screwed North America, western Europe and Japan really are. Credit: SASI Research Group (University of Sheffield). Via Geospatial News and La Cartoteca….  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’ve found two NOAA maps showing the progress and impact of the tsunami generated by this morning’s 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile. Note that the wave is happening as I write this and that by the time you read this post…  •  Continue reading this entry.

David McCandless’s infographic showing what keywords and websites are blocked by China’s Great Firewall is an interesting design. Other versions here and here. Via Andrew Sullivan. Buy The Visual Miscellaneum at Amazon.com…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Another one of those maps-with-timelines that have become de rigueur when mapping the current recession, this time from the Wall Street Journal, which maps bank failures in the U.S. since January 2008. Larger circles indicate asset value at the time…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Health-care advocacy group Public Option Please chose Amy Martin’s map of the United States showing blood vessels coursing across the country as the winner of their poster contest. Via Cartophilia….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via Maps-L, LaToya Egwuekwe’s animated map of county-by-county unemployment rates in the U.S. from January 2007 to September 2009. I quibble that there is no slider, but the map is well done. (Am I right in guessing that this…  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’ve posted a number of maps showing U.S. unemployment rates, so I perked up when I saw that The Globe and Mail had an interactive unemployment map for Canada. Unfortunately, it’s terrible: it only shows the change in the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Geocommons has a map of the Afghanistan presidential election results that also includes a number of other, related data layers. Off the Map discusses some of the data and behind-the-scenes work. Via BBC News dot.life and Google Maps Mania….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Wall Street Journal has yet another map of state-by-state unemployment rates in the United States, with the required slider showing the monthly rate since December 2007. Michigan’s rate is now up to 15 percent. Via MapHawk. Previously: Another Animated…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Google has made available recent satellite imagery of Tehran from the IKONOS satellite via a Google Earth layer. How recent? Last Thursday. It would have been higher resolution if it had come from the GeoEye-1 satellite, but weather apparently played…  •  Continue reading this entry.

North Korea is very much in the news lately, but very much not on the map. The North Korea Uncovered project is trying to do something about that: it’s a Google Earth layer (KMZ file) that maps installations, landmarks…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Adversity Index, developed by Moody’s and MSNBC, maps the impact of the recession on 381 U.S. metropolitan areas as well as each of the 50 states. “The index shows that the recession reached 367 of the nation’s 381 metro…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Another animated map showing U.S. job losses; this one shows net job gains and losses by metropolitan area over the previous 12 months, with a timeline — note the big red circle over New Orleans after Katrina. Via YahooGeo. Previously:…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Maps produced for The Long War Journal show the extent of the Taliban’s influence and control in northwestern Pakistan. Only the first map, shown in this article, contains a legend explaining what the colours represent; subsequent maps that show…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The latest interactive map of unemployment in the United States comes to us from Slate: this one also shows county-by-county job losses, but measures job losses in a slightly different way: for each month selected, it shows the year-over-year…  •  Continue reading this entry.

IKONOS imagery of the Italian region of Abruzzo taken after Monday’s earthquake (whose epicentre was in L’Aquila), is now available in this KML file, Google LatLong reports. See also this landing page (in Italian). Previously: Italian Earthquake….  •  Continue reading this entry.

USGS maps of last night’s magnitude-6.3 earthquake in central Italy are available: here is the ShakeMap (at right); here is a map and chart showing population exposure; historic seismicity maps place the quake in recent context. Via Making Light….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Center for American Progress has an interactive map showing state-by-state unemployment rates and job losses, with a timeline dating back to 2005. It’s not a pretty picture: “Employers have laid off 4.4 million workers since the recession began,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Google LatLong points to a couple of resources for residents of the Fargo-Moorehead area affected by the flooding of the Red River: this My Map, put together by the owner of several Fargo-area radio stations (see above), and this…  •  Continue reading this entry.

USA Today’s map of 2006 and 2008 foreclosures shows “that rising rates of foreclosure were most severe in a few areas. Last year, 35 counties accounted for half the nation’s foreclosure actions.” (Those counties are outlined in red on…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Very Spatial links to a number of maps depicting foreclosures in the U.S., including RealityTrac’s map of the 2.3 million foreclosures across the U.S. in 2008 (thumbnail at right) and USA Today’s map of foreclosures in Denver since 2006,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Times always seems to have good online maps; here’s one showing county-by-county unemployment rates. Via MAPS-L. This CNNMoney.com map shows state-by-state unemployment, state budget deficit, and foreclosure rates. Via Dave Smith. Also via Dave, another state-by-state…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Azerbaijan, Georgia and boundaries. Azerbaijan is developing orthopictomaps at various scales, and is also working out its border with Georgia, which is complicated by differences in 1905 and 1938 maps of the region; they’ve settled on 300 out of 490…  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA imagery of the bushfires in the Australian state of Victoria can be found here (from which I took the above image) and here. See also Universe Today. Imagery from NASA’s MODIS imagery is apparently being updated twice daily….  •  Continue reading this entry.

As usual, I’m just about the last person to mention GeoEye’s high-resolution satellite image of the crowds attending President Obama’s inauguration, less than an hour before he was sworn in. It’s available as a KML layer for Google Earth;…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Last month, the Armed Services Inauguration Committee revealed to the public a 40×40-foot map used to plan the inauguration (via Vector One); another view is here (thumbnail above; via MapHist). New Google Earth imagery for Washington, D.C. finally de-pixellates…  •  Continue reading this entry.

UNOSAT situation maps (via Ogle Earth; Stefan has created an image overlay for use in Google Earth). A map of where the Gaza rockets have been landing in Israel, viewable either in Google Maps or Google Earth (via Catholicgauze)….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via Chad, CNN’s interactive map showing the number of auto industry jobs in each state….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Maps and satellite images from UNOSAT showing the damage caused by the conflict between Russian and Georgian forces over South Ossetia and Abkhazia last month. Via Catholicgauze….  •  Continue reading this entry.

With even more hurricanes on the way, Google has added a “Hurricane Season 2008” folder to Google Earth. Previously: Post-Gustav Imagery; Mapping Hurricane Gustav….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Hurricane Gustav Tracking Maps Firstcoastnews.com FLHurricane.com IbisEye MIBAZAAR MSNBC StormAdvisory (click on Gustav) Wundermap Some are better than others; IbisEye, MSNBC and Wundermap are standouts. Via Anything Geospatial, Google Maps Mania, Kottke and La Cartoteca. Hurricane Gustav in Google Earth…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Map Hawk, a side project by Directions Media’s Joe Francica, is a blog that “will cover the use of maps, mapping technology and location-based information in the media”; topics so far include the U.S. elections, the recent Russia-Georgia crisis, and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Google is denying reports that detailed maps for Georgia and the other countries of the Caucasus on Google Maps disappeared as a result of the conflict between Georgia and Russia. The data was never there in the first place; they…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A photo of a map drawn in the sand, taken by Stanley Greene, has won second prize in the General News category in the 2008 World Press Photo contest. The poignant map depicts an attack on a village in Darfur…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Links to Cyclone Nargis-related data viewable in Google Earth are available at Google Earth Blog, Google LatLong and humanitarian.info. Via Ogle Earth. Previously: Cyclone Nargis; More on Cyclone Nargis and Burma….  •  Continue reading this entry.

More on the devastation wrought on Burma (Myanmar) by Cyclone Nargis: UNOSAT has maps of the affected regions (as PDF files); the maps show the extent of flooding and the villages that have been completely submerged or flooded. Via Glenn….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Satellite images from before and after Cyclone Nargis struck the Burmese (Myanmarese?) coast….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Greg writes to mention that the housing-search site HotPads also has a foreclosure heat maps layer. From the site: “HotPads Foreclosure Heat Maps portray the markets hit hardest by the recent housing crisis and the increased foreclosure rates. These foreclosure…  •  Continue reading this entry.

You’ve probably heard about this by now. An Absolut Vodka ad in Mexico has stirred up a furor in the United States. The ad, which depicts a pre-1836 map of Mexico that includes territories since lost to Texas independence…  •  Continue reading this entry.

For a school dissertation (PDF), Nicolas Kayser-Bril has generated cartograms that “show the world through the eyes of editors-in-chief in 2007” — countries that received more coverage appear larger in these cartograms: see the original (in French) and the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A sobering collection of choropleth maps from the U.S. Federal Reserve that illustrate the subprime mortgage crisis. From the press release: The maps, which are maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will display regional variation in the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

For your reference, the Washington Post’s map of the shootings at Virginia Tech. Via MetaFilter. See also Virginia Tech’s campus maps. Update, 4/17 at 9:30 AM: The Baltimore Sun’s map is a Google Maps mashup. Via Very Spatial. Update #2,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Maps are taking a curious central position in the controversy over former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. A former executive director of the Carter Center resigned over the book, charging that it contained inaccuracies and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Robert Fisk’s column in last Saturday’s Independent, complaining about what he saw as France’s self-serving interest in maintaining Lebanese independence, includes the following passage about colonialism and mapmaking: Amid such geopolitical uncertainties, it is easy for westerners to see these…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Declan Butler has made a Google Earth layer from Reporters Without Borders’s Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index. I’m surprised they don’t put out a cartogram themselves. Via La Cartoteca (which just celebrated its first anniversary)….  •  Continue reading this entry.

A map showing selected CIA aircraft routes and rendition flights over the past five years is now on a billboard in Los Angeles. John Emerson, who designed it, sent along the link to his post explaining the project….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Edward Tufte has been asked “to take a look at airport runway maps and how runway incursions might be reduced by better maps”; the discussion on his bulletin board makes for interesting reading, particularly in light of the recent…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A few web pages place the locations of yesterday’s bomb blasts in Mumbai, India (which you may know as Bombay) on Google Maps: there is this one (via Matt) and “>this one (via Ogle Earth); the latter is a KML…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cartography links to more maps and imagery of the Indonesian earthquake, including satellite images here and here, as well as situation maps from ReliefWeb. See previous entries: Indonesian Earthquake; Indonesian Earthquake in Google Earth….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via Kathryn Cramer, Google Earth overlays for last weekend’s earthquake in Indonesia. See previous entry: Indonesian Earthquake….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via Cartography and Catholicgauze, maps and satellite photos produced by UNOSAT of the earthquake-stricken areas of Indonesia, both before and after the quake….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Deadly Maps collects every map from a book published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats (Amazon.com listing). From the site: “The first five maps reflect the worldwide proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’ve been off my feed a bit this past week, so I’ve got some catching up to do. I’ll start with a few random links from here and there about this and that. From the Google Blog: “Not only have…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Kathryn Cramer points to a USGS “ShakeMap” of the magnitude-6.8 earthquake that struck the Lake Tanganyika region today, and has provided a Google Earth overlay of it as well. This was my first exposure to the USGS ShakeMaps site, which…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cartography looks at the maps generated by news organizations covering the riots in France (which began in the suburbs of Paris and have since spread), and finds them generally wanting. Frankly, as someone who’s spent time in Paris and am…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The legally binding 1978 map of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has gone missing, the New York Times reports (free registration required). The map, wall-sized and 1:250,000 scale, was last seen in 2002 and apparently disappeared some time in early…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The always excellent Kathryn Cramer points to satellite imagery of the earthquake-stricken areas of Pakistan: one-metre-resolution photos from Space Imaging, an image from NASA’s Earth Observatory showing the quake epicentres and fault line, and a page of images from the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Speaking of Kathryn Cramer, she’s also put together a useful Google Maps mashup of earthquake data that allows us to see, quite precisely, where the quakes and aftershocks have hit in northern Pakistan. She notes: One interesting result I obtain…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Ryan Miller writes, “I was looking to find a map showing where the Los Angeles wildfire was, and this map viewer was very helpful. It’s easy to use, and it has a few convenient layers to use.” The server is…  •  Continue reading this entry.

To mark the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the September 11 Digital Archive has used the Google Maps API to create an interactive map of New York with photos (blue markers) and stories (red markers) from that day. Via…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Truck driver Ahmad El Maati was suspected of ties to Al Qaeda, and detained and allegedly tortured in Syria and Egypt, in part because of the presence of a map of government installations in his truck when he crossed the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

In other natural disaster news, Vector One has linked to ESA satellite imagery of the Portuguese wildfires and floods in Austria, Switzerland and Germany….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Peacay notices that the Library of Congress’s Geography and Map Division has a Places in the News page; it currently has a map of the Gaza Strip (see previous entry) and a hurricane tracking chart. Presumably updated as events change;…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The removal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip has occasioned some fine cartography from newspapers. The New York Times had an excellent graphic in its Sunday, Aug. 14 edition, which I can’t find online. The Globe and Mail’s map…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Mapping Worlds is a series of maps that highlight development issues. Some maps distort countries’ sizes based on their contributions, or lack thereof; others highlight global development issues such as Third World debt, AIDS infection rates, and refugee displacements. Via…  •  Continue reading this entry.

DigitalGlobe’s Vatican Gallery, including a satellite shot of St. Peter’s square on April 5 (1.5 MB JPEG, 2168×2164 resolution), showing mourners in line to view the Pope’s body. Via Jason….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Global MapAid is a project that is trying to provide useful maps for humanitarian aid workers. The problem is, when things go blooey, whether due to natural disaster or war or famine, aid workers on the ground need accurate maps….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Mark (of Language Log) compares the Ukrainian electoral results with a linguistic map, to deal with the question of whether the electoral divide matches the linguistic (Ukrainian vs. Russian) one. Via Languagehat. (See previous entry: Ukrainian Presidential Election.)…  •  Continue reading this entry.

These maps of Ukraine’s presidential election results (originals here and here) illustrate the problem: suspiciously higher voter turnouts (compared to the first round of voting) and regionally polarized results (though, as Le Sabot Post-Moderne points out, that’s including the questionable…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Organizational note: the recent posts about the U.S. election results have been moved, along with related older posts, from the News & Politics category to the new Electoral Maps category….  •  Continue reading this entry.

SixDegreesofVoting.com has an animated map that shows the last 100 signups and their connections to one another — this is a Kevin-Bacon-style project that aims at getting people to encourage their friends to vote. (And they told two friends, and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

SatBlog is a blog about satellite imagery; since its restart last August it’s been focusing mainly on the Middle East (especially Iraq) and on all those bloody hurricanes. A lot of news stories can be illuminated by satellite photography —…  •  Continue reading this entry.

An Economist article on the controversy about electronic voting equipment in the United States has an interesting (albeit small) map showing what equipment is being used where across the country, from paper ballots and lever machines to punchards and touchscreens….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Enjoy this map, which compares 2004 hurricane paths to 2000 presidential election results by county in Florida. But don’t take it too seriously, okay? Via Daragh. Update: Snopes debunks, though it hardly seems necessary: The map displayed above is a…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Satellite images of Ryongchong, North Korea, before and after the explosion (via MetaFilter)….  •  Continue reading this entry.

U.S. political discourse talks about “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democrat) states. In “Beyond Red and Blue”, Robert David Sullivan rejects this model as reductionist, instead preferring to split the country into 10 non-contiguous, but politically distinct, regions. (I remember reading…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This is a little dated now for breaking news; I was saving it during the downtime. But still relevant: one-metre-resolution satellite images of Bam, Iran, after the earthquake. Via Here Be Dragons….  •  Continue reading this entry.