The Washington Post maps the parts of the United States most dependent on trade—and thus most at risk if the Trump administration starts a trade war with the U.S.’s trading partners.
Mapping Where America Depends on Trade
Author: Jonathan Crowe
Jonathan Crowe blogs about maps at The Map Room. His essays and reviews have been published by AE, Calafia, The New York Review of Science Fiction, the Ottawa Citizen, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. He lives in Shawville, Quebec.
Google Maps for Android Adds Information Tabs
Yesterday’s update to Google Maps for Android includes tabs for nearby points of interest, driving information and traffic conditions, and transit schedules and recommendations. More at The Verge.
Previously: Google Roundup for January 2017.
50 Fantasy States
50 Fantasy States is Chris Engelsma’s ongoing project to create fantasy-style maps of all 50 U.S. states. Six have been completed so far, including the above fantasy map of Alaska.
The Origins of the Selden Map
The Selden Map is a map of Chinese origin bequeathed by John Selden to the Bodleian Library in 1659. The precise origins of the map have hitherto been unknown, but scientists at Nottingham Trent University are trying to do something about that. Using a series of non-invasive techniques to examine the map’s material composition, they conclude that the map was created in stages, and probably comes from Aceh, Sumatra. Their findings were published last year in Heritage Science. [Caitlin Dempsey/WMS]
Previously: The Selden Map.
Tactile Maps, Modern and Historical
Two items on maps for the blind and visually impaired—a subject I find terribly interesting:
Greg Miller of National Geographic’s All Over the Map reports on a new tactile atlas of Switzerland, which “is printed with special ink that expands when heated to create tiny bumps and ridges on the page.” I can’t find a direct link to said atlas, but Greg interviews Esri cartographer Anna Vetter, who led the project.
Tactile maps have been around for a long time: Atlas Obscura looks at tactile maps—and even a tactile globe!—dating back to the early 1800s. Many of these maps are in the archives of the Perkins School for the Blind. The Perkins School has a Flickr album of these maps.
This Weekend: Miami International Map Fair
The Miami International Map Fair takes place this weekend at HistoryMiami Museum. Local website The New Tropic has more, including some of the maps on display. [WMS]
Previously: History of the Miami Map Fair.
William Smith’s Geological Maps Online
William Smith’s 19th-century geological maps of Britain are now available online via an interactive map interface. [Maps Mania]
Oxford: Mapping the City
Geographical magazine reviews Daniel MacCannell’s
RSGS Playground Map Project
The Royal Scottish Geographical Society’s Playground Map Project has been around since 2011; its aim is to provide a painted six-by-eight-metre world map to every school in Scotland that has playground space for one. [NLS Maps]
Cartographies of Disease
The revised edition of Tom Koch’s Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine—“a comprehensive survey of the technology of mapping and its relationship to the battle against disease”—is now out from Esri Press. (Or at least it’s scheduled to be: the paperback is not yet in stock at Amazon.) [GIS Lounge]
Koch is also the author of Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground (2011).
Bellerby Seeks Apprentice Globemaker
Want to make globes for a living? Bellerby & Co., maker of expensive, hand-made globes, is looking to hire an apprentice globemaker. They emphasize it’s a long-term job, not an internship:
It takes between 6 months to a year to learn how to make just the smallest sized globe … it is a further few years to make the larger sized globes.
Since it is unlikely we will find a former Globemaker.. all applicants will have to have a trial period… you have to try it before you both know you can do it … and to know you like doing it!
All jobs in our company require a patient and passionate person who will commit to the learning process and wants to stay in the company for at least 3 years afterwards.
The job posting was up for at least two months before Atlas Obscura blogged about it yesterday, but I presume, given Bellerby’s rather precise requirements—not so much about the candidate’s qualifications but their characteristics—that the position is still open. Have at it.
Danny Dorling’s TEDx Talk
Oxford geography professor Danny Dorling spoke at the TEDx Exeter conference in April 2016. If you’re familiar with Dorling’s work, it will come as no surprise that he makes extensive use of cartograms to describe the world’s population. Video: TED, YouTube.
Previously: Hennig and Dorling on ‘Seven New Maps of the World’; People and Places.
Redesigning the Paris Métro Map
Last June I told you about Constantine Konovalov’s redesigned Paris Métro map, a map based on concentric circles. Now, in Smashing Magazine, Konovalov does a deep dive into his own design process, which took more than two years. Quite a bit more detail than on his own website. [Alejandro Polanco]
Map Literacy in the Middle Ages
When we talk about map literacy, we mean the ability to read a map. We can blithely talk about how map reading has changed over the centuries while failing to interrogate whether what we mean by map reading has changed as well. It’s presentism to assume that people in the past did things the same way as they do today. In a useful essay called “Maps, Travel and Exploration in the Middle Ages: Some Reflection About Anachronism,” French academic Patrick Gautier Dalché explores how medieval audiences interpreted mappae mundi and marine charts. Even a mappa mundi, he argues, has a practical function. Spoiler: it’s not how you or I would use them.
It also occurs to me that Dalché’s paper is a must-read for writers of fantasy novels (and fantasy map makers), who might also fall into the trap of assuming that their characters would use their maps the same way as a modern map reader would.
The Economist’s Democracy Index
Here’s The Economist’s interactive map of their Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. Its 2016 iteration, released last week, downgrades the United States to a “flawed democracy”—a drop from 8.05 to 7.98 in the index, where 8 is the threshold between flawed and full democracy. (While many developed countries score higher, not all do: France is at 7.92, and Belgium is at 7.77; Japan is practically tied at 7.99.)