funny – Page 5 – The Map Room

‘Based on Something Something Search Data’

Published on 3 June 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

In yesterday’s xkcd cartoon, Randall makes explicit what I think a lot of us have been thinking about those maps assigning a word or a search term to each state or country or whatnot.

Montreal’s Anglo Metro Map

Published on 25 April 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Daniel Raillant-Clark’s map of Montréal’s Métro with anglicized station names (in most cases) is full of awful translations in both directions and puns in both languages (example: “Georges-Vanier” becomes “George Go Deny It” because va nier means go deny). To see what the hell this map is messing with, the real Métro map is here. [MTL Blog/Reddit]

‘Please Return to the Map Center’

Published on 21 April 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

April 19th: The day the Leventhal Map Center finally snapped.

The Isle of Bait

Published on 1 April 201731 March 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

The Future Mapping Company has announced the discovery of a new island 20 kilometres off the coast of Great Britain. They have naturally already produced a new map of this island.

The Isle of Bait is a small, beautiful and untouched paradise, but there is a hitch—it is only visible through the Face Swap Snapchat filter.

It appears that a glitch during the most recent geological shift caused a permanent geofence to go up around the island, preventing it from being visible to the naked eye.

Geocached for so long, local authorities are debating whether to rename landmarks and points of interest to bring the island into the post-Brexit era. Bay of Bright Futures, the Eneychestuary and Happiness Hill are all remnants of a past that is no longer a reality for the rest of the country. Toblerone Ridge, a local favourite for its distinctive jagged shape, may be the worst affected as plans to widen the gaps between peaks are unveiled as part of a “Greater Value Modernisation Programme.”

For this reason, this map is already a collector’s item, so we would advise acting now before the facts are revealed to be of an alternative nature.

Not since the discoveries of Null Island or San Seriffe has there been news of this magnitude—indeed, this announcement comes 40 years to the day after the Guardian published its supplement on the latter island.

‘Potato Drop’

Published on 30 March 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

The CBC comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes has a sketch on the matter of Prince Edward Island being left off maps of Canada.

xkcd’s Time Zone Map

Published on 15 February 201715 February 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Randall Munroe, “Bad Map Projection: Time Zones,” 15 February 2017. xkcd.

Randall Munroe is a bad man who is back with another bad map projection to make our eyes bleed. (If he does this often enough he’ll have enough for a book. Heaven forfend.) This one is, like his other maps, fiendishly subtle: it stretches and compresses countries to fit where their time zones ought to be, longitudinally speaking.

xkcd’s Liquid Resize Map Projection

Published on 11 January 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Randall Munroe, “Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize,” 11 January 2017. xkcd.

Every so often Randall Monroe puts up a map-related xkcd cartoon, and each time I dutifully post about it. This morning’s is called “Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize.” Or: when Photoshop algorithms attack.

A Magnificently Rude Map

Published on 11 December 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

The firm of Strumpshaw, Tincleton & Giggleswick produces whimsical maps of funny place names, including the Magnificently Rude Map of World Place Names, which shows where on the globe there are places with names that mean Naughty Things in English. Because we are 12 years old. [Buzzfeed]

xkcd’s U.S. State Names

Published on 2 December 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Randall Munroe, “U.S. State Names,” 2 December 2016. xkcd.

Randall is messing with us again in today’s xkcd, which assigns malapropisms and synophones to U.S. state names. The results are about what you’d expect.

Previously: xkcd’s United States Map.

xkcd’s British Map

Published on 14 November 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Today’s xkcd is a British map labelled by an American. It’s another one of those where the longer you stare at it, the more it hurts. Randall’s messing with us again.

What If Only … Voted?

Published on 8 November 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

While we wait for the results, think back, raise a glass, and remember fondly the meme that came and went so quickly a month or so ago: What if only … voted? Based on FiveThirtyEight maps showing the gender gap in voting intentions (What if only women voted? What if only men voted?) that quickly went viral, similar maps showing gap by race and education were followed by other maps that were considerably … sillier—here’s a selection. As Boing Boing’s Rob Beschizza said on 14 October: “The whole thing went from funny to saturation point to old in record time, and is already over.” Thing is, now that it’s Election Day I’m seeing them again. It ain’t over till it’s over. And sometimes not even then.

Mount Buggery to Nowhere Else: A Book on Australian Toponyms

Published on 31 October 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

A decade ago Mark Monmonier published From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow, the definitive treatment on toponyms and the controversies behind naming places (here’s my review). Now we have an Australian entry: Eamon Evans’s Mount Buggery to Nowhere Else: The Stories Behind Australia’s Weird and Wonderful Place Names, which came out last week. The book, Joshua Nash reports for Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service, “charts place names from the serious – the many names for Australia, for example—to the jocular, like Australia’s many rude and dirty topographic monikers.”

Many of Evans’s humorous stories go a way to responding to some of the scientific inadequacies and toponymic foibles so common in place naming studies. And after I’ve spent almost a decade inundated with often sterile and uninspirational place name theory and how it may fit within more general research in onomastics, the study of proper names, Evans’s tongue-in-cheek take is more than welcome.

I get the distinct impression that this is a less-serious work of scholarship than Monmonier’s. [WMS]

Street View Protects Cow Privacy

Published on 17 September 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Google’s Street View blurs people’s faces for privacy reasons. Licence plates, too. But a tweet by the Guardian’s David Shariatmadari reveals that Google’s algorithm sometimes extends privacy rights to cows.

https://twitter.com/D_Shariatmadari/status/775488250223947776

See the BBC’s coverage. Some context from Slate.

Map Men

Published on 29 August 201627 September 2022 by Jonathan Crowe

Map Men is a YouTube series by comedians Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones. It’s funny as hell, and quite informative too: it’s two silly people being very smart about often-silly cartographical situations. Six episodes so far; I hope they make more. [Geographical]

All the Countries Boris Johnson Has Offended

Published on 15 July 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Boris Johnson is Britain’s new foreign secretary. The Independent’s indy100 news site has put together a map of all the countries BoJo has offended. It’s interactive: at the link, hover over the country to get the oh-god-what-did-he-say-and-did-he-really-use-that-word story.