Emily Wicks: The Fifty United States and their Mottos

Emily Wick has posted her linocuts and paintings on her "Two Eyeballs Galleries", including the beautifully cartographic The Fifty States and Their Mottos,a composite of 50 individual linocuts:



From the artist's statement:

I began making linoleum prints in 2003 and began studying classical realism under master painter David Hardy in 2006. I like to carve lino blocks while I am relaxing. I enjoy painting so I can slow down and learn this ancient magical trade of optical illusions. Seeing Things Differently to see a new world is my purpose: both imagination AND reality are important ingredients.

In addition, Emily Wick is a filmmaker and blogs about food!

Posters, original linocuts, and T-Shirts are also available.

HT to Orange!

2008 UCF Wildcard Weekend

Last week I introduced the end-of-2008 NFL season United Countries of Football map:



I am Indianapolis Colts fan, and was disappointed that they lost on Saturday and will not go forward. I found I had an unusual basis for the teams I rooted for on Sunday. As you can see on the map above, I made some poor choices of colors. I gave the Minnesota Vikings and the Baltimore Ravens the same shade of purple, and I gave the San Diego Chargers and the Miami Dolphins similar shades of orange! What if the wrong teams win and their colors mix, or I have to change colors? Thanks to the Eagles and the Ravens, that is no longer a problem...



Now I have each team with a unique color. I am predicting a blue and blue Super Bowl this year, Tennessee Titans v. New York Giants... we'll see... I'm usually very wrong.

I should have taken map color advice from John Krygier's book, Making Maps.

Russian Academic Predicts US Disunion

Today's Wall Street Journal has an article about a Russian professor that is getting a lot of attention because of his prediction that the current economic crisis will lead to a break-up of the United States in the year 2010.

He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.

Goodness! That is quite a prediction. I suppose I should mock this, but then they laughed when the collapse of the Soviet Union was predicted...

I guess it could be worse. Here in Ohio I'll take being subsumed by those evil Canadians over some of the other options...

HT to Pascal

2008 United Countries of Football

The NFL 2008 regular season has come to an end. Just as I did last season, I am playing around with the imaginary United Countries of Football.



What if the fans of each team formed their own country, and by the end of the season, Divisional Champions have "conquered" their foes? See the original post for more details.

America Deflated

Often I have highlighted a map that provides an "inflated view" of its subject. In other words, making it appear larger (and by inference, more important).

Artist Nina Katchadourian has taken an opposite approach. She has taken a standard AAA road map of the United States and "deflated" it, to only include the portions that are relevant to her life:

Coastal Merger:

I was born in California, moved to the east coast for college, went back to the west coast for graduate school, and now live on the east coast again. This map reflects my bicoastal experience of this country.

From a purely technical point of view, I am impressed with the way she carefully matched up coastlines and highways to create a seamless merger. I wish I could get a closer look.

Katchadourian's work can also be seen in this collection, Opener 11: Nina Katchadourian: All Forms of Attraction and in my favorite "maps as art" book, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination by Katharine Harmon.

Via Creative Mapping: "A blog dedicated to the creative use of maps in art or how to map information creatively. All in all we are dedicated to showing map art."

Here's Mud In Your Eye

For the last week or so, the blogosphere has been abuzz over the unveiling of the LIFE photo archive hosted by Google. You can now search Google Images to retrieve photos and other images from 1750 to the present. Many of the classic LIFE photos are now searcheable by keyword.

I finally got around to browsing the collection and naturally, I typed in the keyword "map". One of the many results was this less than appetizing array of martinis:

Map of the US w.Martini glasses either empty or filled w. varied portions of black liquid representing the amount of air particulates in the state on which they rest As a result of the US Dept. of Health's "Air Pollution Measurements fr. 1957-1961.
Location: US
Date taken: November 1963

I guess if you were going to drink the polluted air, the best place to be was in the Rocky Mountains, and stay away from Chicago Gary.

Where I've Been

Paticipants of the Facebook and MySpace social networking sites may already be familiar with this type of interactive "Where I've Been" map. Douwe Osinga offers this Create your own visited map of The United States that you can plug into your own blog or website:


visited 33 states (66%)

In most of these states, I have spent some time, or at least driven through. Washington and Alaska only appear here because I had a brief layover in the Seattle and Anchorage airports.

I have far less red on my Create your own visited map of The World:


visited 6 states (2.66%)

Of course I have visited Canada and Mexico and I spent four months in Taiwan during college pretending to learn Chinese. Japan and South Korea were, once again, layovers.

I have never been to India, but those of you that have can also Create your own visited map of India.

Map Shoes Go Swoosh!... and Splash!

Rex Parker, crossword puzzle solver and vintage paperback book collector, sent to me this photo of a map on a Nike shoe:


That prompted me to seek out more info... instead, what I found were additional examples of maps on Nike shoes.


From MyFirstAirShoes.com:




From SlamJump.com.



See previous examples of map shoes:

The Tennessee Representa and Jennifer Collier's map shoe sculpture.

Also, while searching for map shoe information, I was reminded of this amusing, yet environmentally tragic story the cargo ship full of Nike products that accidentally dumped in the North Pacific back in 1999. Shoes and other flotsam were washing up on British Columbian beaches for years.

More recently, there have been grisly stories of Nike (and other) shoes, with feet still in them, washing up in BC.

Last Word on 2008 Electoral Maps

The presidential electoral season brought so many interesting variations of the electoral map, I have resisted the urge to post them all here. So, as a goodbye to the 2008 election, I'll just post these two.

The Economist polled their world-wide readers: What if the whole world could vote in the U.S. election:


I suspect these results confirm the suspicions of both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats are pleased that we will have a president that most of the rest of the world likes, and Republicans see Obama as the favorite of terrorists and socialists... (Although, I'm not sure how that explains Cuba going for McCain...)

Leave it to The Onion to carefully explain the electoral results:

Lost States

Last week I wrote about How the States Got Their Shapes. It turns out that the fifty states we know and love were not the only states that we might have seen... Over the course of our history, many other states have been proposed, only to be shot down or ignored.

Michael Trinklein has written a book about these failed attempts: Lost States: Real Quests for American Statehood. Heavily illustrated, this book tells the tale of would be state-builders and forgotten corners of geography, with wit and humor. Some of these attempts were very serious, some no more than pranks. Here are two examples:

The colonists who followed Daniel Boone through the Cumberland Gap in the 1770s called their coloney "Transylvania" (wich means "through the woods" and has nothing to do with vampires). After the start of the Revolutionary War, representatives went to the Continental Congress seeking recognition, but Virginia, who claimed most of that land, would hear nothing of it. Later, the area was rearranged into Kentucky and Tennessee.



Many new states have been proposed by carving up or rearranging already existing states. Often because residents of a region feel neglected by the rest of the state government. Folks in norther California often feel ignored and underappreciated by the rest of the state. The same goes for southern Oregon. In 1941 a new state, Jefferson (to keep Washington company?), was proposed. A cabal attempted to declare independence on December 4... but were overshadowed by the events of December 7.



For more samples, visit the author's website.

Purple States of America 2008

Mark Newman has already come out with his 2008 Election Cartograms. (Last year I highlighted his 2004 Election Cartograms.)

Take the standard electoral vote maps we have been seeing since election night, and adjust the shape and size of each state for population and you get this:



It gives some real perspective on the size of Barack Obama's electoral vote landslide. However, as we know, in many of these states, the popular vote was very close. Re-color the map to show how the counties voted; strongly for Obama is dark blue, strongly for McCain is bright red, and shades of purple for everything in between...



Once again, the nation is bruised, but carries on...

UPDATE

Declan Butler has his own calculations for a population cartogram. He also includes Hawaii and Alaska (that sort of looks like a squashed bug...)

Ice Electoral Map

Just as they did in 2004, NBC News turned the ice rink at Rockefeller Center into an electoral map:



A video can be seen here on Gawker.com

What Time Do the Polls Close?

I just love how elections produce all kinds of colorful maps!

Via The Daily Dish

Constitution-Free Zone

According the the American Civil Liberties Union, nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within a "Constitution-Free Zone". The United States government has extended the "the border" to a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the "external boundary" of the United States. "As a result of this claimed authority, individuals who are far away from the border, American citizens traveling from one place in America to another, are being stopped and harassed in ways that our Constitution does not permit."

Are you living within a constitution-free zone?



Via The Earth is Square and Jay

How the States Got Their Shapes

How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein. I read this book several months ago, and have been meaning to mention it here....

Each of the 51 chapters (it also includes the District of Columbia) discusses some history of each state, focusing primarily on the decisions that were made by kings, settlers and Congress when drawing borders around states.

This book answers some burning questions:

• Why West Virginia has a finger creeping up the side of Pennsylvania


• Why Michigan has an upper peninsula that isn't attached to Michigan


• Why some Hawaiian islands are not Hawaii


• Why Texas and California are so out sized, especially when so many Midwestern states are nearly identical in size


• Was Delaware really necessary?

Stein tells the stories of these states with humor. My favorite is the sad story of Maryland, and how they LOST every single border dispute over history (just look at it... a very unnaturally shaped state.):



As a resident of Ohio, I was particularly interested in the story of Connecticut and their claim to lands in the West. Like many of the original thirteen colonies, they claimed land stretching all the way to the Pacific. In most cases, it wasn't that they truly expected to govern that land, but they wanted the right to sell the acreage to settlers. Eventually they were obliged to relinquish they claim to half of Pennsylvania, and much of the territory in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois as Congress organized that area as part of the Northwest Ordinance:



However, Connecticut reserved the right to sell the land in what is now northeast Ohio. It was their "Western Reserve." I had often wondered where the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland got their name.



My only criticism is the author's arrangement of the chapters. He chose to put the states in alphabetical order, which is fine if you are not reading the whole thing straight through, but want to find and refer to specific states. I would have preferred that he arranged them by regions. So many of the states have common histories of their borders (such as the 49th parallel and the Mason-Dixon Line). If arranged thematically, many of the chapters would not have needed to be so repetitive. Still, this book is a must for map and geography buffs.

#280

Paint the States Red or Blue

With less than two weeks until the United States general election, cartophiles cannot help but be interested in electoral maps. Everywhere you turn every news source and blog is speculating on which way each state will go... red or blue. My favorite articles also use clever map graphics to illustrate their point.

Salon.com had two recent articles by Walter Shapiro, with "red or blue" paint illustrations.

Why is Barack Obama now electable? "From the youth vote to Sarah Palin's outdated embrace of the rural mystique, Salon's panel of demographers and consumer trend experts talks about how America is changing."

Turning Indiana blue "Put off by the McCain-Palin ticket, suburban Republicans are backing Barack Obama -- who might score a rare Democratic win in the Hoosier State."

It is also fun to speculate on different electoral outcome scenarios, including possible ties! CNN.com offers this interactive electoral map:



Other sites that let you calculate alternate electoral vote results:

270towin, Washington Post, Real Clear Politics

Campaign Ad Spending

Where are the candidates spending their money on advertising?

The New York Times has an interactive map that allows you to see just how much the Obama and McCain campaigns are spending in each market.



Obama appears to have given up on Utah and Idaho... and why is McCain spending any money in markets he has locked, or cannot be expected to win?

Via The Electoral Map, one of my favorite sources for electoral mapping and analysis.

Magazine Roundup

Time for another sampling of maps on magazine covers:

	The Week September 19, 2008 Sarah Palin is having an impact on the election and nation... or is she tearing it apart?
New Scientist September 6, 2008 Talk about your global warming...
	Tikkun July August 2008 What? Do you think new worlds grow on trees?
New Yorker October 6, 2008 Revisiting the classic "View of the World from Ninth Avenue" cover, a "View of Russia from Gov. Palin's Office." For a larger version of this map, see: Strange Maps.

Buckeye Firsts

Just as Ohio likes to style itself the "Mother of Presidents" (because, like Virginia, they lay claim to eight presidents that called Ohio home), Ohio historians also like to highlight the number of famous inventors from Ohio. The list of famous inventors from Ohio includes Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, and Charles Kettering.

I only mention this as an excuse to highlight this poster on display in my library:



The photo does not effectively show the 3-D effect of the state of Ohio thrusting out of the heart of America, but it creates an attractive display.

Sporcle: Can you name the most populous US cities?

Can you name the 25 most populous US cities?



Sporcle.com posts new trivia quizzes every day. Many of them are geography related. Today they posted a quiz on the 25 most populous cities in the United States. I am embarrased to say that I only scored 21 out of 25. Can you do better? No cheating by looking at the U.S. Census figures first...

Other map related Sporcle quizzes:

Countries of Europe
Countries of Asia
Most populous cities of the world
etc.

Plus, these were tougher than I thought they'd be:

U.S. State Flags
Flags of Europe

#260

Updated Singles Map

Back in April I posted about The Singles Map of the United States. The map looked at gender population demographics to determine which parts of the country contain more eligible bachelors or more single women.

Jonathan Soma dropped me a line to let you know that he took the idea and ran much much further with it. On this new website you can now control for age as well as population:





Guys and gals, if you're still looking for that special someone, you may need to adjust for your age, and then get thee to the region with better odds! But don't forget the Half-Your-Age-Plus-Seven Rule.

Harry-est Town in America

This news is a bit "last year"... but it is the first time I heard of it, and I like the graphic... From Amazon.com:


The Harry-est Town in America

After months of tracking pre-orders of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Amazon.com can now reveal the Harry-est town in the country: Falls Church, VA! Residents of Falls Church ordered more copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from Amazon.com per capita than any other town in America. As a result of Falls Church's "Harry-ness," Amazon.com is donating a $5,000 Amazon.com gift certificate to The Mary Riley Styles Public Library Foundation Trust of Falls Church.

Falls Church beat out Gig Harbor, WA, and two other Virginia towns--including Fairfax and Vienna--with Katy, TX, rounding out the top five. Media, PA, Issaquah, WA, Snohomish, WA, Doylestown, PA, and Fairport, NY, completed the top ten Harry-est Towns.

Amazon.com used the most recent U.S. Census data and included all U.S. towns and cities with a population of more than 5,000 people.

Football TV Coverage Maps

College football has been under way for a week, and NFL football started on Thursday night. All is as it should be in the universe... except that sometimes, you cannot watch your game of choice... Which college or NFL game is going to be shown in your market?

ESPN offers coverage maps of the games their channels and partner network ABC offer:



The Map Room has alerted me to the excellent NFL TV coverage maps on the506.com that now make use of Google Maps technology:



I am often frustrated by the choices that the networks make, to decide which games I get to see in my town. Naturally, being very close to Cincinnati, we always get the Bengals games, however, there are a great many Cleveland Browns fans in this area. Their families have been Browns fans since long before the Bengals were in Ohio. So, not too surprisingly, we will get Browns games, when they don't conflict with a Bengals game. The next nearest football markets are Indianapolis, Detroit and Pittsburgh. So why do they keep showing us Dallas Cowboys games? I hate the Cowboys. They call themselves "America's Team" but they have never been my team. The networks like to assume everyone in Ohio gives a flying frak. In my opinion, Dallas Cowboys fans that don't live, or have some connection to the Southwest, are all just a bunch of bandwagoners. Even Adolph Hitler was a Cowboys fan!

End of football rant.

This division of the United States by perceived interest in a specific football team only reminds me of my own United Countries of Football map (shameless plug):

Seattle Space Needle in Jeopardy?

Ken Jennings (yes, that Ken Jennings, the guy that holds the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy!) has a website and blog where he talks a bit about his life and his family, and a lot about games and puzzles and other things that he finds interesting.

Yesterday, he posted about finding a sticker album for his son. "He’s a bit of a nerd, and likes maps and stuff."

I beg your pardon! There is nothing nerdy about liking maps and stuff!

Geeky, maybe...

Anyway, Ken was offended by the lackluster and inaccurate depiction of Seattle's most famous landmark, the Space Needle: "I feel I know the Space Needle. And you, odd gray Cylon-looking phallus, are no Space Needle. You’re not even close."

Check out his post to see the even more egregious offense, the image they chose to represent Notre Dame University, in South Bend, Indiana...

The Measure of America

The American Human Development Project offers interactive maps for over 60 human development indicators including health, education, income, environment, housing and security. Data can be presented by state or congressional district, and can be exported as a printable PDF file. Below is an example of the education statistics; a map of congressional districts by the percentage of the population with less than a high school education:



Maps can also be created for individual states (although they might not be quite so useful for the western states with only one or two congressional districts...)

Via The Electoral Map

The Walmart Epidemic

The Flowing Data blog created an animation showing the growth of Walmart. It starts slow and then spreads like wildfire...



Via Boing Boing

Free Gas? Your Choice

During a recent stay at a hotel, I noticed a poster for their summer promotion. Make three hotel stays at their hotels and get a $50 gas card. The advertising material is designed to look like some sort United States board game:



While I'm not endorsing Choice Hotels (although I did have a pleasant stay), I do like hotels that use maps in their advertising.

The game looks about as interesting as Candyland, but perhaps with that $50 gas card, I could afford one of those "Land o' the Free" road trips...


#233

Power Grid

My latest boardgame aquisition is Power Grid. As eurogames go, this one is middle-range in complexity. Success requires analysis and planning. I have played this game for several years, and a few weeks ago, I actually won for the first time! So I decided it was time I owned a copy.

The object of this game is to supply the most cities with power. To accomplish this goal players purchase power plants and the raw materials needed to run the plants. These materials include coal, oil, garbage, and uranium, but also includes wind and solar-powered plants. The winner of the game will create the most efficient network of plants powering the most cities. The base game comes with a map of the United States on one side:



and a map of Germany on the other:



Official game expansions include Italy, France and the Benelux countries:



However, many enterprising Power Grid fans have created their own maps, allowing them to play in Scandinavia:








...and Connecticut



As it often happens, I found something cool while looking for something else. GameInk.net is offering Power Grid (and other boardgame) themed T-shirts:



Power plant #44 in the game deck is one of the most desirable in the set, as it powers up to five cities, but because it uses solar and wind power, you do not need to purchase resources to burn.

"Money isn't everything, but it is a tie-breaker in Power Grid"

Game board images from BoardGameGeek.com

#227

Let's Clean House With Ike And Dick

The collection of Steve Davis, political memorabilia collector and County Court Baliff, is currently being exhibited at the Dayton Metro Library. “Politics on Display”, An exhibit of Ohio and Presidential campaign posters and more, June 16 – August 16, 2008.

Davis has loaned the library over 50 political posters, as well as, assorted buttons and memorabilia of gubernatorial, presidential and senate races from as far back as the 1920’s to present day. This non-partisan display features both Republican and Democratic candidates including Richard Nixon, James Rhodes, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Robert Kennedy, Walter Mondale and his running-mate Geraldine Ferraro.

Two items from the 1964 election have, of course, caught my eye: Both a Goldwater/Miller button, and a Johnson/Humphrey poster prove the patriotism of their candidates by using an image of the map of the United States (minus new states Alaska and Hawaii).




#222

Competitive Counties

Robert David Sullivan, from Beyond Red & Blue wrote an op-ed piece last week for the Boston Globe.

In "Changing the polarized electoral landscape" Sullivan discusses the shrinking number of counties that are truly competitive in presidential races.



The gray areas on the maps are counties with a margin of victory less than 10 points. The other counties went strongly one way or the other... I am skeptical about Barack Obama's campaign plans to redraw the political map with a "Fifty State Strategy". If he can do it, then perhaps we will see more gray on the 2008 Competitive Counties map.

What does that map say about who we are and where we live? does it mean that most of us vote the way we do because of where we live, or do we choose to live where we are surrounded by people that have similar political views?


#212

Fireworks

Where can you buy fireworks for the 4th of July? It is illegal in many states.

From the National Council on Fireworks Safety:



#210

Evan Crossing the US

In March of this year, Evan, twenty-three years old, left his home in Northern California and began his walk across the United States. Monday this week we had the pleasure of hosting him for a night here in Dayton, Ohio.

He had many interesting stories to share, and good conversation. We could have gone late into the night, if most of us didn't have to go to work the next day... Some of his adventures are chronicled in his blog: Evans crazy ass adventures crossing the US ect. Unfortunately, his Flagr map stopped working about halfway through Missouri:



From Dayton, he will continue across Ohio to Pennsylvania. His goal is to make it to Massachusetts by the end of the summer.

Ms. Cartophiliac connected with Evan via the Couch Surfing Project, a "worldwide network for making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit." These connections provide opportunities for individuals to find a free "couch" to stay the night while traveling, and maybe make a few new friends along the way.

Each dot on this map shows locations where couch surfers might be able to find a friendly sofa:



Evan has used this network to connect with Couch-Hosts from Europe to China. After he is done with this trip, he says he's off to Japan. Good luck on your trek, Evan. May your feet find soft highways...


#208

Maps On The Brain

A selection of recent publications with maps on the cover:

A book:

The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain by George Lakoff

The author attempts to explain why a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests.



Some magazines:





The cover of this issue of The New Yorker (June 23, 2008) features cover art, “Summer Job”, by Bruce McCall.

If you cannot make out the detail, it fancifully depicts bears checking in and out of the "Employees Entrance" at a National Park, while the tourist are reminded, "No picnicing in Buffalo Wallows."

If you look very closely, you can see that, yes indeed, there is a map! A "You Are Here" map of the park for the tourists.

This cover reminds me of the old Warner Brothers Cartoon where Ralph the wolf and Sam the sheepdog clock in, as buddies, before battling over the sheep.



“Subway Man”, by Roz Chast, graces the June 30 issue of The New Yorker. A stressed out commuter IS the transit map of Manhattan.

Finally, the June 21, 2008, issue of the New Scientist magazine features a very hot looking planet Earth, for a cover story on global warming.


#207

Cicadanator

In 2004, my part of the country, and much of the east coast (New York to North Carolina and inland to Illinois and Michigan) was inundated by the B