Some Recent Magazines and a Book

For your amusement, a smattering of recent magazine and book covers using maps as an element of their design.

From The Nation: President Obama must decide on future American involvement in Afghanistan.



Stores Magazine suggests that Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico (VIM?) are the countries to watch for new muscle in emerging markets.



Time believes that California, in spite of being "an apocalyptic mess of raging wildfires, soaring unemployment, mass foreclosures and political paralysis," is still the future of American innovation and growth.





Finally, in his book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, Ethan Waters maps out the way the United States shapes the expression of mental illness around the globe.

Potato Chip World

By the looks of it, someone got bored with their basket of chips at the bar.


Artist Unknown

Potato(e)s previously on Cartophilia

HT to Carol

Kaffeslump World

Erik Johansson, of Gothenburg, Sweden, is a photographer who likes to have fun with Photoshop.

Kaffeslump (Coffee Spill?):



Via Bored Panda

Desktop Earth

Cartofan Joel recommends his favorite desktop wallpaper application for all its mappish goodness. Desktop Earth:



Desktop Earth is a wallpaper program that shows what Earth looks like from space. The program can be configured to update regularly, changing the view based on local time or seasons.

The World According to Ronald Reagan

A little Cold War humor:



Via Kelso’s Corner

#485

Handy Maps

Two map illustrations sent to me by Hunter:

A Long Way to Shiloh is a crime thriller novel written by Lionel Davidson (1966). Among its many editions, this Penguin paperback gets my attention.

Below is an illustration from PickTheBrain, 15 Web Tools to Enhance Language Learning.

ACORN Conspiracy

In Salon.com today, the comic strip This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow, has a little fun mocking Fox News personality, Glenn Beck. In the process, he created a new logo for A.C.O.R.N., the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.





I love the tentacles squeezing the globe of the Earth.

Dr. Evil would give ONE MILLION DOLLARS for a logo so cool.

The End of "The World"

The Times is reporting that Dubai's The World Island Paradise is coming to an end.

For some reason, this has been one of the most popular posts on Cartophilia:



Via The Map Room and Gadling.

Antique Puzzle and Game Maps

New this week at Bibliodyssey: Antique Puzzle and Game Maps:



"You cannot teach geography in any way so effectually as by setting the pupil to construct the map from the dissected parts."

Map puzzles and map games have been used for centuries to teach geography.

Mapkini and Curtain

Today I received several photos from a Carto-friend who must remain nameless. The first one I'll show you is the shower curtain from his bathroom. I'm showing this one first as your warning. The rest of the photos are probably safe-for-work... unless you work for a very prudish employer... We'll get back to shower curtains in a moment...



This Carto-friend sent me these photos of his fiancé in the best bikini bathing suit ever.

Now, he tells me that she said it was OK for me to post these. He'd better be right, because he's getting married next week. Congratulations!

Strictly for geographic study purposes, I think we need to take a closer look at this mapkini...

This mapkini is made up of a map of United States. I think it very appropriate that the top is pieced together with Western states:



Out west, they have huge... tracts of land!



The mapkini bottom is made from Southern states...



But most interesting is the back of the mapkini bottom, with its fascinating mash-up of Montana, Kansas, Idaho and the Baja Peninsula!



This mapkini is (or was) from Victoria's Secret. However, after an extensive search of their website (again, strictly for geographic purposes) I have been unable find it available.

So, back to my Carto-friend's shower curtain. He tells me that he is pleased with the accuracy in detail of the map. Not only is it up to date with all of the changes in Eastern Europe over the last few years, it even shows Cyprus in its current divided state.



However, for some inexplicable reason, Tasmania is shown in a different color than the rest of Australia. Is there something Taz trying to tell the rest of Oz?



Thanks again, Carto-friend. Happy wedding and good luck!

The Ignorant View of the World

I saw this cartoonish map on BuzzFeed the other day, but had not intended to blog about it:



Since I could not determine the source of the map, I could not decide if the author was being ignorant or ironic.

But then today a friend sent this one to me, and decided I am now seeing a theme...



I think someone is trying to suggest that U.S. Americans are a bit ignorant of geography.



Tell that to Eric Yang!

NPR Road Trips

National Public Radio has correspondents all over the world who tell stories about the people and places they cover. Many of the best of these stories have been collected on a series of CDs titled NPR Road Trips.



NPR Road Trips: Postcards from Around the Globe: Stories That Take You Away:

Meet Colin Angus and Julie Wafael, who spent two years circumnavigating the globe using theirhands and feet. Turn on the radio in Katmandu and hear music from the 70s. Learn how robot jockeys are solving a human rights problem in Dubai. (It has to do with camel races.) Join in the wild festivities of Carnival in Rio. And walk through old Beijing before it’s demolished for high-rise development.

Includes introduction by Noah Adams.

Map postcards for the ears?

Also available:
NPR Road Trips: Roadside Attractions
NPR Road Trips: National Park Adventures

Walk Inside a Globe

From Curious Expeditions:

It is a singular experience. No where else on earth can you see, well, earth. Not like this at least; earth the way it really looks, without distortion. As you walk down along the walkway, bathed in a soft blue light from the back-lit stained-glass surrounding you everything sounds strange; you can hear your own breathing as if it was someone else right up against your ear.

D & M are talking about the Mapparium at the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston, headquarters of the Christian Science Monitor.

The Mapparium consists of backlit stained glass in a room three stories tall. Look up and you can see the North Pole:



The map is of course frozen in time. It was built in 1935 and reflects the pre-WWII, colonial world, but the library has an an ongoing exhibit highlighting the construction, history, and significance of the Mapparium and the changes the world has seen since that time.

I was in Boston only four years ago! How did I not know about this? It will be at the top of my list if I ever get back.

More photos from Curious Expeditions and from the MBE Library.

Facebook World

Facebook seems to be in the news often lately. What this means, of course is that the Baby-Boomers and other "old folks" have found it. Much to the chagrine of the kids... Heh! You kids! You stay off my lawn!

I always enjoy finding a logo or graphic that incorporates a map. This one appeared next to a Facebook ad. "Help Facebook connect the world. Invite friends to keep in touch on Facebook using any one of our 35 languages."

You can follow this blog on Facebook, if you are so inclined.

Inflated Britain

Add this to the inflated views file.

Last month, The Earth is Square blog reminded me of this map, that I first saw on Strange Maps.

The Tory Atlas of the World (warning, details of this map are not politically correct):



You will need to click on this image to view the larger version (in order to catch all the detail).

Chad at EIS did not identify the source, however SM remembers it from a book published by the Spitting Image satirical British television program during the 1980s. This map was making farce of the Thatcher régime, and a nationalistic-right-wing-British-centric view of the world.

#352

Why are we changing maps?

"You can't do this."

"Why not?"

"Because it's freaking me out."

Via Eric at Following the Equator

The Map Scroll

The Map Scroll is a new map blog (January 2009) with an emphatic Mission Statement: "You know what you need? A blog that updates with one new bitchin map every goddamn day." The blog's author, "Chachy B. Terwilliger", is doing just that. Every day he has posted a map, some I've seen before, some new; but each of them has been interesting. For instance:

The Greatest Journeys Ever:


The Skin Color Map:


and the Place of the Week: Pitcairn Islands


I admire Chachy's persistence. It will be interesting to see how long he can keep up the pace... but one way or the other I look forward to his next post.

Sporcle Risk

Sporcle, the online trivia quiz site, has posted a Risk Quiz. Can you name all of the territories on the Risk game board? I got 100%!



Someone should write a book... "Everything I Know About Geography I Learned from the Game of Risk".

Related posts:
Sporcle: Can you name the most populous US cities?
The Rubicon of a Diplomacy Player

Additional Sporcle Geography Quizzes:

Name the States

Renamed Places

Longest Rivers

Countries of Africa

Countries of Antarctica!

Ties for Christmas

Cartophiliac's family knows what he likes to find under his Christmas tree: Maps!

Wearable maps from Mrs. Cartophiliac and Miss Princess Cartophiliac:



A world map and the Battle of Waterloo. Cool!

For those of you that celebrate `em, I hope you all have/had Happy Holidays and a very Merry Cartigraphic Christmas!

International Watersheds

While writing about Montana last summer, I went off on a tangent about Ocean Drainage basins. Water is, and will likely continue to be, an important international environnmental issue.

Aaron T. Wolf, et al, have published a paper that reflects on the impact of global geopolitics and water. The paper includes a map highlighting the areas of the world where two or more nations share a watershed river basin:



Access to the water resources and the quality of that water will require international cooperation, or all may suffer (and thirst?).

While preparing to post this map, I came across (via The Daily Dish) another from UNESCO highlighting the groundwater resources of the world (PDF) and the necessity for international cooperation to avoid water wars.



Read more in this article from the New Scientist.

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:

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.

Libros en Español

The beginning of my recent trip to Mexico was marred by flight delays and cancellations. I ended up stuck in the Indianapolis airport for nearly eight hours, and by the time I reached Dallas I had already finished the several magazines I brought along as reading material. At the Dallas airport I picked up a copy of Carl Hiaasen's latest novel, Nature Girl. Adventure, revenge and humor in the Florida Everglades; I recommend his work for light, fun reading.

That book lasted for a few days in Cuernavaca, but by the time we reached Mexico City, I had to go looking for bookstores. Generally, I cannot visit another city or country without checking out the bookstores anyway... but now I needed something to read, and in English! Most of the new book stores I found had very little in English, but then I found a street full of used book stores, only a few blocks away from the hotel. I was now in librarian/book lover heaven. Eventually I settled on a big fat hardback book, Mexico, by James Michener. The author started this book in 1961, and picked it up and finished it thirty years later. Perhaps he should have left it on the shelf. While, as with most of Michener's work, it is steeped with history, I found the characters thin and clichéd. But worst of all TOO MUCH BULLFIGHTING! More than anything else, the book was about the culture of bullfighting in 1961. It might have made a good chapter. But at least it was something to read, to keep my eyes and hands busy in the evening, or on long bus rides.

Enough about books I'm reading, what does this have to do with maps? While in the several Mexico City new book stores, my eyes were drawn to several book covers that used maps in their design. Two of them are illustrating this post. El Espejo Enterrado (The Buried Mirror) by Carlos Fuentes and Breve Historia del Mundo (Brief History of the World) by Ernest H. Gombrich.

Map lovers can be found around the world. It is a universal language.

What Happened While I Was Gone?

Mrs. Cartophiliac and I are back from our trip to Mexico. We visited Mexico City and several nearby sites, Including Teotihuacan:



I found a handful of map postcards, but not much else in the way of map memorabilia. I'll post a few things in the next few days.

Normally, I like to keep tabs on the news, and of course most of the news I saw was in Spanish, so I wasn't always sure what was going on... however, clearly the two biggest news stories of the last two weeks have been the Olympics and the fighting in the former soviet republic of Georgia. Since returning home I have been doing some catching up... so some of these images may be old news for you...

The New York Times has this terrific Olympic cartogram, that compares the number of medals won per country, at every Olympic Games from 1896 to the present:



Via The Map Room

Also via The Map Room is this embarassing Google News map goof:



Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's The Daily Show makes light the average American's ignorance about World Geography:



"War. God's way of teaching Americans geography."



The Princess Sparkle Pony Blog was more than a little tired of the media's repeated allusion to the Ray Charles song, Georgia on My Mind.



FWIW

I do not find humor in the loss of life in this conflict between Georgia and Russia, but I cannot help but find ironic humor in the silly and ignorant responses to the tragedy.


#238