Possibly interesting maps...

[TrentVilla]

Not from when I read it.

[DreadPirateRoberts]

Everyone should own The Onion's amazingly good atlas - Here's a pdf of some pages

You've got to love a map of South Africa that points out "Door to door salesman selling knives at knifepoint" and a map of Afganistan that shows "Blackhawk helicopter struck by surface to air rock" and... well it's all great

[The_Rev]

Carbon emissions in the USA circa April 2008. Obviously it doubles up as a population density map, but for ignorant gits like me its quite interesting to see just how much of the USA is sparsely habited.

[leviramsey]

Carbon emissions in the USA circa April 2008. Obviously it doubles up as a population density map, but for ignorant gits like me its quite interesting to see just how much of the USA is sparsely habited.

Interesting article on the rise of a new frontier in the central US

Welcome to Smith County, home of the geographic center of the contiguous United States, the Kansas state song "Home on the Range" - and the reemergence of America's frontier. As strange as it may sound, more than a century after Americans laid to rest the notion of a frontier, it's reappearing here on the Great Plains.

Only this time, it doesn't involve people moving in, and it doesn't carry the sense of hope and progress of a nation expanding. Instead, it involves people moving out and represents a part of a nation contracting.

The region is losing so many rural people that 261 Plains counties hold fewer than six residents per square mile (an old census yardstick for "frontier"). That represents more than one-eighth of the contiguous US - an area larger than France and Germany, but more sparsely populated than any nation on earth. You'd have to travel to places like the North Pole or Greenland to find fewer people per square mile.

And the nation's frontier midsection is expanding. While frontier counties west of the Rocky Mountains are generally filling up, the rural Plains continue to empty out. Already, the frontier has pushed beyond the traditional eastern boundary of the Plains into eastern Kansas, the eastern edge of the Dakotas, and even into northwest Minnesota.

In many ways, this hollowing out of the heartland is spawning a regional crisis. Hundreds of small towns are disappearing from the map. The lack of local jobs and the allure of cities are sucking young people out like a prairie twister.

Left behind is a population edging toward retirement and businesses coping with the paradox of a dwindling customer base and a shortage of workers. Thinly funded social and government services are straining to keep up, too.

In this downward demographic spiral, poverty often spreads: Some economists believe the frontier Plains will become the next Appalachia.

Even more broadly, the spreading frontier is challenging America's sense of itself. After all, this is the place where the local barbershop and corner drugstore still exist, where neighbors really do look out for one another, and people cling to small-town values of hard work and keeping one's word. While it's easy to romanticize these places, they nonetheless represent a bedrock of American character - a bedrock that's eroding away.

"This is a region full of mainstream white Americans who played by the rules," says Frank Popper, a land-use planner at Rutgers University, who has publicized the frontier's reappearance. "If that region declines, it makes you wonder about the moral validity of the American success drive."

Yet some theorists argue that America's forgotten crisis isn't really a crisis at all. They argue that the semiarid Plains were never meant to hold large populations. Perhaps it should let its people go, they say, and cradle instead ribbons of interstate highways, big windmills, and ever fewer megafarms. Or maybe it will revert to a kind of huge outdoor zoo of the early 1800s, when settlers were few and buffalo roamed freely.

4,121 people in 897 square miles (2322 km^2 for the commies around here), an area about 20% larger than the current county of Warwickshire.

[Gringo]

Correct Map of North America?

The advertisement created for Swedish Absolut Vodka which ran in Mexico, shows a map of the border of Mexico and the United States where it stood before the Mexican-American War of 1848.

Ruminating over the loss to the U.S. of what had been Mexican territories before the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 may have been an ad maker's idea of a good way to sell hard liquor and get a chuckle south of the Rio Grande, but some up north didn't find it so funny. After a barrage of complaints on its internet site and threats to boycott the Swedish-made brand in the U.S., Absolut announced it was withdrawing the advert. "In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues," wrote Absolut spokeswoman Paula Eriksson on the company website. "Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Mexico may feel was more ideal."

[leviramsey]

I could see giving California or Utah back to the Mexicans, but Oregon?

[The_Rev]

Its a flash animation, so you need to click the link: http://www.breathingearth.net/

[The_Rev]

Another click the link one. Shows the location of people who edit Wikipedia pages, with a link to the page they edited. In (almost) real time. Click me!

[leviramsey]

2004 US election results by county. Each county's size on the map corresponds to its population, while the color ranges from red for 70% Bush to blue for 70% Kerry.

Same coloration, but not scaled for population

[leviramsey]

The 9 Nations of North America

[leviramsey]

The 10 core geographic bases of American politics

Unless there is a major shock (on at least the level of Labour losing in Wales...) John McCain will easily win Frontier, Cumberland, Southern Inland, and Comanche, while either Hillary or Obama will easily win the Northeast Corridor, the Upper Coasts, El Norte, and Mega-Chicago. South Coast and Chippewa are the regions up for grabs.

[The_Rev]

John McCain will easily win Frontier, Cumberland,

I thought Cumberland was a sausage?

Anyway, have a big one:

[mjmooney]

Carbon emissions in the USA circa April 2008. Obviously it doubles up as a population density map, but for ignorant gits like me its quite interesting to see just how much of the USA is sparsely habited.

Not much going on in Nevada, is there? Apart from that very regular rectangular strip down its western border - what's that about?

[The_Rev]

It almost perfectly mirrors Washoe County, which at 54 people per square mile is hardly bustling with activity. So i would assume that its some kind of major road, air flightpath, railway line or combination of the three. It does seem awfully wide though, doesnt it?

I guess they could be collecting data for each county in the States and filling them in in a paint the numbers stylee, and Washoe county has a higher emission rate than anywhere else in Nevada except Vegas so it stands out.

[mjmooney]

Yeah, and it stops dead at the Oregon border.

[leviramsey]

Yeah, Washoe County contains Reno, the baby sister of Vegas.

That said, I think they're not quite going on counties, since Vegas stands out from Clark County. They're probably going on incorporated areas and collectively considering unincorporated areas within the county (essay on different incorporation practices among the states redacted).

[leviramsey]

The county to the north of Washoe County, Harney County in Oregon is perhaps the ne plus ultra of the sparsely populated, massive county in the Great Basin: 7,600 people residing in c. 26,000 km^2 (a fifth of England). Of that, 4600 live in the 15 km^2 of the main metropolis of the county... 3000 people in 26,470 km^2.

When you have that kind of widely dispersed population, you see how probably 90% of households in that county own a gun or two... I'd be surprised if there were ever (including state police and off-duty officers) more than ten police officers in the county. If those officers are evenly spread out, then each officer would cover 2600 sq. km., indicating that the average point in the county is something like 28 km from an officer. Even if we assume that they're travelling at 130 km/h to a call, that's still 15 minutes from when a call is received to the police's arrival.

[leviramsey]

The United States of Obesity

You'd think, living in the third least obese of the continental states and just over the border from the second least obese, that I'd not see many fatsos around. You would be wrong...

[Risso]

Apologies if this one has been posted before...confirming what we probably all knew, there are a lot of big time Bible thumpers in Middle America:

[The_Rev]

Africa

Executions in 2007: Botswana (1+), Egypt (?), Equatorial Guinea (3), Ethiopia (1), Libya (9+), Somalia (5+), Sudan (7+)

Asia

Executions in 2007: Afghanistan (15), Bangladesh (6), People's Republic of China (470+), Indonesia (1+), Iran (317+), Iraq (33+), Japan (9), North Korea (?), Kuwait (1+), Malaysia (?), Mongolia (?), Pakistan (135+), Saudi Arabia (143+), Singapore (2), Syria (7+), Vietnam (25+), Yemen (15+)

Europe

Executions in 2007: Belarus (1+)

North America and Caribbean

Executions in 2007: United States (42)

Oceania

Executions in 2007: none

South America

Executions in 2007: none

The list of known executions in 2007 isnt definitive, hence the (1+) or (?) figures next to some countries where executions are known to have taken place.