Common Sense and Whiskey

Funny Place Names

These two maps are really entertaining. Just click through and go see:

Map of Orkney, Map of Shetland

Countries Visited Map

Time for an update. PassportStamp.com, which we've used until now, won't seem to update. This site has us at 113 "states," as below, and I thank them for the map code:

World Population by Latitude

Interesting maps at Radical Cartography, and commentary on them by Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps.

The Eleven Minute Map

European history since 1000. Pop it out to watch it in full screen mode so you can see the years go by at the top, and some commentary at the bottom. Great stuff.

Countries Visited

It's always a triumphant moment to be able to add to our "countries visited" map (Okay, different things are important to different people). Got to add Cuba this morning. Things are coming along just fine.

You can make your own "countries visited" map at PassportStamp.com.

Love Letter to a Map

Made by one guy in Oregon.

Cartophilia

We're cartophiles here. Browse some previously recommended websites, including especially the Strange Maps and Worldmapper websites, and a charming little book called The Atlas of Remote Islands.

Here's a nice new find: the book Maphead is great. Get yourself a copy. From the Kindle version, here's part of a chart called "separated at birth." Good stuff.

Countries Rearranged by Population

Interesting map. In this scenario Uganda becomes Turkey and Italy becomes Angola. Explanation here, and a large version here.

Midweek Miscellany

If I wait until I do a proper treatment of all these I may never get them online. So here are just a few quick items that have caught my eye lately:

- China's version of Google Maps is called Map World. "Map World only provides high-altitude images outside China, with the other side of the Chinese-North Korean border a stark white blank once a certain resolution is passed. Other countries also turn up a blank page at close resolution,” says Reuters." Still, it's fun to play with the world in Chinese. (via The Map Room.)

- Two of the longer flights we've been on, both through our home airport, have been ATL - JNB, 15 hours 20 minutes, and DXB - ATL, at 15 hours 45 minutes. The current longest scheduled nonstop is 18 hours plus. Take a guess on the route, and then click here for the answer.

- There's a story about how, shortly after 9/11, a very rural town nearby here in north Georgia, USA, applied for emergency FEMA aid for its post office - and after some snickering, was turned down. Here's a story about the most remote place in the USA and the emergency aid it's applying for - equalling about $3,500 per resident per year.

- Bad translations are always fun. For example, here's a tourism site offering "a wide range of gut-curdling activities." John Rahoi's May I Take Your Order, a bi-lingual restaurant menu in China, is a lot of fun. Next post we'll link to some fun photos of questionable products, including this one, the unconvincingly named Aftertaste perfume.

More Fun with Maps

Some unusual facts, with links to maps, from an engaging site called Worldmapper:

- "On average each year, on every 30 kilometres of road - someone dies in a traffic accident. Some places have a concentration of accidents: the world’s most dangerous road, in Bolivia, is 70 kilometres long and approximately 100 people die there every year." (See map.)

- "when Christopher Columbus was exploring Central and South America, the combined population of Mexico and Peru was greater than the total of all other American countries." (See map.)

- "0.1% of world tourist trips are made to Central African territories. As a tourist destination Andorra receives 45 visits per person in the population, per year. The equivalent figures for Monaco and the Bahamas are 7 and 5, respectively." (See map.)

And check out this map, titled The True Size of Africa, from Edge:

Coming: 3-D Satellite Maps

Or, more specifically, "... a globally standardised 3D digital elevation model of Earth, and with a measuring point density of 12 metres, it will be incredibly accurate," according to the director of the project, which is called TanDEM-X.

Two satellites will map the earth's terrain in tandem, creating the 3-D effect. The second satellite was successfully launched on 21 June.

"Within three years, this will create a gigantic data record equivalent to the storage capacity of 200 000 DVDs, " says the German Aerospace Center site.

See also a very nice animation here.

Illustration from the German Aerospace Center site.

Who recognizes Kosovo?

Who recognizes Kosovo? A bit over two years after its declaration of independence from Serbia, certainly not Serbia (whose cell towers inside Kosovo the Kosovar authorities summarily dismantled the other day). But Montenegro, the entity most recently departed from Serbia, does. So do fellow former parts of Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia.

According to the Kosovo Thanks You web site, fellow-Muslim-former-part-of-Yugoslavia Bosnia & Herzegovina doesn't recognise Kosovo, though fellow Muslims in the neighborhood, Albania and Turkey, do.

The U.S. and Canada and all the politically correct Western European states are also in, and much of the Middle East and farther flung Islamic lands: The U.A.E., Saudia Arabia, Comoros Islands, Mauritania, Bahrain, Jordan. Just two countries in South America: Colombia & Peru.

First in: Costa Rica. Most recent: Swaziland. In between, an exotic mix of tiny, tiny island nations, including the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Maldives and Palau.

The map is here.

(See photos from several states in the former Yugoslavia - though not yet from Kosovo - in the Former Yugoslavia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Travel Lists & Visited Countries Maps

Much of a perfect spring Sunday morning here on the farm was spent posting a chronological list of our travels to the web site Passportstamp.com (here's how we did). It's another one of those sites, like Douwe Osinga's Visited Countries project, that allows you to compile a map of your travels. Here's our PassportStamp map, followed by our Douwe Osinga map:

Close enough to the same that I'm wondering why I spent multiple hours on a gorgeous morning painstakingly clerking in every trip all the way back to my first drive to Canada in 1980 (Or maybe it was 1979).

But I know why, really. It was in the spirit of competition. See, you'll be ranked among the other site members, stacked up against the competition, sized up and told where you stand. And our results weren't bad:

105 countries visited, ranking 109th overall. Our most-visited countries are the predictable European ones, and many are because they were transit stops on the way elsewhere. The top ten: Germany 11 visits, Finland 9, Austria & France 8, Thailand 7, Italy, Russia, Switzerland & the UK 6, and China 5.

The trouble is the arbitrary rules.

The Earth and Space and Photos and Travel Planning

Like the Astronomy Picture of the Day, the Earth Observatory Image of the Day is almost always worth dropping by for a look. Also check out the series of features at Earth Observatory, like a nice one called Cities at Night: The View from Space. And discussion of the earth and space reminds me of a useful chart - think of it as the eclipse travel planner on a single page.

Unusual World Maps

Browse some fun maps at Worldmapper, "where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest." This map, for example, shows tourist destinations.

"Western Europe is the most popular destination for international tourists. The region receives 46% of world tourist trips. At the other extreme 0.1% of world tourist trips are made to Central African territories."

Mapping Chinese Perceptions

This is one of Beijing's most compelling sites - the Temple of Heaven, from which the Ming Dynasty emperors offered sacrifice to Heaven. The Temple of Heaven complex is bigger than the huge Forbidden City. The thinking was that "As Chinese emperors called themselves 'The Son of Heaven,' they dared not to build their own dwelling, 'Forbidden City,' bigger than a dwelling for Heaven."

China thinks of itself as the Middle Kingdom, meaning "the centre of civilization." Some say that alongside this high national self-regard, the Chinese national psyche is prickly - that "the Chinese can instantly turn hostile to foreigners at any perceived slight." About a year ago CS&W published, via the Chinese blog Danwei, a funny map of countries that have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

Now, via Shanghaiist, enjoy this fun set of maps about what people from specific regions of China think about the other regions of China.

(And enjoy photography from all across China in the China Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

You Want Maps?

Now that we're talking maps, who doesn't enjoy a good map now and then? I'm not sure that last one strictly qualifies as "good" except in a "wry shake of the head" kind of way,  but here's one to wake your inner cartographer - African population density:

This map is from:

• United Nations Environment Programme / Global Resource Information Database (UNEP/GRID), Sioux Falls.
• Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University NY.

and appears here.

McMap

Via the web site Strange Maps, we learn that a man named Steven Von Worley has created this map, which is said to be a map of U.S. McDonald's locations. The "McFarthest spot" is in South Dakota, "a few miles north of State Highway 20 (which runs latitudinally between Highways 73 in the west and 65 in the east)...." It's a 145 mile drive to the nearest Big Mac.

The map comes from the blog Weather Sealed.

Specialty Travel Planning Forecasts & Lists

Climb an active volcano? Chase a cyclone? Photograph the northern lights? All you need to pick your destination is right here.

Night Sky Photography

The Alaska Climate Research Center (webcam here - expect dark) of the Geophysics Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks offers a handy resource for this time of year, an aurora forecast customizable for where you live (or plan to visit).

(Photo at right from the aurora forecaster).

While we're in the sky, try Space Weather, Earth & Sky Tonight and a page of several sets of data, like eclipses and transits of Venus and Mercury, from the U.S. Navy.

Specialty Lists Back on Earth

Not a forecast, exactly, but the U.S.G.S. keeps an extensive list of the latest earthquakes in the world. The Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii keeps track of tropical cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons at Tropical Storms Worldwide. The University of Wisconsin - Madison keeps track of the world's most active volcanoes on Volcano Watch, updated every half hour, with photos.

Still deciding on a destination? World Climate will give you basic information by city name. Weatherbase claims weather records and averages from 16,439 cities worldwide. And before you take off, check the Global Incident Map, which tracks global acts of terrorism and other suspicious events.

Finally, for gorgeous satellite photography from all over the planet, see NOAA's Ocean Explorer Galleries, and it's hard to beat NASA's Earth Observatory and its photography archives.

You, Too, May Have Hurt the Feelings of the Chinese People

Japan has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people 47 times. The United States has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people 23 times. Even Guatemala has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people - twice. Cute post on Danwei called Mapping the Hurt Feelings of the Chinese People.

Countries that have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people are in black on this map, which is from the post on Danwei.

See photos from all over China in the China Gallery on EarthPhotos.com.