The Future of Public Transit?

There has been a movement in municipalities across the country to sell naming rights to schools, parks, subway stops and various other public spaces. In today's Boston Globe there is an article about the MBTA seeking corporate sponsorship. The city I work for is also considering this option for high school spaces. I figured this was a great opportunity for a fun, sarcastic map, but Christopher Jobson of Colossal Art & Design beat me to it with this map of Chicago's CTA.

I like that the loop becomes the "Whirlpool" and the Manischewitz line going out to the Jewish parts of town. Also, it was nice of him to name a stop in honor of Gene Siskel. Click the map for an expanded view (use the magnifier if needed) or here for the original blog post.

Happy Solstice!

Today is the longest* day of the year, unless you're south of the equator where it's the shortest day of the year. The Daylight Map illustrates this well. The bands of darkness get wider as you travel south. The areas north of the dark band are in 24 hour daylight. City lights from NASA's Visible Earth are shown in the areas where it is dark.

Here's a close up of the sun setting over the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.

 The site also has a Cloud Map, with semi-real time cloud cover overlaid on the same image.

* it's not really any longer, there's just more hours of daylight.

Razorback World

There's lot of important things going on in the world but nothing fun. Instead here's a picture sent to me by Charlie Alison from the public relations office of the University of Arkansas. It's a piece of artwork by Jason Jones that hangs in the lounge in the student union. The world's continents are rearranged to form the Arkansas Razorbacks logo.

 According to Wikipedia's Razorbackologists a Razorback is " an Americanism, loosely applied to any type of feral pig or wild boar in North America. The term has also appeared in Australia, to describe such animals there." Here is an actual logo for comparison.

 Here's how it looks at midfield.

Finally, here is (was) an actual razorback - the original Tusk. Currently they are at Tusk III.

Look Up Quickly! - The Transit of Venus

This map, courtesy of the Transit of Venus site shows where you can see Venus make its transit across the sun. Unfortunately here in the northeastern USA we can't see anything because we haven't seen the sun in days. Even if you still can't see it you can follow it on Slooh. Look quickly - or you'll have to wait until December, 2117.