40 Maps That Won't Explain Anything-Part 1

In my continuing quest to make fun of the recent plague of "40 Maps That Will Explain Everything You Ever Needed to Know and Keep Your Breath Minty Fresh" articles such as this one and this one; here are 10 maps that blissfully do not pretend to explain anything. 40 maps is a lot to digest in one blog post so I will break this out into several posts that will appear from time to time.

1. Jeep tracks around the Pink Roadhouse at Oodnadatta Australia

2. Almost unreadable map of Chicago restaurants

3. Detail from Hand Drawn Map of Berlin by Jenni Sparks

4. Oregon Wine Regions using 1980's style computer graphics - somethingaboutmaps

5. The Milky Way Transit Authority by Samuel Arbesman

6. Panama Shipping Routes from a lemon crate

7. Detail from a zoning map of Minsk-the full map is here.

8. Fort Wayne, Indiana art print from Jennasuemaps

9. Forth Worth, Texas art print, also from Jennasuemaps - really you can't tell the difference?

10. Map of Kashi (Kashgar) just because I've always been weirdly fascinated by the place. Note the areas that were not surveyed due to the arrest of the surveyor.

The Nicaragua Canal - Construction Begins This Year?

While the Panama Canal celebrates its 100th anniversary this summer, backers planning a new rival canal in Nicaragua hope to break ground by December. The project is a strange mix of centuries of aspiration, globalism and communist politics. President Daniel Ortega granted a 50 year concession to Wang Jin, a Chinese businessman and CEO of the HKND group, to build and manage the canal.

There are six proposed routes from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Nicaragua, all of them exiting through a newly built canal across the Isthmus of Rivas to the Pacific. The southernmost route through the San Juan river has been rejected for "technical reasons." The river forms the border with Costa Rica and while the entire river is considered part of Nicaragua, many investors would drop out of the project without the approval of the Costa Rican government.

Warnings by legal and environmental experts about the impact and feasibility of the project are dismissed by the Nicaraguan government as political attacks. The Sandinista government has convinced much of the population that this project will bring jobs and wealth to Nicaragua, however most of this wealth may end up in the hands of Wang and his business partners (more details at AP.)

Several colonial powers had looked at constructing a canal through Nicaragua before the canal in Panama was built.

Even after the Panama Canal was built, proposals for another canal continued to surface periodically. There have also been proposals for a "land bridge" consisting of railroads and fiber optic cables. Increased global shipping has reinvigorated the project.