MOTW #81

The Newton (Mass.) TAB did a sloppy map showing the most popular college locations for graduating Newton High School Students It makes for a somewhat interesting pattern and also allows me to rant about careless cartography. I don't expect a cartographer in Mass. to know that Northfield, MN is south of Minneapolis but when they show Boston, Worcester and Dartmouth, Mass all being in the western part of the state then it starts to bug me.

I clipped out the Northeast section of the map for clarity and we only school we only lost Arizona, Tulane and Miami. I had attached a list of all the location numbers so you could see how bad some were but I'm not sure that's worth doing on a blog page.

This paper has used my maps in the past but I don't know who's responsible for this one.

MOTW #80

Yes it's another toilet map. But this one's cool because it shows you how much use they get. It's also helpful to me as I go by Langone Field often on my bicycle and didn't know I had that option. All the fields should have these as I recently watched a softball game and we all had to take turns sneaking into the woods. The Aquarium toilet gets an awful lot of use considering how often it's out of service. This map is from the Boston Globe.

MOTW #79

Nikolas Schiller is a slightly eccentric map nut who has done a lot of interesting stuff including creating a series of "Quilt Projections". These are aerial photos that are mirrored to look like quilt patterns. The link below is just one of many-this one shows quilts for various state capitol buildings. Warning - these take a long time to download so go get a beverage or something while you wait.

MOTW #78

If you like to obsess about how dangerous the world is at any given moment here's your map. It shows all kinds of incidents from bombs in Pakistan to exploding tennis balls in Connecticut to suspicious packages at Cobbs Hill Reservoir. You can also click on an incident and get details and a link to the full story. If you feel like your region of the world is left out check back in a few days and it probably won't be anymore. Unless you live in some sane place like Australia.

MOTW #77

Nina Katchadourian is an artist who does lots of stuff with maps. The map below links to pictures of moss maps. If you click the "Next Project in Maps" you'll get lots of other interesting map art she's done.

MOTW #76

With summer coming up many of you will probably be taking long drives to distant counties. Here's a license plate map to help you get there. There's lots of other good maps at this site too.

MOTW #75

The text below is from the original posting back in May (this is actually being written in August). It now appears that the map has been taken off the web page of La Voz de Galicia. I tried searching with my non-knowledge of Spanish using the words vertederos and mapa and all links to the map seem to be gone. Too bad because it was a good one. The original text:

Way back in 1990 I participated in a project mapping and cataloging illegal dumps in Slovenia. Here's a technologically more advanced version for Galicia in northwestern Spain. You can click on any dump and get a photo. Here's the mapper's description:
"The Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia invites readers to send in photos and descriptions of illegal garbage dumps. Photos and descriptions are plotted on an interactive map of the country. The intent seems to be embarrassing officials into cleaning it up."
This page allows those of you who know Spanish to practice while giving those of us that don't the opportunity to be tolerant.