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Maps of the Weeks

Maps of the Weeks
Is it a map or is it art. Does it matter
10.15.09 | Permalink | Comment?

In an essay hosted by The Morning News, Katherine Harmon writes:
There has always been art in cartography. Maps by definition are utilitarian, of course; they bear implicit promises of routes into and out of the unknown. Yet the language of maps as developed over time is a beautiful one, filled with artistic potential. Cartographers [...]
Maps of the Weeks
Overcoming Olympic Geography
10.06.09 | Permalink | Comment?

You’ve got to feel for Chicago. First they lose a prominent model citizen when he decided to move to Washington D.C. Then, in trying to make things right, he bungles the bid to get the Olympics. Pruned: (Chicago 2018, or: A Proposal for the First Wholly Urban Winter Olympics) however, sees the whole thing as an [...]
Maps of the Weeks
Special Sauce Spatiality
09.24.09 | Permalink | Comment?

I love a McFlurry as much as the next guy, and the question I’ve always wanted to know the answer to is “how far would you go for a happy meal.” Now we can answer that question. We can say with some certainty that there is significant regional variation in the distance people are willing to (or are forced to) travel to get there fix of beef and grease.

This week’s map of the week comes from Stephen Van Worley, who, apparently needed to know that it is impossible (as long as you remain in the contiguous US) to be more than 107 miles away from a McDonald’s. To do that, you have to visit South Dakota.
Maps of the Weeks
Iconic
06.21.09 | Permalink | Comment?

If you were paying very very close attention to the blog a couple of days ago you would have noticed a disastrous “useful posters” post titled “A YouTube VacuumTube HowTube” concerning the history of the manufacture and use of vacuum tubes.

Writing the post got me thinking about the uses of new media (Twitter, TV, The Radio) as tools for the organization and suppression of revolution and large scale political upheaval. So, I started editing the post, first changing the title to “Before the revolution was twittered, it was televised. Before that it was radioed.” I quickly realized, however, that in order to write a post about the history of technology, media and revolution, you need to know a little bit about the intertwined histories of technology media, and revolution.

I’m suffering from the same syndrome with this weeks map of the week, which features an icon designed by Gerd Arntz as part of his large collection in line with Otto Neurath’s ideas regarding the possibility of a universal symbolic language that would help to provide an educated framework for revolution for the illiterate masses of central and eastern Europe. But, while I’d like to know more about this kind of thing, I don’t have the knowledge to make any kind of informed argument at this time. The map of the week is already late, so I’ll just refer you to an Interview with Gerd Arntz by Djoeke Veeninga, VPRO, August 6th, 1976. and some of Otto Neurath’s writings and other information regarding Isotype.
Maps of the Weeks
Unreal city
06.07.09 | Permalink | Comment?

After the release of our summer mix we were feeling pretty proud of ourselves, but we were promptly humbled by this weeks map of the week, and by the general wonder of the website that presented it. This is the 4th of 6 images presented on the blog “but does it float.”. The images are accompanied only by the heading: “Reader, if I have put a pause here, and that I continued the story of the man with a lone shirt, because he had only one body at any one time, I would like to know what you would think? That I lost myself in an “impasse” à la Voltaire, or vulgarly a cul-de-sac, from which I don’t know how to leave.”

To which we add, non-sequitorially:

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
Maps of the Weeks
A guide for Cuntrey men In the famous Cittey of LONDON by the helpe of wich plot they shall be able to know how farr it is to any Street. As allso to go unto the same without forder troble.
05.28.09 | Permalink | Comment?

With a title like that. This map needs no commentary, but over at the British Library they have a zoomable map that might help all you all navigate the fine city of London Town. Which is famous.
Well, perhaps a little commentary is in order. The map was made in 1593, but was published (and [...]
Maps of the Weeks
West Bank Archipelago
05.13.09 | Permalink | Comment?

We have a bit of a backlog in the map room at the moment. We’d love to post a map of the week featuring this video of myriahedral projections (it gets incredible about halfway thought), or perhaps this crazy map of Manhattan that fails to feature a horizon. We agree with the sentiment behind this map concerning the future of London. Just add water indeed. Is it possible not to smile at this map of my computer desktop? In the end, while we hope you have a look at those maps, we’ve chosen to feature this map of an aquatic West Bank which was submitted by Bob Ross, our most regular submitter of interesting things. Bob writes:

Here’s a good map for you, which presents the shrinking Palestinian presence in the Occupied West Bank. And see the additionally commentary on Lebanon’s best English-language blog: As Qifa points out, unlike other archipelago nations, the West Bank’s “waters” are filled with “boiling lava and helicopter gunships.”
Maps of the Weeks
What, people take pictures of that?
04.29.09 | Permalink | Comment?

Everyone is going to be pointing to this series of maps today and tomorrow, so I better get on the train before someone takes a picture of it. Essentially the story is this, some scientists from Cornell took all the Geotags from all the photos on flickr and figured out that people like to take pictures of things that everyone else has already taken a picture of. The side effects of this profound discovery are some interesting maps.

You can see 5 more over at New Scientist. If anyone wants to take a look at the second map and tell me why no-one takes pictures in France, I’d love to hear your theory.
Maps of the Weeks
Re-sort Map of the Week Double Issue
04.22.09 | Permalink | Comment?

The Great James Library Re-sort is scheduled to begin in just half an hour. The reorganization of a library is indeed a rare and momentous occasion. Who can forget the epic tales of the great Tulsa Public Library Resort of 1962, or the debacles associated with the attempted resort of the Duke of Milan’s library in July [...]