281 – Holmes, Sweet Holmes: A Floorplan of 221B Baker Street

Russell Stutler is an American artist living in Tokyo; his website showcases, among other examples of his graphic art, this ink and pen floorplan of 221B Baker Street in London, one of the best-known fictional addresses of all time – as it is the residence of literature’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. The floorplan was “drawn from notes taken while reading all 60 Sherlock Holmes stories twice in a row. If it appears in the books, it appears in this drawing,” says Mr Stutler.

Baker Street, in Westminster’s Marylebone district, these days is a busy thoroughfare, more prosaically known as the A41.  When you exit the Baker Street Tube station – the first underground station in the world, by the way – you can’t miss the larger-than-life  bronze statue of the street’s best-known resident. But Sherlock wasn’t the only fictional figure to live on Baker Street: so did  James Bond, DangerMouse, Sexton Blake (the “poor man’s Sherlock Holmes”) and Dusty Springfield (okay, she’s not fictional). Mme Tussaud’s waxworks museum had been a fixture on Baker Street from 1835 to 1884, and is now located on Marylebone Road, just around the corner.

Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle, was located by the author in an upstairs apartment of one of Baker Street’s then very high-class residences. In Doyle’s day, the street numbers on Baker Street only went up to 100, which probably explains why he chose 221B – to fictionalize Holmes’s address. More recently, the number 221 has been assigned (among others) to an art deco building housing, until 2002, the Abbey National building society.  The company had to hire a ‘secretary to Mr Holmes’ to deal with all the incoming mail addressed to Doyle’s intrepid detective. A bronze plaque at the building’s facade details Holmes’ and Watson’s moving in to 221B.

And yet, the ‘true’ location of the detective’s residence remains a matter of dispute among hardcore Holmesologists. For Baker Street also houses a Sherlock Holmes museum (officially at number 239, but displaying ‘221B’) in a  Georgian house similar to the one Holmes would have occupied. Holmes’s mail is now delivered to the museum instead of at number 221. A third version of the Holmes residence is in the upstairs floor of the Sherlock Holmes Pub, on Northumberland Street near the Charing Cross station.

But Mr Stutler’s floorplan may be the truest rendering of the pipe-smoking, fact-deducing detective’s residence: after all, it is as fictional as its occupant, and was constructed from all the relevant data in Doyle’s stories.

A number of 221B Baker Street maps (both annotated and non-annotated) may be found on this page of Mr Stutler’s website.

280 – Where the Goblins Live

In 1976, Dutch illustrator Rien Poortvliet and writer Wil Huygen published ‘Gnomes’, a quasi-scientific work about the history, anatomy, habits, quirks and other aspects of the lives of these little people. The book, supposedly written with the consent and cooperation of the gnomes, was an international success, translated in 21 different languages and selling over 4 million copies.

Gnomes are extremely small, human-like creatures who wear pointy red hats, all have beards (the men, not the women) and live in holes beneath the ground. They are benevolent, caring for animals, but also sympathetic to humans. Several subspecies can be distinguished: wood gnomes, garden gnomes, dune gnomes (at the coast), farm gnomes and mill gnomes. Or at least some people believe so; in the olden days, gnomes were an accepted fact of life, as is attested by the widespread knowledge of them, but their ever rarer sightings have confined them to the realm of folklore.

This map shows the extent of the gnome habitat in Europe: vast but fragmented, from Ireland in the west to an eastern boundary deep in Siberia, and from high up in Scandinavia to a southern limit running throught Belgium to Switzerland and down into the northern Balkan. Southern countries like France, Spain, Italy, Albania, most of ex-Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria and Greece are (almost) completely gnome-free. Heavy concentrations of gnomes can be found in the British Isles, Scandinavia, the Alps and Carpathians and areas of Belarus and the Ukraine. 

This map, taken from ‘Leven en werk van de kabouter’ (the original Dutch edition of ‘Gnomes’), was kindly provided by Christof Rutten.

279 – The Eurovision Text Map 2008

The Eurovision Song Contest proves that H.L. Mencken’s famous dictum about quality standards in the US media – “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public” – also holds for Europe. The pan-European ‘talent’ show is big on kitsch and schmaltz, pathos and bombast, blandness and gimmicks. It rarely produces genuine hits or memorable evergreens. And yet, the Eurosong is one of the longest-running tv programs in the world (organized annually by the European Broadcasting Union since 1956), and one of the best-watched ones (hundreds of millions of viewers every year, many outside Europe).

The basic procedure of Eurovision is thus: each year, an EBU affiliate in each participating country chooses a song to compete in the contest, held in the country that won last year’s contest. The contest, broadcast live, is usually held on a Saturday in May. After all the songs are performed, a jury (more recently, the viewing public, by televote and text message) in each country grades the other countries’ songs and a new winner is chosen.

The votes are generally perceived to be only partly about the songs performed. They are used to express closeness (or to counterbalance antipathy) between nations. It is expected for countries who share a geographical or cultural affinity to vote ‘in blocks’: the Balkan countries can usually be counted on to give each other the highest marks, as are the Scandinavian countries, or the former Soviet republics.

This musical nepotism has always been a factor, but as the playing field has gotten a lot more crowded since the Eastern European nations started participating (necessitating the institution of semifinals and a system of relegation), irritation about the practice has grown – especially in the West, since the Eastern countries tend to keep their votes ‘in the family’. Terry Wogan, who has provided the contest with ironic commentary for the BBC since time immemorial (1980, actually), has stated that he doesn’t want to present it again for this very reason. Italy has refused to participate for the last few years for the same reason.

This map, sent in by Richard Mellor and to be found on the Diamond Geezer blog, shows how far east the epicenter of Eurosong voting was in the recent 2008 edition.

And finally, just because lists are fun, some Eurosong trivia:

• The Eurovision Song Contest, modelled on the Sanremo Music Festival, was first held in Lugano (Switzerland) on 24 May 1956; 7 countries participated, each submitting 2 songs – the only time this happened.
• In 1968, the UK contended that Spain had not voted for their entry (Cliff Richards’ ‘Congratulations’) to keep it from winning. Recent press stories seem to indicate that General Franco himself orchestrated this, enabling that year’s win by Spain.
• In 1969, France, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK all tied for first place and were all declared the winner. Five countries stayed away in protest from the 1970 contest. A tie-break rule has since been agreed upon.
• In April 1974, a military coup was planned in Portugal, and the trigger for action was the broadcast of its Eurovision entry that year, E depois do adeus, sung by Paulo de Carvalho, on national radio. The following year, the Portuguese entry was the aptly titled Madrugada (April Dawn), sung by Duarte Mendes, then a serving officer with the Portuguese army.
• Participating countries must lie within the ‘European Broadcasting Area’, which not only includes Israel, but potentially also Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. And other areas: in 1980, Morocco participated.
• In 1978, Jordanian tv cut to pictures of flowers during the Israeli performance, and ended transmission when it became apparent Israel was going to win. Jordanian news afterwards reported that the contest had been won by Belgium, which came in second.
• A win in Eurosong only rarely leads to a succesful, rockstar-sized international career. Exceptions are ABBA (Sweden, 1974) and Céline Dion (Switzerland, 1988).
• Since 1989, a strange Eurovision pattern emerged regarding the winning countries: in 1989 Yugoslavia wins for the first (and only) time; in 1990 Italy wins for the second time; in 1991Sweden wins for the third time; in 1992 Ireland wins for the fourth time; in 1993 Ireland wins for the fifth time and in 1994 Ireland wins for the sixth time.

278 – Ice Coffee Town, the Netherlands

This is a print ad for a Dutch brand of ice coffee, the slogan of which is: ‘The Ice Cold Coffee Kick For On the Road’. The drink’s interest for itinerants is underscored by the product’s placement on a city map. The city might appear Dutch, with all that water coursing through the city center in the form of canals, but is in fact an imaginary construct: one doesn’t really need to strain one’s eyes to see the young lady emerge from the city plan to drink from the cup of ice coffee. A nice piece of zoomorphic cartography, which is fairly rare on a street-level scale. Some other examples discussed in earlier posts include Europe As A Queen (#141), Asia As A Horse (#165) and Scotland as a gallant piper (#181).

Thanks to Gérard van Teeffelen for sending in this image.

 

277 – The Biggest Drawing In the World

“With the help of a GPS device and DHL, I have drawn a self portrait on our planet,” writes Swedish artist Erik Nordenankar on his website for the project, appropriately named http://biggestdrawingintheworld.com. “My pen was a briefcase containing the GPS device, being sent around the world. The paths the briefcase took around the globe became the strokes of the drawing.” The resulting drawing’s dimensions are 40,076,592 by 40,009,153 meters – which are about the dimensions of the Earth’s surface, if it could be rolled out as a canvas.

Mr Nordenankar sent off his GPS-laden briefcase on March 17, 2008. He gave detailed travel instructions to DHL, which returned his package to Stockholm exactly 55 days later. Then, Mr Nordenankar plotted the spatial and temporal GPS information on a world map to obtain his portrait. “Due to the GPS drawing technique and the magnitude of the drawing, the self portrait had to be made in only one stroke. That giant stroke passed through 6 continents and 62 countries, thus becoming 110,664 km long.”

Assuming that Mr Nordenankar’s briefcase, left Stockholm to the south, its itinerary took it Denmark, up north again to Norway and then in a straight line towards the Crimea, where some expert to-ing and fro-ing formed the artist’s eye. Lines from the Ukraine to central Europa (possibly Slovakia), bending up towards St Petersburg and then south towards the Caucasus form his brow and forehead.

The nose is formed in the Middle East, the right nostril constituted in Syria, a ‘beard line’ snaking across the Mediterranean towards France, the Low Countries and environs, where Mr Nordenankar’s right ear takes shape. His jawline drops south through the Sahara, bending up towards Egypt (mouth) and the Israel/Palestine-Jordan border (philtrum). The briefcase then travelled south along the African Red Sea Coast, over Somalia, performing some strange maneuvers east of Madagascar.

The briefcase then headed north again, hovering just below the Equator, creating an atrophied hand over the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia and Papua New Guinea. The briefcase then continued along the Equator, coming into view on the left hand side of the map (forming Mr Nordenankar’s right arm), crossing America in Panama,diving south past Brazil’s easternmost point to beyond 40° South, and up again (to form some kind of strap or a suspender).

Fancifully swinging across North America, the briefcase rejoined Mr Nordenankar’s face – or rather his curly hair – over the British Isles, tracing his neck across the Iberian peninsula, North Africa’s Atlantic Coast, the African interior and then up again in a curly arc to the Nordkapp (not Europe’s northernmost point; nearby Knivskjellodden is 1,500 meters further north), finally returning to Stockholm.

Thanks to Kathryn E. Clagett for sending in this map. 

UPDATE (May 28, 2008): I always find it unfortunate when improbable stories turn out to be untrue, and this is no exception. The elaborate loopings over sea raised suspicions that the story was fabricated, but I wrote it ‘as is’, leaving the Great Online Public to draw their own conclusions. Numerous commenters have since pointed out other improbabilities. Now the artist himself has admitted that his work of art is also a work of fiction, as report the Daily Telegraph, Wired and other sources: This is fictional work. DHL did not transport the GPS at any time, reads a message at the bottom of Mr Nordenankar’s webpage. The Telegraph adds that the clarification was added at the prompting of DHL, who had allowed the artist to film in one of their warehouses on the understanding that the school project would stay ‘indoors’.

(Thanks to Andy for providing a link to the story in Wired)

276 – Transgenic Corn Linked To Neo-Fascism

Genetically modified crops are controversial and indeed have been banned in several locations because of concerns that they may cause unintended, as yet unforeseen and potentially hazardous consequences. These maps show just how unforeseen and hazardous transgenic crops can be.

The first is a map of Germany composed out of corn pellets, showing where experiments with transgenic corn (Genmais in German) are carried out. The map, unfortunately not in very high resolution, indicates a high concentration of Genmais in the eastern half of the country, the formerly independent German Democratic Republic. In the western half of the country, transgenic corn is limited mainly to some areas in the southern part of the country (i.e. Bavaria).

 

And then, here is a map showing where the extreme right-wing part of the political spectrum is strongest. Again, the map is quite low in resolution, leaving the map’s legend a bit of a mystery. Possibly, the coloring denotes the number of racist incidents committed in that area. In any case, it’s quite obvious where Rechtsradikalismus (‘right-wing radicalism’) is strongest: in the southeast corner of eastern Germany, to a lesser extent in the northeast corner; with a lesser but still significant presence in the western part of the country, mainly in the center and south of the country. Notice anything?

 Well, yes: there is an obvious correlation between the geography of transgenic corn and the geography of neo-fascism in Germany. As everyone knows, correlation does not imply causality. Although it is true that since the Middle Ages, the number of witches burned has decreased while the average temperature of the Earth has increased, global warming wouldn’t be reversed by throwing old ladies on pyres.

Thanks to Christoph Höser for suggesting these maps, originally from ‘Die Zeit’ and ‘Zeit Magazine’, taken here from Lupe, a German-language satire blog.

275 – The Friendly Floatees’ World Tour

In the Democratic primaries, Paul Tsongas leads the field of candidates. Bill Clinton (dubbed ‘Pander Bear’ by Tsongas) still has to earn the moniker ‘The Comeback Kid’ in the New Hampshire primary that saved his candidacy. Slovenia and Croatia break away from Yugoslavia, setting in motion events that will lead to all-out war on the Balkans. In the small Dutch town of Maastricht, European leaders sign the treaty that will transform the European Economic Community into a much more political European Union.

Another event from early 1992, still reverberating today: On January 10, a container holding almost 29,000 plastic bath toys spills off a cargo ship into the middle of the Pacific Ocean and breaks open. The unsinkable toys, which were en route from Hong Kong to Tacoma (Washington), include a lot of iconic yellow rubber ducks that have since been caught up in the world’s ocean currents and continue turning up on the most improbable shores. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a retired oceanographer, saw from the beginning how valuable the rubber duckies could be in tracing ocean currents, and correctly predicted their trip through the Northwest Passage.

The toys, or ‘Friendly Floatees’, as they became known, made their first landfall in mid November of 1992, when the counter-clockwise Subpolar Gyre started dumping the yellow rubber ducks (and blue turtles, red beavers and green frogs) on Alaskan shores. It took the ducks about three years to drift full circle on the Gyre – scientists calculate they drift 50% faster than the water in the current itself.  They turned up all over the Pacific: Japan, Hawaii, North America and Australia.

As Ebbesmeyer predicted, some ducks escaped the Gyre to flow North through the Bering Strait into the Arctic. Between 1995 and 2000, they slowly drift eastward, frozen in the arctic ice, at a rate of 1 mile per day. In the new millennium, the ducks started reaching the North Atlantic, being sighted from the shores of Maine to Massachusetts.  In 2001, the ducks reached the site where the Titanic sank. In 2003, the plastic toys reached the shores of the Hebrides, off the coast of Scotland. This article in the Daily Mail predicted their arrival on the shores of southwestern England in 2007.

If you spot one of these plastic toys on a beach, its colors probably faded by now, with the imprint ‘The Early Years’, then you’ve found one member of the plastic armada that set sail over 15 years ago. At some point, the scientific team that tracked their progress offered $100 apiece for the ducks – provided you could tell them when and where you’d found them. The offer was valid only from July through to December 2003, and only for Friendly Floatees found in New England, Canada or Iceland. However, friendly Floatees have become so famous that they can fetch up to $1,000 at auction. 

Thanks to Marina (good name for it) for sending in this delightful story, and this map. Wikipedia provides this map of the Friendly Floatees’ journey:

 

 

 

 

 

 

274 – Mercator Never Did This: A Prototopological World Map

As insolvable problems go, it’s right up there with attempts to square the circle. Try as you might, it is impossible to render a three-dimensional object (the Earth, say) on a two-dimensional surface (a world map) without distortion.

Take for example the Mercator projection, still one of the most widespread ways of depicting the world on a map. Because of its cilindrical projection method, areas near the poles are shown much larger than they actually are. In a Mercator projection, Greenland is about the same size as Africa, while in fact Africa’s area is 14 times that of Greenland’s.

All sorts of other map projections have been devised since Mercator’s (practical because it allowed for rhumb lines – used in nautical navigation – to be drawn as straight lines), but none of them have managed to eliminate completely the distortion inherent in converting 3D to 2D.

Chuck Clark has found a novel way to reduce the distortion, though. The Atlanta architect has long been fascinated by world maps, and has devised a way to produce constant-scale natural boundary world maps. All the continents (and the oceans) are shown in a true scale. But to do the maps justice, you will need a pair of scissors, a bit of folding and some glue…

“The art historian Erwin Panofsky (…) called this prototopology, which means merely that the map, when properly folded, resembles the object”, Mr Clark explains on his website.

This prototopological map (constant-scale natural boundary map is even more of a mouthful) of the Earth is an early example of Mr Clark’s csnb maps, and concentrates on the watersheds: the outer edge of the map is constituted by (sub)continental watersheds. For example, north of the rift splitting open Europe, water flows to the Atlantic, south of it, water flows into the Mediterranean.

“What is nice about this map is that at a single glance you see the Earth’s oceans and the lands that drain into them, all in proper proportion, shape and size”, says Mr Clark.

For more information, more recent maps (without graticules) and future updates, check Mr Clark’s brand spanking new weblog: Right Basic Building.

 

 

273 – Amnesty International’s United Nations of War

(click on the image for a larger version)

‘Everybody Is Against Everybody – Somebody Has To Be For Them’: the message behind this Amnesty International poster is ultimately a pessimistic one – war is so endemic to the human condition that we can’t hope to eradicate, only to alleviate it.

That rather hobbesian world view is underscored by this world map composed of soldiers, warriors and fighters of every colour, creed and continent, a veritable United Nations of War, all placed as geographically correct as possible: from loinclothed tribes armed with long sticks or bows and arrows make up much of South America, while the north of the continent is lined with belligerents in Pilgrim dress, Revolution-era garb, Civil War uniform and even the Ku-Klux Klan costume. And so on for each continent, mutatis mutandis.

The map depicts many recognizable masters of war, among whom just three of the previous century’s bad boys stand out: Hitler, Lenin, Mao. The arsenal depicted ranges from stone-age sticks through medieval armor to ironclad battleships and tanks… The longer I look at this map, the more depressed I get. What is it about war that makes it both undesirable and unavoidable?

Here are some ‘pro-war’ quotes that extoll, or at least excuse some of war’s qualities:

• “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.  The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.  The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” (John Stuart Mill)
• “It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it” (Robert E. Lee; statement at the Battle of Fredericksburg, 13^th December 1862)
• “The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.” (Ulysses S. Grant) 
• “Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.” (Friedrich Nietzsche; ‘Human, All Too Human’)
• “War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it.” (Benito Mussolini)
• “Everyone’s a pacifist between wars.  It’s like being a vegetarian between meals.” (Colman McCarthy)

• “The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.” (George Patton)
• “We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.” (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
• “The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.” (George Orwell; ‘Second Thoughts On James Burnham’, 1946)
• “War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.” (Milan Kundera, ‘Immortality’)

Is war a ‘natural’ state of things? Not according to everyone. There are those who see it as an aberration, only possible through lies, (self-)deception and the suspension of common sense:

• “In war, truth is the first casualty.” (Aeschylus) 
• “A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in museums, just as instruments of torture are now, and the people will be astonished that such a thing could have been.” (Victor Hugo)
• “War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.” (Karl Kraus, ‘Die Fackel’, 1917)
• “Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” (Hermann Goering)
• “History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.” (Ronald Reagan, 1984)
• “If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.” (Pentagon official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War)
• “War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view ‘realistically’; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, unprudent—war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive.” (Susan Sontag, ‘AIDS and Its Metaphors’)

Maybe war is so constant and universal that all we can do is limit it, or lament it:

• “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” (Plato)
• “War never takes a wicked man by chance, the good man always.” (Sophocles, ‘Philoctetes’)
• “As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.” (Oscar Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist’)
• “Was it for this the clay grew tall?” (Wilfred Owen, Soldier-Poet)
• “The most persistent sound which reverberates through men’s history is the beating of war drums.” (Arthur Koestler, ‘Janus’) 
• “I would like it if men had to partake in the same hormonal cycles to which we’re subjected monthly.  Maybe that’s why men declare war – because they have a need to bleed on a regular basis.” (Brett Butler)
• “War is not nice.” (Barbara Bush)
• “I think war might be God’s way of teaching us geography.” (Paul Rodriguez)

Yet even if the propensity for conflict and violence is a constant in human nature, the art of war has been perfected to such a degree that it has become unaffordable. 

•  “Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner.” (Thomas Carlyle, ‘The French Revolution’)
• “The expendability factor has increased by being transferred from the specialised, scarce and expensively trained military personnel to the amorphous civilian population.  American strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this century’s major wars.  In the First World War 5 per cent of those killed were civilians, in the Second World War 48 per cent, while in a Third World War 90-95 per cent would be civilians.” (Colin Ward, ‘Anarchy in Action’) 
• “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.”  (Bertrand Russell)
• “The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.” (Omar Bradley)


• “The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.” (John F. Kennedy)
• “We have failed to grasp the fact that mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide.” (Havelock Ellis)

This map was sent in by Derek Jensen. Quotes on this page were taken from Quotegarden, the Quotations Page, and other citational resources.

272 – Missouri, the Shred-Me State

Abraham Simpson never explained what his problem with the Show-Me State was, but Homer’s cranky old dad did offer this reason for owning a 49-star American flag: “I’ll be dead in cold, cold ground before I recognize the state of Missourah!”

Is Abe’s vehement anti-Missourianism grounded in some true but obscure historical fact? I doubt whether Missouri’s very existence ever was the subject of such heated controversy – the only thing that comes close is the brief, bloodless Honey War, a border conflict with Iowa in 1838-’39.

Most probably, the quote serves to underline Abe Simpson’s senectitude, characterized by the obstinacy with which he launches into irrelevant old-geezer anecdotes. (“Not many people know I owned the first radio in Springfield. Weren’t much on the air then, just Edison reciting the alphabet over and over. ‘A!’ he’d say, then ‘B’. ‘C’ would usually follow.”)

As states go, Missouri is one of the more middle-of-the-road ones – or varied ones, if you prefer: it’s in the midwest, but has strong cultural ties to the south. St Louis is often called the ‘westernmost eastern city in the US’, Kansas City the ‘easternmost western city’. Missouri is a microcosm of the nation’s economy, demography and politics to the extent that it is considered a bellwether state – consistently voting for the winner in all US presidential races since 1904 (except 1956, when Missourians preferred Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson over the eventual Republican winner Dwight Eisenhower).

Missouri is known as the Show-Me State, indicating its inhabitants’ reputation for skepticism for any but the most rational arguments. Its origin is ascribed to an 1899 speech by Missouri Congressman Willard Vandiver, declaring that “I come from a country that raises corn and cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I’m from Missouri, and you have got to show me.”

This map portrays Missouri as the Shred-Me State. It’s one of a series of maps of states, drawn as something else, by Frank Chimero, an illustrator and graphic designer, who says that “the illustrations for the states don’t necessarily have to deal the thematics of the state’s culture, it’s just a nice exercise for my creative muscles.”

Mr Chimero’s map captures well the only two areas on Missouri’s western and southern border that protrude from the other wise straight state lines. The torn edge of the paper sticking out at the top left represents the Platte Purchase, an area of 3,149 square miles (8,156 square km) forming the state’s northwest corner, acquired in 1836 and the only Missouri territory beyond the meridian at 94°36’’ longitude west.

At the bottom of the shredded page, the paper forms a straight line equivalent to the 36°30’ parallel north, also known as the Missouri Compromise Line, established in 1820 as the northernmost border of slavery in western territories. The same parallel forms most of the boundary between Virginia and Carolina, between Tennessee and Kentucky, and constitutes the northernmost border of Texas with Oklahoma. The only exception is the bit at the far right. This is Missouri’s Bootheel region, annexed at the instigation of planter J.H. Walker, who argued for the region’s inclusion in Missouri, sharing more affinity with Missouri’s Mississippi River towns than with Arkansas Territory. The Bootheel’s southern border is at 36° north.

 

271 – “Hilariously Wrong”: Swiss Airlines Map of America

 

The notable absence of Swiss people from the long list of explorers and discoverers might not just be due to the Alpine country’s lack of access to the sea. It also might just be that map-blindness is a national characteristic. It certainly appears so from this map of Swiss Airlines’s North American routes. “It’s hilariously wrong,” says Evan Sparks, who sent it in.

“In Florida, every city has magically migrated North. Tennessee also moved north, but Memphis replaced Chattanooga and Little Rock replaced Clarksville. The capital of Massachusetts is apparently Boston, Maine. Detroit is underneath Lake Huron, as is Pittsburgh with Lake Erie. Orange County has moved to Palm Springs. Portland and Sacramento have relocated inland, to the Harney Basin and the Great Basin, respectively.”

 

 

 

270 – Movie Maps of the World

 

You’d think that in the world of global cinema, the US is the dominant force. You’d be wrong. Think New Zealand, India and Iceland. Of course these cartograms (i.e. maps distorted to demonstrate some kind of information) fall into the third category of untruths enumerated by “lies, damned lies and statistics”. Having these these cartograms demonstrate other aspects of the film industry would undoubtedly result in radically different maps. 

These particular cartograms distort the sizes of the world’s countries in relation to the average budget per feature film, the number of films produced per capita and the total number of films produced per country.

On the first map, showing average budget per feature film, the surprising giant is New Zealand – for once looming large over its neighbour to the west, in fact, Australia could fit in between the North and South Islands. I can’t think of any other explanation for New Zealand’s size than the very expensive Lord of the Rings trilogy, shot on location in that country between October 1999 and December 2000.

Even if we revert to things as usual and ignore New Zealand, America’s size is less than impressive. You would think that all those blockbuster movies would have a greater effect on the average American feature film budget. But maybe the ‘big’ movies obscure the fact that the US produces many more ‘small’, low- or no-budget movies.

On the second map, showing number of films produced per capita, another thinly populated island nation is unexpectedly dominant – Iceland. Admittedly, it doesn’t take many movies in this country of barely 300,000 to get a good films per capita ratio. The other Nordic countries are also doing pretty well on this map, especially Denmark, outsizing all other European countries (except Iceland, of course). Slovenia is also doing noticeably well.

Regional dominance in Asia is achieved by Hong Kong, its unfamiliar shape for once outsizing the other Asian countries – even India, which is struggling to keep up with Israel.

The US manages its biggest relative size on the third map, showing the total number of feature films produced, dominating the American continent (much less so in the previous two maps), but with strong competition in Europe (notably France), Africa (a huge Nigeria) and of course Asia (a giant India shows the clout of its ‘Bollywood’, churning out more movies annually than the US).

This is also the only map that shows up a Japan larger than life. Australia and New Zealand have dwindled back into obscurity. Bizarrely, Portugal is almost invisible, whereas in the previous map it broke out of its Iberian partner Spain’s stranglehold.

Notably absent (or very atrophied) on all three maps are Latin America (Cuba punches above its weight on the second map, but that’s about it), Africa (Nigeria being the most striking exception), Russia, the Middle East and much of Asia.

 

These cartograms, an advert for Volkswagen showcasing the car manufacturer’s support for independent cinema, appeared on the back cover of this week’s film magazine from The Observer, the British newspaper. Thanks to Jon Morris for scanning them and sending them in.

269 – What A Great War: Art From the Trenches

The First World War ( 1914-1918 ) obviously didn’t get that name while it was still raging*, on account of the Second one still being a few decades in the future. Some called it ‘the War to End All Wars’ (which didn’t quite turn out that way), others labelled it ‘the Great War’, although that qualifier was a bit misleading – more a comment on its size than on its enjoyability.

Not that there wasn’t any fun to be had in the trenches, in between bouts of severe carnage. This helmet is a nice example of trench art, showing a map of the Western Front. The brim of the helmet is marked ‘H.G. Booth, 110th TMB AEF France 1918-’19’. Henry G. Booth was a cook for the 110th Trench Mortar Battery. AEF stands for ‘American Expeditionary Force’.

The helmet map shows

• England (with London, Winchester, Dover, Southampton, Hull and Liverpool indicated)
• Holland (‘Amstradam’ marked)
• Belgium (one city highlighted, name not legible)
• Luxemburg (a bit too large)
• the Alsace (shown separate from Germany and France; the city of Metz indicated)
• the north of France (with Calais, Lille, Le Havre, St Malo, Brest, Paris and three other cities shown) and
• part of Germany (Cologne, Coblenz, Mayence – i.e. Mainz).

This map taken here from the website Trench Art. Thanks to blogfok for sending me the link.

 

* As hinted at by some people in the comments section, and recently confirmed by an email I got from Philip Jenkins, a history professor at Penn State (on whose authority I take what he says about the subject to be true): “It was fashionable as early as 1918 to refer to the then-raging war as the ‘First World War’, the correct assumption being that it was indeed only the first instalment, and more to come.” What a gruesome thought!