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!

268 – Jamerica the Beautiful

People of a very religious disposition have been known to see the face of Jesus in a slice of burnt toast, or the Virgin Mary’s silhouet in a tree. Map-nuts similarly observe simulacra of states and continents in everyday objects.

“I’ve seen photos of clouds resembling maps, pancake surface patterns,” writes Bjørn Bojesen. “But never a blob of jam.”  And then: “I was just making a sandwich, and there it was – America on the chopping board!”

Both the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines of South America are wonderfully rendered, the accretion of jam at the left hand side even  symbolizing the Andes mountain chain. Central and North America are somewhat less true to life, but their general shape is not that far off. As jam-based maps go, anyway.

Although “there is something really weird going on in Alaska,” as Mr Bojesen readily admits. The Aleutian islands have morphed from a narrow island chain into a gigantic terrestrial tentacle, sticking into the Pacific Ocean and almost touching the West Coast.

On the other side of the continent, Cuba and/or other Caribbean islands have hypertrophied and are drifting east into the Atlantic.

Thanks to Mr Bojesen for sending in this picture of ‘Jamerica’.

 

 

267 – EU Plots to Destroy Britain – Again

It’s déjà vu all over again. Post #163 of this blog (d.d. Aug 5, 2007) dealt with a secretive plan by the European Union to carve up the United Kingdom into several transnational zones, linking parts of the UK with parts of the Continent and wiping out the British state in the process.

The plan was ‘revealed’ by the europhobic Daily Mail. This time around, it’s the equally populist newspaper The Sun that has ‘discovered’ the same plan, albeit with a slightly different map. It must be that the europhobic segment of the Great British Public love a good EU horror story and don’t mind being scared twice by the same one. I don’t know if the deliberatlely misleading article, oozing paranoia and xenophobia, should make me laugh or cry:

“Secret plans reveal the South of England will be renamed TRANSMANCHE – and governed in part by bureaucrats in France.”

“Two more ‘Transnational’ zones are also being set up to ‘promote the territorial agenda’ of t he EU. The ATLANTIC REGION – stretching thousands of miles from the northern tip of Scotland to southern Spain – will take in western England and Wales, along with parts of Portugal and France.”

“And the NORTH SEA REGION will cover chunks of eastern England and eastern Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, and the Flemish part of Belgium. The Atlantic will have its headquarters in Portugal, the North Sea in Denmark.”

“Ironically, news of the carve-up comes on St George’s Day – England’s national day. Critics, including the Tories, claim the new regions ‘ignore thousands of years of history and wipe England off the map’.”

The Sun only obliquely refers to the responsibilities with which these consultative bodies will be tasked: tourism, town-twinning, the environment, shipping and transport – which hardly amounts to “reshaping national boundaries”.

Thanks to James Cribbs for pointing me to the article and the map in The Sun.

266 – Where News Breaks

As any journalist knows, news has to be about people – they either make it, or are affected by it. No people, no news. It therefore stands to reason that heavily populated areas of the US, like California or the Northeast, generate most of the news stories. But even allowing for population, some locations account for a disproportionately high number of news items.

Researchers extracted the dateline from about 72,000 wire-service news stories from 1994 to 1998 and modified a standard map of the Lower 48 US states (above) to show the size of the states in proportion to the frequency of their appearance in those datelines (below). Some notable results:

* Washington DC accounts for a huge proportion of the news stories – not surprising, since it is the nation’s capital, and the home of Congress, the Presidency and other political news generating institutions. But still: DC (pop. 600,000; metro area 5.8 million) generates more news than the most populous state, California (pop. 36.5 million).

* New York is the largest news provider of the country, of course nearly all originating in New York City (pop. 8.2 million; metro area 18.8 million). Compare this to Illinois, home of the the nation’s third largest city, Chicago (pop. 2.8 million; metro area 9.5 million). Especially when considering metropolitan areas, Chicago/Illinois should be half the ‘news size’ of New York City/New York, while in fact it seems to be less than one fifth. Could this underrepresentation be down to another ‘capital effect’ (i.e. New York being the ‘cultural capital’ of the US)?

* News stories from Texas (pop. 20.8 million) seem overly scarce, especially when compared to, say, Georgia (pop. 8.2 million), which seems to get a bigger share. Could this be due to the fact that major news organization CNN is headquartered in Atlanta?

* The Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, with a combined population of under 9 million, are all but invisible. No people, no news? Colorado alone, with a population of under 4.5 million, is responsible for a much larger chunk of news than those states combined. Could this be because the other states lack large cities, while Colorado has Denver (pop. 600,000; metro area 2.5 million)? No cities, no news?

This cartogram, originally from the August 2004 issue of Science News magazine, where it illustrated an article entitled ‘A Better Distorted View: The Physics of Diffusion Offers A New Way of Generating Maps’. Many thanks to Christian Schumann-Curtis, who sent it in.

265 – Olympic Rings of Fear: Japan’s Air Raid Angst (1938)

At some point early in the previous century, island nations particularly were gripped with air raid angst. The relatively new threat of airborne destruction was especially poignant for countries that for centuries were able, for defense purposes, to profit from their aquatic isolation – countries like Britain or Japan.

It seems the Japanese were already holding air raid drills as early as the 1920s, and tried harder than other nations to limit aerial bombing by treaty. To no avail, as history has shown; Japan’s pre-war fears about destruction from the sky would be surpassed beyond belief by the horror of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the war.

This air raid awareness map dates from 1938, and shows exactly whom the Japanese were frightened of – not China, for instance, even though that was the only country they were at war with at the time. The Chinese, reduced to fighting a guerilla war against the Japanese invader, probably couldn’t muster an air force.

Japan was olympic in its air raid angst: the land of the Rising Sun is surrounded and entirely covered by five differently-coloured rings, each showing a radius of action of 2,000 km (1,242.7 mile). At the center of these five potentially inimical radiuses are:

Alaska (yellow circle): probably the island of Attu, the westernmost US possession – and the site of the only World War II battle on US soil. America recaptured the island from a Japanese garrison after bloody hand-to-hand combat at the end of May 1943. Two months later, it was the starting point for the first US raid on Japanese soil since the 1942 Doolittle Raid. As indicated by this map, the attack range was limited to the Kurile Islands, north of Japan proper.
Vladivostok (green circle): Soviet bombers would be able to cover the whole of Japan, all of Korea (at the time a Japanese colony), all of Manchuria (in pink, north of Korea; a Japanese puppet state) and most of Japanese-occupied China (in orange).
Hong Kong (black circle): British bombers stationed here could reach over half of Japan’s mainland possessions, plus Japan’s southern tip.
Manila (brown circle): the Philippines were a US possession until 1946; US bombers stationed here would be able to reach some of southern China, Formosa (i.e. Taiwan, also in Japanese hands at the time) and the very southern tip of Japan itself.
Chichijima (grey/blue circle): or ‘Father Island’, an island in the Ogasawara archipelago.

The island of Tinian, whence Enola Gay took off to drop the first atom bomb, is over 2,500 km (1,560 miles) to the south of its target, Hiroshima. Tinian, one of the Northern Mariana Islands, is not indicated on this map, nor is Hiroshima. The three white dots in Japan are, west to east: Kokura, Osaka and Tokyo. Hiroshima is also situated in the south of the country, near Fukuoka, but on the western tip of the main island Honshu.

This map was sent in by Nils Jeppe, who saw it on Airminded, a blog about ‘Airpower and British society, 1908-1941 (mostly)’. From one niche blog to another, passing by like (air)ships in the night: good-bye and good luck!
This post (a follow-up of a previous post about air raid posters) has this Japanese poster, and several others (including ones where the concentric circles signify ICBM ranges, and a cool British one, warning about the dangers of German zeppelins launched from Heligoland).

264 – An Absolut Mexico

Ay caramba! Absolut Vodka has found a surefire way to put its US sales figures in a downward spiral. This map, used in a Mexican ad campaign, shows what the US-Mexican border would look like in an ‘absolut’ (i.e. perfect) world: a large part of the US’s west is annexed to Mexico.

Needless to say this map made its way to ‘El Norte’, annoying and upsetting many Americans – even leading to calls for a boycott of the Swedish-made vodka. What must be particularly annoying is that this map has some basis in fact.

Large swathes of the western US used to be part of Mexico. In 1836, American settlers proclaimed the independence of Texas, formally a Mexican territory. The US annexation of Texas in 1845 prompted the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), after which Mexico was forced to cede 525,000 square miles of territory (42% of its pre-war territory, 12% of the US’s current territory).

Mexico didn’t have much choice: a US army occupied Mexico City, and the alternative was total annexation. The Mexican Cession consisted of the territories of Alta California and Nueva Mexico, out of which were eventually formed the US states of California, Nevada and Utah, and parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming.

In this ‘absolut’ version of the world, the US and Mexico are about the same size. As gratifiying as it might be for Mexicans to see the loss of Texas and the Mexican Cession be reversed, this map managed to offend so many Americans that it prompted Absolut Vodka to release a statement:

“We are sorry if we offended anyone. This was not our intention. We will try to explain. Though you may not agree, I hope you understand.”
“We have a variety of executions running in countries worldwide, and each is germane to that country and that population. This particular ad, which ran in Mexico, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Mexican sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Mexico may feel was more ideal.”
“Obviously, this ad was run in Mexico, and not the US — that ad might have been very different.”

This map was sent in by Jeremy Yingling, Danny Dorfman, Nate Maas, Jim Yu, Nick Collecchi and Dubi Kaufmann. Here’s a link to it at the LA Times

263 – Functional Geography 2.0: France, the Ideal Household Utensil

Well, the jury is in. The country with the most functional geography is… France. As proved by this diagram, France’s jagged, hexagonal shape makes it the ideal, multiple-use household utensil:

• The Pas de Calais, at the very top of the country, bordering Belgium and the English Channel, is transformed into a diamant coupe-verre (glass-cutter)
• Peninsular Normandy doubles as a handy décapsuleur (bottle-opener)
• Brittany, stabbing into the Atlantic Ocean, makes for a nice fourchette (fork)
• Broadening out into the Bay of Biscay downstream from the city of Bordeaux, the Gironde estuary is a coupe-ficelle (wire-cutter)
• The Pyrennées, the mountain chain forming the border with Spain, are transformed into a hâchoir (meat-mincer)
• The sharp edge where the Alsace-Lorraine region juts furthest into Germany serves as a pied-de-biche (crowbar)
• France’s interior is taken up by a gril (grill pan)

And while several US states and other countries boast purely geographical panhandles (e.g. Oklahoma, West Virginia, Namibia), France gets a real one stuck in its Franche-Comté region – probably Swiss-made, by the look of it.

This handy household item, named Le Gaulois (‘The Gaul’), looks like it could be a big hit on those all-night tv shopping channels. Wouldn’t you want one?

Merci beaucoup à Emmanuel Parfond de m’avoir envoyé cette carte.

262 – Made In Taiwan: Functional Geography

“On a recent trip to Taiwan, I purchased this bottle opener at the Taipei 101 building (technically still the tallest building in the world until the Burj Dubai opens),” writes John Sperling. “The functional part of the bottle opener is in the shape of Taiwan. It makes you wonder which other countries are suitable for everyday tasks like opening bottles.”Picture provided by Mr Sperling.

261 – The Civil War and the Death of ‘Horizontalism’

In 1852, when New Mexico was at its newest, the territory bearing that name was more than double the size of the eponymous present-day state. Of the many changes that were to follow, none was more dramatic – from a cartographic point of view, if you’ll allow – than the creation of the Union Territory of Arizona.

This destroyed a tradition of ‘horizontalism’ in the administrative divisions of the territory, still clearly visible on this map: the east-west-orientation of the counties creates elongated slices of land that are pleasingly improbable to govern. Just imagine being the sheriff of Bernalillo County. Or worse, his horse.

And yet it may not have been practicality, but spite that caused the Union to set up a ‘verticalist’ Arizona Territory, thus thwarting the ‘horizontalist’ Arizona Territory of the Confederacy. Or maybe it was a very practical spite, thus dividing the pro-Confederate south of the New Mexico Territory in two.

All this will make a bit more sense in its chronological context:

1852 – The US territory of New Mexico, acquired as spoils of the Mexican-American War, covers most of what were to become the states of New Mexico and Arizona and southern bits of the future states of Nevada and Colorado.

1853 – The US buys an additional 30,000 square miles (77,000 sq. km) of Mexican territory. This Gadsden Purchase, named after the US Minister to Mexico, cost the US $10 million, and allowed it to construct a southern transcontinental railroad. The original plan was for the purchase area to be much larger, even including all of the Baja California peninsula (and four Mexican states: Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora and Nuevo Leon). This was opposed by the Mexicans and by anti-slavery US politicians, but vehemently regretted by the filibuster William Walker, who marched into Mexico with a small army, and established the short-lived independent Republic of Sonora.

1855 – the Gadsden Purchase officially added to Dona Ana County in the New Mexico Territory.

1861 – After a gold rush, and to secure the area for the Union at the beginning of the Civil War, the Territory of Colorado is established. It replaces the provisional (and unrecognised) Territory of Jefferson, which was a much larger square than Colorado – including an eastern strip of Utah, a southern third of Wyoming and the western protrusion of Nebraska. The Territory of Colorado is made up of far-flung parts of the Territories of Utah, Nebraska, Kansas and New Mexico.

1861 – pro-Confederacy settlers in the southern half of the Territory proclaim the Confederate Territory of Arizona (identical to the areas of the Socorro and Dona Ana Counties on this map), aided by the fact that they are removed from the pro-Union administration in Santa Fe by the Jornada del Muerto (’the journey of the dead man’), a difficult stretch of desert. The CTA links the Confederacy all the way to California.

1863 – Having ousted Confederate forces from the area, the Union creates its own Arizona Territory, but does this by slicing the original New Mexico Territory in eastern and western halves (creating the present state border), rather than northern and southern ones.

1866 – Nevada absorbs the part of the Arizona Territory west of the Colorado River and south of the 37th parallel. The transfer followed a gold rush, with the government judging Nevada would be better suited to manage the influx of migrants.

1912 – In January, New Mexico is the penultimate state of the Lower 48 to receive statehood. In February, Arizona is the very last.

This map was sent in by Brian Fletcher (of Bernalillo County, NM), who found it at this page of the New Mexico Genealogical Society. “All of these counties (mentioned on the map) survive to this day in a different form except for Santa Ana,” he says.

260 – You’ll Never Moonwalk Alone

On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon. He didn’t moonwalk alone – ‘Buzz’ Aldrin joined him on the surface – and he didn’t walk far.

After travelling hundreds of thousands of kilometers, the landing crew of the Apollo 11 lunar mission barely covered an area the size of a football pitch.

Many thanks to John Mark Boling for sending in this extremely cool map, found at this page of the NASA history division website.

If ‘football’ makes you think of a game played with helmets, please substitute ’soccer’. And if soccer is too alien for your liking, this map from the same website overlays the ground covered by the Apollo 11 landing team on a baseball diamond…

259 – Unnamed Methane Sea On Titan

Except for some of the harsh, impermanently inhabited and sparsely visited inlands of Kerguélen, there are no places left on Earth to name.

Those with a penchant for baptising should look to the priesthood, or take a more literal interest in heaven – there are ever more known worlds out there, and precious little of those exoplanets have been explored, let alone provided with toponyms.Even within our own solar system, the field is still wide open. Although all planets and moons in our solar system have been named, many of their geograpical features haven’t.

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, was discovered in 1655 by Christiaan Huygens. Titan is larger in diameter than the smallest planet, (Neptune) Mercury, and 50% larger than our own Moon. It is the only moon in our solar system to have a dense atmosphere – so dense that, in combination with its limited gravity, humans on Titan could fly by just flapping their arms.

The orange opacity of Titan’s atmosphere makes the moon appear bigger than it actually is – astronomers have since distinguished between permanent cloud cover and surface, and downgraded it from the first- to the second-largest moon in our system, after Jupiter’s satellite Ganymede.

Not until the flyby, in 2004, of the Cassini-Huygens mission could scientists confirm the speculation, first ignited by both Voyager missions and then heightened by Hubble observations, that Titan is the only heavenly body (save Earth) to contain large liquid surfaces – or seas, as non-astronomers would call them. For they seem a bit too small to be labelled oceans.

These seas, or lakes, most probably consisting of methane or another hydrocarbon, can be seen on this page of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Cue Peter Minton, a teacher from San Diego with a thing for maps, for mapping and more precisely still for mapping shorelines. His website shows the many maps he has made, most with more conventional subjects than these seas on Titan. Mr Minton used the data at the JPL to create this map of Titan’s Unnamed Methane Sea (his relevant page here), detected in mid-2006 by Cassini probe (which is slated to make the last of its 21 flybys mid-May 2008).

Fascinating. It looks a bit like the Aral Sea, although that might just be me confusing this colour scheme with satellite pictures of the Central Asian lake, shrinking into the desert. The many rivulets and islets make it look like a nice lake to vacation at, until you remember that there’s something unpleasant in the air there (– 98% nitrogen). A shame: how nice it must be to flap your arms and fly over the Superior-sized lake. But then again, the sunlight hardly penetrates Titan’s cloud cover, so you wouldn’t see much. And the average temperature is -180°C (-290°F). Can we go home now?

The naming bit, then. First off, many features on Titan have already been named. To not offend anyone except scientists, and as is customary in extraplanetary toponymy, the names are chosen mainly from mythology: Xanadu is an Australia-sized hilly and craggy area near the Equator (and the fabled location of Kubla Khan’s stately pleasure dome), Menrva is a 440 km wide basin of impact craters (and the Etruscan version of the goddess Minerva), Guabonito is a partially buried impact crater (and a Taino goddess), etcetera.

A bit disappointingly, I just discovered that the lakes have also been named. Wikipedia lists the names of 12 potential lakes, all designated as lacus and named after existing Earth lakes (e.g. Ontario lacus), although it’s not clear which of those lakes is supposed to be the one drawn here by Mr (Burton) Minton. I say its shape looks a bit like that of the northern half of Greenland. But that’s hardly an appealing name – Lake North Greenland (although I don’t think there’s any tourist board out there to complain about it). How about Lake (Burton) Minton, in honour of its mapper? Although Unnamed Methane Sea has a nice, ominous ring to it. Any other ideas? Or should I just go to Kerguélen on my own?

This map was sent in by Paul Drye. With a name like that, he’d best not discover any lakes. Or seas.

258 – An Ocean Of Water, And Not A Drop To Drink: A ‘Map On Temperance’

Temperance not only is one of the four Cardinal Virtues of Catholicism (and one of the five Precepts of Buddhism), it’s also the name of a specific movement gathering steam throughout the 19th century, mainly in anglophone countries, aiming to reduce the consumption of alcohol.

In the US, much of the Temperance Movement was religiously inspired (although by Protestantism rather than Catholicism or Buddhism), and much of it was led by women (such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1873 and still around today).

The most obvious way to ‘temper’ the consumption of alcohol is not to drink it at all; so the call for Temperance escalated into pleas for Abstinence. But the personal choice not to drink at all is much easier if there’s no temptation around. And thus the Movement moved inexorably from demanding Temperance through advocating Abstinence to pushing for Prohibition – “an intemperate denunciation of temperate drinking,” as G.K. Chesterton once derisively described it.

Temperance, now in the guise of Prohibition, was spread with a religious zeal bordering on the fanatical. In 1851, Maine became the first Prohibition state; four years later, there were already 12 ‘dry’ US states. In 1919, the 18th Amendment extended Prohibition to the entire US. Jubilant Temperance zealots were predicting the end of crime, and prepared to promote the benefits of Prohibition in other countries.

But this is where the Temperance wave crested. Far from reducing crime, Prohibition actually gave organised crime a serious boost – e.g. Al Capone and other ‘classic’ American gangsters. Prohibition was not only impopular, but eventually untenable. The 18th Amendment is the only one to have ever been rescinded (in 1933, by the 21st).

This ‘Map On Temperance’ was printed at Howe’s Sheet Anchors Press in Boston around 1846, thus dating from the ascendancy of the Temperance movement. It shows the straits, bays and channels of the Ocean of Life, which is dotted with islands, provinces, kingdoms, territories and regions. All features are named after aspects of alcoholism (in the West) and of Abstinence (in the East).

The Alcohol Islands lie in the northern part of the Ocean, separated by Dissipation Straits and Folly Straits from the wicked lands to the West. The islands are: Brandy Island, Rum Island, Cider Island, Wine Island, Malt Island, Gin Island, Whiskey Island and Cordial Island. Other features on or between these islands are: Rum Sellers Shoals, Temptation Straits, Cape Ale, and, towards the gloriously alcohol-free lands to the East, Moderation Passage and Temperance Straits.

The lands of drink are, north to south: Topers Possession, Sickness Province, Indolence Kingdom, Poverty Territory, Fury Region, Reprobate Empire, Dishonesty Kingdom, Crime Empire, Lunacy Province and Misery Regions. Each territory contains toponyms associated with each of the defects described by their name. The Misery Regions are dotted with Infamy, Ruin, Woe and Horror; Hatred, Malice and Revenge are contained in the Fury Region; and Sloth, Indigence and Lazy Harbour (a particular favourite of mine) can be found in Indolence Kingdom.

The ‘dry’ lands in the East are, north to south: Repentance Kingdom, Resolution Province, Fortitude Territory, Wisdom Empire, Friendship Regions, Industry Province, Morality Kingdom, Religious Possessions, Happiness Empire and Contentment Province. Vices are more colourful than virtues – but still, some interesting toponyms here are: the Religion Channel, Cape Sobriety and the Gulf of Reform.

Drifting in the southern Ocean of Life, almost as if it were on a mission due west is – yep – Missionary Island, with a Persuasion Bay and an Exhortation Coast. Between the island and the dry land are the Washingtonian Straits. This might be a reference to the politicians in Washington who still need to be convinced of the need for Temperance legislation, but I’m not sure.

Below the actual map is a rhyming road map explaining the route from the perilous ‘wet’ lands to the blessed ‘dry’ lands. An Explanation crowns the whole simile between map and life:

Life is an Ocean, both extant and wide;
Man’s the Ship, that doth o’er its surface glide;
Happiness the Port, we ever strive to find;
Temperance must be the Pilot, to navigate the mind;
Reason then takes the helm, free from doubt,
To steer the course – as by Heaven pointed out.

This map was sent in by Natalia Fisher and can be found on this page at Brown University in Providence (RI).

257 – Switzerland’s ‘Röstigraben’, a Curious Culinary and Cultural Divide

Switzerland is predominantly German-speaking, but far from completely so. The alpine confederation is officially quadrilingual: German (64%), French (20%), Italian (7%) and Romansh (0.5%). As the latter two languages are very minoritary, linguistic tension does tend to be a binary thing, between Deutschschweiz – a word only a germanophone could pronounce – and la Romandie, signifying the Swiss French west of the country.

The Romands call the ‘other’ side la Suisse alémannique and the Schweizerdeutsche call the francophone part of their country Welschschweiz (the root word being a Germanic term for ‘stranger’, identical to the one in ‘Wales’ and ‘Wallonia’).

The language border dividing these two areas is known jestingly as the Röstigraben (in German) or the rideau de rösti (in French). A Graben is a ditch and a rideau is a curtain, so you get the idea of separation – but what a Rösti is and why it is significant, requires a bit more explanation.

This dish is made mainly by frying grated potatoes in a pan. It was formerly eaten as breakfast by farmers in the (German-speaking) Bern canton. The original conceit of the Röstigraben was that it constituted the western limit of the German Swiss culture, beyond which people spoke (and ate) differently.

The Rösti has gained popularity as a side dish all over Switzerland, but the language and cultural differences persist. The French Swiss voters have traditionally been less averse of the international community (including potential EU membership) and more prone to support a more active role for the federal government. Recently, voting trends in French and German Switzerland have tended to converge more.

The Röstigraben isn’t the only gastronomically defined cultural border in central Europe. The northern and southern halves of germany are separated by what is called the Weisswurstäquator – the white sausage equator, after a favourite dish in Bavaria that’s rarely eaten in the north.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a map of this particular equator around. The book cover used here (and found here) shows a picture of a very literal Röstigraben – a Switzerland-shaped Rösti broken in two exactly where the language border runs. That the ditch wasn’t too hard to cross, is apparent by the name of the author, Laurent Flütsch: his French forename and German surname suggest his parents had a quite intimate knowledge of the ‘other’… 

256 – The Surrealist Map of the World (1929)

Just as light is not supposed to bend, so the Equator should not waver from its rectitude. The fact that it snakes across this map like a hose through a garden indicates that this is a very weird world indeed.

How weird? A first indication is the size of Alaska – way too big even if you allow for the distortion of the Mercator projection, which is also ballooning Russia to a size much bigger than its already huge actual surface, but this super-sized Russia is not out of line with accepted mercatorial deviance.

Closer inspection of the American continent reveals a gigantic Labrador, bordering on Mexico, to which is appended an atrophied version of South America. Not just atrophied, but completely missing are the United States and Canada (not to mention all other Central and South American countries, save Peru, which takes up all of its subcontinent).

Two para-American islands are affected by gigantism: Easter Island, which looks like a teddy bear pointing towards Peru, and Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of the Americas, looking like a lizard running west… the low resolution of this image leaves much to the imagination.

Asia and Oceania are similarly blighted by gigantism (Hebrides, New Guinea and an illegible archipel, China and Afghanistan) dwarfism (Australia, India) and not-there-ism (Japan, Sri Lanka, much of the Middle East).

Africa is tiny, Europe is almost entirely covered by Germany, Ireland is looking straight at Europe across the Britain-less North Sea. Only two cities are marked on the map: Paris and Constantinople…What’s the point of this map? Well – its point is that it hasn’t any, except to bewilder and shock bourgeois viewers by presenting a bizarre alternative to the stale normality of their expectations.

Which is a neat summary of the surrealist world view – not co-incidentally, the title of this work is Surrealist Map of the World. It first appeared in 1929 in a special issue of ‘Variétés’, a Belgian magazine, dedicated to surrealism – an art form remembered for its absurdity, but less for its political views.

In discussing this map in her excellent book You Are Here, Katharine Harmon quotes a Surrealist manifesto from 1925:

“Even more than patriotism – which is a quite commonplace sort of hysteria, though emptier and shorter-lived than most – we are disgusted by the idea of belonging to a country at all, which is the most bestial and least philosophic of the concepts to which we are all subjected.. Wherever Western civilization is dominant, all human contact has disappeared, except contact from which money can be made – payment in hard cash.”

This map was found here.

255 – Hitler a Star? An Unlikely Map of ‘A Better Sky’

Have you ever seen the constellation named ‘The Tyrants’, spanning the stars Robespierre and Kubla Khan, stringing together Hitler, Mussolini and Attila along the way? Or how about the stars Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt in the constellation ‘United States’? And then there’s the stars Stalin, Lenin and Tolstoi sharing the constellation ‘Russia’….

You’ve seen all of these stars before, you’ve just never heard them called these names. Good thing A.P. Herbert isn’t around anymore to mourn the total oblivion of his plan for renaming the constellations. In 1944, the eccentric Englishman published ‘A Better Sky, or, Name This Star’, a book in which he expounded his proposal to change the names of stars and constellations in order for them to be more recognisable and easier to learn for the contemporary British student.

In 1944, the British government still had other things to worry about than renaming the heavens. Reviewing Mr Herbert’s book in a 1944 issue of The Observatory magazine, G.K. McArthur, retired Instructor-Commander in the Royal Navy, writes: “Should not an attempt be made to persuade the schools to include elementary astronomy and navigation in the curriculum? Here is an opportunity for a keen navigator and zealous reformer like Mr. Herbert; perhaps a more valuable exercise for his brilliant powers than hoisting Hitler and Mussolini with other mortals into the sky.”

Mr Herbert’s attempt to rename the stars was not the first one – equally unsuccesful attempts have been made to change them to the names of Christian apostles, slugs, ships and planes, apparently. Nevertheless, Alan Patrick Herbert can still be remembered for other things: he was a writer, humorist and law reformer, serving in the House of Commons for 15 years and in the Royal Navy during the First and Second World Wars.

He campaigned for modernising the laws on divorce, obscenity and alcohol licensing – once famously taking the House of Commons to court for the (illegal) sale of alcohol on its premises. As a writer, he is best remembered for his ‘Misleading Cases’, satirical law reports of fictional court cases, often written from the point of view of serial litigator A.P. Haddock, and adapted for television by the BBC. He also wrote eight novels and 15 plays, including a light opera.

This map of the heavens renamed has the following constellations –

Canada, The Tyrants, Europe Regained, China, The Airman, The Music Maker, Science, The Gorgeous East, The Story-Teller, The Poet, The Painter, The Islands, The Jester, South America, Australasia, The Player, The Doctor, Russia, The Philosopher, Great Britain, The Statesman, The Soldier, The Traveller, The Sailor, South Africa, The Rebels, The Heroes, King’s Cross, The Children’s Corner, The Women, United States.

I recognise Great Britain as Ursa Major and I suspect The Sailor to be Orion, but that’s as far as it goes, at first glance. A larger map can be viewed by clicking on it, but the names of the individual stars remain not entirely legible.

254 – Ludacris’ Rap Map of US Area Codes

“I’m a female and a feminist. I dislike the usage of the word ‘ho’. However, as a geography major, I find this song hilarious, and had to map it,” says Stefanie Gray, referring to ‘Area Codes’ by the rap artist Ludacris.

Rap, for those less familiar with the term, is a genre in which the rhythmic delivery of rhyme and wordplay constitutes the main element of the music. Rap relates to singing as racewalking relates to running – but that’s just my inexpert opinion.

Rap music has been criticised for its content, which often consists of crude and ludicrous bragging about the rapper’s lyrical, financial, criminal, physical and sexual prowess. ‘Area Codes’ could be considered as an example of this phenomenon, sometimes referred to as gangsta rap:

“I’ll jump off the G4, we can meet outside/So control your hormones and keep your drawers on/’Til I close the door and I’m jumping your bones/3-1-2’s, 3-1-3’s (oh), 2-1-5’s, 8-0-three’s (oh)/Read your horoscope and eat some horderves (sic)/Ten on pump one, these hoes is self serve/7-5-7, 4-1-0’s, my cell phone just overloads.”

“In this song, Ludacris brags about the area codes where he knows women, whom he refers to as ‘hoes’,” says Ms Gray, who plotted out all the area codes mentioned in this song on a map of the United States. She arrived at some interesting conclusions as to the locations of this rapper’s preferred female companionship:

• “Ludacris heavily favors the East Coast to the West, save for Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Las Vegas.”
• “Ludacris travels frequently along the Boswash corridor.”
• “There is a ‘ho belt‘ phenomenon nearly synonymous with the ‘Bible Belt’.”
• “Ludacris has hoes in the entire state of Maryland.”
• “Ludacris has a disproportionate ho-zone in rural Nebraska. He might favor white women as much as he does black women, or perhaps, girls who farm.”
• “Ludacris’s ideal ‘ho-highway’ would be I-95.”
• “Ludacris has hoes in the Midway and Wake Islands. Only scientists are allowed to inhabit the Midway Islands, and only military personnel may inhabit the Wake Islands. Draw your own conclusion.”

Ludacris is not deterred by clever and/or strong women? The concept of Ludacris’ song reminds me a bit of ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’ by Johnny Cash, which, come to think of it, probably shares some subtext with ‘Area Codes’.

Map kindly provided by Stefanie Gray.

253 – Germany Surrounded by Switzerland

The town of Büsingen am Hochrhein is one of two foreign enclaves enclosed within the territory of Switzerland (*). Büsingen has a long, intimate knowledge of borders, being located on the old limes between the Roman empire and the Germanic barbarians.

Ever since the mid 14th century, Büsingen has had Austrian overlords – at the end of the 17th century, the abduction, trial and death sentence of the Lord of Büsingen at the hands of the neighbouring Swiss canton of Schaffhausen almost led to war between Austria and Switzerland.

It’s said that due to this near-war, the Austrians decided to never relinquish control over Büsingen to the Swiss, just to spite them. When Austria sold its rights to the nearby villages of Ramsen and Dörflingen to the canton of Zürich in 1770, Büsingen effectively became an enclave within Switzerland.

In 1805, the Peace of Pressburg handed Büsingen to the kingdom of Württemberg, in southern Germany. Five years later, the town came under the overlordship of the Grand Duchy of Baden. Eventually, with German Unification in 1870, Büsingen became part of the German Empire.

A whopping 96% of the inhabitants voted for annexation by Switzerland in a 1919 referendum, but since the Swiss couldn’t offer Germany any territory in return, Büsingen remained, somewhat reluctantly, German.

As Büsingen is in a customs union with Switzerland, it is outside the European Customs Area. Other peculiarities caused by its exterritoriality:
• the common currency in Büsingen is not the euro, but the Swiss franc.
• Swiss police may pursue and arrest suspects in Büsingen, but no more than 10 Swiss police officers are allowed in the town at one time.
• Similarly, there may never be more than 3 German police officers per 100 inhabitants.
• There are two postal codes in this one town, a German one 78266 Büsingen; and a Swiss one: 8238 Büsingen (D). You can use Swiss or German stamps for your letters.
• Büsingen’s only petrol station advertises that it’s the cheapest in all of Germany – on average 30% cheaper.

(*) later more on Campione d’Italia, an Italian exclave in southern Switzerland.

This map taken here from Jan S. Krogh’s excellent GeoSite.

252 – A River Runs Through It: the Chamizal Dispute (1895-1963)

Ever since the Mexican-American War (1845-49), the Rio Grande has been the border between the two nations from El Paso to the Gulf, giving Texas a natural southern boundary. Fixing the border on a river might seem a tidy solution. But while rivers last longer than most treaties, they are also bound by none. When a river shifts, it shifts, treaty or no.

Does the border then trace the old riverbed or the new one? Naturally, both parties would prefer the outcome that left them the most territory (and the other the least). A war, anyone? International law has a rule for this particular clash between fluctuation and demarcation: if the river changes course gradually, through erosion, the border follows. If the river radically changes course, through avulsion, the border should remain where it was before.

By 1895, the Rio Grande – and the US – had moved south about 600 acres (2,4 sq. km), a disputed area known as El Chamizal. Mexicans filed claims to the land south of the old riverbed (but north of the new one), an arbitration commission was established and it eventually proclaimed in 1911 that each country should receive part of the disputed area:
The US was to receive the area between the riverbed as originally surveyed in 1852 and the riverbed as it had shifted southwards by 1864, the rest going to Mexico, even though this was to the north of the later riverbed of the Rio Grande.

The US did not accept this split decision, leading to sustained tension with Mexico and the development of a curious zone in El Chamizal, called Cordova Island. This was a virtual Mexican island in the disputed zone, leading to a grey zone that fostered crime and illegal border crossings.

In 1963, US president JF Kennedy and Mexican president Adolfo Lopez Mateos agreed to settle the Chamizal Dispute along the lines of the 1911 recommendations.

• The US and Mexico each received 193 acres of Cordova Island;
• Mexico received 366 acres west of Cordova Island, and 264 acres to the east of it.
• Mexico and the US shared the cost of a man-made channel that would (or should) prevent further blurring of the border.
• US citizens in the Chamizal area were relocated and compensated for the loss of their homes and businesses.
• A Chamizal National Memorial, an amphitheatre, a bookstore and a museum were established in the area, which every October hosts several cultural events such as the Border Folk Festival and the Siglo del Oro drama festival.

This map, found at this page at answers.com, would have benefited from a better dating of the three sets of riverbeds, which I assume must be the ones from 1852 (’old boundary’), 1864 (’Relocated River Channel’) and around 1895 (’Rio Grande’).

251 – Pot Kettle Black: Yugoslav Map of the Near-Collapsing US

“While on vacation in Dubrovnik, Croatia this summer, we ran across an old Yugoslav atlas which included this map on the entry for the US. My Serbo-Croatian isn’t so good so I don’t know the true details as to what it’s about, but it appears to be plans for a Russian invasion,” says Andrew, who sent in this map.

“Submarines labelled SSSR are on both coasts. The apparent flight paths of ICBMs are marked. Cuba’s soldiers and bases are indicated (…) If you can figure out more precisely what’s going on I’d certainly be curious, and I imagine that other readers would get a kick out of it.”

My Serbo-Croatian isn’t very good either, but the map does seem to speak the language of the Cold War. Guessing the exact year is complicated as national borders in the Americas have remained stable in the last few decades, unlike in other parts of the world, where they allow easier carto-dating.

A look at the actual legend of the map does allow for some closer dating. Item #3 (the red vertical stripes) indicates the pro-soviet regimes in the hemisphere – Cuba and Nicaragua. The inclusion of that second country limits the timeframe of the map to 1979-1990, the era when the Sandinistas were in control of Nicaragua.

Although the Soviet navy has got the North American continent completely surrounded, in my opinion, the map does not demonstrate a Soviet plan of attack, but restates the Communist ideological orthodoxy of the US as an aggressive, unstable monstrosity at near-collapse – a remarkable example of the pot calling the kettle black.

• Whereas blue indicates the US itself (Sjedinjene Americke Drzave, acronym SAD – but that is a coincidence, I presume), yellow indicates ’separatist’ forces at work in the North American continent, such as Quebec (although that is a Canadian, not a US issue) and Black Muslims (around Chicago) and Mexican-Americans (in Texas). Again, a pretty remarkable comment, coming from a Yugoslav atlas.
• Item #5 on the legend indicates, I think, ‘disputed’ marine boundaries, mainly between Canada and the US, thus misrepresenting the mainly friendly relations between those two countries – the disputes might be real, but their significance is relatively minor.

Anyone able to elucidate on the meaning of the other symbols? Please do!