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Cartographic curiosities
Did you know that almost 90% of the world’s population lives in the northern hemisphere? And that half of all Earthlings [1] reside north of 27°N? Or that the average human lives at 24 degrees from the equator - either to its north or south? Bill Rankin did. Or at least he found out, while ...
GPS technology is opening up exciting new hybrid forms of mapping and art. Or in this case: cycling, mapping and art. The maps on this page are the product of Michael Wallace, a Baltimore-based artist who uses his bike as a paintbrush, and the city as his canvas. As Wallace traces shapes and ...
In a dream-like scene from Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, the titular tyrant [1] gently plucks a large globe from its standalone frame, holds it longingly in his arms and dances it across his office to the tones of Wagner’s Lohengrin. The globe dance is a variation - arguably one too ...
Some maps are beautiful because of their rich complexity. Others capture our attention because they are so starkly simple. Cartography has the curious capacity to bypass a map-reader’s critical function when conveying information, and never more so than when a map is plain and simple. Two ...
The map is not the territory [1], but this collection gets closer than most [2]. Earth Platinum, published at the end of February in an edition limited to 31 copies, is the world’s largest atlas. The book is 1.8 m (6 ft) high and 1.4 m (4.5 ft) wide. When opened, it spans 2.8 m (9 ft). It ...
It ain't easy being slime. If you're sticky and viscous, you're going to be the gooey butt of persistent negative stereotyping. Slime-ophobia has been one long (and disgustingly dripping) thread throughout popular culture for the last half-century at least. Here's a handful of movie references ...
It’s 1849, and a Gold Rush is drawing thousands of American prospectors to California, which was snatched from Mexico only a year earlier [1]. The lay of the land is still poorly surveyed, the risks and resources of the terrain as yet largely unknown. So US President Zachary Taylor initiates a ...
I’m still not sure what Pinterest is for [1], but scrolling a recommended collection of maps on the site, I couldn’t help but notice that the number of cartographic tattoos was remarkably high. This blog has featured map tattoos on two earlier occasions [2], but the cornucopia of examples - and the ...
Why travel all the way to Italy when you can visit a place much closer by that is shaped like Italy? That is the alluring ruse proposed by this poster, created in 1907 by Arthur Gunn for the Great Western Railway. Gunn’s work was meant to inspire an exodus of holidaymakers from Paddington [1], the ...
For better or worse, there is little new under the sun [1]. The real estate bubble that burst in 2008 and kicked off the world economy’s present anaemic state, may seem like fresh horror to many. But it is only the latest example of a basic economic principle: what goes up, tends to go up too high ...
In 1960, feeling he might not be long for this earth, John Steinbeck decided to travel across the length and breadth of America for one last time. The celebrated writer of East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, and Grapes of Wrath set out from his Long Island home aboard Rocinante [1], his specially built ...
To be or not to be Scandinavian, that might be the question soon enough for Scotland, if it decides to become independent. For the time being, Scotland is still a part of the United Kingdom, as it has been since the Acts of Union in 1707. But with the Scottish National Party firmly ensconced in ...
Where is this? The question is simple enough, and in a non-metropolitan environment, the answer may be correspondingly unambiguous. But in large cities, where the flow of human traffic is fast and vast, place names are fluid. They change over time, and expand or contract according to the ebb and ...
Surprise meeting with an old acquaintance in the Whitechapel Gallery - Grayson Perry’s Map of an Englishman (discussed in #241). “It’s the work that draws the most people, and gets the most laughs”, said the attendant. No wonder. Perry’s Map is a masterful blend of vaguely Tolkienish fantasy ...
Last April, this blog discussed a map, dating from 1875, that showed the lower 48 states of the US in the shape of a hog: [T]his must be the world’s finest - and possibly only - example of sustained porcineography. (see #511). How wrong, how fortunately, gloriously wrong! Here is another fine ...