Strange Maps — July 23, 2010

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.

Bald man in casual attire sitting on a stool with a strategic diagram background in yellow.

Leadership

Adam Grant on how to identify and develop high-potential leaders

The ability to toggle between abstract and concrete thinking is a key differentiator of high-potential leaders.

A split image with a close-up of a blue eye on the left, and a classical painting of a woman resting her head on her arm on a sofa on the right.

Business

For true success we need to be more philosophical about “good” and “bad” failure

Bob Dylan gave us the paradoxical gem "there's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all" — he had a point.

Starts With A Bang

The idea that matter is mostly empty space is mostly wrong

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Strange Maps

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Most counties in the U.S. have only one local newspaper, often one that publishes weekly instead of daily.

Two people walking past a dark brick wall with numerous security cameras pointing in various directions.

The Present

Are smart cities a wise idea?

When Google runs a smart city, who owns the data?

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Strange Maps

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