Confucius Say, Handle With Care

Current magazine spotted on the shelf today:

Upfront is a magazine for classroom use to encourage students to become aware of current issues. If we do not handle with care, I'm not sure I want to know our fortune...

 

Baby, It's Hot Outside

Much of the Northern Hemisphere is experiencing extremely hot temperatures this month. Naturally, this brings on talk of global warming, which also means lots of burning globe illustrations. After reading this article, Politicizing Extinction, I decided to see how many other "hot earth" images I could find.

Have you seen any other good ones?

Rubik's Earth

Ad found in a magazine this week:

Just think of the climate change issues as the puzzle moves you from one latitude to another.



Woe to anyone who lives close to the edge of a cube... "Hey! I parked my car here yesterday... now that street is gone!

Torchwood: Earth Go Boom!

Torchwood, the Dr. Who spinoff, is coming to America. Will it be good or bad for the series? I can't say. But it doesn't look too good for Planet Earth:

While I have been a Dr. Who fan, I never got into Torchwood much. But Captain Jack is back, so I may have to check this out.

Vintage Lace Globe

On Regretsy.



Helen Killer doesn't care for it, but I am all for maps and globes in art.

Flat Earth / Square Earth

As reported by The History Blog, the Library of Congress has received the donation of a rare "Square Earth" map. This map (available for 25 cents from Prof. Orlando Ferguson) includes scriptural references to support the "flat earth" cartographic thesis.

Actually, it is not exactly flat... sort concave... (is that the right word? feel free to correct me). But it makes sense. It explains why, when I look up in the sky, I see South America!

HT to Hunter

UPDATE: LOL @vWMaps calls it "The Bible Map of the Earth" and says it "Looks like it'd make a great roulette wheel."

Be My Cartographic Valentine 2011

Via Radical Cartography

From the Craftster Forum

HT to Kate S

Christmas Cheer

Cartophiliac and Thatsaabguy wish you plenty of Christmas Cheer and Holiday Beer.



Merry Carto-Christmas:

Badges? We Need Mappin' Badges!

The Boy Scouts of America have announced a new, map related, merit badge: Geocaching!

According to the "Official Blog of Scouting Magazine", here are a few highlights of what Scouts will learn while earning the Geocaching merit badge:

• Precautions necessary to have a safe time while searching for geocaches
• Geocaching etiquette and how the principles of Leave No Trace apply
• Geocaching terms
• How GPS technology works
• Steps for finding and logging a cache
• How to use geocaching.com, the official online home of geocaching

Of course, the best thing about this new merit badge is that it has a map right there on the badge! A quick check revealed several other badges with maps:

	Space Exploration
	Geology
	Citizenship in the World
	Not to be outdone by the boys, the Girl Scouts of America also offer a badge with a map, "Girl Scouting in My Future"

Via The Map Room

#685

T-Shirt Tuesday: Take Me To Your Loser

"Citizens of Earth! Please, do not be afraid!"

Globish map goodness from The Onion

North VS South

From Thatsaabguy:

One of my favorite webcomics is XKCD, a delightful mix of computer, gaming and observational insanity that never fails to leave me in stitches. Yeah, so some of the jokes are obscure and a bit tech-slanted...even more reason to love it so!

Here's one from a couple weeks back that not only contains a map, but a thought-provoking laugh as well:




Check it out every few days at XKCD.

#675

T-Shirt Tuesday: How Many Licks?

How many licks does it take to get to the center of the earth? For those of you too young to remember, this is a reference to the age old question: how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? (See video below)

This t-shirt, designed Ian Leino, delves deep underground to reveal the secrets hidden under that earth's flaky crust...

"How Many Licks" from Threadless Tees

What is T-Shirt Tuesday?

Other map T-shirts on Cartophilia

Global Leakage

WikiLeaks.org has been in the news lately because of big exposé of American military documents from the war in Afghanistan. Some have suggested that the impact of these documents could be as great as the release of the Vietnam War era Pentagon Papers. WikiLeaks describes themselves as a "public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public." They believe that "transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies." Is Wikilieaks performing a service or are they a danger to national security? I have no comment here, but I do approve of their logo.

Mappy Books and Magazines

Just a collection of some recent mappy looking book and magazine covers:

Atlas of Unknowns by Tania James "A poignant, funny, blazingly original debut novel about sisterhood, the tantalizing dream of America, and the secret histories and hilarious eccentricities of families everywhere."

Governing Broke and Broken By Rob Gurwitt "Legislatures won't just be grappling with a shortage of money this year. They'll also be wrestling with government systems that simply don't work."

The Power of Place by Harm De Blij "What Carl Sagan did for the cosmos, Harm de Blij is doing for geography." --Bill Moyers

Time The Five Keys to Health Reform's Success or Failure By Karen Tumulty and Kate Pickert with Alice Park "Will it work? And how will it work? A guide to what the new law will mean for costs, Medicare, doctors, the states — and you"

You Must Remember This

Christoph Niemann: Why have I not been reading your New York Times blog, Abstract City, all along? I'm loving all your illustrations, not just the mappish ones (See last week's New York City in Legos - and yes, Mr. Anonymous, I'm still spelling it that way... deal).

This month, he shares some Google Maps "His Way", including this reference to one of my favorite films:



The film, Casablanca, of course has many great maps in its opening segment:





Here's looking at you, kid.

Via The Map Room

UPDATE 3/18: Thanks to "Anonymous" for reminding me of the great map on Captain Renault's office wall!

Some Recent Magazines and a Book

For your amusement, a smattering of recent magazine and book covers using maps as an element of their design.

From The Nation: President Obama must decide on future American involvement in Afghanistan.



Stores Magazine suggests that Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico (VIM?) are the countries to watch for new muscle in emerging markets.



Time believes that California, in spite of being "an apocalyptic mess of raging wildfires, soaring unemployment, mass foreclosures and political paralysis," is still the future of American innovation and growth.





Finally, in his book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, Ethan Waters maps out the way the United States shapes the expression of mental illness around the globe.

Have You Hugged Your Planet Today?

The perfect piece of décor for the fashionable cartophile's living room sofa. A real globe but soft. Twelve inches in diameter, accurate and up-to-date. It's the classic Hugg-A-Planet Earth:



For all you Men From Mars, your own Hugg-A-Planet Mars:



Sorry ladies, no Hugg-A-Planet Venus.

HT to Hunter

Icosahedron Earth

Check out the latest post at Black Maps wherein the Sunshine Superboy goes on about Bucky, Tattoos, and New Cartographic Directions and various attempts to "peel" the Earth and create a flat map with minimal distortion. Among the projections featured is the Dymaxion Map by Buckminster Fuller



Further reading on the topic led me to the Earth Icosahedron* cut-out project found on the Views of the Solar System website:


Click on image for larger view

Within about 15 minutes, I had cut-out and assembled my own Icosahedron Earth:



*Dungeons & Dragons players: Think d20.

#515

Cardboard World

Driving around town this weekend, I had to pull over and take a picture of this company's sign:



Cardboardy Earth goodness.

Don't Worry, Be Cool

Today I noticed the cover of the 11 July issue of The Spectator magazine. The illustration shows the planet Earth enjoying the sunshine without a care in the world (sort of like my vacation last week) I couldn't find a complete image of the cover online, but here are two bits...

In the cover story, "Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick"

James Delingpole talks to Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact. Shame on the publishers who rejected the book

I'm not going to argue about global warming here (take it to some other blog). I'll just post this link and image from The Guardian's rebuttal: "Spectator recycles climate rubbish published by sceptic"