"40 Maps That Explain the World"

At the Washington Post there was an interesting post a couple of days ago collecting a variety of geopolitical maps that offer insight into the world.  They don't quite "explain the world" -- maps on, say, oil deposits and mineral resources, education levels, locations of armies and missiles, rainfall, etc. -- might offer something more in the way of explanation, but these are fascinating nonetheless.  A few examples via Tim!):

Large image of map below here.

Large image of map below here (different colors).

Large image of map below here.

Large image of map below here.

Large image of map below here.

Infrasounds and Homing Pigeons

Diagram A shows all releases and random directions pigeons flew; diagrams B,
C, D, and E show different release dates; dashed lines are the correct direction

While we're talking about pigeons, yesterday The Atlantic had an interesting piece about the disappearance of homing pigeons -- who are excellent navigators -- when released from one specific location. One day, though, they flew home with no problem.

After years of not being able to answer the question, the answer has been recently published in The Journal of Experimental Biology: it's infrasounds. Much as human perception is limited to a narrow range of light waves, our hearing is limited to a narrow range of sound. While humans can hear sounds to  ~ 20 hertz, pigeons can hear sounds as low as .05 hertz.

The ocean (or sounds resulting from the ocean) apparently is the dominant source of sounds at that low level even hundreds of miles from the sea. Topography, wind speed and direction, and temperature, however, affect sounds, allowing pigeons to navigate. They also, however, leave dead zones (and surely also places where sound is greatly amplified). The location where the pigeons got lost was normally a dead zone. The one day they didn't get lost was one day where likely high level and not readily apparent atmospheric conditions filled it with sound and allowed the pigeons to find their way.

Pigeon navigation, then, requires not only the ability to hear these sounds but the ability to make a mental map (or remember the sounds they've heard) on one hearing to guide their way back. It's not a common human skill, even for for visual cues.

People Movin'

People Movin' is a website that uses HTML 5 to generate graphic presentations of the number of people moving from one country to another. It's designer, Carlo Zapponi, created it as an example of tools he is developing to generate data graphics using HTML. In theory the site could be designed to scrape the data continuously, giving something similar to a real time sense of the flow of data (for an example of that, see the wind map), but I doubt sufficient population data is available to make that feasible. The data shown is for 2010.

One thing I had not previously known but, accepting his data sources, do now:  People Movin' shows about 10% of the population of Mexico relocated to the USA in 2010. The total number -- about 11 million people -- dwarfs any other migration from one country to another that year. The USA as an immigration destination also dwarfs any other country.

The charts are cool to browse through though I think so far of not much use but the wow factor. Anyway -- it's worth a look. Via Neatorama.

National Geographic Photo Contest Winners ... At Last!

It's three weeks since National Geographic was scheduled to announce their photo contest winners .. and now that it has done so I admit I'm a little disappointed. These aren't bad photos -- they're great photos -- but the judges overlooked a lot from what they had to choose from, in my view. I've covered the entries previously, and I've linked at the end of this post to my collections of what I thought were the best photos of the 22,000 submitted. Ah well ...

Grand Prize and Nature Winner

U.S. States Compared in Population with World Urban Areas

I thought it might be interesting to compare 2012 populations (estimated, as listed at Wikipedia) of the largest U.S. States with the populations of the largest urban areas in the world, and I've thrown in a few random countries and the largest Canadian province just for good measure.

Region	Population	Region	Population
California	38,041,430	Mexico City (Valley of Mex.)	19,463,000
Tokyo–Yokohama (Keihin)	37,126,000	Florida	19,317,568
Canada	35,002,447	Cairo	17,816,000
Jakarta (Jabodetabek)	26,063,000	Beijing	17,311,000
Texas	26,059,203	Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto	17,011,000
North Korea	24,589,122	Mumbai (Bombay)	16,910,000
Australia	22,864,478	Guangzhou/Foshan	16,827,000
Seoul–Incheon (Sudogwon)	22,547,000	Netherlands	16,775,273
Delhi	22,242,000	Moscow	15,512,000
Shanghai	20,860,000	Los Angeles	14,900,000
Manila (metro Manila)	20,767,000	Kolkata (Calcutta)	14,374,000
Karachi	20,711,000	Dhaka	14,000,000
New York City (metro)	20,464,000	Buenos Aires	13,639,000
São Paulo	20,186,000	Istanbul	13,576,000
New York	19,570,261	Ontario	13,506,000

You'll note that the New York State population is smaller than the New York City metro area; that's due to the inclusion of Newark, New Jersey, and southern Connecticut area in the metro area. More below the break.

Median Household Income by Census Tract

Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks is a website that allows users to see the median household income by census tract throughout the United States. This is really cool. A similar -- in fact, more comprehensive -- set of maps can be found at The New York Times, which allow the users not only to search by median income, but by race & ethnicity, home value, and education, and various subgroups of those.

National Geographic Contest Photos, Final Post of the 2012 Entries

Bringing us up to date, here are links to the prior posts (in reverse chronological order): here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. That, again, is about .5% of the total contest entries, most of which were pretty good photos (that is I've posted about 1 photo for every 200 that were entered in the contest).

More Great Photos from the National Geographic Photo Contest

For You MORE National Geographic Photo Contest Photos

I slept in this morning. So shoot me. Well, instead, here's some shots to inspire you:

National Geo Photo Contest, But More ...

Winding Down the National Geographic Photo Sets

I've posted a lot of photos from the contest, but keep in mind that there were over 22,000 entries -- I've been through them all (and, trust me, that took some time) and am posting less then 1/2 of 1% of all entries -- the ones that I liked the best (and, sometimes, could find a large image of if that felt important). For credits, as always please look to the contest website (there are too many to repeat here, though the amateur photographers who made these shots deserve great credit).

More Awesome National Geo Photo Contest Photos

Selected Photos, Continued, from the National Geographic Photo Contest

For my prior posts see here, here, here, here, and here:

Photos from the National Geographic Photo Contest (continued)

I'm continuing to post some of the best photos (in my view) from the National Geographic photo contest. There were over 22,000 submissions, so posting here will continue for a few more days.

Today's Dose of Photos from the National Geographic Photo Contest

Continuing my series of posts of photos from the National Geographic photo contest:

More from the National Geographic Photo Contest

A daily dose of photos from the National Geographic photo contest. All of the photos in this post expand to a very large wallpaper size by clicking on them.

The National Geographic Photo Contest (continued)

More photos from the National Geographic photo contest:

The National Geographic Photo Contest

National Geographic has closed entries to its photo contest for 2012. There are over 22,000. Over the next few days I'll be posting a few favorites (helped not only by going through the entries -- which is not easy given the number but by posts at such places as Colossal, The Big Picture, and In Focus). There are way too many to attribute specifics, which an be found at the National Geographic contest site.

While We're on Electoral Maps, um ... China?

The Atlantic published an article a couple of days ago on an issue apparently now trending in China inspired by the U.S. election: what if there were a popular election in China between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? To quote The Atlantic:

The "election" began in earnest on November 8 when a popular wit with the handle "Pretending to be in New York" (@假装在纽约) asked what might happen if China had a democratic election. He wrote to his 200,000-plus followers, "If China also had a national election, Zhejiang, Chiang Kai-shek's birthplace, Fujian, and Taiwan would for sure go deep blue [for the KMT], while other southeast coastal provinces would also be a huge blue heartland; northern, northeast China and other revolutionary bases for the CCP would certainly go red; mid- and south-western China would be the dead-heat swing states. Ready to be phone-banked and canvassed!"

 Many are apparently criticizing "Pretending to be in New York," though, because they think he or she has over designated CCP areas. Of course, no one can know that one way or the other. The question, though, of where the political divisions lie in relation to geography is an interesting one (well, interesting to me ...).

The U.S. 2012 Elections County by County

2012 Presidential results by county for 48 contiguous states; blue = Obama, red = Romney, purple = percentages of each

The final U.S. electoral map doesn't reflect the U.S. popular vote with precision, though it is a crude guide to which parts of the country are more liberal and which more conservative. A more refined approach, if one cares about the demographics of voters, is to select hue by percentage of vote and look at outcomes at the county rather than state level. One then gets a fairly clear geographic view of trends.

And even more precise approach is then to weight the counties by population. The size of a county in the U.S. is a somewhat arbitrary measure, so weighting by population seems clearer. The problem is that it so distorts geography that the trends are not particularly sensible. And even better approach, not that I've done it, would be to show population weight by color intensity (tinting areas by lower population). Anyway, Mark Newman, the Paul Dirac Professor of Physics and the University of Michigan, has generated the county-by-county population weighted cartograms and a host of related maps.

As above, weighted by population