Southern Hospitality!

In trying to figure out where exactly "the South" starts in this constantly changing country of ours, I came upon this map on one of my favorite map grabs, Strange Maps. You can find the whole story here. But that is someone else's Oprah. What I am looking for goes much deeper. However, one can't help but notice that there is a category of religion actually called "Southern Baptist", which seems to be a fairly well defined border on the map above. As Wilbur Zelinsky explains in his piece, Where the South Begins: The Northern Limit of the Cis-Appalachian South in Terms of Settlement Landscape, "The abnormal relegation of ordinary urban functions to the country: the high incidence of the rural school, church, and cemetery, and the cross-roads store and postoffice" (173).

Religion can certainly help define an area, but as Peirce Lewis notes speaking about Zalinsky, "Here was a man who was willing to go outdoors, use his eyes, and then return to the library and sort through a mass of data to find a match between statistics and landscape" (Wilbur as Icon*). I think this is a good point to think about. In these days of the www, it is imperative to test and "match between statistics and landscape". The illustration at the top is a great visual aid to help map statistics, but in order to really find where this region begins, you have to go there and document everything you see.

Grady Clay's term, "turf" comes to mind when I think of the fieldwork that I have done in Tennessee and West Virginia. Driving through the mountains trying to find a dirt road rumored to be there, in a Land Rover Discovery with New York plates, I discovered what being a stranger in a strange land can feel like. Most of the locals would greet us with a shotgun. On the other hand, it is always a good thing to witness firsthand southern hospitality, which features cuisines that are some of the best I have ever had. And of course a friendly, genuine, courtesy that I have come to define as southern hospitality, which is where I consider the south to begin.

Neighborhood Numb Nuts

Before I start this portion of my blog with regards to a new class I'm taking called Geographic Thought, I wanted to help spread the word and description of a freak that appears to be located in my neighborhood (yes, only a few blocks away). There is a girl that is still missing after a week and I feel it would be best for this fruitcake that has been tied to 2 other attacks near campus, is in need of getting caught or catching a few to the chest if he invades my home. Anyway, sorry for the downer to start off with, but Paul mentioned things in the news we felt strongly about, so here is a link to the description and I hope this guy gets caught soon. Be safe all who read this.

Xtreme Cartage!

I know this guy down in the Yucatan, Mexico that is a pretty Xtreme mapper. Sam Meacham is a cave diver by trade, but has recently gotten into education. He is trying to prove to the powers that be (government, etc...) down there in Playa del Carmon, that pollutants that are dumped into these sunken pools ("Cenotes", Mayan word for "well") is eventually deposited out into the ocean, because much of the Yucatan is connected under ground by a vast underwater cave system. So he is trying to map these underwater caves and map how and where they connect. If you ever have the time and the space, download BBC/Discovery Channel show, "Secrets of the Maya Underworld"(this link will bring you to a page to download the movie). It is well worth the download and has some spectacular underwater filming. Though I should warn you, it is not for the squeamish/claustrophobic. There are a few scenes in which he gets stuck in a pinch.


I worked with Sam down in the Yucatan with all kinds of funky wildlife, such as pumas, scorpions and many fun poisonous snakes. And then there was the plant life, many kinds of things that cause a lot of pain and itchiness. Sam dives into one cenote and then surfaces at another mapping and gathering GPS points to create a map of underground currents that feed out to the ocean.

Techno Mapping

Sensing Things Remotely

Mapping technology is a very fast growing industry using 3D maps, satellite imagery, and many different instruments and sensors that measure all kinds of things. We call this Remote Sensing. These sensors can measure heat, light, radiation wavelengths and much more. Much of what we use in today's mapping techniques are made possible by remote sensing.

I used to work with an instrument (in the picture above) that was used for analyzing the health of different kinds of vegetation. I analyzed white pine (Pinus strobus) for the most part, in an attempt to gather data on air quality in the New England region. The instrument is called the VIRIS (Visible InfRed Intelligent Spectrometer). Basically, it measured water content in the pine needles and graphed it to look like the graph below:

I also used the instrument down in the Yucatan, Mexico. It is never easy bringing anything called a VIRIS across any border and I don't recommend it. The instrument also requires total darkness, except for the light source which is very hot (basically recreating the sun). And when it is stiflingly hot, like in the Yucatan, it is not very pleasant to work around. Below is a picture of us working in a scorpion infested shed.


And no, I wasn't kidding about the scorpions (beer cap for size purposes only, this is science! Right?)...

Dimension of 3

Using 3D or 3 dimensional imagery with maps is a relatively new form of mapping. With the invention of the computer there have been all kinds of breakthroughs in how we can manipulate and view maps. 3D mapping and design is now a part of video games and movies too. The image above is an example of art made using 3D. As with any new form of creation, there are skeptics and there are people who welcome the new forms with open arms.

Google has set the precedent on software that uses 3D mapping and is easily accessible to the public. Companies like Microsoft and NASA are struggling to keep up with Google Earth, but have made fairly good attempts at creating something similar. There is debate over what the best software is when comparing Google Earth to other programs. So I decided to give them all a try. First of all, I am a Google Earth fan and have been for some time now. So I may have a bit of bias, but tried to keep an open mind.

I found NASA's World Wind to be very useful for example, you can overlay topo maps over the scene you are looking at. It has some quirks but is a very good 3D mapping program over all. Microsoft's Virtual Earth on the other hand, I found to be "not so much". It took a very long time to download, and uses Internet Explorer as the window. In all I find Google Earth to be the best, but each have their own unique tools and uses.

I wrote the following for a paper in last semesters Mapping Planet Earth class and thought it would be a good story for this blog: Having worked a good amount with Google Earth myself, I have decided to explain an interesting phenomenon I experienced discovering Google Earth:

At the time Google Earth came out, I was working for both the University of New Hampshire and the Museum of Science in Boston. I had been asked to produce a “Spatial DELE”, which was to be a “Spatial Data (or Digital) Enhanced Learning Experience”, that young children around New England would have access to in their schools (elementary up to high school) to better their understanding of the spatial world around them.

I had been slaving over making a demo DELE using IKONOS, Lansat TM, and MODIS images and integrating them into a PowerPoint “guide” for teachers to use with their students. I had been working on it for a few months and thought I had created something extremely valuable and marketable. Then at an annual meeting of about 30 teachers, I introduced what I had been creating for several months which was essentially a VERY crude Google Earth. At the end of my presentation, a teacher asked me if I had seen Google Earth, which I had heard of, but had not actually taken the time to look at. Needless to say after the conference, I checked out Google Earth and found my presentation to need to take a fairly different direction. I quickly incorporated Google Earth into the DELE and the DELE became more of a “How to use Google Earth” guide.

The above image is of San Fransisco using Google Earth.

Back in My Day!

When exploring maps of the old and new, I remembered Pat showing this cover of the New Yorker in class. I found this article on StrangeMaps and thought it needed to be included. The article is about how New Yorkers view New York as the capital of the world.

Now even though I love New York, I have to add a map of Boston to balance my Ying Yang love for the 2 cities. This map is of the city of Boston from 1806 and shows one of the best places to eat in town, Faneuil Hall. This large building (aka Quincy Market) which houses all kinds of food, was one of my hangover cures for the weekends when visiting my best friend who attended Suffolk University. So after a few to many Guinness' in the Boston Common, we would eat supremely greasy food and chase pigeons. Ah, to be 19 again...

Now, new maps have become interactive allowing users to be able to "Fly To" and get directions to and from all over the world. The use of 3D design is also becoming much more efficient and used in programs like Google Earth. Soon paper maps may become a thing of the past, though there is nothing quite like being able to look at a hard copy of a map.

Fox in the Henhouse

Well, well, well. If it's not my favorite news station. In exploring the topic of "Mapping the News", I tried and tried not to go to the Fox News website, but I eventually gave in. It is hard to explain in words how I feel about most everything the Fox network produces (except for the Simpson's, but even they are becoming suspect nowadays). I guess the best words I can think of are Fear Mongers. When I got to the site, I had a chuckle with the Politics menu options. Almost all of the options have something to do with terror and or war.

They even have a Sept. 11 category that if you click on, you are brought to a page about the 5 year anniversary of the attacks. Now I'm no mathematician, but wasn't that a while ago? Like 6 months ago when all the networks aired shitty movies about 9/11 and blamed Clinton? Odd that this is news, at least in my opinion. If the news is that old, why have it on the main political site? I do have to point out that there are no dates on any article that I looked at, this seems odd coming from a news site.

In an interesting experiment, I typed in Fear Monger into the Fox News search engine and got an article on Global Warming: Fact or Fiction?. Now I thought that we had figured this out, that even good old Mr. Dubya acknowledged global warming which is a miracle in and of itself. In this article there are a lot of opinions that question global warming and say that those of us that are believers, are just wasting money on research and calling those believers Fear Mongers. If we should fear anything it is this...

Also, did anybody see the show "Real Time with Bill Mahr"? Those that saw it may realize he makes some good points. But Fox News is going to be all over him calling him a terrorist. Hopefully he has the balls to stay his ground and not apologize.