War, Hoa! What is it Good For?

After researching a few animated maps on the web, I found this site from Wordpress initially which is written in Spanish, though the blog above has been translated. But from that blog, I found a site about American Leadership and War and was impressed by how well made the animated map is. It is highly interactive and allows the user to watch a brief overview of all the wars America has been involved in showing a body count for "Fore Fathers", Republican and Democrat created wars.

Then I noticed the History of Religion animated map and thought this might be of some use to the class as well, however it does not cover Mormonism or the State of Nevada. Still, a very interesting perspective of time versus the spreading of different belief systems.


For the academic article, I found a site on Google Scholar, which is article about Descartes (aka IRIS), a software used to for animation of maps. Interesting article, but didn't seem worth $31.28 plus tax.

You Don't Know Beans!

I have chosen Boston as a part of "The American Identity". As a fellow blogger in Cartography class pointed out to me, "most Americans don't know their own identity". I thought about this statement for a bit and realized that it is quite possibly true for many Americans. So I decided to hit some of my eastern roots up for some good old identity! Now I realize many who read this blog may never have set foot in Boston, so I'm using this blog to broaden some horizons of you westerners and give you a taste of some Beantown love.

I tried to figure out a way to make this interesting and not just a factual snooze about the Boston Tea Party and Ben Franklin (but if you want some of that check it out at epodunk). And part of me would love to rehash some memories from 2004, when Curt Schilling, that dumb ass Johnny Damon and my man Big Pappy (David Ortiz) led my Red Sox to defeat the ultimate axis of evil, the New York Yankees. But that's a whole other Oprah. So instead, I'm going to tell you about a good portion of American Identity Boston style, which is drinking beer!

For 2 years now, I have been a part of something truly beautiful and great, a Annual Boston Pub Crawl! This idea of my Father in laws, happens every year a few days after Christmas, and takes place all over Boston and parts of Cambridge. Below is a map from Google with the 10 different bars we went to this year:

We have a pint at each bar and some good conversations which end up in muttering gibberish towards the end of the crawl. But good times are had by all. An interesting tidbit of information you might not find on to many websites or guidebooks is that the Harvard Bridge (located almost in the middle of the picture above) was measured in "Smoots" which is the name of a student at MIT. The entire bridge is measured in "Smoots" and they are painted all along the bridge (this full story can be found here: Smoots). For the real interesting part, go to Google Earth and use the measuring tool, and click on the increments of measurement button where it says, miles, kilometers, etc...and notice the last increment is "Smoots". How many Smoots do you get when you measure the bridge? Check it out.


After to many Smoots and a few to many bars. Cheers!

Dr. Strange Maps

Maps, Fact or Fiction: For this blog, I chose to use some of the maps found on the Strange Maps website. And out of those maps, this one seemed to be the most compelling to me, because I'm not sure if it is fact or fiction. I mean, it is entirely possible that our current president actually believes and perceives the world this way, according to Dubya.

It is tough now days to accept what is fact and what is fiction. With the Internet allowing almost anyone to post what ever they want, it is hard to decipher truth from reality. It becomes even more difficult when looking at blog entries, because they are specifically someones opinion which doesn't always make them right no matter how convincing they may seem. For example, I found this blog entry on Strange Maps, and to me this seems entirely possible that this was at one time a possibility in the Mormon religion (see map below). The map above is of a proposed State that the Mormons attempted to get from the US government. Supposedly this proposal never reached Statehood because it would have "created a state based on a separate religion, and it was probably too ambitious in its scope" (5th paragraph). It is interesting to note for one, the word "Deseret" is not spelled like the word desert. Apparently the name of the proposed state was based on a Bible passage from the LDS Bible, which means honeybee. It is also interesting to compare this proposed state map with a map of the Great Basin...

I got the map above from Wikipedia. I suppose it is because the Mormon map was based on the mountain ranges that form the Great Basin, but it is interesting to note on the Deseret map that Los Angeles would have been part of the Mormon State. This in its self is quite boggling to the mind...imagine what movies would be like if instead of Hollywood, we had "Mormonwood". I shutter to think.

Good, Bad and Ugly Maps

Maps can be either good, bad and sometimes they can be pretty ugly. The design of a map is crucial to how it is perceived by the viewer. For instance, if a map is not centered correctly or there is too much text, the map can deter the reader from focusing on the key points of the map.

The above map is a good example of what not to do when creating a map. As pretty and colorful as this map is, I can’t for the life of me figure out what information this map is trying to convey. For one, there is no “key” to tell the reader what each color means. And above all, a big “no, no!” goes out to this maps author for stating on the map that it is “highly inaccurate”. This defeats the purpose of the map and makes it pretty much irrelevant.

This map on the other hand, clearly indicates the maps purpose and includes a key to help explain the different data represented. Though the squared numbers are not defined, but one assumes they are the “percent of popular votes”.