Archive for the ‘maps’ Category

Cartography, Pragmatism and the Liberation of Metaphysics

All maps are lies. That's one of the first lessons of cartography, particularly when it comes to the problematic task of representing our 3-D world on a 2-D plane. It just can't be done. At least, not without some distortion. Yet, even in the face of this necessary distortion, and in the absence of the 'perfect' map projection, cartography lives on. Why? Because maps are useful.

I think this is a notion that could lead to a 'liberation' of metaphysics, and its daughter disciplines of epistemology and ontology.

To explain why, we need to venture briefly into the world of map projections. Our planet is a globe. Or an oblate spheroid, if you want to be more precise. A world map is typically a 2-D plane. There is, as a matter of fact, no way to represent an oblate spheroid on a 2-D plane in such a way that it doesn't distort some feature of the original globe.

.:ockhamsbeard.com->

Reverse Mercatorisms

As with any map projection, Mercator is a trade-off. Ancient compass-wielding navigators loved Mercator's lines of constant heading, and without its faithful local angles and parallel lines of latitude/longitude, online maps would be downright confusing. The mathematical cost? Magnification, fun house mirror style! Mercator oversizes Greenland because it sits so much closer to the poles than Africa.

Poking around the Internets, you'll find some equal area projections that tell the true story. But what if we went even further, stuck with Mercator, and swapped Africa and Greenland - dragging the Mediterranean coast up to 81 degrees North and the ice cap south to the Equator?

.:datapointed.net->

Charting the World’s Entrepreneur Ecosystem

.:venturemaps.co->

Cigarette Citadels

The tobacco industry produces some six trillion cigarettes worldwide every year.

Yes . . . six trillion.

That's more than enough annually to create a continuous chain from Earth to Mars and back, several times.

You see them, you smell them daily.A They are sold at convenience stores, newsstands, truck stops, bars, pharmacies, open-air markets. For some people they are a source of income or pleasure, for many others a scourge.A They areA the single largest cause of preventable death worldwide today and may kill a billion people during the 21st century if current trends continue (source: WHO).

Six trillion cigarettesAevery year a each ready to release smoke filled with highly addictive nicotine and powerful carcinogens.A Where do they all come from?A Where are they manufactured?A Where are they rolled, wrapped, and boxed for shipment?

.:stanford.edu->

Disney-Sized Imaginations at Loveland

What Detroit really needs, Paffendorf says, is fine-grained "digital social map" that could aid in Mayor Dave Bing's program to "resize" the city. By some accounts, two thirds of the land in Detroit is unoccupied, which means services such as police and fire protection and water and sewer maintenance are stretched needlessly over a vast area. Bing is running for reelection this November in part on a platform of mothballing the abandoned areas in the form of land banks and concentrating city services in the remaining healthy pockets. The problem, says Paffendorf, is that "they're drawing up a master plan for how to intelligently deal with this Swiss-cheese environment, and they're trying to do it with no maps."

Or, rather, they're doing it with outdated paper maps and drawings that lack information about the legal disposition of each parcel. To manage the process of land consolidation, the city needs an interactive, Internet-based, parcel-by-parcel map that's open to everyone, Paffendorf says. "We started realizing that if we could get the real-life data, we could use the same social map system we have [for Plymouth and Hello World] and apply it to the whole city," Paffendorf says. "You could mouse over every parcel and see who owns it; if it's the city, if it's private, if it's vacant, if it's for sale, then you could click on it and comment on it. Block by block, people in the city could have a conversation about the things they want to see." Using information contributed by Data Driven Detroit, a project of several local foundations to track neighborhood-level social, economic, and environmental indicators, Loveland has already built a demonstration map for Corktown, the historic district where Tiger Stadium once stood.

.:xconomy.com->

Great Circle Mapper : Easter Island

.:gcmap.com->

Terrorism Risk Map

.:aon.com->

The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein, The Younger (1533)

A found map- The Ambassadors (1533) is a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger in the National Gallery in London.

.:nikolasschiller.com->

Invisible Commitments

.:yesyesnono.co.uk->