Tag: geography

  • The Polar Vortex…Or Not

    If you live in the United States, you probably have heard the term polar vortex by now. People have been using the term to describe the bitterly cold temperatures affecting the eastern two-thirds of the country. But the term polar vortex is a meteorological term that means a specific phenomenon. In other words, it’s more…

  • Holiday Tidings…of War

    I’ve been away for over two weeks on holiday. So to spread good cheer to all, today I am sharing an image from a series of maps the BBC put together to try and explain the civil war in South Sudan. Credit for the piece goes to BBC graphics department.

  • Travelling for the World Cup

    Well, travel for the teams, not you. It’s a big issue in Brazil because unlike the last couple of times, the teams need to travel big distances to reach the cities where they play their matches. Thankfully, to explain just how far some of these distances are for some of these teams, Quartz put together…

  • Winds Across the World

    Most of us have likely seen the wind map by Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg. However, this new wind map takes the idea and makes it a bit more useful. It offers the user the opportunity to look at winds at different levels of the atmosphere. Or you can look at different projections. Some projections…

  • The Next Cold War?

    The New York Times has a nice piece about the Arctic, which is increasingly fought over by the nations north of the Arctic Circle. Maps like these are always opportunities I enjoy to see the world in an infographic that is not a standard projection, e.g. Mercator or Robinson. The slight change in fill or…

  • The Origin of Beer

    Today’s post comes via Business Insider. They linked to work by reddit user sp07 who mapped out words used for common objects across Europe and then looked at those words by their origin. But of all words, this is probably the most important. Credit for the piece goes to sp07.

  • Haiyan’s Destruction in Tacloban

    On 8 November, Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in the Philippines, killing what may well be 10,000 people. The New York Times covered much of the damage in Tacloban, perhaps the hardest hit city, in this interactive graphic. Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.

  • The Republicans Who Support a Clean Budget Resolution

    Yesterday, we looked at the new Conservative Party of America. But those are the votes that John Boehner fears to upset—and possibly fracture his party and cost him his job—if he should let a clean budget resolution come to the floor and should it pass. But why would it pass if it needs 217 votes…

  • Mapping the Borders

    This map by Dorothy Gambrell looks at US state borders formed by natural, well, borders. None of those lines drawn by a bunch of old men wearing wigs. What I really like is how those artificial borders are drawn as a thin grey line and labelled as “just some line”. Credit for the piece goes…

  • Charting and Mapping Income Mobility

    After two weeks out of the country, I come back and find early this morning (thanks, jet lag) an interactive article published by the New York Times on income mobility. What does that mean? From a medium side, a long narrative interspersed with charts and graphics with which the user can interact to uncover specific…