Tag: geography
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Mapping Boston’s Neighbourhoods
Ever wonder what neighbourhood you really live in? In every city I have ever visited, neighbourhoods have clear cores but murky, fuzzy borders. Last year, bostongraphy.com took a stab at defining Boston’s neighbourhoods with a survey. If you read through the description and don’t just look at the pretty pictures, you will see they talk…
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Black and White Maps
Rarely do I have criticism for infographics or pieces published by the New York Times, and admittedly this time I no longer have the original. However, in May, the Times published a map that was printed in black and white in their paper. I could not make heads or tails of what the map was…
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Political Pangea
Theoretical/hypothetical maps can be a lot of fun, as well as informative. Today’s post exemplifies both. Pangea was one of those super-continents where all the Earth’s landmass was mashed together into one giant continent. It broke up a few hundred million years ago into the geography with which we are roughly familiar. But I have…
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The United States Compared to the Rest of the World
Have you ever wondered how big the United States is? MAPfrappe allows you to compare different geographies in Google Maps. My employer has an office in Chicago and an office in Santiago, Chile. How big is Chile? North-to-south it is quite large. But east to west, the distance is like that of driving from Chicago…
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The Threat of Climate Change
We are warming the planet. And like ice cubes in a glass of water on a hot summer’s day, Earth’s ice caps will, over the course of centuries, begin to melt and contribute to a rise in sea level. Unfortunately, most of the world’s population lives close to shorelines or the rivers connecting continental interiors…
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Climate Change
When I was younger—albeit not by much—I applied my interests in geography, history, and politics to create maps of fictional places. I used knowledge of things like the Hadley cell and the Koppen climate classification system to figure where on the maps I drew people would be able to live in temperate climates and where…
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Indo-European Language Origin
Polonius once asked Hamlet what he was reading. Hamlet replied “Words.” I still love that scene. But, it turns out that we now have an even better idea of where our words came from. It turns out that it is more likely that our shared Indo-European languages originated not in the steppes of Russia but…