Cartoo uses Google Maps to show you how far you could get by car, bike, or foot in a set amount of time.
posted by Paragon
on Mar 8, 2012 -
38 comments
The Guardian
recently reported that, according to the 2011 edition of the Times Atlas, a new island called Uunartoq Qeqertaq has emerged off the coast of Greenland due to a 15% loss in glacial cover since 1999. However,
glaciologists were quick to point out that this was deeply improbable. Ejo Schrama, a professor at TU Delft whose research interests include satellite mapping of Greenland, has posted a
copy of a letter subscribed by several scientists at the Scott Polar Research Insititute expressing displeasure/disgruntlement with the publishers of the atlas (the linked post has been continually updated as events have warranted, so keep an eye out). The publishers have issued a
semi-apologetic statement, but why was the mistake made in the first place? ScienceInsider
thinks they might have worked out the answer (see the update in the second half of the article).
posted by Dim Siawns
on Sep 23, 2011 -
31 comments
Jerry's Map: a short film about the fictional world of Jerry Gretzinger, which he has been building for decades through a process of procedural cartography.
His website.
posted by avocet
on Aug 24, 2011 -
20 comments
Res Obscura is a blog by Ben Breen, a graduate student of early modern history, which styles itself "a compendium of obscure things." Indeed, even the asides are full of wonder, such as the one about Boy, the famous Royalist war poodle of the English Civil War, which is but a short addendum to
a post about witches' familiars. Here are some of my favorite posts,
Pirate Surgeon in Panama (and a related
post about 18th Century Jamaica),
vanished civilizations,
asemic pseudo-Arabic and -Hebrew writing in Renaissance art, and a series of posts about the way the Chinese and Japanese understood the world outside Asia in the early modern period (
Europeans as 'Other',
Europeans as 'Other,' Redux and
Early Chinese World Maps).
posted by Kattullus
on Sep 30, 2010 -
16 comments
The Atlas of True Names reveals the etymological roots, or original meanings, of the familiar terms on today's maps of the World, Europe, the British Isles and the United States. For example, Britain = Great Land of the Tattooed, New Jersey = New Island of Spears, and Chicago = Stink Onion. There's now an
iPhone app. However, at least one linguistic historian
takes issue with some of their methodology. Mefi's own languagehat
responds.
posted by desjardins
on Jun 17, 2010 -
67 comments
Make a Map is a website that lets you create your own maps of the US and areas thereof using various demographics data. It's still in beta stage but it's got all of the US (at least everywhere I've thought to look) and so far has datasets for median household income, population change 2000-9, population density, median home value, unemployment rate, average household size and median age. It's fun to use and taught me a great deal about my home city. The sitemaker, ESRI, also has a pretty good free globe map software,
ArcGIS Explorer, for which you download
map layers and
add-ins.
posted by Kattullus
on May 2, 2010 -
13 comments
Comic Book Cartography is more than
maps of
make-believe lands. It also covers
cutaways ga-
lore,
robot schematics, and
diagrams of
Batman's utility belt. In the same vein, there was The Marvel Atlas Project (M.A.P.), and though it is now offline,
some pictures have survived. There is also the
two-
part Marvel Atlas, a subset of the
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The
Atlast of the DC Universe is limited to Earth, (sourced from
the DC Heros RPG book and
Secret Files & Origins Guide to the DC Universe 2000), and
Mapping Gotham is a single blog post which collects some maps from Batman's world, as found from a variety of sources.
The Map Room collected a few more, some which
require some
digging into
the archives. [
more,
previously]
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 15, 2010 -
28 comments
Hadji Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Mehmed, ( 1465–1554/5) was an Ottoman-Turkish Admiral, Privateer, Geographer and Cartographer more commonly known as Piri Reis. In 1521 he finished his
Kitab-I Bahriye or Book of Navigation
This is an exquisite C17th - C18th revised and expanded version.
(
scroll down and click the icons which can then be magnified. )
Marvel at the gold leaf and coloring of the map of the
Bay of Salonica
or the wonderful
map of Rhodes.
(
click addittional information button below map to get further information.)
However Piri Reis
is more famously known for this map dated 1513 which is one of the oldest surviving maps to show the Americas. In the
marginalia are the accounts of the pioneer seamen who have taken part in the discovery of the places shown on the map.
Piri Reis at The
Map Room
and
wiki
and
related.
posted by adamvasco
on Nov 27, 2009 -
6 comments
Biblemap.org is an interactive map system for the bible, which is great for visualising where certain biblical events are said to have occured. It's also great for people who don't subscribe to any kind of organised religion but do like looking at maps (like me!).
posted by Effigy2000
on Jun 14, 2009 -
24 comments
Have you ever wondered what New York was like before it was a city? Find out at
The Mannahatta Project, by navigating through the map to discover Manhattan Island and its native wildlife in 1609.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Jun 4, 2009 -
16 comments
Powhatan's Mantle was the emblem of kingship worn by Wahunsenacawh, also known as Chief Powhatan, father of Pocahontas. A deerskin cloak ornamented with shell beadwork, it may at first appear to be only clothing but in fact it is also a map of the Powhatan Confederacy, which ruled most of eastern Virginia when the English first settled there. The mantle was acquired by one of the
John Tradescants whose
collection was the foundation of Oxford University's Ashmolean Collection and the mantle resides there
still today. The
first linked article is a fascination article about the mantle as well as a gallery of images of and related to Powhatan's Mantle.
posted by Kattullus
on Feb 12, 2009 -
5 comments
John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg emigrated from Germany to the United States, where he was eventually a Chaplain in the American Civil War. He also really liked maps; in the course of traveling over his lifetime, he collected
hundreds of maps, some dating back to the 16th century.
[Most maps in Latin]
posted by Rykey
on Jul 26, 2008 -
6 comments
Tohoku University's Kano Collection is an unparalleled collection of japanese books from the Edo period. The beautiful and grizzly
Kaibou zonshinzu anatomical chart has been
making the blogrounds lately but that's only one of the countless treasures the Kano Collection has to offer. Stumbling around near-blindly, like a non-Japanese reader such as myself, with only minimal help from the site, I have come across an amazing variety of beautiful objects, such as
this picture book,
a scroll with images of animals,
city map,
map of Japan,
battle map,
another picture book,
the Kaitai shouzu anatomical chart and
this picture scroll which has
my favorite little scene I've come across in the collection. Whole days could be spent just surfing idly through the Kano Collection.
posted by Kattullus
on Apr 28, 2008 -
9 comments
