Archive for the ‘Worth Seeing’ category
Nail Houses #
Up’s Carl Fredricksen is probably America’s most famous nail house resident, but he’s certainly not the only one.
(idea via FYE)
America’s Tube #
Cameron Booth set out to make a map of America’s Interstate highway system in the style of H.C. Beck’s famous map of the London Underground. Unlike other versions — I linked one here — he strived for the ideal compromise of geographic accuracy and simplicity of presentation, and it’s fair to see he’s made the best one the internet’s seen. The big version; and some details on the forthcoming hardcopy.
(via kottke)
Mars from Above #
If you’re tired of all those satellite pictures of the Earth I keep posting, how about everyone’s second favorite planet?
Man from Space #
You’ve probably heard the apocryphal anecdote that the Great Wall of China (and sometimes New York City’s garbage dump) are the only human creations visible from space. Wired Science shows a number of man made open pit mines visible from low-earth orbit and explains a few details of how they supply us with many of the metals whose provenance we rarely question.
Glaciers from Above #
Pictures of things on Earth from above always interest me. Pictures of the earth from above that teach me a little science along the way satisfy me.
(via kottke)
World’s Most Beautiful Bookstore #
I don’t think anything could top this one. Modern fixtures dropped inside a 13th century Dominican church in the Netherlands. A Google Image search has the biggest pictures I can find, and a review from the Guardian is available.
(title link via Boing Boing)
Letters of Note #
A truly awesome tribute to the lost art of letter writing, history, and all the cool stuff we can gather with the technologies available to us today. Yesterday’s is great.
(via Yewknee, who points to some more historical examples)
Mapping Matchups’ Perceived Popularity #
I think the most interesting thing about these maps showing which NFL games are shown where in the United States is seeing what teams and matchups get the greatest geographical distribution as the season unfolds. You can already see data from the last four(!) years for just such a study. At this point in my life, this interests me more than the actual games.
(via kottke)
America’s Religious Geography #
These maps aren’t new — I think I may have even perused them before — and contain no information I was really shocked by, but I still think they’re worth a gander. A fairly comprehensive pair is made by the percentage of people with religious affiliations across the country, and the churches with which the greatest number are affiliated.
(via Flowing Data)
Reinterpretting Children’s Drawing #
Illustrator Aaron Zenz moved his refrigerator — spellcheck was invented for words like that — to the internet three years ago, and in honor of that anniversary he encouraged people to reinterpret his kid’s drawings. The results are pretty great.
(via @ironicsans)
Nowhere in Manhattan #
Though the image loading can be a little slow, this series of photos of non-places in Manhattan is fascinating. My concept of Manhattan — as someone who’s spent approximately no time there — is certainly expanded.
(via MeFi)
Passing the Time #
The coolest chart of the month, no doubt: how American spend their time. (Yes, you’ve seen it already. Yes, I’m comfortable with that.)
Feral Detroit #
Abandoned houses overrun by vegatation. What a fascinating photoset.
(via PSFK)
Show Me Your Refrigerator, and I’ll Tell You Who You Are #
Stretch your voyeur muscle.
(via @fakelvis)
Music Sales by Format #
This is a really interesting graph, though I’d like to see better year delineation (and maybe a total sales line somewhere).
(via DF)
An Epic Correction #
It’s not the nature of the errors that so amazing, it’s their sheer number. I thought we were supposed to value print for soberness and fact checking the internet doesn’t provide:
An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International.
(via kottke)
More Time-Space Maps #
So fascinated was I by the idea from yesterday, I’ve hunted down a few more examples.
- Oscar Karlin redesigned the iconic London tube map so that distance were determined by travel time. So did Rod McLaren and Tom Carden.
- “Patrick” made a map showing the travel time, using public transporation exclusively, between Brussels and a number of European cities. This observation is striking:
And although Chimay is a lot closer to Brussels in the real world, with public transportation, you’d long be in Paris or London before arriving in Chimay.
- David Chatting, as enamored as I am, has saved more of these of Delicious. He’s also stretched Britain based on driving times and trains from Ipswitch.
- Personal World Map not only offers time-space shifting, but also money-space shifting. It does air travel.
These maps that don’t actually offer a time-space adjustment, but do illustrate travel times.
- The EU made a map showing how long it would take you to get to a city of 50,000 people or more from anywhere in the world.
- TripTrop has a time overlay based on the NYC subway travel time.
- A similar map of train travel times for the entirity of Britain.
- And, finally, how long it took to get from London to the world by steamship in 1920. (This from the incredibly cool Hipkiss Scanned Old Maps collection.)