Posts Tagged ‘laris’
Friday, December 18th, 2009
[Editor’s note: Time to updated Natural Earth vector already! Last week India added a new state to the national map (see map at right), not without counter protest. India is largely administered by language-focused states. The last time states were added was in 2000. The BBC has some good coverage (second).]
Republished from The Washington Post via the AP.
By RAVI NESSMAN. December 16, 2009.
Demand for new states could change India’s map
NEW DELHI — From scores fasting in demand of a new state in India’s hilly northeast to a powerful chief minister suggesting her region be split up, the map of the nation is facing an overhaul.
Ethnic minorities and activists in economically deprived regions are seeking states of their own, following the government’s surprise decision last week to give in to a hunger strike and create a new state in southern India.
Now, India is confronting serious calls for a grand reorganization of this sprawling, diverse nation of 1.2 billion.
“We are looking at what could be a major crossroads in the political evolution of the Indian system,” said Mahesh Rangarajan, a prominent political analyst at Delhi University. “Are 28 states enough for a billion people when 300 million Americans have 50 states?”
China, which India is expected to surpass in 2025 as the world’s most populous country, uses centralized, authoritarian rule to maintain order and unity. India’s democracy has relied on constant negotiation and compromise to empower its different ethnic groups and bind the diverse country, from the rural hill people who live on the Tibetan border to the business tycoons of Mumbai.
The Indian system gives broad power to the states. It was largely created after a Gandhi disciple died from a 58-day hunger strike in 1952, while pressing for the creation of Andhra Pradesh, a new state in the south.
Following the ensuing street protests, the government agreed to reorganize the country based on language groups. India has occasionally tweaked its internal boundaries since then, most recently with the creation of three new states in 2000 that brought the total to 28.
Some states remain so large they have become difficult to govern, leaving politically marginalized regions out of the country’s economic boom.
“You’ve got to try something new,” Rangarajan said. “Something’s not working about it.”
Parties across the spectrum – including the ruling Congress Party – have backed appeals for new states to garner regional support during elections. But as the campaigns fade, so does the pressure for statehood.
In an attempt to re-ignite the passions, politician K. Chandrasekhar Rao embarked on another hunger strike in Andhra Pradesh last month, demanding his neglected region of Telangana be given statehood.
As his health faded and protests grew, the government suddenly gave in – and was immediately swamped by calls for at least 16 other new states.
Continue reading at The Washington Post . . .
Tags: andhra pradesh, india, karklis, laris, natural earth, natural earth vector, ne, nev, state, telengana, twp, wash post
Posted in General, Geography, Maps in the Wild, Print, Promote | Comments Off on India to create new southern state of Telengana (Wash Post)
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
[Editor’s note: Beautiful map of a blue and red circulation system stretching across the United States with the heart located at Washington, D.C. Selected by a lefty advocacy group as part of their media campaign during the ongoing health care debate. Thanks Laris!]
Republished from The Washington Post. December 2, 2009
Public Option Please, a lefty advocacy group, set out to find a poster artist who could dramatize their argument for government-funded health care. Judges (including Arianna Huffington and Jesse Dylan) found not just a poster artist but a poster girl for their cause. Their winner, Amy Martin of Los Angeles, created her striking image of red and blue blood vessels coursing through a map of the United States when she was home sick with the flu, and a few weeks later, organizers said, lost her job and health insurance. “A healthy United States is dependent on healthy American citizens — which is why I presented America as a vulnerable living system.” She’ll spend her $1,000 winnings on insurance premiums, they said.
Continue reading at Public Option Please . . .
Tags: amy martin, health, health care, illustration, insurance, laris, los angeles
Posted in art, General, Mapping, Print, Promote | Comments Off on Amy Martin’s Public Option Please Map Illustration
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
[Editor’s note: You’ll start seeing more mashups on The Washington Post site the next month. Staff are being trained to use a new mashup maker tool I made that churns out decent maps in 5 minutes flat. Just like in print, normal rules about accuracy in reporting apply. The bottom line, don’t show more location detail than you know to be true, as this blog post from InfoGraphicsNews illustrates. Thanks Laris!]
Republished from the InfoGraphicsNews blog.
Original on 12/04/2008.
Yesterday, the terrosrist group ETA killed another person in Spain. In this cases, as most of the cases, internet media have the initative. The first idea is to place the new. Shw where it took place. But the problem is that in this kind of news all the information is changing all the time during the first hour, and the data are not accurate. Yesterday, we only knew that Ignacio Uria was killed while he was going to his favourite restaurant, Kiruri. We didn’t even knew if he came form his house or form his job.
The punch line:
None of those that placed the killing on a exact place were right.
Some rectified later, others didn’t even change it. Being the fastest can’t go before telling the truth. On reconstructions many editors use to say that “the reader know this is not exactly the truth, that we’re just guessing”. I don’t want the reader to not trust us. I prefer to have a reader who really think that when we say something we know it and we’re not guessing.
These are screenshots from some spanish websites two hours after the agencies gave the news:
Continue to view screenshots at InfoGraphicsNews blog . . .
Tags: accuracy, fastest, infographicsnews, karklis, laris, Mashup, precision, twp, wash post
Posted in Best practices, Critique, General, Geography, Google Map Mashup, Interactive, Mapping, Maps in the Wild, Mashup, Promote, Self promo, Software | Comments Off on Being the Fastest Is Not Enough (InfoGraphicsNews)
Friday, August 14th, 2009
[Editor’s note: This seems kinda odd given the poor image resolution, but I’m sure there’s a use for it and someone will figure out how to sample higher res tiles. Thanks Laris!]
Republished from the Google Geo Developers Blog.
Posted by Mike Jones, Maps API Team
2-D maps are great, but sometimes it’s cool to gaze into the distance. Today we’re happy to announce support for perspective in the Maps API for Flash. We’ve taken the regular API, added pitch and yaw, borrowed the look-around control from Google Earth, and thrown in some nifty camera trajectory support. The opportunity to see the world from a chosen point of view is now in the hands of a user!
Here’s a perspective map in action. Sit back and watch or dive in and drag the view. Try holding down the zoom plus (+) or minus (-) buttons to see the new smooth continuous zoom.
Play with demos and the possibilities emerge. Shadows stretch out as the land tilts back. Foreground detail blends with background context. Movement through the world becomes first-person in nature and distant features can rapidly be dragged to the fore. On a regular map a cluster of markers might only confuse. Spin a perspective map and their pattern becomes clear as nearer markers pass in front of their more remote partners.
A key strength of Flash is its ubiquitous nature and we’ve taken care to develop an API that preserves this advantage. While supporting the latest, greatest Flash players, the API requires only Flash 9. Build a single target and API runtime code matches implementation library to player version. Flash 10 users gain the benefits of the native 3-D graphics support–rendering speed and accuracy–but Flash 9 users won’t be left out.
So how do you create a 3-D map? If you’ve not used the Maps API for Flash before here we’ve got lots of documentation to help you get up and running. For those who’ve used the API and have an existing map to hand, three quick changes should suffice:
While this new functionality is aimed at Flash developers, we also have the Earth plugin and API for those of you working with JavaScript and the JS-based Maps API. For developers using the Maps API for Flash, today’s release is just an extension of the existing Flash API; where it makes sense, we have borrowed some learnings from the Earth API (and will continue to do so). From a user’s viewpoint, if you’ve used the Earth plugin or Google Earth, the controls will all be familiar. We’ve kept the same basic key mappings. Add SHIFT to tilt the map, or CTRL to tilt your view and you’re ready to go. More features are hidden just under the surface. Animate a flight from A to B, or apply perspective scaling to your markers. See the new API reference documentation for details.
As always, for those of us working on APIs, the most rewarding aspect is of seeing what developers do with it. Here’s what some of our trusted testers have done to date:
Check out some more demos, have a play, make some maps, and let us know what you think!
Tags: 3d, api, as3, Flash, flex, google maps, googlegeodev, karklis, laris, perspective
Posted in Best practices, Flash, Google Earth, Google Map Mashup, Interactive, Mapping, Promote, Software | Comments Off on 3D Perspective in the Maps API for Flash! (GoogleGeoDev)
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
[Editor’s note: This interactive map from The Washington Post examines political prison camps were opponents or fallen favorites of the regime in Pyongyang are forced to do slave labour. Great use of Google Earth to generate the 3d scene, combined with Natural Scene Designer. Kudos to Kat and Laris for a great presentation.]
Republished from The Washington Post.
North Korea has operated political prison camps for more than 50 years, twice as long as the Gulag in the former Soviet Union. People suspected of opposing the government are forced to do slave labor in the camps, which hold an estimated 200,000 prisoners. Great use of Google Earth to generate the 3d scene, combined with Natural Scene Designer. North Korea’s government says the camps don’t exist, but high-resolution satellite images show otherwise.
Interact with the original at Washington Post . . .
Tags: camp, downs, Google Earth, Interactive, karklis, kat, laris, laris karklis, map, north korea, slav labour, soviet union, twp, wash post
Posted in Design, General, Geography, Interactive, Mapping, Maps in the Wild, Mountain Carto, Promote | Comments Off on On the Map: Five Major North Korean Prison Camps (Wash Post)
Friday, July 10th, 2009
[Editor’s note: I’ve been researching sovereign state boundary disputes for Natural Earth Vector at the 1:15,000,000 and 1:50,000,000 scales so I read this entry at the StrangeMaps blog last week with some curiosity. Egypt effectively administers their portion of the “disputed” area along the Red Sea and seems to have dropped their claim to the Sudan portion south of the 22nd parallel. This boundary will be shown de facto along the 22nd parallel the Natural Earth Vector dataset. Thanks Laris!]
Republished from Strange Maps. June 28, 209.
The Bir Tawil Triangle is a desert of sand and rocks on the border between Egypt and the Sudan. It is also officially the most undesired territory in the world. Bir Tawil is the only piece of land on Earth (*) that is not claimed by any country – least of all by its neighbours. For either of them to claim the Bir Tawil Triangle would be to relinquish their claim to the Hala’ib Triangle. And while Hala’ib is also mainly rock and sand, it is not only ten times larger than Bir Tawil, but also adjacent to the Red Sea - so rather more interesting.
This bizarre situation started out with what is supposed to be the simplest of borders: a straight line. By the Condominium Treaty of 1899, the British drew the line between Egypt and what was then still known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan at the 22nd parallel north, resulting in a straight-line border of about 1,240 km (770 miles) from Libya to the Red Sea.
Continue reading at StrangeMaps . . .
Tags: boundary disputes, countries, egypt, karklis, laris, natural earth vector, ne vector, soverign, states, strange maps, strangemaps, sudan
Posted in Critique, Geography, Mapping, Maps in the Wild | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 15th, 2009
[Editor’s note: This Flash-based interactive experience features several 3d panoramas shot from high above Manhattan. Spin the views around, listen to tunes, and download desktop wallpaper pictures. Thanks Laris!]
Interact with the original at Pixel Case . . .
Tags: 3d, karklis, laris, new york, panorama, pixel case, vr
Posted in Flash, General, Geography, Interactive, Maps in the Wild, Promote | Comments Off on New York 3d Virtual Reality Panorama (PixelCase)
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
[Editor’s note: No, this is not an April Fools joke 😉 I often get asked, “Hasn’t everything been mapped yet?”. Well, some things always need remapping (and this begs the question as to why don’t movie goers boycott theaters for showing the same the same Hollywood plots year after year, but whatever). The zones affected between Switzerland and Italy include the Matterhorn. Thanks Laris and Todd!]
Republished from The Independent.
Melting snow prompts border change between Switzerland and Italy
By Peter Popham in Rome
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Global warming is dissolving the Alpine glaciers so rapidly that Italy and Switzerland have decided they must re-draw their national borders to take account of the new realities.
The border has been fixed since 1861, when Italy became a unified state. But for the past century the surface area of the “cryosphereâ€, the zone of glaciers, permanent snow cover and permafrost, has been shrinking steadily, with dramatic acceleration in the past five years. This is the area over which the national frontier passes and the two countries have now agreed to have their experts sit down together and hash out where it ought to run now.
Daniel Gutknecht, responsible for the co-ordination of national borders at Switzerland’s Office of Topography, said “the border is moving because of the warmer climateâ€, among other reasons.
Continue reading at The Independent . . .
Tags: border, climate, dispute, glacier, global warming, independent, italy, laris, matterhorn, peter popham, snow, switzerland, todd, topography
Posted in General, Geography, Mapping, Print | Comments Off on Melting Snow Prompts Border Change (The Independent)
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009
[Editor’s note: The Times produced a fantastic interactive time-based tag-cloud-on-a-map showing twitter chatter across the US keyed to major events in the Super Bowl game between the Steelers and Cardinals. Several thematic channels are available. Kudos to Matthew Bloch and Shan Carter. Thanks Laris!]
Republished from The New York Times.
Orig pub date: Feb. 2, 2009.
As the Steelers and Cardinals battled on the field, Twitter users across the nation pecked out a steady stream of “tweets.” The map shows the location and frequency of commonly used words in Super Bowl related messages.
Interact with the original Flash version at New York Times . . .
Tags: ad, cardinals, emoticons, Flash, Interactive, karklis, laris, matthew bloch, New York Times, nyt, sean carter, steelers, super bowl, swf, tag cloud, tag cloud map, time, timeline, times, twitter
Posted in Best practices, Charting, Design, General, Geography, Interactive, Mapping, Mashup, Promote | Comments Off on Tag Cloud: Twitter Chatter During the Super Bowl (NY Times)
Thursday, January 15th, 2009
[Editor’s note: Truly bizarre science graphic about how the human brain processes sensation and the wacky tricks that expose the artifice of our senses. Thanks Laris.]
Republished from the Boston Globe. Sunday 11 Jan. 2009.
How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio
Text by Johan Lehrer, graphics by Javier Zarracina
DO YOU EVER want to change the way you see the world? Wouldn’t it be fun to hallucinate on your lunch break? Although we typically associate such phenomena with powerful drugs like LSD or mescaline, it’s easy to fling open the doors of perception without them: All it takes is a basic understanding of how the mind works.
The first thing to know is that the mind isn’t a mirror, or even a passive observer of reality. Much of what we think of as being out there actually comes from in here, and is a byproduct of how the brain processes sensation. In recent years scientists have come up with a number of simple tricks that expose the artifice of our senses, so that we end up perceiving what we know isn’t real – tweaking the cortex to produce something uncannily like hallucinations. Perhaps we hear the voice of someone who is no longer alive, or feel as if our nose is suddenly 3 feet long.
Click image for larger view.
Tags: boston, globe, hallucinate, hallucnations, illusion, javier zarracina, johan lehrer, karklis, laris, mind, ping-pong ball, process, radio, reality, sensation, senses
Posted in Design, General, Print, Promote, science | 1 Comment »
