Ran across this a couple of days ago while rummaging through my overflowing Google Reader. There is some repetition in this series, but overall it was pretty interesting, especially the comic maps explored in the fourth part of the series.
Check out the rest of this BBC Documentary over at Visual News.
If you haven't already heard, here's a final plug for the collaboration between the Hand Drawn Map Association and linenlaid&felt. You've got until the end of the month to submit a hand-drawn map, which will get you entered to win one of Katie's map-related books. Submissions details here.
The books to be given out to the five randomly selected mapmakers are shown above. You can read more about those over at Katie's site too.
Each Friday we share our Web discoveries, mostly pulled from our RSS feeds and Twitter accounts. If there's something we should know about, please write to thesadbear [at] gmail [dot] com.
Typical women apply about six strokes of mascara per eye. Volume seekers ramp that up to about 30 or 40, then sometimes employ toothpicks, paper clips, pins or the backs of their earrings to poke through the clumps, CoverGirl executives say. "When we asked them why they do this, they blamed their lashes, not their mascara," says Esi Eggleston Bracey, P&G's vice president of global cosmetics, shaking her head. "That's when we knew we had an opportunity."
Jack says: Just found this today while working on that Chamber story. Is this new? I've been playing with it all day. I think we should try and do a post on it, where we basically just fuck around with data for our respective areas.
Find the driver with the fewest teeth, the most gray hairs, and the thickest glasses. He's your man: Anyone who has survived to AARP age with these handicaps, on third-world roads, must have an abundance of caution, or perhaps just a jalopy that can't reach the hundred-mile-per-hour standard of Peruvian and Kenyan pistes.
Former American figure skater Timothy Goebel helped popularize the quad by performing it prolifically during his 14-year career ... his rotations per minute were clocked as high as 946; the average rotations per minute for an NBA player performing a 360-degree dunk is 100.
I'm writing a "novel." Truthfully, I don't expect to finish it on time, but I started it under the impression that it would kickstart my creative juices and get me writing more fiction and creative stuff. For the most part, it has.
I've been rereading Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, and it's getting me more and more interested in the art of storytelling. Maybe more specifically, the art of telling local history and how it influences who someone is. There's a story in there called "Speaking of Courage," where a young soldier comes back to his Iowa town after Vietnam. Without retelling the whole plot, he's trying to come to terms with how he didn't win the Silver Star and drives around the lake in his town all day, having fake conversations with different people around the town (his dad, his ex girlfriend, his best friend) in his head.
My "novel"'s concept is still hazy, but I'd like to explore this a little bit— the idea of local legends or local history and where history and legend meld into one. Maybe I'm trying to hard to be Faulkner, I dunno. But I did a bit of research on Missouri history — I might set the novel here, plus I was doing a bit of research on local sports history anyway.
That's why this website got me into a brainstorming frenzy. It's an archive of Missouri place names and basically tells you, by county, everything you need to know about how a particular town, school, landmark or anything got its name.
For instance, the Roubixdoux Creek, in my county, is one of the tributaries of the Gasconade River. It got its name from French explorer/ settler Joseph Robidoux. (It did not say why the townsfolk dropped the first "u" but not any of the other vowels.) Wikipedia did not originally know about this. It now does, thanks to me.
This search for a little local flavor of my new home got even more of my internal engines whirring and led me to more gems that even the non-Missourian SadBear brethren would appreciate.
I sought out the Pulaski County Historical Society and looked at the last names of some of the original settlers. I now know just how many families around here have lived here for generations.
Notable for the fact that despite being so old and before the advent of the highway system, each state map is pretty well-detailed.
Looking at old-school eastern states like Virginia or Ohio or Michigan doesn't reveal much new about said states that we don't know already. But the maps for the more sparsely-populated Midwestern and Western states still have an air of mystery about them. For instance, Oklahoma is still considered Indian Territory here, and I'm pretty sure neither Oklahoma City nor Tulsa existed yet (or else they were nothing more than cowboy towns). Wayne Coyne and Oral Roberts were just a gleam in the worlds' eye...
I also found some even more interesting stuff on the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad, which runs directly through my county (now called BNSF) and directly contributed to the high school sports league I cover, but that stuff's so good I think I'll save it for another post.
Waynesville and St. Robert (affectionately known, by me, as "the 'Ville" and "St. Bob") are technically different cities, but they're basically, along with the Army base Fort Leonard Wood, one community, as you can see here:
The 'Ville has a population of around 3,500 and St. Bob around 2,700.
But if you were to come here without knowing anything about the community other than the population figures, you'd be mighty confused. How many communities of 6,000 have rush-hour traffic jams?
They don't. The actual population of the entire community is somewhere closer to 40,000. The problem is, most of Ft. Wood's population is unincorporated, so it doesn't count towards the figures of either city. Fort Wood has about 35,000 people (tricky, since the Army is transient... so it might, in all truth be even more).
If you read the article above, though, you'll read that the Wayesville and St. Robert city councils and the Pulaski County commission are in talks to annex the population of Fort Leonard Wood, which will mean that they'll add 17,500 people to the numbers of each city.
If you're keeping track, that would put the 'Ville at 21,007 and 20,260 for St. Bob. And since they're basically one community that's upwards of 40,000 people.
This is significant, for a few reasons. First, now people will actually look at the city populations and not think "podunk, middle of nowhere town." They'll think "podunk, little CITY off I-44."
Second, and most importantly, businesses might give us a second look and give us the possibility for even more growth. Which means that maybe we'll finally get a Panera Bread and a standalone Starbucks.
If we couple it with Rolla, 20 miles up the road towards St. Louis— pop. 18,438, plus 6,000 college students— we've got ourselves a nice little corridor of small cities. Who knows, maybe we'll even get a Borders or Barnes & Noble bookstore (snicker).
When all is said and done, it looks like Tony and Chase still live in a larger metropolitan area— Augusta County, VA has a total population of 70,910 (not sure, at this point, if that includes Waynesboro and Staunton).
Pulaski County, MO, on the other hand, has a population of 44,546, including the 'Ville, the Fort and St. Bob. So we're still smaller.
Despite Waynesville's relative smallness compared to Waynesboro, the city has a higher percentage of roadways available for Google Street View.
But when Google came through the 'boro, they captured one of the oddest items I've seen in any lame "street view sightings" site. Es.g.: 1, 2. They pictured a line painting truck:
That said, Street View has really bloomed. Just zoom in here to check the coverage area.
People seem to say goodbye in one of three ways. If they meet a person with whom they have almost no connection, they might wave only. If they meet an acquaintance, they'll shake hands. But if they say goodbye to someone meaningful, they generally hug.
Of the three, I like the hand shake least.
The longest (and best) goodbye I ever received from a friend was in the form of a hug. It lasted maybe 37 seconds (though I wasn't counting at the time), and it meant a lot.
I'm finished now with my four years of undergraduate work. My family came to graduation. A friend drove up from the south. I said my fair share of goodbyes...and I gave one distinguishable hug to a friend I've grown up with for the past 10 years.
Now I have a lot of time on my hands. I couldn't be more pleased.
Here's what I'm up to:
- Listening to a lot of Daniel Johnston. So much that everything I notice has lyrics (Tony mentioned this in his last post). - The Meat Puppets new album, Sewn Together. - My brother learning guitar rifts (Modest Mouse, Cake, "Thunderstruck," etc.) - The new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, still. - Google Reader. - Reading Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut. - Picking up Roberto Bolano's2666 soon, a Silliman suggestion. - Mapping my move to Arizona - Finishing a playlist for the drive west...another flung-together list. - Going to juggling club in Louisville. - Getting MLB audio. - Unpacking and re-packing to figure out what I really want to keep.
So on May 31 I'll start my drive to the Southwest United States. Here is the basic map of the journey.
DAY 1: Leave home. Arrive at Jack's apartment. Chill. Sleep. DAY 2: Leave Jack's apartment. Drive. Arrive in Amarillo. DAY 3: Chill in Amarillo with my friend, Brad. DAY 4: Leave Amarillo for Phoenix. Drive. Drive. Drive. Arrive.
Three days later I start working.
The best thing I hear about Arizona, are the wild pigs that run around willy nilly in the streets. I bet someone could make a cool song about them.
On November 4, 1991, my little brother was born. I was at home though, sitting at my kitchen table, staring into the plastic wrap of a gift basket. At the same time, no more than 300 miles away Oscar Bills, Jr. was shot to death in his driveway. He was in his twenties, like I am today.
I always find it a little eerie when I discover something horrible happened during a time where I can match my exact whereabouts to the event. When you become aware, it's kind of like you momentarily draw a link with the victim or the victim's family. You become witness, at least in some strange way, to something terrible and your brain isn't quite sure how to react.
I found out about Oscar Bill's murder after listening to episode #342 of This American Life ("How to Rest in Peace"). It was easily the most disturbing episode I've ever listened to, but interesting nonetheless. In it they reference to this article in The Atlantic (1997) about the families of murder victims. It's long, so if you don't have some time to spare I'd wait till the weekend.
"She came out of the neighbor's house and asked, "Is she dead?" Al said, "Yes," and Harriett blacked out. Moments later she heard horrible screaming and wailing, like the sounds of a wounded animal way off in the distance, and then she suddenly realized that the sounds were coming from her, that she was screaming and wailing and pounding on Al's chest. In an instant she came to, and saw that Al was sobbing..."
The story talks a lot about grief, which was consequently a huge part of the theme in TAL #342. The article begins with a note on America:
"Americans are fascinated by murders and murderers but not by the families of the people who are killed -- an amazingly numerous group, whose members can turn only to one another for sympathy and understanding."
The story made me think more about a crime reporter's role in telling those types of stories. NPR actually hosted a roundtable of crime writers in July 2008. They spoke a lot about how race affects their jobs, but also a bit about their actual work routine. One of them said:
"My passion was to cover the communities where the crime happened, rather than the crime."
I like that statement. It's true, reporting like this should be more about how it affects the community you cover, not just the defendant, and certainly not just the crime. Maybe this is a common point, and I'm just new to thinking about it. But it's something I want to remember when I go into the business of journalism.
I am an avid fan of The Wire (Omar! Word). It's a television show about crime in Baltimore, Maryland - which superficially got me obsessed with following The Baltimore Sun. I recently ran across a Sun blog post entitled "A Reporter's Lament" (just one of the posts at the Sun's crime blog).
They post about a lot of things, including how they (the reporters) see themselves as part of the community, their dealings with police, what the murder numbers mean for individual communities, and even a few personal stories from the job. In one post they linked to this man, a retired police captain turned citizen-crime blogger (remind anyone of a particular character in The Wire?). He has a different perspective, and it's interesting to compare some of his notes with those authored by the newspapermen.
It's all fascinating. Hearing these people and looking at their crime maps (2006), it makes me super-curious and even more interested in covering these types of stories, at least for a bit.
A number of county names are Native American-influenced neologisms invented by ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft, while ten “cabinet” counties are named after members of Jackson's executive branch. Several are named for famous Native Americans, local tribes, and geographically descriptive Ojibwe words. A few are named for Christian saints and military commanders, while others are named for their terrain, like this one:
Also from the Times, an old piece from David Foster Wallace on Roger Federer. The interesting thing about the piece is that he goes on all these tangents within the article (that's ostensibly a feature on Federer), most of which only loosely concern Federer, but he somehow manages to make them seem relevant. Plus, the footnotes (which is something for which his work has been criticized) are actually a plus for something like this.
(The Wallace piece was from their monthly Play sports magazine...kind of like their better version of Sports Illustrated after SI went down the tubes. Anyone know if they're still publishing it?)
It's probably been ten years since I last checked out the aerial photography on Microsoft's Terra Server. “Terra” is a play on words–terra as in “earth”, and tera- as in “terabyte,” a unit of measurement which was a really big deal in 1998.
The Terra Server fares better than Google Earth for most rural areas. The images are eery like Area 51 and seem more distant and magical when rendered in satellite charcoal.
Indiana, Michigan, Ohio:
Home:
Public domain photos courtesy of the United States Geological Survey.
"Sampled beats sound like galoshes stomping through puddles, and percussive sizzles evoke maracas filled with syrup-coated seeds. It's a dense, humid listen. At times, you can almost imagine beads of dew seeping from the pinholes of your ear buds."
+ Katie and I were wondering about the Interstate Highway System, so I read up on it and found this awesome route-numbering explanation map.
+ Blind technology can become technology for everyone. NYT feature.
+ I've been reading a collection of Reason Magazine stories and now have to wonder what to do after reading something so foundation-questioning as Gulf Lore Syndrome. This sort of reporting, and, I guess, myth busting, also pops up in a NYTimes story about how online predators really aren't a problem on social networking sites.
I only lived there three months, but I can't help but be a defender and a spokesperson for Detroit. I still follow The Detroit News as much as any newspaper. So I was intrigued by a Weekly Standard article about the big bad city. It's probably my zest for Detroit that mucks up my reading of the article, but I'm having trouble deciding if I like it; if I think it's fair and accurate or revelatory in any way. I do think it puffs up one DetNews reporter a bit too much ... my hero will always be Josar.
+ Strange Maps is super great at combining quirky wonderment with more heady ideas. Most recently: pareidolia: perceiving significance in stimuli that have none. Especially in maps.
+ The best mug shots of the year. Follow the links to see more odd mugs and the story of a man arrested 1,000+ times.
+ I'm on the street fashion blog bandwagon now. This NYTimes article is a helpful guide to finding a few good ones. ... not sure why they're so fun to scroll through ...
"... if we want to learn about something tactilely, we must make a move. We must rub the fabric, pet the cat, squeeze the Charmin" ... “To have your cellphone buzzing as opposed to ringing turned out to have a lot of advantages in some situations, and the question is, where else can vibrotactile cues be applied?” The NYT on touch
In Iraq: "for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed." The government, via NYT, on rebuilding Iraq
+ Not sure how this technology is helpful, but here's to video searching
Perhaps in light of my own recent psuedo-obituaries and reports dealing with death, I have grown even more interested in obituary writing. Here are three I find interesting: 1: Richard Topus, military pigeon trainer 2: Infield fly rule analogy writer 3: Legendary thief of baseball signs
At long last, one of my maps made it to the Hand Drawn Map Association. Take a look.
The HDMA is available for RSS feeds and maintains a calm Twitter and nice Facebook page. They (Kris H.) also pay for maps, which I'd forgotten before receiving eight dollar bills and a little button in the mail recently. I won't likely accept another dollar, but I've got a new envelope almost ready to send.
+ Malcolm Gladwell has a new book on the way about how people rise to the top and what it means to be an expert. He talked with the WSJ about it. I'm chasing more expertise links, via Wikipedia, etc. So far...
+ My GoogleReader is really important. I'm not sure what Tumblr is all about, but I found one Tumblr to GoogleRead and it showed me this photo.
+ Investigation into U.S. Air Marshals. + The horror of fire is bothering me more lately. + DNA evidence is clearing innocent convicts, in some places more than others.
Thirteen years ago this kid listened to books on tape. After dozens of books, he laid the cassette player into a box, carried it into a field, used a shovel, and buried the box. At the time he figured he'd be back for it.
The landscape changed. Trees were planted, siblings were born, and new things caught his attention.
I thought about that box today. Walking around the field, I kicked some dirt and grass with my shoe. Chances are slim that I'll ever find it. The realization now is that I probably should have made a treasure map. Damn.
"If you're small and on a search / I've got a feeder for you to perch on" - eels
It's like a videotaped explosion played in reverse. That precision beyond practice, that elegance, that one-by-one landing - that's birds come to branches.
But the only birds in Illinois tonight are those with dysfunctional magnetic field sensors, those who have been consulting these faulty Texas and New York maps, or those that were fooled by the unseasonal warmth only to be slammed against suburban house siding in tonight's wind. It's so windy it sounds like wind out there. Go on, birds, get!
And because 1) I've edited it, and 2) It's no longer posted anywhere else, I go on about birds:
They stood conspicuosly, although it's odd to describe birds as standing, in a plowed fall farm field (not in trees). Their ilicit gathering found out by our passing car, yet not aggressively threatened, the blackbirds acted their cue to the air and funneled upward with organized teamwork like that captured in 1950s synchronized swimming motion pictures.
They did not flee the field or fly very high as their ranks expanded. As if an M.C. Escher sketch, the tornado of birds whirled larger upon itself while the lead birds covertly returned to the ground. The swoop grew with blackbirds unseen a moment before. Neither a beginning nor an end visible.
We passed. They settled. The second car of our caravan came next and they performed again like so many amusement park rides. Perhaps more importantly, we read about birds high school, junior year:
Virginia Woolf The Death of the Moth
The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.
John James Audubon Ornithological Biographies
...I observed the pigeons flying from north-east to south-west, in greater numbers than I thought I had ever seen them before, and feeling an inclination to count the flocks that might pass within the reach of my eye in one hour, I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, found that 163 had been made in twenty-one minutes...The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse...
...I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions, when a Hawk chanced to press upon the rear of a flock. At once, like a torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, pressing upon each other towards the centre. In these almost solid masses, they darted forward in undulating and angular lines, descended and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and, when high, were seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent.
Annie Dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Out of the dimming sky a speck appeared, then another, and another. It was starlings going to roost...They seemed to unravel as they flew, lengthening in curves, like a loosened skein...Each individual bird bobbed and knitted up and down in the flight at apparrent random, for no kown reason except that that's how starlings fly, yet all remained perfectly spaced...Over my head I heard a sound of beaten air, like a million shook rugs, a muffled whuff. Into the woods they sifted without shifting a twig, right through the crowns of trees, intricate and rushing, like wind...
...I stood with difficulty, bashed by the unexpectedness of this beauty...Could tiny birds be sifting through me right now, birds winging through the gaps between my cells, touching nothing, but quickening in my tissues, fleet?
NPR: Anatomy of a bank takeover
