In: Culture Humor Interactive Maps
11 Apr 2012Use this interactive google-mashup-map to locate emergency supplies in the event of a zombie outbreak. This should help you not walk past guns and supplies like in that stupid Walking Dead show.
A government report analyzed the impact of a ground 10-kiloton explosion in Washington DC. Turns out it wouldn’t be quite as bad as you might think (well, compared to what it would have looked like during the cold war when the scenario was multiple megaton air bursts). The full report contains a number of nice map visualizations of the severe fallout threat. The bad news? I live and work within the “severe damage, lifesaving not likely” region. Oh well…
Share of income that comes from government programs, broken down by type of benefit. (related article)
In: Maps US Economy
23 Mar 2012James Hamilton takes a crack at explaining why gasoline prices vary so much across the country. I think he’s right that taxes, regulations, and transportation explain most of it, but I suspect that refinery shenanigans also play a role. Brad Plumer over at WashPost has additional insights.
(the original version of this map over at Gasbuddy is fun to zoom around in)
In: Maps
19 Mar 2012Not much difference from the old one. Some font and icon changes, and split coloring to indicate rush hour schedule changes.
In: Culture Food Interactive Maps
16 Mar 2012CityMaps is an interactive going out map service– something like a crowdsourced cross between google maps and yelp. Personally I found it to be a disturbing reminder of how surrounded we are by corporations and logos. For a fun game, see how many Starbucks logos you can fit in one screen – my record is eight, below. Currently available for NYC, San Francisco, and Austin.
In: Culture Interactive Maps
14 Mar 2012Bloomberg created this interactive map of heritages according to the 2010 census. You can select any two and see how they compare across the country. It struck me a bit odd that neither “native american” nor “african american” is included – it’s probably some strange dataset problem.
In: Finance Global Economy History Interactive Maps Politics Updated regularly
6 Mar 2012I’m not a fan of the Heritage Foundation, and the one time I dug into the data of their Economic Freedom Index I found that they occasionally compare apples and oranges to get around data scarcity – BUT: they do put a large research effort into the report each year. The below interactive map is well executed – but you should drill down to country level data to get a feel for what is really being measured (click on a country, then the “learn more about this country” link that pops up in the lower left. Why this requires two steps I have no idea).
An addictive collection of beautiful charts, graphs, maps, and interactive data visualization toys -- on topics from around the world.