Via Tom Hollander comes Strange Maps, a blog I will have to read through when I get a free moment next year. The blog supports Frank Jacobs' forthcoming book, Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities. The blog starts with "Lunatic Asylum Districts in Pennsylvania," moving through "The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World" and "Heineken's 'Eurotopia'" on its random walk through maps. Very cool blog.
Example: a map showing the best beer in America, based on the number of medals won, with a handy refiguring of the results by population:
The top 10, reshuffled to reflect the number of medals per million of inhabitants, looks quite different, reflecting a dominance by states with a strong micro-brewing tradition:
- Colorado – 64.4
- Oregon – 42.5
- Wisconsin – 38.6
- Washington – 16.2
- Missouri – 15
- Pennsylvania – 13.5
- Massachusetts – 12.6
- California – 12.8
- Texas – 5.6
- New York – 5.1
Also from Hollander, a report that Samoa changed sides:
As sirens and church bells wailed across Samoa just before 6am on Monday, drivers obediently stopped their cars. Then, after instructions issued over the radio by the Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, they shifted to the other side of the road and ushered in history.
"After this announcement you will all be permitted to move to the other side of the road, to begin this new era in our history," Mr Tuilaepa told his people, warning: "Don't drive if you are sleepy, drunk or just had a fight with your wife."
Good advice, that.