Love these: 40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense of the World » TwistedSifter
Very entertaining!
That was awesome! Thanks for sharing.
Fun, thanks!
OK, the Ludacris one really cracked me up.
The world map tattoo with countries visited colored is freaking genius.
Another interesting map I encountered recently: A Map of the Lands Actually Discovered by European Explorers.
Love it.
Cool, indeed. Some comments :
Map 3 : The UK invaded such places as Norway, Finland or Russia? That’s a quite broad understanding of the word “invaded” (obviously, landing and getting one’s ass kicked counts as an invasion)
Map 4 : Finally proves that France is the center of the world.
Map 6 : I’m very surprised that a maternal leave is paid in most third world countries.
Map 10 (internet usage based on time of day) : For some reason, I find this map absolutely fascinating.
Map 19 : 
Map 22 : poor Malaysian teens 
Map 30 : Interesting
Map 32 : I expected the Moon to be larger. This map gave me a sense of proportions I never had.
Map 12 : “There are more people living inside this circle than outside of it” is pretty mind blowing, particularly considering the majority of the circle’s area is over open ocean. Remember that map every time you think it’s too crowded where you live, or that traffic is a bitch. Imagine if most of the people in that circle wanted to live in a house in the suburbs and have cars.
That’s the scary part.
No 38 is my favourite. Who’d have thought that was a straight line. Map projections are weird.
I really don’t get #29. How do they get the world’s “economic center of gravity” in 1990 and 2000 to be around Svalbard and Franz Joseph Land? Nowhere of any economic significance is anything like that far north. In fact, all the points from 1913 to 2000 seem way too far north. I read the explanation, but I am none the wiser.
I suppose the big shift south and a bit east between 2000 and 2010 represents the economic rise of China, but it still seems implausibly large, especially since several other far eastern countries have been quite big economic powers since well before that, and Japan was a major economic player way before.
Apparently Canadians enjoy coffee and bribery to a higher degree than our American friends.
Me too.
What I found most interesting was the pattern of Europe and Asia having the peak time being in the late afternoon or evening right before sunset, but the US having our peak time at roughly mid-day.
Does this point to some kind of business difference wherein Europeans use the internet primarily for entertainment in the evenings, and Americans primarily use it for work? Or does it point to something else?
And the Russians love getting shitfaced. Which we already knew.
coffee, yes; bribery, not determined by that map.
It’s a summary of the cases under US law of bribery cases against American countries doing business in foreign countries (i.e. not the US), so the US bribery rate doesn’t show up in that map.
Dude, I’ll give you a snack pack of Timbits and an extra large DD if you don’t say anything more about this.
#38. I want to take a cruise along that route. Just to say I did it.
OK, so most of the world’s economic activity is in North America, Europe, and Asia, right? So the “economic center of gravity” of the world is somewhere between those three continents. And if you find the point on the globe that’s closest to midway between those places, it’s somewhere way up north.