Obesity map: 1985-2004

CNN has a very interesting map showing the increase in Obesity rates across the nation. it's an interactive map. So to see other years besides the one from my screen capture above, you will need to click the link to the CNN website. It's amazing how fast our nation has put on the weight. Maybe it's time for the old US to go on a diet.

CNN: Obesity in the US

Religious Meme map

The above map shows the spread of religious Memes throughout the world. It also highlights the major wars that were directly a result of clashes between religions. I'm not sure about some of the dates for the foundings, but otherwise it's pretty good.
For more maps, go to www.MapsOfWar.com
Via VirusHead: Major Religious Memes in 90 seconds

US State GDPs compared to Countries

Found this interesting map of US states labeled with the country whose GDP most closly matches. Kind of an interesting way to show how rich the US is in comparison to most of the world. We often forget how lucky we, as Americans, are to live here. But when you see that we live in a place where the GDPs of individual states rival those of large industrialized countries like Canada and France, it becomes a lot more obvious.

Strange maps: US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs Via Boing Boing

Internet Censorship maps

The OpenNet Initiative is an organization that tracks and monitors Internet censorship. On their website you can test individual URLs for blocking, and also see interactive maps of censorship throughout the world. Each country and region is rated and what type of content it censors is laid out in detail. The methods and agencies by which the censorship is enforced are also described in detail. All in all, a pretty useful site if you are interested in Internet censorship.

Check out the official site: OpenNet Initiative
Found Via Boing Boing: OpenNet reveals the global Internet censorship trends

Learning a Foreign language

Recently I've been wanting to upgrade my Spanish speaking skills. If you live in the western hemisphere, Spanish is growing more and more important to know. Even if you live in a non-Spanish speaking nation.
Looking at the map above, you can see that much of the western hemisphere has Spanish as a primary(darkest color) or a secondary(lighter color) language. The map comes from the Wikimedia. For a more descriptive legend follow the link: Map-Hispanophone World.

So I was pretty happy to find a list of foreign language podcasts to listen to. They have quite a few different languages. All free. So check it out.

Open Culture: Foreign Language Lesson Podcast Collection

Student arrested for creating a CounterStrike map of his school

A student in a Houston area High school was arrested after school officials discovered that he had made a CounterStrike map of his school for him and his friends to play on. The student had no history of violence, and had not threatened any students or teachers. Nevertheless, he was arrested and sent to an "Alternative Education Center." Alternative Education Centers are high security schools for violent and abusive students, or for repeat drug offenders. School officials were quoted as saying the situation was a "terrorist threat."
CounterStrike is a popular team shooter game, that allows users to create maps of their own. Commonly players will create maps of their neighborhoods, local workplaces, and schools. Playing on a map that fits a local setting, that you know well, can make the game a lot more fun.
How many of you have fantasized about playing paintball or laser tag in your local mall or school? I know I have. CounterStrike with it's map creation tools allows you to do just that. When I was in college, several of my friends made CounterStrike or Quake(a similar game) maps of various school buildings. Some of them were a lot of fun to play on.
What this kid did wasn't against the law. He didn't threaten anyone. He didn't do anything wrong. All he did was enjoy playing a perfectly legal and very popular game. Not a crime! Once again, the people in power are scared and are overreacting. Just like they did with the student who wrote the essay that "disturbed" a teacher.

What bothers me the most about these stories, is not that people are checking up on suspicious behaviour. Or that people are worried about it and more cautious. The problem is that in both of these cases, the students did not break any laws. They were both punished because something they did made people think they might break laws in the future. Is it really okay to punish people for things they didn't do, but might do?

Check out the story here: Teen punished over violent video game
And here: Fort Bend school trustees put off video game appeal

[Edit] Some pictures of the map have surfaced. Check them out at Joystiq: Images of the Clements High student's "terroristic" maps

Mapping the Blogosphere

Matthew Hurst, a scientist at Microsoft Livelabs, has collected data on how Blogs interconnect. He used that data to generate maps showing the different ways that news and people travel from blog to blog. The map above represents data collected over six weeks.
The maps are pretty cool looking. The white dots on the map above, are the most active blogs. As you can see, most of the other blogs connect to the active ones in some way.

Check out the Discover article: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/map-welcome-to-the-blogosphere
See Matthew's Blog for more maps and more info: Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media

Singles Map

Found this very interesting map(click on it for a bigger view) from the February edition of National Geographic. It maps out the percentages of single men vs the percentages of single women across the country. Seems that there are a lot more single Women on the east coast than on the West coast. There doesn't seem to be any definitive reason for this distribution, but I suspect that it has a lot to do with industry. All of the largest male concentrations are in known technology centers, whereas some of the largest female concentrations are in fashion and publishing centers. The tech industry is known for being heavily male dominated, just as the fashion and publishing industries are strongly female dominated. Industry dominance explains some of the concentrations, but not all. So I think it is probably a little more complex than that. According to this map, I live right between a high single female area and a high single male area. Now, if only I could find a way to leverage this to find myself a girlfriend, I would be all set. Maybe I should move to New York.

Map found at CreativeClass