I have had this map up in a tab on my browser for long enough to have forgotten the source of it. Although, from the URL, it was hosted at SciMaps.org — unfortunately, I can’t find it there.

Still, very cool work!

The author of this infographic cleverly shows just how immense the continent of Africa is. And cunningly places it in the public domain, ensuring that teachers everywhere will feel able to share it with their classes and magnify its impact.

Well played, sir or madam!

We offer authentic antique and vintage maps and prints- we do not sell modern reproductions. Hand-colored maps and engravings, etchings, photogravures, color chromolithographs… in such areas as animals, children, architecture, botanical, agricultural, religious, landscapes, historical, portrait more!! You will also find stereoviews, postcards, photographs, first issue stamps, and advertising, as well as many other interesting pieces of ephemera.

For example, I found this map — of North and South Dakota, before they were separated, but also including the southern (then only) bit of Manitoba, where I live:

If you click on the image to see it full-sized, you may (if you are keen-eyed and a Westmaniac like me) notice an error (or perhaps a change). The region north of Brandon is apparently named “Minnedosta” — but there’s no T in it these days. Frankly, I think it’s got a nice ring to it.

Peruse the maps and other vintage prints here.

(click for full-size)

Amy left this up for me to see, so I’m not sure the provenance of this map of the island in Lost, though I’m sure it’s fan-made. I wonder how close it hews to what the producers and writers had in mind when they were adding locations.

I’m not a Lost scholar, but it looks pretty good to me, though I have a couple of quibbles. I thought Hydra island was bigger, for one.

But somewhere in the middle lies the uncanny valley. When something looks almost real, but not quite, it creeps people out. If it looks less real, they breathe a sigh of relief and think “cartoon.” If it looks more real, they think “well, this is real.”

But if something’s off, and they can’t quite put their finger on it, people just get the heebie-jeebies.

I’m going to theorize that the same thing holds true in other realms, and to prove it, I will present to you, via Gizmodo,  the latest incarnation of Google Earth, featuring New York City in near-perfect 3-D rendering:

I haven’t exactly been able to figure out why, but it creeps me out. I love Google maps and even Street View — even zooming in close on my own home. But this is almost too much.

And yet, I’ve also seen much better zooms in television shows and movies, where they actually zoom in and show things perfectly, so there aren’t flat cars on the streets, for example.

In between, in the uncanny valley, is this new Google Earth.

But perhaps I’m just in an uber-creeped-out frame of mind already, because I just learned that IBM wants to make Minority Report come to life, with its advanced “crime prediction” software.

I never really connected the legendary Canadian thirst for beer with my grain surroundings until I saw this map, over at StrangeMaps.

In red is the areas of Europe that are traditional wine drinkers. In brown, the traditional beer drinkers. And in blue are the vodka countries. Of course, there is much individual variation, but you can note that it by and large matches up with both the places were grapes grow and the spread of the Roman Empire.

As Strange Maps notes:

Either through effects of climate change or renewed viticultural enthusiasm, grapes and wine-making have in recent years been introduced in areas to the north of the traditional Wine Belt, in southern Britain and the Low Countries, creating an overlap between Wine and Beer Belts. That overlap is often ancient rather than recent; the introduction not rarely is a reintroduction. And indeed, southwestern Germany, for example, has an ancient and unbroken tradition of wine-making.

Mmm, now I’m thirsty.

I’ve had these tabs open for a while now, and I can’t remember how exactly I stumbled on to them, but check out, for example, the awesome map above, done in a “strip” style that reminds me of the old CAA “trip-tych” maps that you used to be able to get (they do GPS now). Rather than focusing on a specific sector of the world, this map follows a single road, from London north, noting all the crossroads and various things that a traveller would pass by. It’s apparently the UK’s oldest road map.

I found it at StrangeMaps.com, but I also got engrossed by the maps at PriddysHard.com, where (if you scroll down) you’ll find a number of cool old maps. There’s this one, for example, of Saxton in 1575. Out of curiosity, I went to the same location on Google Maps, and I found that there’s still a fair bit of overlap with regard to placenames. It was relieving to see that one of the main forests on the old map, called “New Forest”, is now a national park.

One tends to think of surveying as a quite precise procedure. But it wasn’t always thus. And sometimes, when maps are made with mistakes, and then treaties or some such are made based on these erroneous maps, and then surveyors are sent out to map new borders based on wrong assumptions, you can end up with weirdness.

See, for example, the Delaware Wedge. Located where Delaware meets both Pennsylvania and Maryland, there exists a tiny piece of land that, technically, belongs to none of the three states.

Part of the famous Mason-Dixon line, the territory in the wedge now belongs to Delaware.

It reminded me of the Northwest Angle, which Manitobans will recognize as that part of Minnesota that’s actually north of the 49th Parallel and the only part of the “contiguous” 48 states that’s actually not contiguous with the rest of them.

I think I’d like to take a road trip there this summer. Not that I anticipate there’s much to see, but apparently you have to do the border crossing by videophone.

I’d be curious to hear about more map weirdness, if people have other examples.