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The U.S. Census Bureau defines the Midwest as the region of twelve states cornered by North Dakota, Kansas, Ohio, and Michigan. Comedian Luke Capasso convincingly argues that while that is technically correct, regions should be defined by culture and your dad’s spirit vehicle.
[via kottke]
Tags: geography, humor, Luke Capasso, Midwest
Throughout the United States, there are a surprising number of cities that have the same name. In fact, after playing with this interactive map by Russell Samora for The Pudding, it seems more likely that cities share a name with another than not. (Don’t quote me on that.)
The question is: When someone mentions a city, which one are they talking about? Samora calculated the likelihoods, given the county that person lives in. For example, when someone refers to Buffalo, most people are probably talking about Buffalo, New York. If you live in Buffalo, Kentucky, then probably not.
You can also mess around with your likelihood metric here.
See also: street names across the country.
Tags: cities, geography, Pudding, Russell Samora
When you’re used to looking at the world through a certain lens, such as a certain rectangular geographic projection, your mental model tends to mirror the view. John Nelson goes over a handful of misconceptions, through the eyes of North Americans.
Tags: geography, John Nelson, mistakes
Posted by in geography, John Nelson, maps, mistakes
Based on a Morning Consult/Politico survey, most people don’t know where Iran is:
As tensions between the United States and Iran rise in the aftermath of the American drone strike that killed the country’s most powerful commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a new Morning Consult/Politico survey finds fewer than 3 in 10 registered voters can identify the Islamic republic on an unlabeled map.
The data is noisy, with selections in the ocean, and in the world view, with selections of the United States and Canada. So I’m not totally sure what to make of that, but it’s clear a lot of people don’t know where Iran is, which might be part of why Americans don’t have a clear opinion about the current affairs.
All I can think about are these geographic stereotype maps from 2010.
As plants take in sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow, they also respire or “breath” out part of that carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere. When this occurs belowground from the plant’s roots, it’sPosted by in climate change, conservation, ecology, featured, geography, hydrology, Montana, mountains, new research, PLoS, PLOS One, science
As you enter Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park from highway 180 there is a small little parking lot to the side with a couple of bathrooms and a non-descript, standard-issue, brown, wooden parkPosted by in biodiversity, California, climate change, conservation, ecology, Ethics, Evolution, featured, forests, geography, PLoS, trees
0000-0002-8715-2896 As flowers began to bloom and leaves slowly emerge in the northern hemisphere this time of year, most people are thinking about how they soon get to lose the winter coat and enjoy thePosted by in biodiversity, climate change, conservation, ecology, featured, geography, imagery, natural history, new research, Phenology, remote sensing, science
0000-0002-8715-2896 Like many scientists, Jean-François Bastin and colleagues had a question. A question that on its surface seems like it may have an obvious answer, or at least, an obvious way to find out theA computer scientist in India has lost a 2013 paper on satellite imaging because he submitted — and published — essentially the same article three times. The researcher, P.V. Arun, came to the attention of the Indian media last year after it emerged that he had lied about winning a post with NASA and other […]
The post Duplication retraction appears for ‘NASA Patriot Boy’ turned Indian scandal source appeared first on Retraction Watch.
In January 1992, a container with yellow duckies and other bath toys fell from a cargo ship in a heavy storm. The container opened in the accident, and the contents spilled out into the Pacific.
Cargo ships lose a few hundred containers at sea every year. The containers usually sink, and the contents end up on the bottom of the ocean. These bath toys, however, were made to float – and float they did.
Song inspired by the travelling bath toys, by Rich Eilbert
In November 1992, a beachcomber in Alaska found the first toys. Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer used this information to figure out the ocean current that brought the ducks from the site of the storm at sea all the way to the Alaskan coast, 2000 miles away. Over the next few months, more toys were found along the Alaskan coast, adding to Ebbesmeyer’s data set.
After floating past Alaska, some of the duckies turned around and moved toward Russia, while others floated northward, through the Bering Straight. In 1994, some of the toys got stuck in ice in the Arctic.
In 1997, to add to the toys floating around the oceans, a container with Lego figures fell off another cargo ship off the coast of England. This batch of toys was much closer to land, and many of the Lego pieces were found on a beach in Cornwall. Most sightings of the Lego pieces have come from England and Wales, but there is also one suspected find in Australia.
For the duckies, getting stuck in Arctic ice would have been the end of their journey, were it not for climate change. After almost ten years, the ice melted enough for some of the ducks to escape the Artic region, and in 2003 one of the toys was found in the Hebrides, in Northern Scotland.
At the moment, there are probably still a few of the initial batch of bath toys left, floating somewhere along the world’s ocean currents.
“Friendly Floatees” by NordNordWest – This file was derived from:World pacific centered.svg. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Posted by in bath toys, geography, Have Science Will Travel, rubber ducky, sea, Song of the Week
