Iringa Update

A little over a year ago I wrote about updating some of the streets in Iringa, to better match existing imagery.  While the individual updates were rewarding, I complained about the inability to perform multiple edits.  As I worked my way outside of the center of the city, I noticed that the streets were all misaligned.  I logged it as an issue in the Google Map Maker forum.

And nothing happened.

Until now.  I received email confirmation that my problem (the misalignments) had been fixed.  To my surprise, throughout the City of Iringa, the images and the roads are now perfectly aligned.  When I logged the issue, the streets were all 25-100 feet off or more.  Take a look at it now!

It's good to know that Google continues its cartographic work in Africa, albeit more slowly than I'd appreciate.  

On a similar front, last week Google announced it would be collecting streetview imagery in Botswana.  We don't know when the data will be live, but I'll keep my eye out for you.  Read the Google press release.

A Hot Maghreb and a Nice Warm Mitten

A couple of weeks off has provided me an opportunity to reflect. While the time was fleeting, the reflection was powerful and important. When it comes to geography, I have a renewed sense of wonder when it comes to all the Places yet to explore. Earlier today, after a Google search for "Maghreb" I ended up on a wiki commons page of a map of northwest Africa by Guilliaume Delisle.

A touch of "research" got me thinking about how cool it would be to visit the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, where the above map "lives".

This ain't a bad Guilliaume!  I wonder what else he has done?  Surely, a map of Michigan. 

Which, I'll be damned doesn't make me think of the dumb Wisconsin adverts claiming mitten status over Michigan! You be the judge. Which looks more like a mitten ? :)

Yay! Michigan beats Wisconsin again!

A Nice Little Sail South

The idea is to go from Alicante, Spain to Cape Town, South Africa on a sail boat as fast as possible. Not having their own database companies and billions in disposable income, most people instead flock to a game to simulate the long race. I'm always intrigued by visualizations of a massive number of data points. Of course those databases companies make both the real race possible and amazing geographic visualizations to go with it, such as the one below.

The track of each person that participated is shown in white, with a tiny blue dot showing the position of each boat. Perhaps the coolest part is noticing things like the people who didn't follow through and sail straight into North America, or those who tried to use the Suez canal and sail around the horn of Africa rather than the western coast.

Whatever their reasons, its cool to look at the thoughts and strategies of so many people in just 30 short seconds!

Strait

It's incredibly frustrating to fork over hundreds of dollars a month for gas.  Being addicted to gas is not fun.  There's no way out - you can't live without it. You can put it off for a day, hoping the price will go down and you can drive miles searching for the best dealer, but in the end, you have to get gas. 

A side effect of that addiction is a heightened sense of Middle East sociopolitical awareness for most Americans.  Recently, we saw the significant impact of the Arab Spring in Libya on the price of oil.  This was quite interesting because Libya has a relatively small share of world oil production.  We're so addicted, though, that we use it as fast as our dealers can produce it.

And then we "lost" a drone in Iran.

They we're not impressed.  And, as they do from time to time brought out the threat of blocking the Strait of Hormuz.  Now, I had heard of this threat but looked a little further into the potential implication of having the straight closed.

It turns out, more than 40% of oil shipped by tanker in the world passes through the straight of Hormuz.  That means 15 million barrels per day - give or take a few.

Looking back at my post on oil production by country  we see that that can be thought of as Saudi Arabia and Iran going off line at the same time.  That's the number two and four producer in the world.  Libya is about 17th.

So unfortunately that couple hundred dollars a month could look very cheap in 2012.

And that's not fun to think about.

Brain Drain

From time to time, events in one's everyday work life will lead that person to evaluate their continued service.  It's at that time that I, er, one, considers the possibility of moving somewhere else, somewhere to a place where they feel their needs will be better met.

I've been down that road before, and to a certain extent, for almost everyone, its a continuing evaluation.  In southeast Michigan we have an interesting problem.  We have great universities and a below average economy.  That manifests itself as significant brain-drain, where the talented folk move outside of the area. 

Washtenaw County (think Ann Arbor) attracts lots of people (the young ones) from all over the region,  who then get a great education financed in part by the taxpayers.  A frustratingly high number of those people go out of state seeking the fruits of a less-bad economy.   This makes our economy even worse, with the exception of the night before thanksgiving when everyone comes back to go out to the bars and fellow-high-school-alumni-watch. 

Wayne County (think Detroit) has an even bigger problem, a dwindling population.  Unfortunately it's a rarity for a well-educated Detroiter to stay put in the city.

So we know these issues are there but Forbes just came out with a great tool to visualize it.  Using tax data it shows how many people move between counties, net gain in blue, net loss in red.  Unfortunately I can't embed the cool tool. But here are links to the Washtenaw County and Wayne County maps. It'll take a minute to load...but be patient, it's worth it.

Wayne County

Washtenaw County

A Prime Slice Before Thanksgiving

Just a few days away from Thanksgiving, it's time to take a look at a little slice of the earth.  The Prime Meridian is the ugly step child of the equator.  It's the go to longitudinal line, unappreciated for no other reason than our perception of up and down in the universe. 

Ultimately the reason for this post is my frustration with Google's decision to not allow exports of the great elevation profiles in Google Earth. I realize they own a certain amount of the "rights" to it, but at the same time, it seems like one of those things you shouldn't be able to own, you know, the moon, earth elevation profiles...Antarctica.

I took a slice on near the Prime Meridian (give or take a couple minutes each way) starting on the north shore of the UK and extending to the southern shore of Ghana.  I guess I think this elevation profile is cool because, when dealing with such a long line, you can really "see" things.  Starting with the relatively flat lands over England, extending to the Pyrenees near the border of France and Spain (and Andorra), we then see the fall off into the Mediterranean which jumps up to the Algerian edge of the Atlas mountains and finally falling off across the Sahara and across the ol' Volta.

So that's one way of looking at it...here's another:

Simple, yes...but still pretty cool.