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Making Lemonade from an Old and Somewhat Flawed Map

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We begin with a map.  A map from TD-Architects, which seems to have a lot of interesting content though remarkably difficult navigation.  A map that might be from 2006 or 2007 (or 2009?).  The source of the income data?  Unknown.

Anyway, the idea of the map is that 73% of the world’s income is being protected on all sides by walls or, as they are called, “heavily guarded border zones” in an effort to create the “greatest wall” ever built on this planet.  Go ahead, take a look…

(click to enlarge)

If you want get into the flaws of the map, reddit has conveniently ripped it apart on multiple occasions, including this 400+ comment thread.  The gist is that “heavily guarded” is an exaggeration, the selections are arbitrary, and there are plenty of wealthy areas outside these borders.  …  But is it still conceptually interesting?

While looking into the income data, it turned out that these countries within the so-called walled world match up with the World Bank‘s list of “High Income” members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).  Since 1973, these countries have made 70-80% of the world’s income year after year, that is until 2006 when their percentage started to drop.  The situation really is changing, and as of 2010 the high income OCEDers were down to 63%, but the map really is a SNapshot Of Globalization, which is what TD’s SNOGs are all about.

Tomorrow we’ll use a somewhat flawed chart to take this a step further.

For more on those walls: DMZ, Australian Defense Force, Mexico-United States barrier, EU Maritime Borders, Melilla & Ceuta border fences, Schengen Area, Israeli West Bank barrier.

For more on the data: The World Bank is offering a killer 200,000+ line spreadsheet full of all kinds of data or if you’re more of a charts person, check it out via Google’s Public Data Explorer.

[Map via Information is Beautiful]

February 15, 2012 | Comments (0)

COICA. PIPA. SOPA. ACTA. TPP. Stop.

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You know how in the movies the good guys have an initial victory, then the bad guys come back worse than ever, but though the odds are outrageous the heroes come back in the end with some insane plan to save the day?  Well, that’s what is happening this Saturday, February 11th.  Where?  Everywhere!


View ACTA Protests Worldwide – Brought to you by stoppacta-protest.info in a larger map

Who are the good guys and bad guys again?  To translate from above, the internet had an initial victory with the PIPA & SOPA copyright bills in the United States, but now there’s all kind of secret shenanigans going on internationally to push through trade agreements with the same absurdly overreaching copyright and intellectual property provisions as SOPA, just this time on a global scale.  For this round, the response is being led in Europe as the EU has not yet ratified ACTA.  The action, however, will be happening worldwide, with over 200 cities planning protest events.

In case you haven’t been keeping score, this is how the saga has progressed:

1 – COICA, Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act – S.3804 – [Wikipedia|Bill Text]
2 – PIPA, or Protect-IP, Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act – S.968 – [Wikipedia|Bill Text]
3 – SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act – H.R.3261 – [Wikipedia|Bill Text]
4 – ACTA, Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – [Wikipedia|Text]
5 – TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership – [Wikipedia|Text]

The timeline is the most shocking part.  COICA was introduced in September of 2010.  In 17 months, the entertainment industry and its faithful servant, the United States government, have managed to get three pieces of legislation shot down by overwhelming public opposition, yet still had the time and the nerve to try to get their way by bypassing every democracy on Earth.

In the U.S., Obama has already signed us on to ACTA, although that doesn’t mean it will stick.  As Digital Commons explains it, “The problem is that the President lacks constitutional authority to bind the U.S. to the agreement without congressional consent; but that lack of authority may not prevent the U.S. from being bound to the agreement under international law.”  Then again, Obama might be left holding the bag on this one, as Poland and the Czech Republic have now suspended their ratification of ACTA and the European Parliament is about to get an earful encouraging them to not even bother.

Now back to the movies.  Yes, you’ve already had to hear and do a lot about this crap, you’re tired, it’s Friday and you want to go home, but we can’t walk away yet.  There would be no entertainment industry if the heroes never finished the job.  Go ask a focus group.  We’ve got to see this through and it is going to require a little more effort.

What can you do?  Once again, Fight for the Future has everything you need at KillACTA.org.  Join in one of the events mapped above, sign the TPP petition and don’t hang up your spurs until you write your representatives about ACTA, which you can take care of right here, in Brainerd…

From KillACTA.org:

Stop ACTA & TPP: Tell your country’s officials: NEVER use secretive trade agreements to meddle with the Internet. Our freedoms depend on it!



For European users, this form will email every MEP with a known email address.
Fight For The Future may contact you about future campaigns. We will never share your email with anyone. Privacy Policy

Here’s to happy endings!

February 10, 2012 | Comments (2)

Land of the Satisfactorily Free (or The U.S. Gets a Yellow Card)

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Thanks to Occupy Wall Street and the arrest of journalists covering it, the United States fell 27 places in Reporters Without Borders’ latest Press Freedom Index.  The thanks is for the heads up on yet another soft spot in our democracy.  You don’t have to look at this map long to appreciate what a rare thing freedom can be.

freedom of the press map(click to enlarge)

Sadly, there are 130 countries with less satisfactory conditions.  Some much less so…

From the release:

It is no surprise that the same trio of countries, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea, absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties, again occupy the last three places in the index. This year, they are immediately preceded at the bottom by Syria, Iran and China, three countries that seem to have lost contact with reality as they have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror, and by Bahrain and Vietnam, quintessential oppressive regimes. Other countries such as Uganda and Belarus have also become much more repressive.

That’s the other side of this coin.  It’s the place we are trying not to go when we cry foul.  It shouldn’t matter what you think of those getting arrested.  No news is bad news.

Unfortunately over the weekend the Oakland Police Department started working on dropping the United States down a few more slots.  On Saturday night, Occupy Oakland had another run-in with the OPD in which 400 people were arrested, including six reporters.

Though four were released on the scene, two got to see the inside of a jail before the night was over.  Gavin Aronsen was one of those two and wrote up the story over at Mother Jones.  Below, a couple of tweets from Kristin Hanes, one of the semi-lucky reporters, who sums it all up quite well:

Luckily a judge has had his eye on the OPD for a while now and this weekend likely increased the odds the department will go into federal receivership for being “woefully behind its peers around the state and nation”.  Not that Oakland’s is the only force dragging down the country’s freedom of the press rankings.  If you want to see the full journalist arrest tally or follow it as the Occupy movement continues its diagnostic tests of the United States’ checks and balances, Josh Stearns is tracking it right here.

[Press Freedom Index via Boing Boing; High-res map in report PDF]

January 30, 2012 | Comments (0)

Anything that Flies, on Anything that Moves

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Thanks to a declassified set of georeferenced bombing data, we now know that America’s official story on activity in Cambodia during the Indo-Chinese War bore little resemblance to the reality of the campaign.

From the article, Bombs Over Cambodia by Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan:

“The data released by Clinton shows the total payload dropped during these years to be nearly five times greater than the generally accepted figure. To put the revised total of 2,756,941 tons into perspective, the Allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during all of World War II, including the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 15,000 and 20,000 tons, respectively. Cambodia may well be the most heavily bombed country in history.”

(click to enlarge)

How does set a drastic course of action get set in motion?

“After telling Kissinger that the US Air Force was being unimaginative, Nixon demanded more bombing, deeper into the country: “They have got to go in there and I mean really go in…I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out of them. There is no limitation on mileage and there is no limitation on budget. Is that clear?”

Kissinger knew that this order ignored Nixon’s promise to Congress that US planes would remain within thirty kilometres of the Vietnamese border, his own assurances to the public that bombing would not take place within a kilometre of any village, and military assessments stating that air strikes were like poking a beehive with a stick.

…

Five minutes after his conversation with Nixon ended, Kissinger called General Alexander Haig to relay the new orders from the president: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?””

Read the whole story at The Walrus.

[via iRevolution]

January 26, 2012 | Comments (0)

Stop Being So Sensitive

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Think Progress’ headline lays it out starkly: Climate Change May Flip 40% of Earth’s Major Ecosystems This Century.The article questions whether or not species will be able to adapt to such quick change and an important point to remember is that we are one of those species.  …  A species projected to add two more billion to its ranks by 2050.

You don’t have to rush to the Sahara, but if you ever wanted to see tundra, don’t take your time about it.

[Map from Climatic Change journal via Think Progress via /r/collapse]
[Related: Get To Know Your Biomes]

January 12, 2012 | Comments (0)

What Could Possibly Go Wrong in 2012?

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What better way to start the new year than to consider for a moment all the things that could go terribly wrong this year, at least from the U.S. foreign policy perspective.  That’s what the Council on Foreign Relation’s Preventive Priorities Survey: 2012 intends to offer.  Culled from a “targeted group of government officials, academics and experts”, three tiers of possibility are mapped out:

Tier 1 – Contingencies that directly threaten the U.S. homeland, are likely to trigger U.S. military involvement because of treaty commitments, or threaten the supplies of critical U.S. strategic resources.
Tier 2 – Contingencies that affect countries of strategic importance to the United States but that do not involve a mutual-defense treaty commitment.
Tier 3 – Contingencies that could have severe/widespread humanitarian consequences but in countries of limited strategic importance to the United States.

If you’d like to see the specifics of the threats for each tier, check out the press release on the CFR’s site or, if you’d like to dig further, download the whole report (pdf).

Bonus Question:  If you were a country in the leftovers of Tier 4, would you be relieved or nervous not to have made the list?

[Map by Council on Foreign Relations via Zero Hedge]

January 2, 2012 | Comments (0)

A Vote to Remember

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Paying attention to politics is not a rewarding effort.  It’s one thing to hear about everything Congress passes into law and another to keep up with the all the things they are considering.  With the media and activists from both sides joining in, citizens are quickly turned into EMTs, called from one emergency to the next with constant email blasts.

Even if you hold out for the big issues, there’s plenty to keep you busy.  Last month it was the multiple copyright bills bouncing around the House and Senate that would basically give corporations the ability to censor the internet and enable a flood of lawsuits aimed at consumers.  The effort to stop SOPA and PROTECT-IP seems to be paying off, but the threat remains and action is still required.

This month, however, the stakes are even higher.  What is it this time?  Oh, just the prospect of indefinite detention of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.  No lawyer.  No trial.  Taxpayers could go straight to military prison, no longer having “due process” in their democracy bundle package.

The bill, S. 1867: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, is part of a yearly ritual where the military is sure to eventually get their money, which is starkly evident in the different votes for the bill and for the amendment to the bill, S.Admt.1107, proposed by Sen. Udall [D-CO], which would have scrapped the whole “indefinite detention” issue.

What’s worse: Senators specifically voting to allow indefinite imprisonment of their constituents or senators who voted to remove those provisions and, upon failing, voted for the bill containing said provisions?  Does something this big really have to come down to a veto?

It’s no wonder Congress’ disapproval rating is stuck in the 80% range.  We’ve got a little under a year before we get a chance to restock the ranks of Congress and this is a vote to remember then.

For more color on the situation, take your pick: Gawker breaks it down piece-by-piece, The Daily Show makes it sad but funny, plus articles from Forbes, Christian Science Monitor, Rolling Stone and the ACLU.

[Maps from GovTrack]

December 12, 2011 | Comments (3)

Where is Everyone Going?

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37.5 million Americans moved during 2010.  4.3 million changed states.

Find out where your neighbors went and who took their place…

(click for interactive map)

For contrast to Brooklyn’s traffic, check out some rural counties.

[Migration Map from Forbes]
[Related: To and Fro, Internationally]

November 29, 2011 | Comments (0)

A Map of Where to Give Thanks

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During hard times, being thankful for what we have comes a little easier.  Here’s a map to help guide your thoughts of thanks in regards to food.

But before you breath a sign of relief over there being so much room to grow more, remember that only 29% of the Earth’s surface is land and only 9% of it is arable.  And guess what, we’re not taking good care of it.

We have much to be thankful for, but it’s not a guaranteed condition.  They’ll still call it Thanksgiving, even if there’s hardly anything on your plate.  Just ask anyone with hardly anything on their plate.

[Map 1 from Radical Cartography, Map 2 from The Global Education Project]

November 23, 2011 | Comments (0)

Say Hello to Your PostNatural World

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Don’t let the continued debate over genetically modified foods fool you.  Field tests of GMO’s have been going full steam ahead.  Below you can see what was tried out in April 2007 alone.

If you missed yesterday’s Millions Against Monsanto in honor of World Food Day, there’s still two weeks left in October, which just happens to be Non-GMO Month.  Remember, knowing is half the battle, even with genetically modified foods, and that’s the half we’re still working on.  Tell the FDA that the least they can do is label it.

[Map from Center for PostNatural History (Thanks, Mason!)]

October 17, 2011 | Comments (0)

To and Fro, Internationally

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Ever thought about getting out of Dodge in a big way?  Looking for ideas?  At MigrationsMap.net, you’ll find a handy world map of information on where your fellow citizens have gone to and the origins of those who took their place…

The data comes from the Global Migrant Origin Database and gives a rough estimate of migrant populations circa 2000.  There were an estimated 175M migrants worldwide as of 2000, up from 75M in 1960.  But that’s only an increase from 2.5% to 2.9% of the total world population, which went from 3 billion-ish to 6 billion-ish in those same 40 years.

Anyway, here’s the list of lines that more than a million people have crossed, with the U.S. starting and finishing it off.

Pulling the full data set and counting up the complete totals for each country, the United States once again tops the list in positive net migration at 32.4M, with Mexico on the negative end of the spectrum at -9.7M.

But the impact of these numbers depend on the total population of each country.  Considering only countries with populations over one million, the United States comes in 15th in terms of migrant population as a percent of total 2000 population.  Meanwhile, Mexico falls just short of the list in regard to percent of population lost against the total population had no one left.

And finally, here’s the stats on all 24 countries with a population over 50M as of the 2000 censuses.

There’s a story behind every number on here.  Hopefully once we get all the numeric data visualized, the next wave of visual representations will work to connect the data to those stories.  We have so much data, but so little reference for it.

September 23, 2011 | Comments (0)