This is a map of my home town, Visalia, CA, and the surrounding Tulare County. Located in the middle of California's Central Valley, Visalia is surrounded by a plethora of natural resources. The map pictured above shows how easily accessed the rivers and mountains are from Visalia and the neighboring communities. Camping is a very popular recreational activity for residents as noted by the many green tent symbols in the map and the different state parks denoted by the green tree symbols. Travel from one town to another is not difficult, as seen from the scale of the map in the bottom right hand corner. Significant mountain peaks are also listed with their respective elevations. I take a great interest in this map in how it represents the many different roads and highways one can utilize to experience my home.
This map was found on the "Downtown Voices Coalition" blog, an advocate group for the improvement and development of Phoenix, Arizona in a sustainable fashion. Originally from the US Global Change Research Program, the map depicts population change during the years 1970 to 2030 in a three-dimensional manner. As noted in the description, each section of the map represents an individual county in the US and the size of the block protruding from the section represents the amount of growth or decay in population predicted. Orange shaded blocks represent a growth in the population and blue shaded blocks represent a decline in population for that county. Interesting to note are the massive reduction in population of the northeastern part of the country and very concentrated areas of decline in the midwest. The western and southern coasts show a definite increase in population, but not as massive in scale as the decline noted in other areas. It makes one wonder where this data comes from and what is causing these massive exoduses.
This map was found on Raj Rao's "Aggregated Intelligence" Blog. A software engineer, Rao posts anything that he finds relevant to his work. Although most of his postings usually involve updates on the latest software, innovations in computing hardware, or just fun and interesting tidbits about trending research topics, this particular entry covers the dark and controversial topic of internet censorship. This map is very cluttered with many different lines representing internet communication intersecting each other in a dense network. The black areas on the map show the hard stop of communication by censorship in countries such as Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Maldives, Nepal, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. The caption of the map describes how news is unable to be circulated in these nations due to harsh government restrictions. This map itself was created by the "Reporters without Borders" Organization, a group dedicated to the freedom of the press. One wonders why, even in modern times such as ours, does censorship even exist. The white backing is almost entirely covered up by the proliferous lines of communication, yet these countries by whatever reason choose not to allow people access. It is truly mind boggling.
