Recommended reading / surfing

I picked up a copy of the Jan / Feb 2007 issue of the Atlantic Monthly and I recommend it highly. Alas, the on-line edition of AM reserves much of the content from back issues for subscribers, but you may still be able to find a copy on your newsstand.

PJ O'Rourke's article on Mapping Innovation stands out as especially good, and within the article, the highlight is the visual representations of global trends available at Worldmapper. The site takes a standard map of the world, and distorts it to create comparisons between nations and regions.

A standard map shows each country's land-mass:
But what if, instead of land-mass, we mapped the distribution of, say, total births?

Or, for instance, population over 65: (note Europe and Japan)

Or, more disturbingly, war deaths in 2002:

I recommend the Atlantic and Worldmapper.

Peace.