Some of Limbaugh’s Stations

While listening to an NPR story this evening about Rush Limbaugh’s lack of concern over the possibility of losing sponsors, I had a thought: what would a map of all stations carrying his show look like? I had AM station contours sitting around from the Red Sox Radio Rivalry map I made last summer. 526 of these contours matched stations listed on Rush Limbaugh’s site. Only 53 (of over 100) FM stations were then added to the mix; these are based on the FCC’s licensing database. To give an idea of how many people have traditional radio access to his show, I’ve mapped these stations on top of population density.

Mr. Limbaugh claims that losing 28 sponsors to him is “like losing a couple of French fries from the container when they’re handed to you at the drive-thru.” Assuming some diversity in regional advertising, this map (despite being admittedly incomplete) pretty much confirms this analogy.

Bogus Frank Lloyd Wright Map

 

In honor of NACIS 2011 in Madison: A Bogus Art Map of the Lower 48 states inspired by the style of Wisconsin native Frank Lloyd Wright. It turns out Wright was involved in the design of a number of wallpaper patterns, as seen in Schumacher’s Taliesin Line of Decorative Fabrics and Wallpaper. Yikes.

All Conterminous Memorials

Have you ever wondered how many place names in the conterminous United States have the word ‘memorial’ in them? Well, neither had I… until a few minutes ago. It turns out there are ~11,636 such features. And, since I’ve been all about population density proxy maps and the GNIS lately, here they are:

 

The Political & Transportational Geography of Cell Tower Placement

After my post on television broadcast areas as a proxy for population density, I thought I’d have a look at cellular service area boundaries. Here, lighter areas represent more (or, really, redundant) cell coverage. This data is also courtesy of the FCC.

I expected this map to more or less mirror the television map, with added coverage along highways. It does this to a degree, but there are some unexpected patterns too. Dallas befuddles me, for example (though this is probably an odd data issue, rather than an actual lack of cell reception in the 9th largest city in the US). Something that does seem interesting to me here is the clear state and county boundaries that appear. Notice how easy it is to see the Maryland-Delaware line, as well as Minnesota-Iowa and others. So, what’s going on? Is this a tax thing? Is there some benefit to building cell towers on state lines? Or is this simply a matter of small overlaps where cell towers are built to “just reach” state lines?

I don’t rightly know. But I’ll post it up, if I find out.

Overnight #Abbottabad Twitter Chatter

We are seeing plenty of maps and stats on social media chatter following the big news yesterday. Not knowing what else to do (other than follow the news), I made this quick and dirty map. I used Jeremy White’s twitter-hitter program to collect geolocated tweets mentioning the town (#abbottabad or #abbottābād) where US forces found Osama bin Laden. The data was collected during the 8 hours following President Obama’s speech. White dots are tweets; gray dots are Natural Earth populated places. If nothing else, this map confirms that people in the US were up through the night tweeting about this now-(in)famous place.

Call: Art in Modern Cartography > NACIS 2011

Those of you who have attended a conference even vaguely related to cartography in the last couple of weeks may have already seen the above image. If so, I’m guessing it was handed to you with a smile and a verbal invitation to come to Madison, Wisconsin in October for the best cartography, geohacking, map collecting, map art, geodesign, &c. conference of the year. (Sorry, ICC. Paris is great, but it’s not NACIS in Madison. Of course I am slightly biased as a graduate student living in… er, Madison.) But if you have not yet seen this call for participation, I urge you to have a look at it and seriously consider either presenting or attending. This year’s conference promises to be a cartographic barn-burner. The theme is dynamic and will speak to GIScientists, cartographers, journalists, information designers, librarians, and artists alike. Let’s face it—no matter what kind of work you are doing in the field, this is an age of data, and it will do us all well to address this question: How does design make a difference?

Part of my stab at addressing this question will be in the form of a session on Art in Modern Cartography. Does this sound like something else you may have seen on my blog recently? If it does, there is a reason. What started as a one-off cheeky Venn diagram created in Chicago O’Hare whilst coping with extreme sleep deprivation after a red-eye returning from AAG snowballed into a somewhat lively blogospheric debate concerning the placement of “art” in cartography on the Web. This debate snowballed so much, in fact, that I decided to pull together a NACIS 2011 session.

Now, I should explain that I am well aware that the art/science debate in cartography has been going on for decades. The number of books and articles on the subject is impressive (and constantly growing). But in the literature I have seen, very little discussion has taken place regarding art in cartography on the Web. So, my hope with this session is to fill that gap and have that discussion by addressing how art plays into modern cartography both on and off the Web.

What. NACIS 2011 Session > Art in Modern Cartography.

When & Where. October 12-14, 2011 > Madison, Wisconsin

Purpose. To investigate the ways art influences, drives, inspires and facilitates various forms of modern cartographic design (on and off the Web).

Participants. I am very pleased to be able to report that I have received some interest in this session already. So far, we will hear from cartographer-artists who have specialties ranging from mental maps to digital and analog art and information design to critical cartography, &c.

Call. I would love to hear from more carto-artistic folks who might be interested in participating in this session. If this seems right up your alley, drop me a line and I will fill you in on the details. The format of the session is going to be mildly nontraditional. So, if long papers and big crowds make you wince, don’t be shy.

Contact. twallace2 [at] wisc [dotty-dot] edu.

Promotional Venn (last one, I swear).

Bogus Jannis Kounellis Map

A Bogus Art Map of the Lower 48 states inspired by the style of Jannis Kounellis.