At least some of us seem to be spending time during quarantine drinking wine: wine sales though March were up 42% over the same period last year. This topological map shows global wine exports. howmuch.net/articles/world-map-wine-exports-2019
0 Comments
Can construction practices influence a country's recipes? Apparently, yes. When the Spanish arrived in the Philippines and began building churches, they insisted on using egg whites in the concrete mix to strengthen the mortar. The number of eggs used in this way is believed to have run into the millions. What to do with all the extra egg yolks? Make flan, cakes, and other egg-rich desserts, of course -- a practice still in evidence in Filipino cooking today.
www.atlasobscura.com/articles/filipino-desserts With hand-washing and hygiene in the news, it may come as a surprise to many Americans that toilet paper is not always flushed after use. This map shows cultural practices (linked to plumbing capacities) regarding the use of toilet paper. brilliantmaps.com/flush-toilet-paper
These maps from a recent New York Times article look at "upmarket bubbles" (locations that are five miles or less from a Whole Foods, Lululemon, Apple store, or Urban Outfitters) vs. "down-home zones" (locations that are at least five miles from an upmarket bubble and within 10 miles of a Bass Pro Shop, Hobby Lobby, Cracker Barrel, or Tractor Supply). In 2016, 34% of American voters lived in an upmarket bubble and 50% lived in a down-home zone. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/27/upshot/democrats-may-need-to-break-out-of-the-whole-foods-bubble.html
In digging through loads of data from various sources, the website Thrillist has created this map highlighting one thing each state is "best" at. tinyurl.com/wwn9av5
One of the things my geography students explore on occasion is how cultural traditions are updated for the 21st century. This video showcases The Hu, a group from Mongolia that blends traditional Mongolian instruments and throat singing with a heavy metal motif. If you like throat singing -- or have never heard it -- this video is worth checking out. This map looks at religious traditions around the world. (What is especially interesting to me about these sorts of maps are the outliers and the cultural geography that contributes to their unexpected status.)
www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/epkate/genealogy_of_religions_abrahamic_versus_dharmic/ President Donald Trump's recent threat to target Iranian cultural sites raises the question, "What are Iran's cultural sites?" This interactive site allows users to view and learn about Iran's 22 cultural and two natural UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including Persepolis, the Golestan Palace, and the Sheikh Lotfollah mosque built by Shah Abbas in Esfahan: whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/ir
I saw a t-shirt in a shop in Hawaii several years ago that stuck with me because the philosophy was both profound and a dramatic departure from that of the East Coast of the U.S.: There are two ways to get rich in Hawaii One last photo instead of a map. This is the Hawaiian state fish, known in English as the reef triggerfish. In Hawaiian, its name is humuhumunukunukuapua'a. The Hawaiian language was oral, not written, until missionaries arrived in the islands in the early 1800s and used English letters to capture Hawaiian sounds. It turns out that the Hawaiian language employed only 12 sounds: the five vowels plus seven consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, and w). Not surprisingly, many Hawaiian words transcribed into English are long and, to outsiders, look confusingly similar. The Hawaiian language is related to languages spoken elsewhere in Oceania, including Tongan, Maori, Samoan, and Tahitian. (Politically, Hawaii may be part of the United States, but geographically it is actually part of Oceania.)
This map, assembled by Business Insider based on U.S. Census data, looks at the language most commonly spoken at home, other than English or Spanish, in each state. In Hawaii, that language is Ilocano. Previously, it was Tagalog. Students who have taken my "Your Future World: Human Geography 2050" class may recognize both Tagalog and Ilocano as languages spoken in the Philippines. image.businessinsider.com/5d07a1e16fc920279f04aea5?width=1600&format=jpeg&auto=webp
Not a map today but a photo: a tray of lilikoi (passion fruit-filled) malasadas. A malasada is a Hawaiian treat, a yeast doughnut brought to the islands by Portuguese immigrants. In the second half of the 19th century, Portuguese sugarcane workers were recruited in the Azores to come work in Hawaii's sugarcane fields. Although there is no longer any commercial sugar production in Hawaii -- the last sugar mill closed in 2016 -- there are still sugary malasadas, a reflection of Hawaii's complex cultural geography.
Have a Scottish surname somewhere in your family history? Or maybe a particular Scottish clan was mentioned in a book or movie? This map shows historic holdings of Scotland's clans. www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/e67d0r/map_of_the_scottish_clan_lands/
Thanksgiving is a major travel holiday in the U.S. As this geo-graphic shows, though, Thanksgiving pales in comparison to the Chinese lunar new year holiday and the Hindu festival of Prayag Kumbh Mela. infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_16906_holiday_travel_events_n.jpg
This geo-graphic, which looks at witchcraft trials and executions in Europe from 1300-1850, caught my attention because the students in my online modern drama class just finished discussing The Crucible. www.statista.com/chart/19801/people-tried-and-executed-in-witch-trials-in-europe/ As the accompanying article notes, though, trials and executions for witchcraft continue around the world, just not in Europe any more. For those interested in learning more about Europe's witch hunts, this podcast from the University of Texas's "15 Minute History" series is short and worthwhile: 15minutehistory.org/podcast/episode-55-witch-hunting-in-early-modern-europe/ Happy Halloween!
This map, based on Google search data (as opposed to sales or consumption), shows the most popular Halloween candy by state:
www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/da5mdf/the_most_popular_halloween_candy_in_every_us_state/ It was announced recently that the U.S. is blacklisting certain Chinese high-tech companies for the Chinese government's mistreatment of China's Muslim minorities. This Reddit map looks at ethnic distributions across China. The two major Muslim minorities are the Uighurs (spelled various ways), a Turkic-speaking people more closely related to the other Turkic-speakers of Central Asia, concentrated in Xinjiang province in the far northwest of China and the Hui, a Chinese-speaking Muslim minority concentrated in Ningxia province south of Mongolia. i.redd.it/o72uxf3i02i31.jpg
WalletHub released its annual ranking of U.S. states by happiness, with Hawaii, Utah, and Minnesota at the top of the list. (And West Virginia, Arkansas, and Alaska at the bottom of the list.) Follow the link for details on all 50 states and methodology. wallethub.com/edu/happiest-states/6959/
In the U.S., "the Midwest" is one of those vaguely defined geographic terms. What are the boundaries of the Midwest anyhow? CityLab is running a simple quiz, linked to in this article, asking people if they live in the Midwest or not. The areas in dark green on this map have an 80-100% self-identification as being in the Midwest. But even some residents of places like Buffalo, NY, think they are Midwesterners. (Being from the Midwest, I have very specific ideas on the answer to this question and can't imagine what people in some of the light green areas were thinking when they said no and would exclude many people who seem to want to include themselves :-).) www.citylab.com/life/2019/08/where-is-the-midwest-map-geography-great-lakes-rust-belt/597082/
Diet is a key component of cultural geography. In many countries, such as China, meat eating has increased with growing affluence. This geo-graphic, though, looks at the growth in vegetarianism, with some surprising countries out on top (at least as far as percentage change is concerned): www.statista.com/chart/18852/countries-with-the-biggest-increase-of-the-vegetarian-population-between-2016-and-2017/
This map looks at states' current treatment of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines: www.statista.com/chart/18924/states-without-a-ban-on-assault-rifles-and-large-capacity-magazines/
Jaipur, India, southwest of Delhi, is renowned for its January book festival and its pink sandstone architecture. The Palace of the Winds is an example of the latter. Built in 1799, the intricate facade of the Palace of the Winds is akin to an enormous screened-in porch for the women's section of the palace. www.atlasobscura.com/places/palace-of-winds
Under international law, a stateless person is a person who does not possess nationality of any state. Often, this occurs because a given group is denied citizenship, as in the case of the Rohingya in Myanmar or the Burkinabé in the Côte d’Ivoire. Other times, it occurs because of border disputes, war that disrupts documentation, or because citizenship is passed patrilineally in a given country and patrimony cannot be proved. Being stateless generally means an individual lacks the paperwork to legally travel, work, access health care, marry, or open a bank account. As of 2018, the UN recorded nearly 3 million stateless persons. (This number does not include stateless persons who have registered as refugees in another country, as more than 1 million Rohingya have in Bangladesh.) This map shows the geographic distribution of stateless persons. (from popstats.unhcr.org/en/overview)
The Pew Research Center is one of the most well-respected names in demographic research, including religious demography. This series of maps shows in which country or countries at least 50% of adherents of a given religion live. www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/FT_Religions_Big.png (From https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/08/27/many-religions-heavily-concentrated-in-one-or-two-countries/)
|
Blog sharing news about geography, philosophy, world affairs, and outside-the-box learning
Archives
December 2023
Categories
All
|