Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with geography

Help us Find a Settling Location in the Soutwest

Dag Maggot — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:25:37 -0800

I'm a US expat living in Australia and am thinking of moving back to the US. But I have juxtaposed requirements for a settling location that I'm not sure I can meet. Here they are:
1. Need to be within a day's drive of my ageing parents in Las Cruces, NM.
2. Need a place that will support/employ a techie nerd type guy (me)
3. Need a place that has an alternative lifestyle culture that supports traditional midwifery and doulas (my partner)

Dairy in Asian Cuisine?

Yiggs — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:23:04 -0800

Why do dairy products have a limited geographic range in Asian cuisine? I've noticed a trend in my (admittedly limited) experience of Asian food: dairy products seem to be rarely featured, if not totally absent, in the cuisines of China, Japan, and some of Southeast Asia. Yet, just over the Himalayas, Indian cuisine has ghee and paneer, and the Mongolians have kumis. This also seems to be correlated with geographic distributions of lactose intolerance, with China, Japan and Southeast Asia having the highest rates in the world.

My initial guess was that, historically, geography prevented cultures with dairy-heavy cuisines from intermingling with dairy-free cultures - either the Himalayas or the Gobi Desert may have limited the movement of cattle into mainland China. But China seems to have plenty of opportunities to intermingle with other cultures, be it the Silk Road, the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty or even later trading with the Portuguese or Dutch. Why would the use of dairy products - which, if Wikipedia is to be trusted, greatly increases the amount of calories extracted from livestock - not be adopted by these cultures?

Website to sort and display different mountain heights?

seasparrow — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:56:36 -0800

Is there a website that would show the world sorted by elevation? I recently enjoyed reading Plague Year, a post-apocalyptic thriller. The main conceit of this science-fiction novel is that a nanotechnology plague that kills any warm blooded animal (including humans), but the disease self-destructs at altitudes above 10,000 feet. How much territory would this be across the whole planet? I liked the book. It isn't great literature, but the author, Jeff Carlson, thinks through the ramifications of a world where most mammals are now extinct and a tiny fragment of humanity clings to a few frozen mountain-tops. Carlson also doesn't shy away or sugar-coat the realities of such a situation. He also doesn't make it easy for his characters, unlike other authors in the post-apocalyptic genre. (Yes, I'm pointing at you, S.M. Stirling.) Some of the protagonists feel guilty about the cannibalism they had to resort to in order to survive, but at least they are alive, unlike 99.9% of the human race.

So, like I said, a fun read that got me thinking. My real question for the Hive Mind is-- in all the great variety of the internet, is there some sort of geographical website that would allow me to view the world through the filter of all elevations above 10,000 feet?

Which sparks another question: Have you seen the maps that occasionally appear showing what the world would look like if global warming caused the sea levels to rise 50 or 100 feet? Is there a website that will let you do that as well? Maybe even set your own parameters on how much you want the water levels to rise or fall, and then generate a map for you?

Does anyone work in the field? Isn't is called Geographical Information Systems? It sounds fascinating. I think I might enjoy working a GIS job eventually. Questions like these linger in my mind, so much so that I'm willing to spend my one-a-week currency of an AskMe question to see what the sophisticated and cosmopolitcal Mefite community has to say about it.

Thanks for your help, and I hope I'm not the only weirdo who thinks about these things!

Where's Cissylvania?

madcaptenor — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:38:40 -0800

Where's Cissylvania? There are some pairs of geographical names with "cis" and "trans" prefixes. These include Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul; the Ciskei and Transkei in apartheid South Africa; the Cisjordan (present-day Palestine) and Transjordan (present-day Jordan).

And then there's Transylvania.

Where's Cissylvania? (Or Cisylvania? I'm not even sure how to spell it.)

What can you see in satellite photos?

k. — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:33:01 -0800

Satellite photos: what interesting features can be seen or measured in them (or other aerial photos), and where can I get a supply of images? Examples I have already seen, from some crude Google-searching:
Roads
Buildings
Degree of development (urban/suburban/rural)
Oil spills (apparently these are usually hard to see)
Blooms of algae (cyanobacteria) in the Baltic Sea
Damage to buildings from earthquakes

More would be appreciated--the more specific, the better. These will be used in a computer vision system, so I'd especially like to know where I can find a supply of images containing whatever feature I'm looking for (including the above)--easy for buildings or roads, but hard for rare events like oil spills. Natural disasters seem interesting, if there are pictures available.

I would also consider some other kind of non-photographic data as well, if it could be combined with maps or photos. Don't worry whether you think it's suitable; any idea you have will help!

MixtapeFilter: Geography

natabat — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:54:57 -0800

I'm making a CD for a party whose theme is "Around the World" and I need ideas. I'm looking for popular songs that would go over well at a party of 20-somethings and are about specific geographical places, preferably outside of the U.S. I know I'm missing some obvious ones. Some examples:
Men At Work - Land Down Under
Toto - Africa
Murray Head - One Night in Bankok
Animaniacs - Wakko's World
They Might Be Giants - Istanbul

Why are so many contests limited to the continental United States?

yesno — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:49:51 -0800

Why are so many contests limited to the continental United States? For example check out these rules ([sic] on the misspelling in the URL) for the Conan O'Brien "Please Blow Up My Car" contest:

Open only to permanent, legal U.S. residents who are physically residing in one (1) of the forty-eight (48) continental United States or the District of Columbia (excluding Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands and other United States territories)

Now, I understand why you'd want to limit a contest to just the USA, and I can see that there might be legal reasons to limit a contest to states and not territories. But excluding Alaska and Hawaii, which are just as much part of the United States of America as Virginia, doesn't make sense to me.

Now, for this contest which involves moving cars around, you might think it has to do with saving money, but I can't see that moving a car from Juno would be all that much more expensive than moving one from western Maine.

A Wonderful Day in the Neighborhood...

richmondparker — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:19:03 -0800

Anybody know of a way to get a map that shows neighborhoods instead of just street names? If it helps, I'm looking for the 30062 area code...

Walk from Moscow to Istanbul?

sandraregina — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:52:15 -0800

I am trying to remember the name of a board game I played as a child. I got it free in the mail, and it was a travel/geography game. It was a game I got for free, probably from a government agency of some kind. I got the address from a book in the library, where you could write to different agencies and get things for free/very cheap.
It was a travel game that taught geography. The board was foam backed puzzle pieces, that you put together to form a map of the world. You then went from city to city, placing your pins as you went, and linking it with string (like embroidery floss). You travelled by walking, by car, a plane, or a train, depending on a dice roll or some similar randomization. There was also a little plastic ruler, for measuring out distances. There were cards that depicted different roles, and the cities you travelled to in the game were dependant on the role you picked (like international jewel theif, or diplomat, or archaeologist). You had to get to all your cities in the shortest distance possible. It came in a rather plain white box, and it took up a bit of room on the bookshelf at the foam puzzle map stacked up quite thick.
It was well made, at least for a free game, with a fun premise, decent rules, and pieces that stood up to some use. I can't for the life of me remember what it was called though. Does anyone else remember this game? Are there similar games out now?

Longitude Latitude Database

AdamOddo — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:26:49 -0800

A few years ago I had bookmarked a website that had a very plain search feature that allowed you to search names of all sorts of geographical whathaveyou and gave a table complete with longitude and latitude coordinates. I believe this site was US-centric (might have been USGS but I looked and failed) although it was possible to search for anything, world-wide. Ring any bells?

Problem-solver in search of suitable problems

McBearclaw — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:15:20 -0800

I think I finally understand what I like to do. So... what would I like to do? After many a year of soul-searching, I think I'm getting close to pinning down the things that I would like to do for a living. The problem now is identifying the jobs that would best bring those things together.

What I like: statistics, geography/GIS, and programming. In general, investigation and problem-solving. I like the first two because of their system-level perspective; I like the third because it's like magic, y'all, and it makes boring work disappear (although sometimes it is replaced by equal or greater quantities of interesting work; whatever). Best of all, I like combining all three, with healthy doses of data visualization thrown in.

These interests, of course, suggest some pretty obvious career choices: statistician, geographer, programmer. I find all of these appealing in theory, but I have some concerns:

I don't know enough about being a statistician, especially in academia; I worry that I might be too application-focused for that. I also have serious concerns about what's going to happen to the life academic over the coming years. Similarly, I don't know much about being a statistician outside of academia. The Census and related government organizations have been suggested to me, but they are out; while I have tremendous respect for the work they do, I greatly prefer analysis with a specific problem in mind.

I've read enough AskMeFi and thedailywtf to put the fear of career programming into me. I get the feeling that combining some programming skills with a domain area is the way to go for me - especially in a smaller organization - but I'm open to suggestions.

Of the three, I think "geographer of some sort" is the most promising, primarily because it could potentially include both statistics and programming. But what is it really like to be a geographer? Where do geographers find work? Are academic geographers in the same boat as academic statisticians?

For contrast, my current job is really wearing me down. I write reports about reports. I thought that I was getting hired into a fairly quantitative job, but I haven't done much more than a few t-tests in months. The best parts of it so far are when I have managed to turn boring work into awesome work: I automated several weeks' worth of copy/paste reporting work, and have learned a fair bit of HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

Any input is sincerely welcome. I'll happily consider jobs that are way outside of what I've mentioned above, too - I've often been told that I would make a good criminal investigator, and I really love woodworking and homebrewing. The fundamental keys are learning and problem-solving, I think.

I know this is vague, but I'll happily clarify anything I can. I know I'm lucky to have a relatively good job right now, but the recession won't last forever. I've got 3-4 years to work on getting ready for my next job, and I'd like to have at least some idea of where I'm going.

Thanks.

Languages of the Western Hemisphere

math — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 05:42:03 -0800

Awesome trivial question: How many official state languages are there in the Western Hemisphere? Give yourself a moment to think about this before you read my first guess on the inside. Here's what I have at first blush. English, Spanish, and Portugese are easy ones. French and Haitian Creole are both official languages of Haiti, and Dutch is the state language of Suriname. There's a little bit of Russia that sticks into the Western Hemisphere (it's the part that Sarah Palin can see from her front porch), so that counts as well.

So, that's seven.

Danish was once the official language of the now-US Virgin Islands, but I think that it was fairly marginal and anyways now that the islands are US, it's a moot point.

Any others that I'm missing?

Dammit, Mercator!

HumuloneRanger — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:05:15 -0800

Help me find a series of maps with various countries superimposed on the continental US. I used to spend hours poring over atlases as a kid. One of my favorite maps came from a community college course that my grandfather took; it was a map of Africa something like this. Looking back, I really appreciate what an intuitive grasp that gave me of just how HUGE the continent is, when we're usually so accustomed to the Mercator projection.

However, I still find it difficult to get a sense of the sizes of individual countries compared to my own. I'm familiar with common verbal comparisons, e.g. 'France is about the size of Texas,' and the CIA World Factbook is pretty good about providing some less common ones, but this is the sort of thing where a visual is much more helpful. My google-fu is failing me, perhaps because I'm not coming up with a very good search string. This isn't very helpful, because it's cluttered with too many borders and cities and is clearly just two areas from different latitudes of the same Mercator projection. I think this site captures the basic idea of what I'm looking for, although I'd prefer higher quality maps and less in the way of politicization. Something like this map of Alaska, but with India, Japan, Nigeria, etc in its stead.

I can haz demographic displays, plz?

WidgetAlley — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:09:46 -0800

I am in need of a program that will allow me to display demographic information by county on a state map. Recommendations? I am interning for the Legal Aid society over the summer, and part of my work includes compiling demographic statistics about their client population and figuring out a way to display it in a way that ties in with a map of our area (Tennessee.) I am looking for a program set up for this, and that will allow me to create some quite sophisticated displays-- for instance, percentage of total population vs. percentage of clients per county, dominant type of cases per county, etc.

Legal Aid is fairly well-funded, but we are still a non-profit; we are willing to make a cash commitment but don't have a whole lot of money to throw around, so cheaper/free is better! Thank you from a lowly intern!

Any interesting map theory books?

slab_lizard — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:06:27 -0800

I'm looking for suggested book(s) for backgrounding myself in map theory. Think somewhere between a history of maps and a technical textbook. I've been looking at maps for 30+ years as a non-geographer, and will be taking some GIS and mapping courses this autumn. So, plenty of text-and-classroom exposure there. What kind of semi-technical background reading would be useful over the summer?

Mysterious disappearing Google lake

UnclePlayground — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:50:55 -0800

What is the name of this body of water in southeast Ohio? What is the name of this body of water in southeast Ohio. It is east of Greasy Ridge, Ohio and south of Polka Dot, Ohio.
No, it is not "Scottown, Ohio". That's just what Google maps is calling this spot/area.

Bonus question: why does it appear on Google maps satellite view, but not on the "map" view as a blue body of water?

Bonus, Bonus question: who "owns" this body of water? I'd like to fish it and ask for permission. ;)

Thanks!

New York, the final frontier. Help me understand the geographic lingo.

milqman — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:04:41 -0800

New Yorkers seem to have an incredibly detailed implicit and explicit knowledge of their city. I want to know more. New York has burrows, streets, neighborhoods, mass transit, parks and all the rest of it. New Yorkers seem to have all of this knowledge deeply ingrained in their psyche. You always see statements on AskMe like:
"oh, there is a ridiculously tiny shop that does that exact thing on broadway at fifth" (just making that intersection up, I don't even know that it exists)
-or-
"You are going to have a hard time getting an apartment at that price in that part of town below 53rd"
-or-
"Oh yeah, just take the orange train to 6th, then transfer to the M line southbound, hop on the #562 bus, and get off exactly 2 minutes and 45 seconds after the stop by that excellent bagel shop."

1: How does this knowledge become so ingrained? Do people really just answer questions about the parts of town that they travel through everyday or is it that New Yorkers all use he same basic language to communicate geography?

2: How (or where online) would I learn about the neighborhoods/areas of New York without actually going there? To a New Yorker, it means something if you say "I live on the Upper West Side, on 10th". I have no idea what that means. Does that mean they are rich or does that mean that they live in a roach infested half-condemned hovel? Is there any sort of reference for this kind of "meta" information? Like which neighborhoods are safe to go out at night, which neighborhoods mean that you are an i-banker or executive?

3: Which areas are where for that matter? For example, the Upper east side, where is that? When someone says they live in Queens and commute to Manhattan, how could I get an idea about what their commute is like, how long it takes, what areas they go through, and whether that is a popular route for that kind of person to make or if it is a very atypical arrangement of work and home?

Generally speaking, when someone uses any of the top ten or so geographic locations in NY, where are they referring to, and what are the connotations associated with that location?

References would be excellent, personal opinions and listing would also be perfect. Help me understand the lingo better.

Desire Paths/Lines: the original translation and related concepts/terms

0bvious — Mon, 25 May 2009 10:37:04 -0800

Desire Paths / Lines: a term apparently coined by Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space. What was the original French he used? and are there any other terms for the act and outcome of paths that emerge through routine, reflexion and the feedback of movement. What was Bachelard's original name for desire lines, in French?

Also, I am not just interested in desire lines as object/artefact, but the actual act of creating/adding to desire lines. Is there a different term for this? or a series of related terms? any terms from other areas/disciplines which pop into your head?

Some past ask.mefis that touch on this subject:

http://ask.metafilter.com/62599/Where-the-sidewalk-ends
http://ask.metafilter.com/45203/Too-lazy-to-take-a-hardright

I'd really love to read any notions/ideas you have regarding this concept. Thanks!

Where in the world is.........

micklaw — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:47:52 -0800

Please pass on your favourite online mapping websites, with an emphasis on interactive applications. I really love maps. I spend a lot of time using a variety of (mainly educational) online maps such as the WWF Wildfinder, NationMaster, Reuters AlertNet, Globalis and the very excellent Geoscience Australia Sentinel Bushfire tool and so on. Maps of War is also an excellent resource in a similar vein, although not as interactive as those previously listed.

Anyway, the internet being what it is, I am sure there are many more fantastic resources online that I have not yet come across and I would love to tap the collective mind of Metafiler users to help me expand my mapping horizons.

Post your recommendations, particularly with an emphasis on non-US maps (global or other regions would be most useful) as these will be used in a non-US school.

Thanks in advance!

how many Americans own 40 acres or more of land?

rzperllian — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:25:37 -0800

how many Americans own 40 acres or more of land? I'm trying to find statistics about the nature of private land ownership in the US and can't figure out where I need to look or if this information exists. I want to know what percentage of adult Americans own a sizeable chunk of land - my hunch is that most don't, and that the number is dwindling. Any help is appreciated.

US Census I only found homeownership statistics, which is different.
USDA Census helps with farm ownership numbers, but no other.

Why have the NBA's western teams been better than its eastern teams in recent years?

ORthey — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:06:52 -0800

Is there a geographical reason the NBA's Western Conference has been so much better than the East? What's the deal? It does seem in the past couple years the East is catching up and, who knows, maybe is better this year, but that said - the West has been dominating (at least during the regular season) for some time now. I wonder if anyone knows of any articles that specifically address WHY and HOW this happened, rather than what I see all the time, which is more about PROVING the west's superiority, using stats and such.

Given that there are no rule differences (as in MLB with the DH, for example, which leads to totally different strategy), it doesn't make any intuitive sense that teams in one half of the country would generally be better than the other - other than migration of better players to the better conference.

Ideas, theories, and resources welcome!

If I only had a widget...

nosila — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:16:34 -0800

I'm looking for a Dashboard widget for Mac OS X that will help me get better at geography. I've found the Worldview Widget and the countries widget, but neither is exactly right.

Ideally, the main interface would be a normal old colored map with country borders and country/capital names that I could zoom into/out of. It would be a bonus if I could switch between a map/satellite view a la Google Maps, but if I had to choose, I would prefer a plain old map.

The Worldview Widget is close, but it's really small, and you can't make it larger. It also doesn't have a non-Google-Earthy map; it's all satellite imagery. I do really like the extra info it gives, though.

The Countries widget is too simplistic.

It is key to me that it works in Dashboard.

Why is Sudan frequently referred to with an article, as in the Sudan?

christhelongtimelurker — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:16:15 -0800

Why is Sudan frequently referred to with an article, as in the Sudan?

diagonalism - a new science of mental health

anazgnos — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:02:20 -0800

What is this odd geographical feature in Long Beach, CA? See the diagonal strip running from the upper left to lower right on the google map. It can be followed for several miles northwest from the linked point. Zoom in and check it out, and you'll see that it's pretty well defined for the several-mile span both by surrounding development and non-development.

I've had it suggested that it may have been an old rail line, but haven't found anything concrete on that. There's nothing really visible or tangible to it at ground level, but I'm curious why seemingly everything developed in the area has stuck precisely either within or without that diagonal footprint relative to the surrounding street grid. If it was a rail line removed sometime in the 60s or 70s, that'd probably explain the way it looks now, but I'd love to find out what, if anything, was there.

Thanks!

Geography Bee

iconjack — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 17:34:42 -0800

Looking for Geography Bee questions online. We're solid on world geography, so we're looking for material that concentrates on the US.