A Map Animation of the Atomic Age

Via Boing Boing and The New Yorker, a map animation that shows every detonation of a nuclear bomb until 1998, by Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto:



Says The New Yorker:

It is the sort of set of pictures that makes you want to read—to learn more, for example, about how it came to be that France exploded more than a tenth of those bombs (two hundred and ten); China blew up forty-five. Not that anyone was taking cover in Provence: if you don’t watch the icons above and below the map, you might think that Algeria, and not France, was the world’s fourth nuclear-armed power (and that Australia, not Britain, was the third). The Gerboise Bleue explosion, of a seventy-kiloton device, took place in 1960, in the Sahara desert, in the midst of the Algerian war; several others followed. (Later, after Algeria gained its independence, France’s tests moved to French Polynesia; its last one was in 1996.)

It's a wonder Nevada's even still habitable - though I guess you could make an argument that it's not, really...

Hanging of the Parliament

So they went ahead and had those elections in the UK, as you may have heard. The result was a major victory for primary colors, as this Wikipedia map shows. (Blue = Conservatives; Red = Labour; Yellow = LD; assorted = regional and minor parties):



The political parties, however, didn't do so hot. Oddly, though electoral politics is supposedly a zero-sum game, all three major parties managed to lose. The Tories fell short of the majority they were hoping for; Labour lost a ton of seats and had their worst showing in decades; and the Lib Dems, despite anticipation of major gains and predictions that they might crack 100 seats, actually lost a handful of seats. The Tories now have 305 seats, to Labour's 258, and the Lib Dems' 57, with the rest distribute amongst various regional parties and a Green. With ~323 needed to form a majority, the parliament is, as they say, hung.

For comparison, this is what the map looked like after the last election, in ought-five:

UK Election Calculator

The BBC has an election seat calculator for the upcoming UK elections:



I will say this: UK electoral democracy appears to be pretty messed up. Like, US-caliber mess up. I say this because as you can see, I've set the calculator so that the 3 majorest parties all get just about the same percentage of the vote (a third each, if you want to check my math). Yet look at the seat distribution that results from that popular vote outcome:



See? Messed up. Everyone gets the same number of votes but the Tories and Lib Dems combined don't have as many seats as Labour. W, if I may say, TF? I assume this is a function of the Lib Dem vote being highly concentrated in ethnic areas? And the conservative vote being somewhat concentrated in rural areas? But I'm sort of projecting from the American political scene, so that may be way off base.

At any rate, the BBC's "poll of polls" currecntly shows the Conservatives with a slight lead: 33% to 29% for each of the other two parties. That would result in 285 votes fo Labour to 244 for the conservatives, and a whopping 92 seats for team yellow. Democracy!!!And since this would result in a hung parliament, I assume the High Court would intervene and choose the victor in a 5-4 ruling according to their own political predilections. What, isn't that how everyone does it?

The Decline and Fall of Assorted Empires

A visualization of four European empires over the course of the 19th and 20th Centuries:



The bubbles respresent "the evolution of the top 4 maritime empires of the XIX and XX centuries by [areal] extent"; hence Britain's loss of Canada looks like a more significant bursting of the imperial bubble than its loss of India, even though India is obviously a far more important place than Canada.

Via Andrew Sullivan and 3quarksdaily.

London's Underground: The First Circle of Hell?

The Underground is hot, according to this heat map of heat:



Says Times Online:

It is easy to feel sorry for commuters on the London Underground at this time of year, crammed into stuffy carriages with the temperature rising. But some passengers, it appears, are more deserving of pity than others.

A map compiled by Transport for London (TfL) has revealed the hottest spots on the Tube network, notorious for its lack of air-conditioning.

The map, which covers most of the Underground lines in zones one and two, was compiled by TfL officials to identify areas most in need of cooling, but it will be a handy aid for travellers anxious to avoid the worst spots.

The hottest parts of the Central Line were above 30C (that's 86 in 'Merican numbers) on the hottest day of 2008. Notes the Times: "In previous tests, temperatures in some carriages during the summer have exceeded 35C [95F], which would make the network officially unfit for transporting cattle." Upon reading this line, the hooved population of Texas collectively burst into derisive laughter, rolling gaily among the prickly pears and bullnettles for some hours. (They're big readers of Times Online, oddly.)

My point: that's not all that hot, especially for the hottest day of the year. How did the Brits ever manage to stick around India long enough to comprehensively exploit the place?

Elections in the UK: Labour Gets Whomped

The center-left didn't just lose in the elections for European parliament - they got creamed in local elections in the UK. This map, from Times Online, shows the comprehensiveness of the shellacking:



Says the BBC:

The Tories took councils from Labour and the Lib Dems including Derbyshire, run by Labour since 1981.

The Lib Dems won control in Bristol while Labour lost control of all of its four councils.

Labour deputy Harriet Harman admitted the results were "disappointing" but said the party would learn from them.

The Conservatives took Staffordshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire from Labour - which had run all of them for more than 25 years - as well as Devon and Somerset from the Lib Dems...

With all the results in from the 34 councils which held elections, the Tories gained 233 councillors while Labour lost 273 seats and the Lib Dems four - although Sussex's results are provisional pending a recount in one ward.

According to the BBC's projections, the Conservatives garnered 38% of the national vote with Labour falling to a historic low of 23%.

The Lib Dems polled an estimated 28% of the vote, with other parties on 11%.

I understand there are certain peculiarities in British politics at the moment. Nonetheless, the poor results for Labour are no doubt partly due to the fact that the economy has gone hang-gliding without a glider on Labour's watch. And it kind of points up one of the absurdities of representative democracy: utterly contingent factors play an enormous role in the outcome of elections. For instance, the Great Depression traumatized countries around the world. In the US, the response was to elect Franklin Roosevelt and the most liberal government in US history. In Germany, the response to elect Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In both countries, the economy eventually improved; and in both countries, the new government got the credit. Likewise, the tanking economy didn't help the Republicans in the US last fall, and it's not helping Labour in the UK now. But all of this is quite aside from who's actually responsible for the tanked economy.

Depression in England and Wales

From Mark Easton, another interesting social map of the UK. This one shows the number of anti-depressant prescriptions per 1000 patients for January of this year.



Anti-depressant demand is especially booming in Wales and northern England. Says Easton:

The top seven [districts for anti-depressant prescription] are all Welsh Local Health Boards (LHBs) in a small area in the south of the country. Of the top thirty prescribers, 12 are in Wales and 10 are Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in the north-east of England.

We even see a local health authority prescribing at a rate greater than one prescription for 10 patients. In Torfaen, the area around Pontypool in south Wales, GPs handed out 104 prescriptions per 1,000 patients during January. This appears to be an astonishing level of anti-depressant use. GPs we have contacted blame a shortage of counselling for the high prescribing levels.

Those two areas have relatively high rates of unemployment. Easton also points out, though, that London, which has lots of poor folks, has some of the lowest rates of anti-depressant use; so a simple correlation to economic factors can't explain away all the trends. Beyond that: is it too trite to say that northern England is just a more depressing place to live than London? There's the bad economy, but there's also the erosion of infrastructure, the past-their-primeness of cities and institutions, and the general sense of malaise of a region whose industrial might peaked during some century other than the one we're in. If, as in my imagined picture of the place (which I have never visited), the actual north ofEngland is like the Michigan or Upstate New York of The UK, I think that maybe no great exegesis is needed to explain the region's higher anti-depressant use.

Regarding Wales, though, I don't have any overly simplistic and ignorant opinions to offer. Commenters on Easton's blog variously suggest the availability of free scrips in Wales; decrepit housing; unaffordable housing; oldness of the population; poor whiteness of the population; the social history of the region; the fecklessness of Labour politicians; Thatcher's anti-union policies; and average annual rainfall. I will go out on a limb and say: some or all of those factors may or may not be involved.

The Atheist Map of the UK

The Guardian has an interactive map of religious belief - or the lack thereof - in the UK.



The map is based on a survey by the think tank Theos which polled respondents on their beliefs about human origins. The map indicates the percentage of the population who agree with the proposition that 'evolution removes the need for God.' The map gives stats for each region of the country; the pie chart on the left is for the Eatern region - the most atheistic region of the country, where fully 4 out of 9 people say that evolution obviates a religious explanation for the existence of life.

Here are the regions of the country ranked by lack of religiosity:
1. Eastern - where 44% agree that 'evolution removes the need for God'
2. Southwest - 40%
2. Southeast - 40%
4. Northeast - 39%
5. Yorks and Humber - 38%
5. East Midlands - 38%
7. Northwest - 36%
7. West Midlands - 36%
9. Scotland - 34%
10. Wales - 32%
11. London - 31%
12. Northern Ireland - 28%

London's low ranking is a bit of a shocker. Could it be the large immigrant population there importing beliefs from more devout corners of the globe?

It's interesting to compare this map to the map of atheism in the US. The most obvious thing to note is that the US is way more religious than the UK. The two maps aren't 100% comparable. In fact, neither map directly depicts self-reported atheists as such: the US map shows "non-religious" population, and this UK map shows those who choose belief in evolution over belief in God, when given the choice. But those are both pretty good proxies for atheism/agnosticism. And a comparison shows that the most religious regions of the UK barely approach the least religious regions of the US: only the states of Vermont (34%) and New Hampshire (29%) have more non-believers than the most religious region of the UK, Northern Ireland (28%).

But none of that is too surprising. What I find more interesting is a possible correlation between the UK and the US. The most religious regions of the UK are Scotland and Northern Ireland. Those happen to be the source regions for the Scots-Irish who populated the the American South as early as the early 18th Century and contributed much to the development of the culture of that region, which is now the most religious in the US. Of course, the South is far more religious than Northern Ireland or Scotland is today; but could the relative strength of religion in these areas within the context of their broader societies be causally related? Is it a function of that centuries-old cultural kinship? It seems possible.

The Disappearance of the English Countryside

A study from the Campaign to Protect Rural England maps the effect of urbanization and development on the english countryside.






From the summary of the report:

We have developed a method of mapping areas of intrusion in England. These are areas disturbed by the presence of noise and visual intrusion from major infrastructure such as motorways and A roads, urban areas and airports. The resulting maps show the extent of intrusion in the early 1960s, early 1990s and 2007.

The report also has extensive data tables so you can see, for instance, that Oxfordshire County has gone from 75.45% undisturbed in the 1960s, to 54.63% in the early 1990s, to 41.45% today. It has such figures for all counties in England.

The maps are interesting in their own rights; but I'm also intrigued by the difference in the premise of this study from what you might see coming from a conservationist society in the U.S. In the States, you don't see much of this sort of concern with the aesthetic corruption of the countryside; what you do see is a concern for keeping areas in a state of uncorrupted wilderness (however that is defined). The American approach may be sentimental, in some ways, but it's not particularly aestheticist. I'm sure this has to do with the fact that the U.S. has an enormous amount of rural land, and it's not under threat of being consumed whole by a nation-swallowing urban conglomeration; and then, too, there's the fact that England doesn't really have any wilderness left to preserve. But I wonder if there's also a different approach to nature going on here: Americans see nature as an Eden to be preserved, or exploited for its resources; Brits see it as a garden to be managed. But this is just an idle hypothesis - anyone have any thoughts on this (poossible) cultural difference?

Place of the Week: Sealand

It's another edition of the possibly inadvisable series, Place of the Week. Today I give you: the littlest and most oxymoronically named (micro-)nation on Earth, Sealand.



Status: ambiguous
Form of government: constitutional monarchy
Founded: 2 September 1967
Area: 0.06 sq. km.
Population: 27
Sex ratio: 4.4 males/female
Per capita GDP, if you take their word for it: $22,200 US

In 1967, Paddy Roy Bates was just another run-of-the-mill Army major-cum-fisherman-cum-pirate radio operator, minding his own business and blithely disregarding British broadcasting law. But the British - sticklers for things like laws (especially British ones) - were none too keen on Bates' activites, and they convicted him on a charge of radio piracy. Now, it's common knowledge that getting tried and convicted in a court of law leaves a man with two clear options: 1) go to jail; or 2) abscond to an abandoned WWII-era naval defense platform in international waters, claim you've founded a new nation and declare yourself royal prince. It takes a certain sort of person to determine that, of these two options, the latter is clearly superior. And Bates was that sort of person.

The HM Fort Roughs was a pontoon base dropped onto a sandbar by the UK military in international waters off the coast of Essex. The unmellifluously-named base continued to serve as perhaps the least exotic outpost of the waning British Empire until 1956, when the Brits evidently just lost interest in it and left. This was all to the good for Bates of course, who, 11 years later, would find in Fort Roughs an inviting sanctuary from his legal troubles, not to mention a likely platform for continuing his pirate radio operations. (And never mind that the place had already been occupied by a rival crew of radio pirates; Bates physically evicted the squatters, apparently with no great effort.)

It isn't clear that Bates knew right away what he had. But after talking to a lawyer, he determined that the UK government's abandonment of the installation in international waters constituted a dereliction of sovereignty. The (perhaps bemused) British military sought to suppress this minor kerfuffle in 1968, sending out a vessel to politely re-enfold Sealand into the apron of its empire. Bates' son Michael fired a warning shot at the craft, and by and by Roy was arrested when next he set foot on English soil. He argued that the court had no authority to bring charges, as he was a sovereign entity in international waters and, charmingly, he won his case.

From that point on, Sealand pursued a course of nation-building. A constitution was enacted in 1975; a flag was designed and an anthem was written; postage stamps, currency, and passports were issued. And Sealand chose a motto: E Mare Libertas - from the sea, freedom.

Of course, in international relations, peace is never more than an interregnum between wars, and it wouldn't be long before the tranquillity of the young and absurdly small nation would be tested. In the summer of 1978, Roy and his wife were enticed to Austria by the prospect of a business deal with a group of Dutch and German diamond dealers. The meeting never materialized, however, and meanwhile a group of nefarious Dutchmen were abducting Michael and dropping him off, sans passport and pennies, somewhere in the Netherlands; they were assisted by Alexander G. Achenbach, the turncoat prime minister of Sealand who had been appointed by Roy Bates. Following this disastrous turn of events, it was clear what the Bateses had to do:

The Bates family enlisted armed assistance, including a helicopter pilot who had done some work on James Bond movies, and headed back to Sealand to storm the fortress and take back their country. When they arrived, Michael slid down the rope onto the deck armed with a shotgun, and fired a shot. The intruders quickly surrendered, and were held as prisoners of war until their home countries petitioned for their release.

Achenbach was subsequently held for treason, and wasn't released until a visit by a German diplomat (which visit, Bates argued, constituted de facto recognition by the German government). Achenbach would go on to establish a government-in-exile in Germany, claiming the title "Chairman of the Privy Council."

Times have been fairly quiet since the War of '78. Roy and his wife, Princess Joan, have retired to Spain, though Roy maintains his status as sovereign, along with his son Michael. Plans for an online casino are afoot. Challenges to the sovereignty of Sealand are occasionally levied, such as this one by one 'King Marduk' of Germany. But more than 40 years after its founding, the greatest micronation in the history of the world persists.

For more information, visit the official website of Sealand.

A 4th Grader's Map of Great Britain

Hee Hee...



Real places, every one. For some reason, I can't get over 'North Piddle.'

Social Cohesion in the UK

Here's another map on the social health of England:



Mark Easton gives a description of the map:

The map colours range between bright green (where 100% of the population think that "people from different backgrounds get on well") to bright red (where 40% or fewer believe the same). Broadly, green means good race relations while brown/red suggests tension.

As with the anomie map, I'd be interested to see a version of this for the US. In both the UK and the US, my educated guess - and it's not more than that - is that you'd see better reported relations between races in areas that either have very low minority populations, or a very high degree of diversity. In the former sorts of places, minority groups aren't sufficiently prominent to pose a threat to the local majority group. In the latter sorts of places, there may be no majority group (as is the case where I live), and so members of diverse groups are pretty much forced to live and work together (and are liable to find that the world does not come crashing down upon doing so). In between, however, are communities where a majority of the population has historically been empowered (whites, in England), but where a significant minority population seems to represent a threat to their erstwhile hegemonic control.

Of course, tons of other factors, especially historical and economic ones, contribute to the nature of race relations. (I'm sure you'd find different attitudes on race in Vermont compared with southern Appalachia, even though both regions are almost entirely white.) But it would be very interesting to compare this cohesion map with a map of ethnic population by county in the UK. (I've been looking - I can't find one, but I'll post if I do.)

Anomie in the UK

(h/t to the Sex Pistols for the title, natch)



According to the BBC's Mark Easton, these twinned maps provide "a measure of people's sense of - or lack of - belonging to where they live." Since the early 1970's, it would seem, people's sense of connection to their physical homes has been deteriorating, at least in the UK. It would be fascinating to see how this data compared to other countries: I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a similar phenomenon were evident in the US. And what about other countries? Is it a Continental affliction, as well? What about the developing world?

Now, I don't doubt that this is a bad thing. But as with so much in the way of modern social change, it seems to me that we've traded one very large good for another very large good. That is, we've exchanged communities defined by geographical proximity (and the sense of place, history, tradition, safety, security, and stability that they connote) for communities defined by interests and personal identity (and all the freedom to define one's own social experience that they connote). So it's true that a disaffected or socially isolated Liverpudlian may have less of a local community in which to root her sense of self (that is, she would report a high level of anomie); but she surely has more opportunities to escape whatever stultifying or socially arid conditions are responsible for her disaffection in the first place.

It's a real dilemma, with probably no certain answer. Still, those maps are a reminder that one of the characteristic sensations of being alive in the post-industrial Western world is a subtle but inescapable feeling of loss.

Or, to quote a keen observer of contemporary social conditions:

Every time I think of her
It brings back memories
I remember how it used to be
Oh baby, can't you see?
Oh baby, come back to me.

I'm a lonely boy
I'm a lonely boy
I'm a lonely boy
I'm a lonely boy