Through a Map Darkly

Wonderful. Matthew Bloch, the graphics editor at the New York Times, has "a collection of accidents that happened while working on maps and other graphics." Here, for instance, is a "1917 map of Beijing (after trying to use spline-based georeferencing in ArcGIS)."



And something has gone dreadfully wrong with this map of electoral votes:



I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something disconcertingly plausible about the chaos of these images. You know what I mean? As if the maps weren't just defective representations, but accurate representations for someone who's actually mad.

They're delightful, at any rate.