March 22, 2008

Stranger Maps of Space (and other things)

Strange Maps recently put up some interesting astronomically themed maps. The one above is "A Better Sky." Well, not actually better, but at least more current. Someone took a constellation map and replaced the star groupings by fable, with star grouping by recent world leaders. Does this make more sense? My verdict: sort of. It doesn't involve pretending that Aries somehow resembles a ram...or anything else. Plus people like Einstein, Darwin and Roosevelt get stars named after them. On the other hand, Mussolini has his own star too, in the "Tyrants" constellation (with Hitler, Robespierre and other fun friends!). At least the sunspots would run on time. Wait a second, there is a Quebec star? Nein!

Next up, the "Unnamed Methane sea on Titan."

Hmm. This is pretty much what it sounds like. There may be a bunch of liquid methane on Saturn's moon, and, basically, um, scientifically speaking, there is a "sea" of it. And it doesn't have a name. May I propose dubbing it the Sea of William Carlos Williams? He got left off the constellation map somehow...

In actuality though, we don't know whether there is liquid methane there, this map was just made by looking at "dark spots" on some radar maps of the surface. Nonetheless, Titan is pretty fascinating. When you crash into it, it looks like this: a probe. (The video is Huygens' decent in 2005, time-compressed from four hours.)

I have to say though, as cool as these maps are, they have nothing on Area Codes in which Ludacris Claims to have Hoes:

“In this song, Ludacris brags about the area codes where he knows women, whom he refers to as ‘hoes’,” says Ms Gray, who plotted out all the area codes mentioned in this song on a map of the United States. She arrived at some interesting conclusions as to the locations of this rapper’s preferred female companionship:

  • “Ludacris travels frequently along the Boswash corridor.”


Jere said...

The Ludacris thing is funny and all, but, terrible job by the woman to assume that his hoes in Nebraska must be white farmers.

Omaha and Lincoln are in the 402. I went to school in Lincoln, and, while I'm always saying, "people ask me if I went to school on a farm and I have to tell them Lincoln is a city unlike the town in the NY-metro area which is like 98 percent trees." And 99 percent white, too. So, yeah, those are cities, not farms. And Omaha is 13 percent black. The national percentage is 12%.

And I would say I-20 is as much of if not more of a ho-highway than 95. How is she not seeing this stuff??

(Ryan) said...

That is a good point about Nebraska. I actually know someone from Lincoln myself and she is about as far from being a farm girl as you can get.

Jere said...

Moving on, how old? The girl from Lincoln. Maybe I know her.

(Ryan) said...

23 or so? She was in my class in college, so you probably don't know her. Still, in these parts, knowing anyone from Lincoln feels like an acomplishment.

Jere said...

This conversation is like one of those chess games-by-mail. Old mail.

Um, so, I probably don't know her. I'm 32 or so.

Jere said...

If her family still lived in Lincoln in '93-'95, they probably got prank called by me, though. But my pranks were always friendly, Like, Hi, I'm a stranger, let's just have a conversation....