Sunday, June 03, 2007

Strange Maps

Strange Maps

It screenshotall began with a charting of Pennsylvania's lunatic asylum districts. That might be an inauspicious start elsewhere, but not here. Welcome to the world of strange maps. Since that initial posting in September of last year, the blogger-collector behind this site has rolled out post after post of eccentric and imaginative maps—"the kind you won't find in a regular atlas." From ancient history to alternate history, from the world according to some two-term presidents to the U.S. according to its politics, the maps displayed here are historic, fake, funny, and marvelous. And sometimes all of the above. We paused over the image of Flash Gordon's native Mongo, ate up the charting of North America's "totem food" regions (oh, to live in Corn Bread and BBQ Nation!), and then located ourselves on both the atlas of the country of Houyhnhnms (where Yahoos, those "deformed, debased humans" reside) and the record of the online communities map. Brrr! (in Science & Geography)