"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

On this page with its map of the current Gulf oil spill, these comforting words:

The largest accidental spill of all time was also in the Gulf of Mexico. Ixtoc I, a two-mile deep exploratory well, leaked at an estimated rate of 10,000 to 30,000 barrels per day for almost ten months until it was capped in March 1980.

According to independent academic estimates (hotly disputed by BP, of course), the current spill may be producing over 100,000 barrels a day.

Thanks to kmusser for the link.

I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and find it hard to believe. The names, the shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and rivers, the prehistoric footsteps of man still distinctly traceable up hill and down dale, the mills and the ruins, the ponds and the ferries, perhaps the STANDING STONE or the DRUIDIC CIRCLE on the heath; here is an inexhaustible fund of interest for any man with eyes to see or twopence-worth of imagination to understand with! No child but must remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies.

--Robert Louis Stevenson, found at "How Books Got Their Titles"

I've been building a map in GoogleMaps, and I had it set to most of Scotland. I idly flipped on "traffic" and saw that bits of the Central Belt lit up, mostly green (it's the middle of the day, so that makes sense) but nowhere else much. I can see that making sense; there's probably less traffic in other parts of the country but also less infrastructure for reporting traffic.

Then I scrolled the scale out to show all of the UK. The image is kind of striking. There's traffic data that run right the way from Penzance to Newcastle, but it stops dead at the borders of England. Funny.

Then I scrolled out further to see all of western Europe. *No* data anywhere, except for France. So this is clearly an artifact of information-sharing agreements (I'm sure Germany has both traffic and the ability to monitor it).

This may be old news to everyone else, but Google have a feature on their maps page that allows you to see a street-level view in selected cities. I've just been fruitlessly trying to see the house I used to live in in Brookline (I think it must have been repainted or remodels, as nothing looks quite right). Fascinating idea!

For linking to this wonderful site with all kinds of weird maps.

He linked to this one about GDP

but I find this one even more entertaining.