Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Yahoo Maps me to your leader.

The last time we looked at Lio by Mark Tatulli he was using Mapquest, though it was for purposes of space travel.  Now he's using Yahoo Maps.  Of course this one is from June of 2006 and the other example was from May of 2007.  So maybe Lio switched browsers during that year.  The additional joke in this, if you can't see it, is that Lio is getting directions to Washington D.C. for these visitors.  Get it?

Why any of them thinks a 2D map is at all useful for space travel is beyond me.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Electoral College

This Bizarro strip by Dan Piraro ran at the end of November 2008, during the aftermath of the historic 2008 presidential election.  This is the well drawn low-hanging-fruit pun off of the term "electoral college".  This map takes many of the terms and phrases which became prominent during that long, long election cycle, mostly terms that came from the GOP side of things... mostly from Palin actually.   Click on the image to see a more legible version.

Monday, June 28, 2010

You have humans

Eric Lewis had this cartoon published in The New Yorker in October of 2002.  If that's Saturn playing the doctor she/he might want to be careful.  Saturn's moon Titan is right now the solar system's next best candidate for life.  If it doesn't watch out Saturn could get itself infected with life, then maybe it'll eventually have humans too

Friday, June 25, 2010

A-F Street Map


Cartoonist Ciaran Ryan gives us this oddity.  The man is holding an "A-Z directory", which is the ubiquitous British equivalent to a street guide, only this guy's directory ends at "F", thus explaining his trouble getting to "G Street".

Thursday, June 24, 2010

I'm lost shirt

I'm lost. I have a problem.  Where am I now?  Which is north? Someone do something. Help me.  I can't walk more. 
This is a photo of a t-shirt from Engrish.com, a site dedicated to publishing images of badly translated text.  This shirt may have been made to be intentionally funny.  It may have been worn to be intentionally funny.  It's still a bad translation. 

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Drive me to the moon

Getting lost in a car on the moon has been done.  This time it's by Chris Madden.  Turns out, however, that "Marius" is, in fact, a place in Lancaster, England. And this guy is trying to blame it on the GPS, or Sat-Nav as the Brits call it.

Friday, June 18, 2010

No streets

This is a Family Circus strip by Jeff and Bill Keane from February 2007.  Billy seems rather overly angry about this rather mundane discovery.The reason for his ange could be related to the scale of the map he's looking at, but Jeffy was already in a funnier joke about that

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Too soon

As far as I'm concerned, we didn't get out a moment too soon. 
I had to change the comments on this one.  I set these up to publish before my father died a couple weeks ago.  It's odd that so many of these are Heaven-related.  However, in reference to this one, I think my dad did get out too soon. 

This is from Arnie Levin in The New Yorker in February of 1990. 

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Friday, June 11, 2010

Homeland Security

Here's a strip from June of 2007 from New Adventures of Queen Victoria by Pab Sungenis. It's a strip that uses actual photos as its primary medium.  While it occasionally gets into modern political commentary, it's more often absurdest humor, almost in the vein of Monty Python animations, with Queen Victoria being the main focus of humor.  This particular episode focuses on current events, namely the work of the newly created U.S. Department of Homeland Security to apprehend terrorist suspects.  The "Secretary" in question in this strip would be Michael Chertoff.   Other cartoonists have made the Google Earth-terrorism connection

David Malki's Wondermark uses a similar medium, though it tends to use Victorian illustrations and drawings rather than photographs and, unlike N.A.o.Q.V., it almost never uses modern images.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Have no clue

A cartoonist who signs as "Kes" created this take on the "spouses arguing about directions" gag.  Did the wife create the map? It seems like it's giving the guy her opinion of things. 

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Godwin's Law

This is how I learned about Godwin's Law, an (unfortunately?) useful term in political discussions, especially online, when people bring up Nazis. XKCD by Randall Munroe is an extremely valuable webcomic for educating folks on things like this. I don't know if it counts if a person references a different person or group which held ideals and/or committed acts just as bad if not worse

Go to this actual webcomic, hover over the image, and there will be an additional message in the "title-text" . This one says: 
Constantly stopping these briefings half-way through is becoming a pain. 

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Monday, June 7, 2010

Missing Mapquest link


Former cartoonist for The Wichita Eagle Richard Crowson did up this cartoon in response to the discovery in 2006 of this curious beast (thought to be a "missing link" between fish and amphibians)...:

...at about the same time that the Kansas School Board was having issues with evolution being taught in schools.  That incident, by the way, prompted quite a few map-related cartoons, like these:
Here's one, and another, and another

By the way, clicking on the image can make it large enough to see the dog in the lower left-hand corner which is saying "I doesn't matter.  The Board made reality 'opt-in'".  There's a few editorial cartoonists that used little tiny characters like that to make additional comments on the topic du jour.  Pat Oliphant comes to mind. So does Tom Toles.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Hanging Chad

Robert Mankoff had this published this in The New Yorker in December of 2000, at the height of the Gore-Bush 2000 election aftermath, with the hanging chads and ballot recount and Supreme Court ruling.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Redistricting Israel - Olmert

Patrick O'Connor drew this in May of 2006 as a commentary on both the situation in the Middle East with Israel re-drawing its borders (and putting up a big giant wall to prove it) as well as the practice of redistricting, which will get underway big time next year when this year's Census is finished.  Of course it could be argued that clumsy redistricting is what caused many of the Middle East's problems in the first place.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

End of block

 This cartoon by Shannon Burns is only map-related if one thinks of the sign as information about location rather than a dire warning.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Deadwood

Charles Barsotti had this published in The New Yorker in March of 2005, at the height of the popularity of HBO's "Deadwood" show which, if you don't remember it, became known for it's foul language.  But the language is also rather well written, or so I'm told.  I never actually saw the show.