NYT abandons geography for this season's choose-your-own-adventure electoral college picker. Not sure how I feel about it.

Map-based US Census tool for job location and commuting data.

"dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs - all sorts of legs and no legs - what is this to him?"

Prediction for 2012 election and/or minimum path to victory for Obama

Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living.

Page shows one of nineteen trillion simple maps of the United States, will show a different map the next time loaded.

A well-known theorem proves that with only four colors, any simple map of can be drawn so that no color touches itself. The next step is to ask how many ways there are to accomplish this simple task. For the contiguous United States, there are over nineteen trillion different maps that use only four colors. Even the tightest constraints can yield near-infinite variety.

Census data raw file download.

Excerpt from the end of his speech to the 1952 Republican National Convention:

"We, Negro Americans, sing with all loyal Americans:
'My country 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrims' pride,
From every mountainside,
Let freedom ring!'
That's exactly what we mean—from every mountain side, let freedom ring. Not only from the Green Mountains and White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire; not only from the Catskills of New York; but from the Ozarks in Arkansas, from the Stone Mountain in Georgia, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia—let it ring not only for the minorities of the United States, but for the persecuted of Europe, for the rejected of Asia, disfranchised of South Africa and for the disinherited of all the earth—may the Republican Party, under God, from every mountainside, 'LET FREEDOM RING.'"

A plan of New York island, with part of Long Island, Staten Island and east New Jersey, with a particular description of the engagement of the woody heights of Long Island, between Flatbush and Brooklyn, on the 27th, of August 1776.

TV ownership down to 97%! Victory over the boob tube will come any day.

New national emblem proposed (1960).

this will be great
"Every county has itself listed as a neighboring county"

great. Could benefit from scaling geographies by population.

"Rehoboth, he likes to say, used to be an island of tolerance in a sea of homophobia, and now is an island of tolerance in a sea of outlet malls." (ha)

on white gentrification in black neighborhoods

"Because the electoral college is terrible."

Really quite slick, except for the part where they email you the download link.

Harvard undergrad unhappy that he had to live on campus, couldn't participate in the "life of the city." NOTE TO HARVARD UNDERGRADS: Cambridge does not like you, does not want you around.

"Cities versus suburbs? Get over it. Welcome to the metropolitan century."

One of several good questions to ask about zoning.

NYT, as always, has beautiful census maps up the day after the data is released.

Google books results for the (apparently) authoritative atlas of tree distributions

geographer and "father of the quadrangle"

Add more reps to the US House!

rad

"The Land Survey Information System is the official government Web site for the distribution of the Public Land Survey System of the United States. The Bureau of Land Management cadastral survey program is responsible for the official boundary surveys for all federal agencies in the U.S. that together manage over 700 million acres. The Public Land Survey System also called the Rectangular Survey System is the foundation for many survey-based land information systems."
You can "Download PLSS data in NAD 83 shape file format that can be used with GIS applications. & Export Survey points, Points/Lines, and Control Points in kml, gps, list, and GeoRSS formats. "

basic background from the National Atlas

Overlays heat maps of household transportation cost on US Metros. From CNT.

"Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software."

"The following document is extracted from Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress: A checklist compiled by the Reference and Bibliography Section, Geography and Map Division. The Preface contains general information on LC's collection and includes a list of other libraries with Sanborn holdings. The Introduction by Walter W. Ristow give an excellent historical perspective on fire insurance maps and the Sanborn Company.

"It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from."

Mapping tool from CNT for doing side-by-side comparisons of carbon/expenses/density/etc for US metro areas. Pretty snazzy.

maps of the numbered streets in various cities, colored by the size of the number

Using Facebook profiles to track connections between cities and propose breaklines for a geographic decomposition of the US.

does what it says on the tin.

datasets and yearbooks for US transit. Get that juicy cost per passenger mile and revenue mile data!

State GIS clearinghouse clearinghouse. "primary purpose is to track the status of GIS in US state and local government to aid the planning and building of Spatial Data Infrastructures. Ramona is designed to work in concert with Geospatial One Stop (www.geodata.gov). "

"To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways."

geodata.gov

Who knew? "Under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, over 11,000 Germans and German Americans were selectively detained and interned at the start of World War II. In addition, over 4,500 ethnic Germans were brought to the U.S. from Latin America and detained." (as comparison, 10x as many Japanese-Americans were interned)

"The fifty largest metro areas (in blue), disaggregated from their states (in orange), scaled and sorted by population."

The Joint Center's annual report for the most eventful year in housing in decades. This should be an exciting read!

"The shared rules, customs and conventions specific to the United States." There are 7 apparently: Cooties, Dibs, Five-second rule, High five, Padiddle, Punch buggy, and Riding shotgun.

geodata on renewable energy

Results of a 2004 North American Vexillological Association poll of its members. Rates 150 flags. The first 5 or so are great, the last 10 are hilariously bad.

US American and state-level demographics

Housing sqftge from the Energy Info Administration.

Visualization of energy flows by type and sector, including used and lost energy. "Lost energy" in transportation is about equal to petroleum imports.

>>These files were compiled from Census 2000 responses to the long-form (sample) questions on where people worked. The files provide data at the county level for residents of the 50 states and the District of Columbia (DC).

download census data from esri. Some files (eg rail) that are not avail on census.gov

Shiny exit poll visualization goodness

Nate Silver's hour-by-hour breakdown

good comparison of electoral history and current endorsements, if slightly clumsy with map/color/gradient choices.

state-by-time-zone map. color ramp for times.

2006, from the Magazine: "The panel asked the taboo question of whether homeownership and the interest deduction were related. It decided that they weren't."

State-by-state poll closing times. VA, IN and FL close at 7PM, so there will be strong indications early-on.

LOC Record. Detail maps of Newark, NYC, Amboy.

ASCII lists of tracts, places, counties, etc

shp, e00, gen
"Welcome to the U.S. Census Bureau's Cartographic Boundary Files Web Site. The boundary files available here are selected generalized extracts from the Census Bureau's TIGER geographic database and are designed for use in a Geographic Information System (GIS) or similar mapping system. These are not map images. They have been developed for various internal Census Bureau projects and have been made available here to the general public on an "as is" basis."

GIS repository for NYS.
"CUGIR is an active online repository in the National Spatial Data Clearinghouse program. CUGIR provides geospatial data and metadata for New York State, with special emphasis on those natural features relevant to agriculture, ecology, natural resources, and human-environment interactions.
In order to provide the best possible access to geospatial data for New York State, CUGIR coordinates its activities with those of the New York State GIS Clearinghouse."

photographs of clouds

2000 presidential race exit polls

2004 presidential race exit polls

Next American City on the print I did for them.

"Demographic inversion" proposed as replacement term for gentrification. Question of depth/width/length of the trend. By ed. of Governing mag. Imprecise about inner city vs downtown an what exactly Jane Jacobs wrote.

Proposal to shift housing to Commerce/Treasury and turn HUD's attn to promoting regional cooperation. Federal coordination of land-use policy was aborted back in the early 70's, maybe it's time to bring it back?

On the would-be state of Absaroka on the WY-SD-MT border.

this is the stuff