40 Maps That Will Help You Understand the World

Twister Sifter is carrying a great compilation of maps with some extra information on them. Several of them have been featured on this blog before, but not even close to all of them. I particularly like the map above, showing the most common surnames by country in Europe, and the one below, which shows where different writing systems are used around the world. For both, click to embiggen.

40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense of the World   [TwisterSifter]

Why Some Languages Sound Faster than Others

Researchers from the Université de Lyon have discovered that, while some languages are spoken at more words-per-minute than others, they all tend do communicate the same amount of information in the same amount of time:

The investigators next counted all of the syllables in each of the recordings and further analyzed how much meaning was packed into each of those syllables. A single-syllable word like bliss, for example, is rich with meaning — signifying not ordinary happiness but a particularly serene and rapturous kind. The single-syllable word to is less information-dense. And a single syllable like the short i sound, as in the word jubilee, has no independent meaning at all.

With this raw data in hand, the investigators crunched the numbers together to arrive at two critical values for each language: the average information density for each of its syllables and the average number of syllables spoken per second in ordinary speech. Vietnamese was used as a reference language for the other seven, with its syllables (which are considered by linguists to be very information-dense) given an arbitrary value of 1.

For all of the other languages, the researchers discovered, the more data-dense the average syllable was, the fewer of those syllables had to be spoken per second — and thus the slower the speech. English, with a high information density of .91, was spoken at an average rate of 6.19 syllables per second. Mandarin, which topped the density list at .94, was the spoken slowpoke at 5.18 syllables per second. Spanish, with a low-density .63, ripped along at a syllable-per-second velocity of 7.82. The true speed demon of the group, however, was Japanese, which edged past Spanish at 7.84, thanks to its low density of .49. Despite those differences, at the end of, say, a minute of speech, all of the languages would have conveyed more or less identical amounts of information.

Why Some Languages Sound Faster than Others   [TIME]

Fish in the Sea

The above graphic shows the decline in fish stocks in the North Atlantic Ocean over the course of the 20th Century:

It’s hard to imagine the damage over-fishing is wrecking on the oceans. The effects are literally invisible, hidden deep in the ocean. But there is data out there. And when you visualise it, the results are shocking.

This image shows the biomass of popularly-eaten fish in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1900 and in 2000. Popularly eaten fish include: bluefin tuna, cod, haddock, hake, halibut, herring, mackerel, pollock, salmon, sea trout, striped bass, sturgeon, turbot. Many of which are now vulnerable or endangered.

Dr Villy Christensen and his colleagues at the University Of British Columbia used ecosystem models, underwater terrain maps, fish catch records and statistical analysis to render the biomass of Atlantic fish at various points this century (see the study)

Plenty More Fish in the Sea?   [InformationisBeautiful]

Deaths in Iraq Visualized

This visualisation, created by Kamel Makhloufi, shows the total number of deaths in Iraq due to the war. Each pixel represents a death.The bright blue are U.S. soldiers.  The green are Iraqi troops.  The gray at the bottom are enemies. The orange are civilians.

The graph on the left, labelled with a sigma, shows the totals over the course of the war. The one on the right shows them as a function of time.

[via]

Flying 101

South Africa’s Kulula airlines has re-painted on of their aircraft as a flying infographic, explaining all the parts of the airplane. Reminds me of the cutaway books I had as a kind that I loved, with all the parts of a plane explained.

[via WooHome]

Visualizing the Petabyte Age

This great infographic helps visualize the sheer amount of data being thrown around nowadays. The rest of it is after the jump, because it’s looooong.

Banned Books Week

If you live in the US (or anywhere else for that matter) make sure you celebrate Banned Books Week by reading something you’re not supposed to! Billed as the only national celebration of the freedom to read, it was launched in 1982 in response to a surge in numbers of banned books. Runs from 28 Sept to 03 Oct.

Banned Books Week

Infofuses

Wired Science reports on Infofuses: a burgeoning technology involved flare being made of a precise sequence of different materials which burn different colours. This means that as the flare burns, a signal can be sent based on the intensities of different frequencies of light. From the article:

The so-called “infofuse” is made from dots of lithium, rubidium and cesium laid on a line of fast-burning nitrocellulose. Different combinations of the metals produce different intensities and wavelengths of light, from visible to infrared. These characteristics can be precisely controlled, allowing the fuses to convey a form of chemical Morse code.

“If somebody is stranded in an unfriendly environment, they may need to communicate without attention-drawing electromagnetic frequencies,” said chemist David Walt of Tufts University. “The infofuses are designed to send signals that are visible in a region of the spectrum that human vision cannot detect, but can be picked up using detectors optimized for that part of the spectrum.”

Infrared-burning flares are the most obvious immediate possible application of the research, which was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and recently described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Other uses, however, will likely be found.

Infrared Fuses Can Send Secret Messages [Wired Science]

Is it OK to Run an Illegal Library from my Locker at School?

Sometimes Yahoo! Answers comes up with something amazing. This is one of those times. Kat Atreides, a student at a private school asks the following question:

I go to a private school that is rather strict. Recently, the principal and school teacher council released a (very long) list of books we’re not allowed to read. I was absolutely appalled, because a large number of the books were classics and others that are my favorites. One of my personal favorites, The Catcher in the Rye, was on the list, so I decided to bring it to school to see if I would really get in trouble. Well… I did but not too much. Then (surprise!) a boy in my English class asked if he could borrow the book, because he heard it was very good AND it was banned! This happened a lot and my locker got to overflowing with the banned books, so I decided to put the unoccupied locker next to me to a good use. I now have 62 books in that locker, about half of what was on the list. I took care only to bring the books with literary quality.

We need more students like this! Interestingly, one of the banned books is Twilight, but she doesn’t want that “polluting [her] library”. Some (but not all) of the books she currently carries are:

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Slaughterhouse-5
• Lord of the Flies
• Bridge to Terabithia
• Catch-22
• East of Eden
• The Brothers Grimm Unabridged Fairytales.
• Candide
• The Divine Comedy
• Paradise Lost
• The Godfather
• The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
• Animal Farm

The entire question, as well as the answers, are here:

Is it OK to Run and Illegal Library from my Locker at School? [Yahoo! Answers]

[via Laughing Squid]

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Slaughterhouse-5
• Lord of the Flies
• Bridge to Terabithia
• Catch-22
• East of Eden
• The Brothers Grimm Unabridged Fairytales.
• Candide
• The Divine Comedy
• Paradise Lost
• The Godfather
• The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
• Animal Farm

Hang This Up In Your Time Machine

A cheat-sheet, in case you find yourself missing the amenities of the here and now next time you go back in time. (Click for big)

[via]