The Map Scroll

Via Jeff Masters, an animation of the Japanese tsunami's propagation across the Pacific basin:
The abstract yet brute physicality of the phenomenon makes it all the more horrifying to think about the lives lost to this disaster.
Says Masters, "Today's quake was the strongest in Japanese history, and will likely be the most expensive natural disaster in world history, surpassing the $133+ billion dollar price tag from Hurricane Katrina." He also has a nice map of the force distribution...

An interactive map from The Economist lets you click on member-states of the Arab League for relative scores on democracy, corruption, and press freedom, as well as overall stability:
You know what country looks pretty damn shaky? Iraq. Odd, what with our having bombed them into the age of liberal pluralism just eight years ago... Syria is similarly close to head of the line on the instability index, though most indications are that...

(Ahem: Based on 2005-2009 American Community Survey data, for the sticklers out there.) A racial profile of the United States, block by block, courtesy of the New York Times:
As you can see, this map divides human beings into the five standard types: white, black, Asian, Hispanic, and other. And it characterizes every single city block in the country according to those types. It scales up show whole regions of the country...

Hey look, I have a blog! Guess I'll post something.
Yep, it's census stuff, from here. Roll over states for their particulars. I think it mostly speaks for itself - the Rust Belt continues to Rusts, the Sun Belt continues to... not rust. One thing I notice about the latter, though, is that there seems...