Frazz by Jef Mallett for March 23, 2021

I like the map Ben Franklin made of the Gulf Stream…

But there is a map to show where the map corner is.

It’s in the map corner.

When I got a vehicle, my parents got me maps. For a long time, the glove box was so full of them that there was room for little else. Now, I still have one of those map-books in the side pocket, but it’s used mainly as a portable desk. Until a couple of years ago when both Google Maps AND Garmin decided to remove the little dirt roads that I like to explore on. Now it’s back to being useful!

Then there was (?is?) AAA trip ticks. Actually very handy when traveling.

This is why so few younger people actually know how to get anywhere.

Of course Frazz is wearing a USGS shirt as they’re discussing maps and atlases

A whole section of libraries that has been gathering dust for the last 5 decades. The Peter Ustinov segment in the movie Logan’s Run 1976 showed the likely effects of decades of substituting digital education and AI control for hands on experience. Yes, sure, a fantasy and very unlikely . . . no?

Caulfield has found a gold mine of the kind of fascinating material that might hold his interest, where current curricula might not. Just comparing the ever changing maps of the world over the generations, will give him a new outlook on history and the ever evolving foibles of the human race that he can get nowhere else. Be interesting to see how far Mallett takes this theme.

The BEST maps are at 1 to 1 scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science

I remember when the NASA probes started mapping the moon and NASA and the USGS came out with these (free) beautifully colored maps of lunar geography/geology. Spent hours exploring those maps. Glorious.

Here be dragons!

I know public libraries still use the Dewey Classification System but I haven’t been in a school library in a long, long time. I know also that trained librarians are becoming very rare as an asset in most school boards in Ontario anyway. I wonder, does anyone know if books are still classified according to Dewey in schools? Do libraries even exist? If they do, are they sorry remnants of their former selves or is everything in the cloud?

I prefer maps of places that don’t exist.

Caulfield’s discovery parallel’s Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series) in her book ‘The Outlandish Companion,) about researching. Catalogues are very valuable and useful, but they show you what you ask for. She recommends using the catalogue until the call numbers (letters, whatever) start repeating. Then go to that section and start reading the shelves. You’ll find things—fun and/or useful—that you’d never dream of.YES!

Just last weekend ordered a new, large scale !:25,000 map of my area from the USGS ! And libraries often have a librarian w/ a MLS that runs the map rooms.

Nothing like an up-to-the-minute Google street view.

They’ve got one of a huge hole in the ground a block up the road where I’ve been shopping for over two years. Spent two nights at a twelve story hotel in my state capital that Google thinks is a residential block.

Did I mention Ken Jenning’s Map Heads. There seem to be a lot of us here.

Neither does the potato chip aisle at Kroger.

I love old maps!

As a stats person Minard’s map of Napoleon’s march to Moscow is one I always think on – it represents both a brilliant representation of data – and a failure to achieve the desired impact in policy. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a7/59/cb/a759cb705ec5098c25df9a5a8624d9ac.jpg

Why does he assume no one knows it’s there? How did the kid know that some maps were new? And since when do libraries have maps and not just atlases?

IIRC, atlases were grouped with other oversized books — sinisterly labelled “Q” — like artworks and architectural drawings, not because of their contents but simply because they were way too big to fit on the regular shelves and had to be laid flat.

It’s The Arcane Way of Navigating.

Bet the Librarian knew it was there – but she’s probably as obsolete as Mrs. Olsen.