Free Republic

Drawn half a millennium ago and then swiftly forgotten, one map made us see the world as we know it today... and helped name America. But, as Toby Lester has discovered, the most powerful nation on earth also owes its name to a pun. Almost exactly 500 years ago, in 1507, Martin Waldseemuller and Matthias Ringmann, two obscure Germanic scholars based in the mountains of eastern France, made one of the boldest leaps in the history of geographical thought - and indeed in the larger history of ideas. Near the end of an otherwise plodding treatise titled Introduction to Cosmography,...

SNIPPET - quote: Doing a Google search today for "al Qaeda", I accidentally hit "map" instead of "news". And you know what? Al Qaeda is on the map.

Researcher whose father found old maps posits 2000 BC voyage to west coast History books tell us that the first Chinese settlers to Canada arrived in Victoria about 150 years ago, but a U.S. researcher says she has solid evidence that they came earlier. Some 4,000 years earlier. That would be 3,500 years before 1492, when European explorer Christopher "Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Or 10,000 years after nomadic hunters from Eastern Siberia crossed the frozen Bering Strait during the Ice Age, a migration taken by modern scholars to account for North America's native population. Charlotte Harris Rees, a retired...

I follow this map every year, it usually doesn't even start up until Novemeber, they started it early this year, and it's worse than I've ever seen it, the peak is usually Jan/Feb for flu ... See map HERE

Tracking the progress of H1N1 swine flu This map and the data behind it were compiled by Dr. Henry Niman, a biomedical researcher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, using technology provided by Rhiza Labs and Google. The map is compiled using data from official sources, news reports and user-contributions and updated multiple times per day. Rhiza's web-based mapping product, Insight, is helping Dr. Niman get official and unofficial data into the tracking system faster while giving researchers and the public many options for viewing the data in a useful and understandable way.

A global team of researchers has mapped the genetic code of the world's most popular vegetable — the potato. The draft of the potato genome released last week represents the work of more than 50 scientists from 16 institutions and will provide a starting point for other researchers to develop sturdier, more nutritious potatoes. That's important because the potato is widely grown and plays a central role in feeding the world's 6.3 billion people, said Robin Buell, a Michigan State University plant biologist who worked on the project. The East Lansing school announced the results in the U.S. The Potato...

The map above is a visualization of the contiguous United States, colored by distance to the nearest McDonald’s, courtesy of Stephen Von Worley (via Felix Salmon): For maximum McSparseness, we look westward, towards the deepest, darkest holes in our map: the barren deserts of central Nevada, the arid hills of southeastern Oregon, the rugged wilderness of Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, and the conspicuous well of blackness on the high plains of northwestern South Dakota. There, in a patch of rolling grassland, loosely hemmed in by Bismarck, Dickinson, Pierre, and the greater Rapid City-Spearfish-Sturgis metropolitan area, we find our answer....

The Appearance Of The United States Will Change Stephen Hanson Jan. 30, 2005 [21] For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now--and never to be equaled again. [22] If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. Matt. 24 “There is a place that you can run to and hide when the storms come upon this world. There is a place that you will be sheltered from the storms. I tell you that you can run to...

Many people around the world are interested in learning more about the growing open carry movement in the United States, particularly when and where they can open carry too! . . . Key points everyone should know about open carry, i.e., the practice of carrying holstered unconcealed functional handguns (functionality includes being loaded): 42 states permit open carry in public 26 states require no license to open carry Only 7 states ban open carry in public California allows open carry in many or most parts of rural areas, but figuring out precisely where it is banned (i.e., that guns must...

To commemorate the 90th birth anniversary of Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the Indian space programme, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Wednesday unveiled its most ambitious people-oriented project yet. Bhuvan – Sanskrit for ‘Earth’ – is a remote-sensing 3D image portal that promises to take on the likes of popular virtual globe-mapping applications such as Google Earth and Wikimapia. What’s more, it is technically superior on paper! The most interested feature for users will be the ability of Bhuvan to zoom far closer than the aerial view from a chopper. While Google Earth restricts zooming to 200 metres...

The MSM will try to ignore the Tea Party aspect, but it will be the dominant news story, so let's show these SOB's that the Tea Parties are not a passing fad.

Hello FreeRepublic. My name is Nathan I'm a GIS Mapping Technician in Ohio. I want to put my skills to good use in trying to restore America to its common sense roots. I created this map to show the votes of representatives on HR2454, otherwise known as Cap and Trade. If you are so inclined you can contact the representatives that voted for it and ask them to redact their votes. If you want to download the better PDF that better shows counties and congressional districts, go to my SkyDrive and download. Feel free to pass it on to anyone...

Since it's AP, you'll have to follow the Yahoo link to get to this interesting map. There has got to be a way for some sharp FReeper to superimpose the election results by county with the current economic "stress". Even just a statistical correlation between how strong the vote for Obama was vs. how bad the economic conditions are in these counties.

CAMP MEJID, Iraq — Marines from the California-based 1st Intelligence Battalion and 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion recently taught soldiers of the 7th Iraqi Army Division’s Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Battalion advanced land navigation and map reading techniques aboard Camp Mejid, Iraq, April 27. The course, which lasted a total of six days, included nearly five full days of exhaustive classroom instruction on how to properly read maps, how to design and plot locations and routes on a map, compass techniques, the negotiation of terrain obstacles and the use of hand-held global positioning systems. While teaching rudimentary map-reading and navigation...

Israel has been excluded from digital maps displayed for passengers on British airline BMI flights from London Heathrow to Ben-Gurion Airport. Instead of viewing Tel Aviv or other Israeli cities signposted on screens, customers flying on two BMI-owned Airbus A320 airplanes have instead been exclusively shown Haifa, spelled "Khefa" - the Arab name of the city before 1948. BMI, which runs flights to Ben-Gurion Airport twice daily, has declared that the maps are the result of a logistical error due to the company's failure to modify the system created by British airline BMED (British Mediterranean Airways), now defunct, from which...

H1N1 MAP Here

(Application on site) http://www.notoriouslyconservative.com/2009/03/from-carlos-labs-have-you-ever-wondered.html Now of course you should never play with matches, let alone a nuclear bomb. If you have a bomb, you are a terrorist, and I hate you. This map is just for fun, to go along with the nuclear bomb testing video posted below. Have you ever wondered what would happen if a nuclear bomb goes off in your city? With Google's Maps framework and a bit of Javascript, you can see the outcome. And it does not look good. The list of weapons contains bombs of historical significance - but what happens with modern, nuclear-assertive...

Hamas turn a Gaza neighborhood into a warzone. Youtube video at link.

Note: See map inlcuded on this report. Note: The following text is a quote: JANUARY 9, 2009...17:54 Captured Hamas Intelligence, 9 Jan 2009, 16:26 IST Jump to Comments Confiscated Intelligence Map from Hamas Hamas turn a Gaza neighborhood into a warzone. This map, confiscated Wednesday (Jan. 7) by IDF paratroopers operating in the north of Gaza, shows how Hamas uses an entire neighborhood, rigging it with explosive devices and putting the entire civilian population at great risk. The map shows the al-Tatraa neighborhood in Gaza City divided into three areas of operation (red, blue and green). The dots on the...

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

How was it that a German priest writing in Latin and living in a French city far from the coast became the first person to tell the world that a vast ocean lay to the west of the American continents? That is one of the bigger mysteries in the history of the Renaissance. But it is not the only one involving Martin Waldseemueller, a map-making cleric whose own story is sufficiently obscure that his birth and death dates aren't known for certain. Waldseemueller appears to have also known something about the contours of South America's west coast years before Vasco...

Anybody have any sort of a red/blue map breakdown by counties from last night?

Key Obama Blue 234 McCain Red 179 Too close to call Purple 125

Karl Rove is so powerful, he is probably toying with the Libs by putting out these maps showing Obama anywhere near winning this thing. We all know he will draw upon all the powers of heaven and earth (or hell if you are a Dem) and put McPalin over the top in November. For now, though, he shows an interesting dynamic.

Money Track at Political Base Data aggregated from the FEC. All records are based on $200+ contributions to campaigns except for the 2008 Presidential campaigns, which include sub-$200 transactions as well.

Biologists have constructed a genetic map of Europe showing the degree of relatedness between its various populations. All the populations are quite similar, but the differences are sufficient that it should be possible to devise a forensic test to tell which country in Europe an individual probably comes from, said Manfred Kayser, a geneticist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands. The map shows, at right, the location in Europe where each of the sampled populations live and, at left, the genetic relationship between these 23 populations. The map was constructed by Dr. Kayser, Dr. Oscar Lao and...

Police found a map of Camp David marked with a presidential motorcade route inside the Bethesda home of the teenager at the center of a bombmaking probe, along with a document that appears to describe how to kill someone at a distance of 200 meters, a Montgomery County prosecutor said yesterday at a court hearing. Collin McKenzie-Gude, 18, also had two forms of fake identification: one portraying him as a Central Intelligence Agency employee, and the other in the name of a federal contractor purportedly protected by the Geneva Conventions, authorities said. The investigation has expanded to include officials from...

A map of President Bush's motorcade to Camp David was found last week in the possession of a teenager accused of stockpiling weapons and bomb-making materials, according to prosecutors. With the possibility that the motorcade was a target, federal authorities have joined police in investigating Collin Matthew McKenzie-Gude, 18, who allegedly was storing the weapons and materials just outside Washington, D.C., at the Bethesda, Md., home where he lives with his parents. MyFOXDC.com reports that Assistant State's Attorney Peter Feeney disclosed the discovery of the map of Camp David during a court hearing on Tuesday in Rockville, Md. The map...

Pollster.com keeps running averages of all reported state polls on the presidential election. Every Tuesday, I'm generating a weekly map showing electoral votes so we can see graphically how the race is changing over time.

Map takes approximately 90 Seconds to see. Interesting History of Religion in the world.

Sorry for the vanity. I was doing some research this morning, went to Google Maps and noticed the "street view" option isn't on the menu. Has it been deleted? I know there have been some privacy issues and some communities have asked that street view not be used but has google caved and scrapped the whole thing? FWIW I think the privacy issues are mostly unfounded. If it's a public street and anyone can take a picture then google should be able to make street view available. If Google has pulled it, there could be wide ranging effects. What about...

Here's an interesting representation of the "Blogosphere" and how Free Republic appears in this map. As far as I can tell, FR get's linked to or has links from? all these sites that we have a tie to...Red are conservative, Yellow are "InfoPits"? and Blue...the enemy...Go to the website and you can search on websites and vary the size of the display to achieve better resolution. Sorta fun to see...

Astronomers unveiled today what they are calling the best map ever produced of the Milky Way galaxy. The new view shows our spiral galaxy as it would look face-on to a very distant observer. The map is based on findings about the structural evolution of the Milky Way presented this week at the 212th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Missouri. Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater was among the scientists who presented results at a briefing today with reporters. The researchers determined that the Milky Way actually has two fewer major arms than previously believed....

Here is the 2008 Presidential Electoral Projection Map and State Poll Average Chart for Thursday, May 22, 2008. . . .Barack Obama now leads John McCain on the Electoral Vote Map 237-236 as a result of the 50-Day Average of polls from Virginia now showing McCain leading Obama there by only three points, which puts Virginia into the "Tossup" Column. There are now 65 Electoral Votes in the "Tossup" category. . .Don't forget to check out the charts at the bottom of the page for Latest State Polls, 50-Day Average of National Polls, and Latest National Polls. . .

100 Explosions on the Moon A map of the 100 explosions observed since late 2005.Not so long ago, anyone claiming to see flashes of light on the Moon would be viewed with deep suspicion by professional astronomers. Such reports were filed under "L" ... for lunatic. Not anymore. Over the past two and a half years, NASA astronomers have observed the Moon flashing at them not just once but one hundred times. "They're explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the Moon," explains Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). "A typical blast is...

Cuius Regio, Eius Religio - this Latin saying applies to Europe, and to the principle that ended religious warfare: “Whose region (it is), whose religion (shall predominate)”. But it sprang to mind when seeing this map of the US, showing the leading church bodies per county. The map demonstrates the important link between region and religion, or to put it more precisely: where you live is a predictive factor as to where you worship. The map highlights 8 major Christian denominations, showing where they represent a plurality (and in counties marked with a + at least 50%) of the...

Stolen 15th-Century Map Finds Way Back to Spain Harold Heckle in Madrid, SpainFebruary 5, 2008 Associated Press A stolen 15th century map dating to the dawn of modern printing—a decade before Christopher Columbus sailed to America—was returned to Spain on Monday. The map was discovered missing from Spain's National Library in August, cut out of a 1482 edition of Claudius Ptolemy's Cosmographia. Fifteen other irreplaceable documents also disappeared. Scattered Around the World The Cosmographia map was seized by Australian Federal Police at an art gallery in Sydney, after it passed through dealers in Argentina, London, and New York, a spokesperson...

'As their landing craft touched down on the shoreline at 6.30am, they stumbled forward into Hell. Some 1,500 soldiers died in the bloody battle by the Americans to take Omaha Beach on D-Day - under fire from a well-disguised German gun emplacement. The onslaught memorably featured in the memorable opening scenes of the film Saving Private Ryan. But military experts remain divided over exactly where the battery that laid down such a murderous bombardment was sited. But now, a chance discovery by an amateur historian appears to have finally revealed the answer more than 63 years after the Allied invasion...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The only surviving copy of the 500-year-old map that first used the name America goes on permanent display this month at the Library of Congress, but even as it prepares for its debut, the 1507 Waldseemuller map remains a puzzle for researchers. Why did the mapmaker name the territory America and then change his mind later? How was he able to draw South America so accurately? Why did he put a huge ocean west of America years before European explorers discovered the Pacific?... ... Although the map conceals many mysteries, one thing is clear: it represents a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The only surviving copy of the 500-year-old map that first used the name America goes on permanent display this month at the Library of Congress, but even as it prepares for its debut, the 1507 Waldseemuller map remains a puzzle for researchers. Why did the mapmaker name the territory America and then change his mind later? How was he able to draw South America so accurately? Why did he put a huge ocean west of America years before European explorers discovered the Pacific?

Internet search leader Google Inc. is testing technology that will find the location of people using its mobile mapping service, even if the phone making the connection isn't equipped with a GPS receiver. The new tracking feature introduced Wednesday is being touted as an added convenience because it will enable people on the go to skip the task of typing a starting address on a mobile handset's small keys when they turn to Google's maps for guidance. Using the technology, dubbed "My Location," simply requires pressing zero on a mobile handset equipped with the new software. The sender's location shows...

The landmass and the seas have been stretched and flattened Enlarge Image The Tabula Peutingeriana is one of the Austrian National Library's greatest treasures. The parchment scroll, made in the Middle Ages, is the only surviving copy of a road map from the late Roman Empire. The document, which is almost seven metres long, shows the network of main Roman roads from Spain to India. It is normally never shown to the public. The parchment is extremely fragile, and reacts badly to daylight. But it has been on display for one day to celebrate its inclusion in Unesco's Memory...

WASHINGTON — A key turning point in the U.S.-led war against the Iraqi insurgency came even before last winter's troop surge, FOX News has learned. (snip) The Times reported that days now pass without a car bombing, unheard of in the height of the insurgency. The number of bodies appearing on the streets has fallen from a peak of 35 eight months ago to five a day, and homicide bombings dropped to 16 in October, half as many as last summer and down from a peak of 59 last March.

The first global map of magnetic peculiarities - or anomalies - on Earth has been assembled by an international team of researchers. Magnetic anomalies are caused by differences in the magnetisation of the rocks in the Earth's crust. Many years of negotiation were required to obtain confidential data from governments and institutes. Scientists hope to use the map to learn more about the geological composition of our planet. The World Digital Magnetic Anomaly Map (WDMAM) is available through the Commission for the Geological Map of the World. The magnetic signature of the Earth's crust has been measured for many decades...

Ancient Cataclysm Rearranged Pacific Map, Study Says Julian Ryall for National Geographic NewsOctober 24, 2007 A cataclysm 50 million years ago changed the face of the planet from the Hawaiian Islands to Antarctica, according to new research. The collapse of an underwater mountain range in the Pacific Ocean turned Australia into a warm and sunny continent instead of a snowbound wasteland and created some of the islands that dot the South Pacific today. "We have found that the destruction of an entire mid-ocean ridge, known as the Izanagi Ridge, initiated a chain reaction of geological events," said Joanne Whittaker, a...

Investigators used a ruse to question a man later charged with aiding terrorists, an FBI agent testified Tuesday at a hearing over admissibility of the conversation and a search of the defendant's luggage. FBI agent Michael Scherck said he and another law enforcement officer approached Ehsanul Sadequee as he got off a flight from Atlanta to New York on Aug. 18, 2005, and told him they wanted to talk to him about passenger complaints that he had acted suspiciously on the plane. Scherck said that in fact there were no complaints, but investigators wanted biographical information from Sadequee as part...

Map of Humanity by Rex Libris and Nil creator James Turner

"The Arab states are not seeking to wipe Israel off the map," Lebanese Prime Minister Faud Saniora claimed in a New York Times editorial on Friday morning. "Rather," he continued, "we are seeking the legitimate goals of an armistice, secure borders and the ability of all of the region's people to live in peace and security." Saniora went on to say that the Winograd Committee's interim report on the Second Lebanon War failed to draw the most essential lesson that "military action does not give the people of Israel security," adding that compromise and diplomacy were the answer to instability....

Map reveals secret of awesome Mavericks waves 17:27 19 April 2007 NewScientist.com news service Phil McKenna Seafloor map showing a long narrow ramp leading up to the Mavericks break (in black box) off Half Moon Bay in Central California. Blue = deep water, Red = shallow water, White = break zone (Image: Seafloor Mapping Lab, California State University, Monterey Bay)Rikk Kvitek, director of the Seafloor Mapping Lab at California State University-Monterey Bay Center for Habitat Studies at Moss Landing Marine Labs California Coast State Waters Mapping Project Images of the seafloor at Mavericks The magnificent waves in Half Moon Bay...