Map Hawk

Leading up to the recent Afghan elections, violence plagued the country. The Wall Street Journal has documented the terrorist acts by mapping bombings, missile strikes, rockets and clashes on an interactive map . The map is supported by a calendar and time scale so the user can choose to see the chronologic order of the incidents. Though the map provides and interesting chronology of events, it lacks the ability to spatially reference or sort incidents by type which would help in understanding the proximity of events and their relative significance to each other, at least for the "arm chair" spatial analyst.

The U.S. unemployment job statistics, on a state by state basis, are nicely explained in a map published today by the Wall Street Journal . What's particularly noticable, if you watch the animated sequence that shows how unemployment rates have increased across the country, is the story of how the states where manufacturing is most heavily concentrated has taken a beating while the agriculturally-based midwest has remained somewhat stable. The service economies of the east coast have been hit hard but not as bad as the tourism economies of Florida, Nevada, and California. Texas, stabilized by oil, has remained below the national average. The graphs also tell an interesting story as you see how some states have only just recently crept up to the national average.