Resizing the globe with world mapper

It’s always easier to show than tell. Worldmapper.org has used that adage to maximum effect; this U.K.-based site is an intelligent use of data that shows the relative sizes of the world’s countries if measured according to different categories and social measures.

For instance, what would a world map look if showed the countries with most airline travelers loom larger than those with smaller numbers?

A good summary article was published recently by the London Daily Telegraph, at www.telegraph.co.uk.

As that story reported, the organizers at the University of Sheffield set out to create 365 world maps, measuring the planet in a wide assortment of categories: from HIV incidence to grocery exports, and from adult literacy to teenage mothers.

Worldmapper.com should appeal to educators and to data junkies. Also commendable are the PDF posters accompanying each map. The files document and support the map images with recent data used to scale the world displays.

BreakYourSpace.com

A Web site called BreakYourSpace.com tackles a major Web problem of having too many annoying friends on your social networking sites. Friends who keep coming back to your MySpace or Friendster page and leave annoying messages. Get a life, you want to tell them, but you’re incapable of such direct messages.

BreakYourSpace offers to send “get lost” messages to people you no longer cherish, via direct e-mail messages. The cost: 99 cents per breakup.

Here’s what BreakYourSpace has to say about that cost: “At this price you most likely can even afford to break up with multiple people.”

Mixed Nuts is a regular feature of .TXT.