Good vs. Evil: One Final Holiday Map

With the various rounds of travel and vacation at end of December break we ran out of time to post the entries for the second round of Satan/Santa maps. This is an issue that we now want to make right and since we received only one addition entry it makes choosing a winner very simple! But this does NOT mean that the map or the technique used to create it falls short of our stringent Floating Sheep standards. Indeed the map below submitted by Tom Koehler is a great example of the willingness to apply stringent GIS techniques to somewhat messy data [1] about an offbeat subject.

After combining a range of terms -- Satan, Satan Santa, Zombie, Bad Santa, Evil Santa, Devil and Lucifer -- Tom "created a surface raster of the results. I suppose there is some argument to be made over creating a contiguous surface from absolute data, but I figure the search hits aren't exactly absolute since they're searching a radius around that point." We suspect that the resulting map would look similar whether Tom used summed or absolute data but greatly appreciate the fact that he raised it as a possible issue/critique.


The resulting map of "more bad" clearly is shaped by major population centers; after all, population density is a key (albeit not the only) driver of geoweb material. Still some cities known for their "badness" such as Las Vegas, New Orleans and Miami come off relatively less bad than others, especially the Northeast. I guess Santa is looking forward to catching some time in the sun and warmth as well.

In any case, thanks to Tom for his map and he will be receiving his prizes in the mail soon.

[1] Is there any other kind of data?

Holiday Map Contest Winner: Santa vs. Satan

We are happy to announce that Duane Griffin of Bucknell University is the winner of the Floating Sheep "Mapping Santa" contest. His entry combined a flair for cartographic representation with a willingness to combine unconventional data (details here) to create what we think is a truly terrifying map. It is truly one of the creepiest things we’ve ever seen associated with the holidays (and that is saying something!).


So, put the kids to bed, block up the chimney and hide the retirees....someone is coming to town and they are pissed! Even Santa looks rather menacing in this map. So, congratulations to Duane for this mark of distinction dubious honor. We can only hope he has the good sense to keep it off his c.v.

Don't forget, we're running a second round of this contest with entries due on Friday! In particular, we'd love to see some maps of the United Kingdom.

Contest Rules and Data

1. The data is available in shapefile and excel versions. See the excel version for the metadata and other information about how the data was generated.
   
2. Email your entries to zook@uky.edu
3. Entries must be received by Friday December 23rd by 8 am EST. (Apologies for the tight deadline but we're getting this post up later than planned). We'd like to post all the entries to the blog by the 23rd or 24th.
   
4. By entering you agree to allow us to post your visualization on the FloatingSheep.org blog and under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
5. Winners will be decided by the FloatingSheep collective as advised by comments to the posts here.
6. Winners will receive a honest-to-God Floating Sheep ornament and a Slacker strata t-shirt. Both of which are also available for your purchase and pleasure.

If you have any questions... feel free to ask us in the comments section.

The Santa contest entries and a second round

We want to thank those who entered our contest for Santa-themed maps. We're quite happy with the range of entries and are currently deciding on a winner.

We wanted to share them with you in the hope of inspiring new entries. We suspect that there is many a GIS person at work without much to do (after all, you're reading this blog right now) and this week would be a perfect time to make a map. Not many people around the office, just marking time on the clock until the end of the year break. Although the first contest is over, we're running a second round with the same rules and prizes (see here). All entries have to be emailed by 8am EST on Friday, December 23rd.

But on with this round of maps.

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First, is a quasi-entry from someone who may want to remain anonymous given the incomplete nature of this map. He notes, "Didn't have time to develop a complete plan for the Santa vs. Zombies contest, but did find a nice image of brains on a silver platter, live traced in Illustrator, then imported as a symbol into ArcMap." Well done we say, but why not take some time this week to further develop it? Tons of potential here.

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Our second entry is from Ate Poorthuis who went the open-source GIS route. Using QGIS and Photoshop he notes, "no fancy analysis from me this time but thought the Jesus versus Devil thing was kind of fun. Obviously the devil clusters are related to place names. The most prominent ones are Kill Devil Hills, NC and Devil's Lake, WI. Nonetheless, you can see the Bible Belt and Salt Lake City quite clearly. I have no explanation for the cluster around Seattle - most other cities have at least a devil point or two + Seattle doesn't strike me as the most religious city in the US."

Indeed, the results for Seattle are rather surprising. Perhaps it is tied to the "mellowness" we documented in the area that even makes the devil more laid back.

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Our third entry comes from Duane Griffin [1] with a map that we're quite frankly really creeped out by. I made sure my laptop was closed last night so it couldn't escape.


Duane outlines his method as, "I aggregated all of the Satan/Lucifer/zombies/etc. as Team Satan, aggregated all the religious and holiday categories and everything else as Team Santa (including fatman and robot santa), and mapped them Fox-style to hype up the threat. The "Mostly" category is based on the team ratio." The result is a road map of "badness". While Las Vegas comes as no surprise, who knew that Wyoming was so Satan-ridden? And I'm going to think twice before heading out to the middle of Kansas. Duane simply notes that it "Looks as if the Forces of Evil are winning the West and making inroads into the eastern US." Others (e.g., my mother) notes with some surprise that Washington D.C. shows up as mostly good which defies all expectations.

Happy holidays! And stay tuned for more posts.


[1] Other identifying information such as his role as a professor at Bucknell University has been withheld so he is not tainted by his admission of being a Floating Sheep reader. [2]

[2] Oops.

Santa vs. The League of Darkness (Zombies allied with Satan!)

Merry Christmas!….hopefully. But you may want to check out the maps below before heading out for the holidays as our analysis of holiday related references in the U.S. is NOT all candied sugarplums. In fact, there seems to be something rather sinister lurking in the hinterlands…and we're not just talking Newt Gingrich here.

Using our standard method to chart the number of hits for search hits at a grid of locations in the U.S., we recently compared the distribution of references to "Santa" and "Zombies". We thought there would be little chance that the shambling brain-dead fixtures of horror movies would be more popular than a jolly old elf distributing presents but we once again underestimated the American populace's ability to fixate on the "naughty" rather than the "nice".

In any case, the map below clearly shows that while most of the country is all keen about Santa, a few pockets including just outside the San Francisco Bay and Seattle and the cities Houston, Dallas and Austin in Texas have a lot of zombie angst. Hmmm…it might be the only things these places are in agreement on. But one of the more interesting clusters runs from Tampa to Orlando Florida….home of Disney World. Sort of makes sense in a way. Also of interest is a thin band of zombies stretched out along the Eastern seaboard, west of most of the major metropolitan areas.

The fact that zombies outrank Santa is a bit shocking but here at Floating Sheep we always look for the cause behind the pattern. Towards this end we decided to compare Santa vs. Satan. Surely, Santa would win this contest! Sadly there remain stubborn pockets of non-Santa-ness in the U.S. although in the West they are smaller than the zombie clusters (hmmm, new junk food idea?). Conversely in both Texas and Florida Satan clusters are bigger than the Zombie clusters observed earlier. And the line of preoccupation with Satan remains behind eastern seaboard cities, so I guess folks from New England and the Mid-Atlantic should drive carefully and not pick up and shambling or horned hitch-hikers they may see.

We are a bit concerned about this Zombie-Satan alliance and therefore will be spending our Christmas barricaded behind closed doors and with our shotgun pointed at the fireplace just in case. So Santa, if you are reading this, you might want to see if anyone is selling red Kevlar.

From the FloatingSheep headquarters we now sign off.

p.s. If you would like to try your hand at mapping Santa vs. Satan (including data for the U.K.) you can download the data here. We're running a contest (complete with prizes!) for the best reader designed map.