Tag: Present day
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How the world is governed: 197 countries, 112 systems
Democracy or not is only the first question. Compare head of state, executive, federalism, chambers and voting system, and the world’s 197 countries fall into 12 families and 112 exact systems. 80 countries have a system nobody else shares.
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Pilgrim roads: there is more of the Way of St James in Germany than in Spain
I measured every waymarked pilgrim route in OpenStreetMap without counting any stretch twice: 77,804 km. 41,674 km lead to Santiago, and Germany has 14,814 km of them against Spain’s 9,922.
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Who shares the world’s rivers? 313 basins, 19 countries on the Danube, and why nobody agrees on the longest river
313 river basins cross a border. They drain 47% of the world’s land outside Antarctica and hold 45% of its people. I mapped them, measured the great rivers on one map, and found the longest river depends on who holds the ruler.
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A Tolkien-style map of the whole world, drawn from real data
A Tolkien-style map of the whole world, zoomable from continents to single hills: little ink peaks on the real high ground, forests of tiny trees, rippled coasts, red lettering and towns drawn as tiny houses, all generated from open data.
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How high is the world? Mountains, plateaus and height above sea level on one map
A map of the height of the whole planet, sharp from continents to valleys. The world’s land averages 807 m, only 11% of it is above 2,000 m, and only 1.9% of the people in its cities live that high.
