And you are here why?

via XKCD

Erasmus is a European student exchange program.  It is a non-profit international student organisation. Our  mission  is to represent international students, thus provide opportunities for cultural understanding and self-development under the principle of  Students Helping Students . We are  12.000 members  from  441 local sections  in  36 countries  working on a volunteer base in Higher Education Institutions. We are offering services to  160.000 students . Christian Gross and Sebastian Sadowski  have created this wonderful interactive visualization that shows not just where the student's go, but also why , by mapping the destination by temperature, cost of living, and distance. Good stuff!

via  +Paul Oliver  , for all the Doctor Who types out there, we have this brilliant Dalek Relaxation Tape " Your tension has been EX-TER-MI-NA-TED! "

That is all

via Find Properly , we have this (somewhat) nifty interactive take . Its pretty nifty (especially the morphing between the Beck and Geographic maps), but it would have been even nicer to have a summary of some kind show up as a hover/tool-tip. Its embedded below, but go to the original to get the full experience ...

via Earth Engine Partners , we have the University of Maryland's Department of Geographical Sciences  bringing us this excellent interactive take on global forest change . Short version - its frightening. Slightly longer version Quantification of global forest change has been lacking despite the recognized importance of forest ecosystem services. In this study, Earth observation satellite data were used to map global forest loss (2.3 million square kilometers) and gain (0.8 million square kilometers) from 2000 to 2012 at a spatial resolution of 30 meters. The tropics were the only climate domain to exhibit a trend, with forest loss increasing by 2101 square kilometers per year. Brazil’s well-documented reduction in deforestation was offset by increasing forest loss in Indonesia, Malaysia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Zambia, Angola, and elsewhere. Intensive forestry practiced within subtropical forests resulted in the highest rates of forest change globally. Boreal forest loss due la...

via MakingMusic , the voices behind one of my favorite songs ever. As the blurb sez. "Kids, this is HOW IT'S DONE. Take notes " Back in the summer of 1981, Queen and David Bowie happened to be recording material in separate studios in Montreux, Switzerland’s Mountain Studios.  After a night of binge drinking and binge… um… sniffing… Queen and David Bowie came up with one of the most killer rock songs written in years.  Here we have the unbelievable isolated vocal tracks from that song.  This was before WAY before autotune and punching in your takes with ProTools.  Just raw talent.  Freddie’s vocals of “why… why…. whyyyyyyy” and then going to a HIGHER note after that is just unbelievable. Kids, this is HOW IT’S DONE.  Take notes. and the full song/video for completeness sake

via the ever wonderful Ta-Nehisi Coates , It may well be true that, against all his strivings, trouble stalks George Zimmerman. It may be true that George Zimmerman never pointed a shotgun at his girlfriend's face. T hat Ms. Scheibe smashed a table, took his stuff, started throwing it and then called 911 on herself. That  she was simply being poetic when she said  "you pointed your gun in my freaking face and told me get the fuck out" and then added "he knows how to do this. He knows how to play this game."  And it may be true that  in September when Zimmerman's ex-wife, Shelly Zimmerman, claimed that he had punched her father and threatened them with a gun she was embellishing. That when she  called 911 and said "I'm really afraid. I don't know what he's capable of. I'm really scared," she was suffering some form of hallucination.  That Zimmerman  had not smashed  his wife's iPad. That it was his wife that assaulted him wi...

Thrill to the amazing blend of "eastern" and "western" fighting skillz! Marvel at the miraculously placed pommel horses in Parmistani town squares! Root against the Anti-American Sentiment! And best of all, watch the whole damn thing online on the Tubes of You ! Life is - indeed - awesome... (Yes. 2nd Greatest. Road House  is, and always will be, the Champeen)

A sure-fire sign of the apocalypse - Trader Joe's Poutine  (aka  "French Fried Potatoes with Beef Sauce and Cheese Curds" ). The mind reels...

The Global Carbon Atlas  (ok, actually WeDoData ) has put together this splendid interactive showing the growth of carbon emissions since 1960. As they put it The Global Carbon Atlas is an online platform to explore, visualize and interpret global and regional carbon data arising from both human activities and natural processes. The graphics and data sources are made available in the belief that their wide dissemination will lead to new knowledge and better-informed decisions to limit and cope with human-induced climate change. The Global Carbon Atlas is a community effort under the umbrella of the  Global Carbon Project  based on the  contributions  of many research institutions and individual scientists around the world who make available observations, models, and interpretation skills. Check it out...

Yup. per Variety Star Partners and Hummingbird Prods. are collaborating on production of a sequel to  Frank Capra ’s iconic 1946 movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which starred  Jimmy Stewart  and  Donna Reed . The sequel, titled “It’s A Wonderful Life: The Rest of the Story,” is being financed by Allen J. Schwalb of Star Partners who will also produce along with Bob Farnsworth of Hummingbird. The duo are aiming to get the movie into theaters for the 2015 holiday season. Because, seriously, it had  to have a sequel, right? What d'you bet that they'll somehow manage to throw in a bit of the good ol' GrimDark™ action? 

Remember Newhart  (ok, for the most of you that don't, play along), with the classic finale that hearkened back to The Bob Newhart Show ? Well, via The Tubes of You , we have the real  ending of Breaking Bad.   Well, it is supposedly the alternate  ending, but I prefer this :-) And of course, the ending of Newhart  for completeness

From the Tubes of You Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project's "Trinity" test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear). Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing"the fear and folly of nuclear weapons." It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming. hat-tip Pieter Hintjens

The WHO has a new report out details Road Safety worldwide .  Per the abstract The  Global status report on road safety 2013  presents information on road safety from 182 countries, accounting for almost 99% of the world’s population. The report indicates that worldwide the total number of road traffic deaths remains unacceptably high at 1.24 million per year. Only 28 countries, covering 7% of the world’s population, have comprehensive road safety laws on five key risk factors: drinking and driving, speeding, and failing to use motorcycle helmets, seat-belts, and child restraints. The bit takeaway for me is just the sheer number of victims that are pedestrians and bicyclists ranging from 27% to as high as 75% (!!!).  Which is probably also why they address this right up front in the executive summary Concerted effort is needed to make road infrastructure safer for pedestrians and cyclists. The needs of these road users must be taken into consideration earlier...

From the fine folks at GQ , we have this awesome Family Tree(s) of Bourbon .  It is, admittedly, a bit of a 'best guess', but hey, its better than nothing! As they put it This chart shows the major distilleries operating in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana, grouped horizontally by corporate owner, then subdivided by distillery. Each tree shows the type of whiskey made, and the various expressions of each style of whiskey or mash bill, in the case of bourbons. For instance, Basil Hayden's is a longer-aged version of Old Grand-Dad, and both are made at the Jim Beam Distillery. Some of this is imprecise. Buffalo Trace has two bourbon mash bills, but it isn't known which of its many brands are made from each, so this is a rough guess based on online commentary. Willett, formerly only a bottler as Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, has been distilling its own product for about a year; I include the brands that it bottles from other sources for reference. The ages are taken ...

In case you've been living under a rock, JPM helped take Twitter public, and in its infinite wisdom, decided to host a Twitter Q&A w/ the hashtag #AskJPM. The results were pretty much exactly what you expected - the Times has the details , but the following from The Big Picture sez. it all UPDATE: Stacy Keach reads teh Tweets.

JCVD seems to be going full Shatner, embracing his inner ham, but with one minor difference - he is Jean Claude van Damme , the Muscles from Brussels , and he can do the most EPIC of splits. This had me grinning madly for quite a while afterwards... UPDATE : And Channing Tatum responds w/ his own take on the ad

"Film Critic Hulk"  takes on the subject of rape - partly in response to the horrible horrible HORRIBLE  article by Emily Yoffe at Slate telling women to, well, Stop getting drunk - to prevent getting raped .  I'm not going to summarize the post - go read the whole thing. Its infinitely insightful, as well as deeply depressing - if only in the way it points out how our culture is so deeply deeply fucked up. I'll leave you with this passage - read it, contemplate the phrase " WHY ARE WE, AS  CULTURE, NOT GETTING PAST THIS? " ,  and then read the whole article That is all WHY AREN'T WE LEADING A DAMN CRUSADE AGAINST THIS BULLSHIT? WHY IS THE FIGHT ALWAYS LIMITED TO THE SAME SUBSET OF WOMEN AND A HANDFUL OF GUYS WITH VARIOUS LEVELS OF UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE?  WHY DO SO MANY OTHER GUYS IN THE "50%" JUST ACCUSE THOSE HANDFUL OF GUYS OF FEIGNING INTEREST IN FEMINIST CAUSES JUST TO GET INTO SOMEONE'S PANTS? WHY...

Seriously, if there is one thing you'll watch on the Intertubes today, it should be this. Sheer awesomeness - and perfectly done awesomeness at that. Attenborrowed from wreckandsalvage on Vimeo .

A 7 minute prequel to The Day of The Doctor. Sheer happiness!!!

Amptoons puts Alyssa Rosenberg's count of the race and sex of characters on prime-time TV up against the same for the USA as a whole.  The conclusions? Asian & Latinos get short shrift  Law Enforcement is all over the place Check it out...

This one really, really  needs no commentary.  From Richard Cohen's latest Washington Post op-ed  (emphasis mine) Today’s GOP is not racist, as  Harry Belafonte  alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all. Seriously?  That line is so horrific it bears repeating People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a ...

Its the 2013 Britannia awards, and Sasha Baron Cohen had the following happen as he receives the Charlie Chaplin award... Watch on for the entire acceptance speech

Derek Thompson at The Atlantic as a piece up on the racial composition of the US workforce , and it is one of the more depressing articles that I have read in the recent past.  As he puts it The numbers reveal a workforce stratified, if not calcified, by race, with whites seeing higher wages and lower unemployment, while blacks and Hispanics constantly stuck behind them.  The following two charts pretty succinctly summarize  everything  wrong with our workforce today. First, what employees make, broken down by race Its really pretty straight forward: White > Black > Hispanic , as well as Men > Women Add to this the next chart showing who works more often, once again broken out by race - but this time, over the last 40  years The bottom line? The unambiguous take-aways? It pays, and has always  paid to be White in this country. Quite literally. Regardless of whether you are a man or a woman If you're a hispanic man, you have ...

via James Offer , we have this interactive take on the almost 1 million  commonwealth citizens who died in the First World War. The vast majority were from the United Kingdom ( 781,858 ) but Canada, Australia, and India had 171,997  between them. Play around with this to see how the count climbs over time, as well as the nationality/age/burial-location of the dead

Lagkagehuset - for baked goods that are simply the best that I've ever had.  As a bonus, they are all over the airport!

Somethings just don't go together... via WuMo

via Nathan Yau , a map showing the nearest Pizza place within a 10 mile radius in the USA . The summary? As you might expect, Pizza Hut (red) dominates from a national perspective. Domino's (blue) also has a strong showing nationally, but with a better showing in the east. Regionally, Papa John's, which started in Kentucky, is strong in the east central area; Godfather's, with headquarters in Nebraska, is popular in the midwest; Little Caesars shows strong in California and Michigan (its first location in Garden City, Michigan); and Papa Murphy's is strong in the northwest, which makes sense because it started in Washington. The sad thing, of course, is that none  of this is actually any good :-(

Well, technically, this is the Global Burden of Depressive Disorders , and is part of a study that was conducted by researchers in Queensland .  The maps below have some fairly interesting (and sometimes unexpected?) findings: Afghanistan, Algeria, Libya and Syria do very  poorly Australia, China, Japan, Mexico and New Zealand do  very  well Finland and Norway do poorly, but Sweden is doing just fine. Russia does quite poorly The war zones I completely understand - you'd have  to be depressed. Japan and Mexico are somewhat surprising, as well as China - anyone care to comment? As for the northern countries, Finland and Norway I'd put down to the long winters, but that really doesn't explain Sweden doing so well...

If (when?) you end up in Berlin, the one things that can't be passed up is Currywurst .  From Wikipedia a  fast food   dish of German  origin consisting of steamed, then fried  pork   sausage ( German :  Wurst ) cut into slices and seasoned with  curry ketchup , regularly consisting of  ketchup  or  tomato paste  blended with generous amounts of  curry powder , or a ready-made ketchup-based sauce seasoned with curry and other spices For you ketchup-averse types, this is - seriously - awesome food.  Surprisingly light (to be fair, for what it is, its surprisingly light :-) and immensely yummy, one of the best places to get it is at Krasselt's  ( Steglitzer Damm 22 ) where the lines are usually long, but move rapidly. (And yes, thats  +Heinz Gies  over on the left above) Also, FWIW, you're supposed to get it with a roll (which you use to sop up the ketchup/sauce), and (hot) chocolate milk to drink....

I remember the moment when the above happened, the sheer awfulness of the WTF  moment. I remember convincing myself that perfection requires a flaw , that Andie MacDowell's horribleness made everybody else sparkle so much brighter , and so on. Well, it turns out that it wasn't just me - that others feel the same .  Russell Sanders -- You see, midway through the movie we learn that another member of the British foursome is herself in love with Hugh Grant’s character. ...  That character is played by Kristen Scott Thomas, an actress who is not only astoundingly gorgeous but also has more charisma in her elegantly manicured little finger than Andie MacDowell has from stem to stern.  And we are meant to watch with sympathetic interest as Mr. Grant chooses the latter instead. Which is absolutely  true.  I mean - Kristen Scott Thomas vs Andie MacDowell? Andie MacDowell? GAH!

This is the famous Time Zone clock in Alexanderplatz, Berlin Eastern - NYC Mountain - Denver Pacific - SF/LA Central - New Orleans . Wait, WTF? Where is Chicago? Seriously Berlin, get your act together!

via The Manchester Music Map , we have this interactive map showing the history of music in Manchester ( Sex Pistols! John Mayall! Bob Dylan! ), complete with maps, artists, videos, venues, and a whole lot more.  It is quite the excellent labor of love!

From Pop Cart Labs , we have this 24"x36" chart showing the progression of music players starting in 1840, and ending, well, now .  As they put it A masterful recording of 219 engines of aural bliss that tracks the progression of the music player from 1840 to the modern day.  Color-coded and hand-illustrated, this chart scores a wide spectrum of audio devices, from  Edison’s early phonograph to the Disco Lyte boombox to the Sony Walk/Discman, all the way to the rise of mp3 players like the iPod and Zune. If music is the gateway to the soul, this high-fidelity timeline lays down the ways we’ve been unlocking the doors through 173 years of audio history. $32 - check it out...

From Pop Chart Labs  we have this monster 60"x40" chart which, apparently is the most complete charting of beer ever, breaking down ales and lagers into over 100 delicious styles from hoppy IPAs to fruity lambics, and including over 500 individual beers as notable examples of each style as well as glassware recommendations. Its $90 - if you have a 'man cave', you probably need one of these :-)

Air New Zealand's latest is all sorts of Epic Virgin America's is, well, brilliant Mind you, the older ones aren't that bad either Virgin America's previous one was seriously cute Air New Zealand  for the Rugby fanatics And Air New Zealand's  previous one, where they are all nude, 'cept for the strategically placed seat-buckles (and body paint!)

Yes, it is  a thing. And a Finnish team won it this year. That is all... (hat tip Al Roth. Yes that  Al Roth )

WuMo brings the pain... It never gets old :-)

via Air Berlin I'm hoping "coherent process" is actually something relevant in German... I'm hoping it