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Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Muslims Don't Support ISIS Either

We get a lot of confusing results when looking at how much support ISIS has in the Islamic world. This is because large numbers of unscientific opinion polls show widely differing results. Metrocosm created this map, based on six different scientific polls.
http://metrocosm.com/support-isis-muslim-world-perceptions-vs-reality/
Except for Syria, support for ISIS is very low - even 0% in Iran and Lebanon.* Contrast this with the perceived support in the United States:
http://metrocosm.com/support-isis-muslim-world-perceptions-vs-reality/

These are the types of perceptions that cause rednecks to throw pig's heads at mosques and this illustrates the dangers of the media relying on social media and other non-scientific opinion polls.

I am no expert of what makes a poll "scientific" but the questions and polls cited for the above map can be found here.

* 0% in any poll should arouse skepticism.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Mapping the Philly Pope-Fest

The Pope is coming to Philadelphia this weekend. Security measures include banning cars, closing bridges, transit and schools and building a fence around the event perimeter. To keep track of all this data scientist Lauren Ancona has created the Philly Pope Map showing all available public data.
https://phillypopemap.com
There is also a timeline for the various closures. Here's a zoomed in version.
https://phillypopemap.com/#15/39.9586/-75.1680
There's a bit of an assumption that you know what some of these colored areas are. If you're in the area you probably do but for the rest of us, a legend would be helpful. This map from the Philadelphia Inquirer helps explain the different zones, but doesn't have the same interactive pizzazz.
http://www.philly.com/philly/infographics/321846572.html
If you come in from out of town and you don't want to pay for an over-inflated hotel room, you can pay for an over-inflated campsite at "Francis Fields" in beautiful Fairmount Park. Of course, you'll have to walk the two plus miles each way.
UPDATE: Actually no, you can't - they just cancelled it due to lack of demand for over-inflated camping.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/pope/20150910_Fairmount_Park_campgrounds_being_set_up_for_papal_visit.html
 Personally, I think I will wait at least a few more weeks before my next visit.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

New Provinces in Iraq?

Iraq's Shiite government has decided "in principal" to create three new provinces to address Sunni grievances, counter Kurdish expansion and possibly, to appease Christian and Turkomen minorities. I immediately looked for a map but there is none because the government has only described it in general terms. The idea is to create a province around Fallujah, and two others on the edge of the Kurdish regions, in the Nineveh Plain and around Tuz Khormato. Here is a map from the Public Intelligence Blog showing where these provinces might be.
The text on this map is tiny and weak on descriptions but the color scheme nicely illustrates the ethnic and religious areas and where they mix. The article describes the situation in more depth. The black outline is the area with Christian minorities that could compose the Nineveh Plain province while purple outlines the Turkomen minority areas including Tuz Khormato. Fallujah is the yellow star in the middle of the country. 

The map above does not show the current provinces. To get both the provinces and cities here's a map from Maps of the World. Fallujah is not shown because it is not a capital but it is near the bottom of the "f" in their watermark, between Baghdad and Ramadi. Nineveh is Ninawa on this map.
http://www.mapsofworld.com/iraq/iraq-political-map.html
Finally, for some classic sarcasm there's this map of the provinces of Iraq. The author showed an admirable respect for the actual provincial boundaries.
https://twitter.com/willJens/status/226247406939955200/photo/1


Wednesday, December 11, 2013

The Islamic World

Columbia University's Gulf/2000 Project was created as a service to scholars, journalists, politicians and other professionals working in the Persian Gulf region. The web site for this project contains some fantastic maps created by Dr. Mehrdad Izady showing population, religion, language and other divisions that affect the region.

His large map of the Islamic World is particularly striking. Many of the recent conflicts in the world have occurred along the boundaries of Islam and other religions such as in Mail, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Sudan/South Sudan, the Caucasus region and in parts of India and Pakistan.
http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/images/maps/Islamic_World_Basic_lg.png
The lower right corner of the map contains a 1907 map depicting the extent of the "Moslem World." The overall pattern is largely the same as today.

"Syria Ethnic Composition" is another very detailed map showing how diverse that country is. The text on the right describes how much of this complexity is lost when language is considered the defining ethnic characteristic. The commonly used "Arab" ethnic stamp glosses over these divisions but the current conflict in Syria has shown their significance. 
http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/images/maps/Syria_Ethnic_Detailed_lg.png

The maps page has many other highly detailed maps not just of the Gulf region, but the entire Middle East as well as parts of Africa and Asia. You can spend hours looking at these. I did. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

March Pope Madness!

When I saw the list of papal candidates today, I immediately thought about the March Madness brackets. Apparently, the Religious News Service beat me to the idea.


You can vote for the final two (Ouellet vs Onaiyekan) here.

UPDATE: It's Onaiyekan from Nigeria!