Maps as an Instrument of Propaganda, Part 1

Nov 16, 2014 by

Maps as an Instrument of Propaganda, Part 1

[This post was originally published in December 2012.] Maps are ideally supposed to be objective depictions of reality, but they can also be used as an instrument of propaganda, portraying the world not as it is but as it is imagined...

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Crimean Tatars, According to Gustav Radde—Part 2

Nov 2, 2014 by

(This post is part 2 of my overview of Gustav Radde’s Crimean Tatars, originally published in Russian in 1856-1857. Part 1 can be found here. The images in this post are from EncyclopediaOfUkraine website.) The introductory chapter...

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Regional Differences in Swiss Cuisine

Oct 26, 2014 by

Regional Differences in Swiss Cuisine

[This post was originally published in March 2013] My previous post discussed the differences in voting patterns between French-, German-, and Italian-speaking areas of Switzerland. Similarly, distinctions in regional cuisines are...

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Best Country To Be a Mother: Finland

Oct 20, 2014 by

Best Country To Be a Mother: Finland

[This post was originally published in June 2013] Among the world’s many social development indices is the 2013 Mothers’ Index recently published by the Save the Children charity. The index is a composite of five factors: maternal...

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Global Alcohol Consumption

Oct 16, 2014 by

Global Alcohol Consumption

[This post was originally published in March 2013] Having looked at the global patterns of consumption of milk and cheese, I will now take a look at alcohol consumption. As the maps on the left show, alcohol drinking habits vary...

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Are We “The United States of Smoking”?

Oct 16, 2014 by

Are We “The United States of Smoking”?

[This post was originally published in March 2014] On March 14, 2014, The Washington Post online published an article by Reid Wilson entitled “The United States of smoking: The state with the most tobacco farms smokes most often”....

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