Anyone know how to say "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated," in Japanese? Not suprisingly, the land of the rising sun blows away the competition on IEEE Spectrum's robot density map:

I guess it's impressive, but this sort of thing makes me very worried for them.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Using data from the Department of Homeland Security, Northwestern University grad student Ian Stevenson created this gorgeous animation showing the flow of immigrants into the U.S. over time, color-coded by their regional origin. Each dot represents 100 people:

Immigration to the US, 1820-2007 v2 from Ian S on Vimeo.

(Hat tip: Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward)

This week's map comes from our benevolent overlords at WashingtonPost.com. The TimeSpace map, which you can find on the Post's "World" page, is an interesting new way to visualize the day's news from the post's reporters around the globe. You can adjust the timeframe of the stories you see on the slider at the bottom of the map:

If you zoom in on Washington D.C, you can see the latest Passport posts. You may even be able to find the post you're reading right now, though that risks opening up an Escher-like metaphysical vortex with Large Hadron Collider-like destructive powers. If this happens, the Washington Post Company will not be held responsible for the consequences.

If you haven't yet had a chance to read E.J. Graff's superb piece "The Lie We Love" from our November/December issue, it's now available for free on ForeignPolicy.com. The piece is an exploration of the dark side of global adoption and the myth that millions of healthy babies are waiting for adoption in the developing world. Too often, Graff argues, these infants are "manufactured" to meet Western demand.

To accompany the piece, Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism has put together this online map showing the countries where the most serious adoption irregularities occur. Click through for in depth country data and check back as more countries are added:

Ronald Reagan was almost right. The actual scariest words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I know where you can score some weed."

The U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy was trying to prove a point on its blog about the proliferation of medical marijuana dispensaries in California by noting that there are now more of them than there are Starbucks locations in downtown San Francisco. To bolster their point, the agency's bloggers included this handy Google Maps mashup:

As Wired's Threat Level blog noted, the narcs' map also serves as an excellent guide for anyone who might be looking for one of these establishments, or... you know... really in the mood for some Starbucks.

So good work, ONDCP! I hope all those latté-sipping, pot-smoking San Franciscans appreciate your efforts.

Update: Apparently many of those marijuana locations don't even exist. Starbucks wins again. (Hat tip: Commenter beltwaynative.)

The International Chamber of Commerce's Commercial Crime Services have created a live map showing pirate attacks around the world, as they are reported to the International Martime Bureau. The map shows only attacks from 2008:

As you can see, the gulf of Aden, where a Saudi oil tanker was hijacked by Somali pirates yesterday, is by far the world's most dangerous area for pirate activity. It's hardly the only hotspot, though. West Africa and Indonesia also have a troublingly large pirate problem.

ICC-CSS (Screenshot)

If the 21st century's wars will be fought over water, rather than oil, it might help to at least know what we're fighting over. UNESCO recently released this world map showing where freshwater aquifers lie:

Here's the Middle East:

What else could it be today? Here's the LA Times' latest projection. Click to create your own scenarios.

Our own Blake Hounshell has also put together the following invaluable guide to the states you need to watch tonight:

Click here to download.

This month's new-look Atlantic features a cool map of arctic shipping routes and global warming-related geopolitical concerns put together by Scott Borgerson of the Council on Foreign Relations:

Too many bank failures and bailouts to keep track of as the financial pandemic makes its way around the globe? Try this new interactive global credit crisis map from Reuters, which shows countries that have been impacted and what measures they've taken in response:

Reuters

Eat your heart out RealClearPolitics. This week's map, put together by the good folks at The Economist, shows how the whole wide world is leaning in the 2008 election. With a month to go, Obama's pretty much got the imaginary global election in the bag:

Economist.com

It looks like McCain can only count on Georgia, (guess that "We are all Georgians" speech did the trick) but has a good shot at Macedonia. Any of our occasional Macedonian commenters want to chime in? It also looks like Obama's support in Slovakia is soft. Better get Scarlett Johansson and will.i.am on the next flight to Bratislava.

Screenshot from bbc.co.uk

This week's map is the centerpiece of The Box, a new multimedia project from the BBC. The producers have painted an ordinary shipping container with the BBC logo, outfitted it with a GPS transmitter, and released it into the wilds of global shipping routes. Along the way, the Beeb will be producing video and text content on trade and globalization, based on the box's activities.

You can follow the progress with only a few hours delay here. After its launch last Monday, the box picked up a shipment of scotch whisky in Glasgow and is now back in the South of England waiting to be shipped off to East Asia.

Also be sure to watch Declan Curry's feature on how the standardization of shipping containers made much of what we call globalization possible. It's truly one of the more underrated technological innovations of recent history.

(Hat tip: Ethan Zuckerman)

Once again, UNOSAT's where it's at –- and this time their satellite imagery takes us to a very damaged South Ossetia:

UNOSAT

This map illustrates the structural damage wrought to villages between Kekhvi and Tskhinvali as of August 19, 2008, just three days after Russia signed a ceasefire bringing the Russian-Georgia war over the region to a close. Buildings either completely collapsed or with less than 50 percent of its roof still intact appear in red; those with visible structural damage to a wall or roof are marked in orange.

Interestingly (read: disturbingly), the map notes:

An important preliminary finding of this satellite damage analysis is the observed heavy concentration of damages within clearly defined residential areas."

Maybe that explains those remains of 500 civilians -- and they're still counting.

With hurricane season in full swing, what better time to be a DIY meteorologist? Try this handy set of weather tools for Google Earth and you'll be tracking Hannah, Ike, and Josephine in no time.

The good news is that all three Gustav successors look like they won't develop into full-on hurricanes. Keep your fingers crossed.

By the way, one group of folks that is likely watching these storms with great interest? Investors in cat bonds, featured in FP's current issue. Cat bonds, short for catastrophe bonds, allow insurance companies to transfer the financial risks that come with disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes to the broader capital markets. If any of these storms cause major damage, investors in such bonds could be wiped out.

(Hat tip: Google Earth Blog)

massacremap.com

The makers of this week's map want to remind visitors to Beijing of the violent history lurking behind the glitz and glamor of the Olympic Games. Freedom House's Ellen Bork along with the Weekly Standard's design director Philip Chalk and Tiananmen survivor Tian Jian have created this map for Beijing tourists interested in visiting the sites of the June 4, 1989 massacre of the Tiananmen Square protestors. Each number shows the place where where one of the 176 victims were killed or the hospitals to which their bodies were taken.

You can find information on the victims here and read Bork's explanation of the map at the New York Sun's site.

Google

As if Georgia didn't have enough to deal with, yesterday the country's cities and transportation routes completely disappeared from Google Maps. Reportedly wanting to keep its cyber territory conflict-neutral, Google removed all of Georgia's details from its maps, making the war-torn nation look like a ghostly white blob flanked by Russia and Turkey. Georgia, though, isn't the only country going blank on Google: neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan--who have their own ongoing terrorital dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region--are coming up empty too.

Some online commenters speculate that the allegiances of Google's Russian-born co-founder Sergey Brin might have something to do with Georgia's disappearance. That's pretty doubtful, but it's possible that Google doesn't want their software used for military purposes.

But Google has helped out Georgia in one major way, providing (albeit "involuntarily") Georgian sites with a "cyber-refuge" from Russian hackers. News service Civil Georgia as well as the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs have started using the Google-owned site Blogger to post updates and press releases on the conflict.

 Update: Google denies that it has made any changes to the map:

“We do not have local data for those countries and that is why local details such as landmarks and cities do not appear.”

Looks like we may have gotten a bit ahead of ourselves, though as NYT's Miguel Helf notes, Google does seem to have plenty of "local data" about Georgia in its Google Earth program.

This week's Tuesday Map comes via the New York Times.

The Times provides a cool interactive graphic that shows overall medal counts for each participating country at every summer Olympiad stretching back to 1896. Below, the 2004 Athens Games:

As you'll see as you click around the graphic, the United States' greatest athletic adversary was always the Soviet Union. Yet China has been hot on America's heels at recent summer games, and has vigorously prepared its athletes to beat the United States in Beijing. China has been emphasizing sports that award more medals, such as rowing, in a savvy effort to garner as many medals as possible. Can the Chinese do it? And if they do, how will the world react?

As FP contributor Jacob Leibenluft wrote last year, beating the United States could have political ramifications:

[E]ven if organizers can somehow pull off an Olympics free of both pollution and protestors, they can't control what happens on the field. And ironically, just as China’s leaders emphasize its "peaceful rise," the athletic juggernaut in which they have invested so much may inadvertently send the opposite message.

Watch this space. 

Today's map is a source of a bit of controversy in the UK. Recent news reports have described plans to provide folks with interactive maps that display incidents of crime in any neighborhood. The maps would detail, on a street-by-street basis, where different crimes took place. It would also allow users to select different types of crime -- "serious violence," "other violence," and "youth nuisance" among others -- and highlight only those infractions in each neighborhood.

The map below shows "anti-social behaviour" in Leeds, West Yorkshire:

In case you're wondering what constitutes "anti-social behaviour," here's a quick sampling:

Street drinking, presence of drug dealers or users, soliciting, abandoned cars, illegal parking, off-road motorcycling, skateboarding, noisy neighbours, persistent alarms, shouting & swearing, fireworks, climbing on buildings, false emergency calls, uncontrolled animals, groups or individuals causing nuisance, graffiti, damage to bus-stops or buildings, dropping litter and fly-tipping."

Not everyone is happy about the map. Aside from privacy concerns, there are fears that publishing that sort of information in a rough housing market could devalue properties overnight.

It would sure make life easier for a British Bruce Wayne, though.