Watch This Map
Did you ever play the old "ABM" game in the arcade? The one with the incoming missles that you had to shoot at, and hope that the circle of your shot got the missile before it hit your radar site? With the slowly exploding circles indicating destruction and carnage?
Here's a link to a map built on the same principle, except the damage is real and very scary. It's Slate's animated map of job loss by US county over the past two years. Each county that gains or loses jobs gets a circle, and the size of the circle represents the size of the gain or loss.
Go ahead -- give it a try. You can either click through it a month at a time, or click the big Animate arrow and let it move ahead on its own. At first, things don't look two bad. When you take it all the way to March 2009, though ... well, let's just say it's powerful. And disturbing. And scary. And very, very sad.
We've not been hit tremendously hard here in The Ville. I challenge anyone to watch this map change over time, though, and not see the enormity of what is happening to our nation and the world.
And remember -- President Obama said today that unemployment will continue to get worse for some time, before it gets better.
Damn.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 10:18PM
Reader Comments (2)
Where's the link?
It's in the story -- the link beginning "Slate's animated map." Sorry if it wasn't clear.