Week 3 LAB

View JusticeCorps Courthouses in a larger map This map is a trip around the Los Angeles County courthouses where I volunteered with self-represented litigants in cases involving housing law and family law from August 2011 until July 2012. With each courthouse, I will detail a humorous anecdote of some of my favorite litigants that I assisted during my year with the JusticeCorps program. It begins with the red map marker at the Los Angeles Downtown Superior Court and continues on until it ends at the pink marker signifying the Compton courthouse.

My personal neogeography map retains some of the pitfalls, potential, and consequences that befall all neogeographic maps. To start, a pitfall of neogeography is the questioning of authority and content of the map information. In the specific case of my L.A. County courthouses map, one may question my authority on creating a map with this content. Particularly problematic for some is the gray lines used to document my transition between courthouses. These lines are not meant to reflect an exact route between two given courthouses, but rather, simply to show the general movement that I followed throughout the year. However, the personal nature of neogeography means that another viewer may or may not question the use of these lines and read some incorrect information based off of what I have chosen to portray.

One of the greatest potentials of neogeography involves the widespread movement of information and mapping knowledge across the public sphere. Everyone is now capable of building their own neogeographic map. My personal map has the potential to tune into the good works and resources of either the JusticeCorps program or the many courthouses of the L.A. district in general. Lastly, a general consequence of neogeography is the cost of decreased privacy, which comes with the increase of navigational information. Personally, this map reveals where I have worked, what I did while I was there, and who I interacted with. Although I may not take issue with this consequence in this scenario, it is still a serious consequence for other neogeographic maps.

Week 2 LAB

1. Beverly Hills Quadrangle

2. The seven adjacent quadrangles are Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, and Inglewood.

3. The Beverly Hills Quadrangle in this map was first created in 1995.

4. Various datum was used to create this map including the North American Datum of 1927 and the North American Datum of 1983

5. Map Scale - 1:24,000

6.    a.) Conversions:       1 cm: 24,000 cm; 5 cm: 120,000 cm; 5 cm: .05 m; .05 m: 1,200 m.
                    5 cms on the map is equivalent to 1,200 meters on the ground.

       b.) Conversions:        1 in = .0000158 mi; 5 in (map): 120,000 in (ground); .000079 mi (map): 1.896 mi (ground)
                     5 inches on the map is equivalent to 1.896 miles on the ground.

       c.) Conversions:      1 mi = 63,360 in.; .00004167 mi (map) = 1 mi (ground); 2.64 in (map) = 63,360 in (ground)
                      1 mile on the ground is equivalent to 2.64 inches on the map.

       d.) Conversions       1 km = 100,000 cm; 1 km (map) = 24,000 km (ground); .000125 km (map) = 3 km (ground); 12.5 cm (map) = 300,000 cm (ground)
                      3 kilometers on the ground is equivalent to 12.5 centimeters on the map.

7. Contour interval on the map is 20 feet.

8.    a.) Public Affairs Building:
               Longitude: 118d, 26', 25"W OR 188.440278
               Latitude: 34d, 4', 8"N OR 34.068889

       b.) Tip of Santa Monica Pier:
               Longitude: 118d, 0', 29"W OR 34.008056
               Latitude: 34d, 30', 1"N OR 118.500278

       c.) Upper Franklin Canyon Reservoir:
               Longitude: 118d, 24', 40"N OR 118.4125
               Latitude: 34d, 6' 58"W OR 34.11611

9.    a.) Greystone Mansion: Approximately 555 ft. OR 169.164 m.

       b.) Woodlawn Cemetery: Approximately 138 ft. OR 42.0624 m.

       c.) Crestwood Hills Park: Approximately 625 ft. OR 193.548 m.

10. UTM Zone 11S

11. UTM coordinates (Lower Left Corner): 3762950N, 361500E

12. 1,000m x 1,000m = 1,000,000m^2

13.

14. The magnetic declination of this map is 14d east.

15. The stream between the 405 freeway and the Stone Canyon Reservoir flows from North to South.

16. A map of UCLA...

Week 1 LAB

Map #1
Source:http://www.wjla.com/
http://www.wjla.com/blogs/weather/2011/12/odds-of-a-white-christmas-for-d-c-increase-slightly--14050.html

This map shows the probability of any given area in the United States having a "White Christmas." For this map, a White Christmas is defined as a location receiving at least one inch of snowfall on December 25th. What I found interesting about this particular map are some of the inconsistencies found within the more general pattern of increased probability of snowfall the farther north in the United States an area is. A fact demonstrating these inconsistencies is that there is a higher probability of snowfall in the Midwestern regions of Idaho and Wyoming, than a large area of Montana, a state to the north of Wyoming. This begs the question of why this significant area in Montana has a lower probability of a White Christmas compared to other states at similar latitudes like North Dakota and Michigan.

 Map #2

 Source:  http://drhiphop85.com/
http://drhiphop85.com/2011/06/02/u-s-stereotype-maps-movies-tv-shame-and-awesomeness/

This map labels each of the 50 states in accordance with a relatively famous film that took place in that particular state. Although a map like this is subject to the preferences and biases of the map's creator, a wide variety of film genres are represented here, including comedy (There's Something About Mary), horror (The Evil Dead), and family films (The Goonies). This map is interesting to me due to some of the plot patterns to be found in films of certain parts of the United States. For example, many of the films chosen for the Midwest revolve around a plot driven in some part by the rural agricultural landscape. Whether this plot revolves around evil farmer children (Children of the Corn in Nebraska) or tornadoes (Twister in Oklahoma and The Wizard of Oz in Kansas), they are brought about in some way by the flattened wide open spaces of the Midwest.  Furthermore, many of the films located in the Northeastern New England states have a general similarity in that their plots revolve around troubled people doing awful things to one another just because they can, as shown in the cheating spouses of The Ice Storm, the mafia hits in The Departed, and Bill Murray being rude just for the sake of it in Groundhog Day).

Map #3



Source:  http://watchdog.org/category/kansas/
http://watchdog.org/36805/ks-kansas-among-highest-in-education-jobs-per-k-12-student/

This map shows K-12 employment of educators per state for the year 2007. The map gives the percentage of education employees per 100 students, the placement of that state relative to the other 50 based on that percentage, and color codes each state depending on which quartile the given stats place that state in.  What is interesting about this map is the fact that the western United States consistently falls in the bottom quartile while the states up in the northeast place into the top quartile.  This begs the question of why one side of the United States succeeds in hiring out a greater number of educators per student and the other lags behind significantly.  Furthermore, are the students in the states with higher percentages of teachers per student receiving a lesser education in accordance with the figures given in this map. However, when one takes a closer look at the numbers given for each state, one can see that Washington, which placed last is only approximately ten percentage points behind Wyoming, which placed first. This observation supports further research into whether the minimal point differences between the states have a significant effect on the overall education of the students.