Slashgeo

Cartography blog (via Boing Boing) link to an animated obesity map for the US. From the report: "The burgeoning percentage of heavy Americans has economic consequences, too. Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and RTI International estimated that 2003 health-care costs attributable to obesity reached $75 billion, with taxpayers picking up about half of the bill through programs like Medicare and Medicaid."

Some not-so-closely related geoblog entries. First is Spatial Sustain linking to an article showing correlation between the spatial distribution of fast food restaurants and obesity in Canada. Very Spatial discuss MapEcos a site mapping U.S. industrial pollution. And finally if you have some time during the holidays, APB links to an article about the Traveler IQ Challenge online game, I admit I tried the game some time ago and its simplicity and educative components charmed me. From the MapEcos article: "It offers information on the environmental performance of more 20,000 industrial facilities across the country. Visitors use an interactive map to reveal government data on toxic pollution as well as information from the facilities themselves on what they are going to protect the environment, being gathered by the site's developers." Several related stories below.

spatialguru writes "Came across this posting from a couple months ago showing US states and their obesity rates. The interesting add-on here was the comparison to Canada on the same map. I'd heard there was a difference, but I didn't expect it to be quite so dramatic. Wonder when we'll catch up. Either way, I think they should have used a cartogram representation instead — though Canada might get lost in the crumbs ;-)" Slashgeo covered obesity maps three times in the past. A quick search made me aware that The Map Room recently linked to obesity maps for England and southern Ontario.