Quick hits: He's not Santa, he's Belsnickel; 'phantom' towns; how music can reframe memories; going out for a walk

A local constabulary lends the town's Belsnickel
a hand. (Photo via Lancaster Farming)

Belsnickel may not be as famous as Santa (or as clean), but he gives Christmas gifts to children in Manheim, Pennsylvania. A Belsnickel is "a crotchety, fur-clad gift giver related to other companions of St. Nicholas in the folklore of southwestern Germany," reports Dan Sullivan of Lancaster Farming. A Belsnickel is tasked "to carry out duties somewhat similar to Santa, ferreting out the naughty and nice and dispensing just punishment or reward. Traditionally, Belsnickel carried a switch in one hand as corporal punishment for the bad kids and a pocketful of treats for the good ones."

When financial times are tight, not as many Americans buy new cars or repair the vehicles they have. "Pinched by inflation, higher interest rates, and supply-chain woes, Americans just haven’t been buying as many new vehicles lately," reports Spencer Jakob of The Wall Street Journal. U.S. consumers choosing to keep aging autos may sound "like great news for auto parts and repair companies. . . . [but] there are some surprising signs that Americans are choosing cheaper options or even deferring purchases of the goods and services that keep them running. . . . Skimping has rarely made less sense, though. . ."

Cartographic 'phantoms' are mapped towns where there isn't a town. (Illustration by Piper Olsen, L&S)

Most mapped towns exist but not all. "The Wisconsin state map is full of phantoms," reports Alli Watters of Letters & Science at the University of Wisconsin. Cartographer Howard Veregin spends his days scouting possible phantom towns, which includes exploring some of the state's most rural places. On one phantom sleuthing day, Veregin works to verify a mapped town called "Walker." He comes upon a friendly cranberry truck driver and this conversation ensues:

Truck driver: Good morning. Looking for something in particular?
Veregin: Well, I’m looking for cartographic phantoms.
Truck driver: What’s a cartographic phantom?
Veregin: It’s a community that is listed on a map, but it doesn’t exist on the ground.
Truck driver: This place exists.
Veregin: Sure, but it doesn’t really look like a community. What is it?
Truck driver: Well, this is our family cranberry farm. We’ve been farming cranberries here for 125 years. I’m a fifth-generation cranberry grower. Most of this area is private property. . .

"Veregin’s suspicions were confirmed. . . . He had found yet another cartographic phantom."

Beginning the new year a little wiser never hurts. In simplest terms, surviving 2025 is the first goal. Field & Stream experts "weighed in on four survival myths that could get you killed," reports Jim Baird. Many people think humans can live off nature's food and survive -- that's not true. "The myth here is that you can survive off them for an extended length of time. But the reality is if you are only eating 'survival foods,' you’ll start feeling sick and weak after a day or two." Another myth is if you kill large game "you're set" because you'll have all the protein you need. Not true, you can also get sick and die from eating too much protein without adequate fat. Read four debunked survival myths here.

Music may subtly shift emotional memories.
(Adobe Stock photo)

As a new year begins, people often reflect on how life has gone over the past year or years. Sometimes there are memories people wish they could change, and while history isn't alterable, music can help shift how people feel about past experiences. "Listening to music can change how you feel about what you remember – potentially offering new ways to help people cope with difficult memories, writes Yiren Ren, a cognitive brain science researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology for The Conversation. "Our [research] results suggest that music acts as an emotional lure, becoming intertwined with memories and subtly altering their emotional tone. Memories may also be more flexible than previously thought and could be influenced by external auditory cues during recall."

Walking alone or with a buddy can be great exercise. 
(Adobe Stock photo)

Ernest Tubb twanged about "Walking the Floor over You." Johnny Cash confessed, "I Walk the Line." Aerosmith cranked the amps to "Walk this Way." Besides belting out catchy tracks, these musicians were onto something -- walking is an outstanding activity. "Walking can help meet the U.S. surgeon general’s recommendation that adults get at least 2 1/2 hours of moderate-intensity physical activity every week," reports Laura Ungar of The Associated Press. "This helps lower the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, dementia, depression and many types of cancer. . . .While it’s not the only sort of exercise people should do, it’s a great first step toward a healthy life."

Comparing U.S. broadband coverage using two different maps shows 'stark contrasts' in representation

Photo by Possessed Photography, Unsplash

Two separate broadband maps give different pictures of how the service is offered throughout the U.S. "Using the results of 'broadband audits' across the United States, Ready.net has collected geographic data, information about available internet speeds, and demographic data to determine areas that are 'likely or arguably' underserved or unserved," reports Brad Randall of Broadband Communities. The results offer a "stark contrast" with the Federal Communication Commission's reported data.

Ready.net "establishes the ground truth of America's broadband reality," Randall writes. "Compared to the FCC's National Broadband Map, the Ready.net interactive map displays the U.S. as a patchwork of served, underserved, and unserved locations."

Location comparisons show how the maps differ. In Hyde County, North Carolina, pop. 4,600, the FCC's map "reports 100% coverage of fixed broadband services, the Ready.net map reports a county that is 81.7% unserved and 18.1% underserved," Randall reports. "Similarly, in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, pop. 8, 600, 90.7% of the county is listed as unserved despite the county's 100% coverage representation on the FCC's National Broadband Map for fixed broadband."

According to Ready.net data, the most underserved and unserved states are as follows:

1. Alaska (36.6%)
2. Montana (29.1%)
3. West Virginia (26.3%)
4. Wyoming (22.8%)
5. Vermont (21.3%)
6. Idaho (20.7%)
7. Mississippi (19.9%)
8. New Mexico (18.6%)
9. Wisconsin (18.4%)
10. Louisiana (17.3%)

Interactive map shows county-level population change

Map by Benjamin Schmidt; click on the image to enlarge it or click here to see the interactive version

A new interactive map shows the change in population density at the county level from 1790 to 2010. Northeastern University assistant professor Benjamin Schmidt created the map using data compiled by Jonathon Schroeder of the University of Minnesota's Minnesota Population Center. Schmidt notes that the map is flawed because it relies on census data, which did not count most Native American populations in earlier years.

The upcoming 2020 census may be flawed too, since some areas will likely be difficult to count. Any area with large numbers of the poor, minorities, immigrants and children is at higher risk of being undercounted in 2020, especially the rural Deep South, according to Tony Pugh of McClatchy Newspapers. An accurate count would be more difficult if the census adds a question about citizenship, possibly causing the country's three most populous states (California, Texas and Florida) to lose seven congressional seats.

Map shows global croplands in highest resolution ever, reveals India has more cropland than U.S.

U.S. Geological Survey map shows North American croplands in neon green.
Click on the image to enlarge or click here to see the interactive map.

As part of a global food-security data project, the U.S. Geological Survey has just released a map detailing croplands worldwide at 30-meter resolution, which is the highest resolution ever achieved. The study brought some startling facts to light. For one thing, it reveals that there are 1.87 billion hectares of croplands on Earth, which is 15 to 20 percent higher than previously thought.

And though earlier studies showed that China or the U.S. had the most net cropland, "This study shows that India ranks first, with 179.8 Mha (9.6 percent of the global net cropland area). Second is the United States with 167.8 Mha (8.9 percent), China with 165.2 Mha (8.8 percent) and Russia with 155.8 Mha (8.3 percent). Statistics of every country in the world can be viewed in an interactive map," Morning Ag Clips reports. South Asia and Europe are the overall agricultural capitols of the world in terms of total geographic area dedicated to croplands.

In a world with rapidly increasing population, it's important to understand and monitor agriculture, since it's the main vehicle for food security. The map also helps provide a baseline for assessing global water security, since almost 80 percent of all water used by humans goes toward food production. The project, which bears the somewhat unwieldy name "Global Food Security-Support Analysis Data @ 30-m Project", aims to continue recording and releasing croplands data year after year.

Map shows percentage of people in each county who believe climate change is happening

Do people in your neck of the woods believe climate change is happening? The Yale Climate Opinion Maps, created by Yale University's Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication, include county-level data (updated this week) on the percentage of people who believe climate change is occurring.

Seventeen survey questions were asked, such as: Do you think that global warming is happening?; How much do you trust or distrust climate scientists as a source of information about global warming?; and a question that asks if participants think global warming is caused by human activities, natural changes to the environment, other causes, or if they believe global warming is not happening. (Yale map: Screenshot of how many people in Logan County, West Virginia believe climate change is happening. For the interactive map click here)

"Across the country, 70 percent of Americans think global warming is happening and that it will harm future generations," Erika Bolstad reports for Climatewire. "An estimated 82 percent of adults think there should be support for research into renewable sources of energy. An estimated 69 percent think there should be strict limits on CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants."

Data also includes "information from other survey questions, including how much people trust climate scientists, whether they think global warming will harm plants and animals, and how often people discuss global warming with their friends and family," Bolstad writes. "It even asks how often they hear about global warming in the media."

The data include the number of people surveyed in each county, from which a margin of error can be calculated: Divide 0.25 by the sample size, take the square root, then multiply the root by 1.96 (for a confidence level of 95 percent, meaning that 19 of 20 times the result of the poll would be the same, within the error margin, of a survey of the county's entire population).

What have been the leading causes of death in your county? Study maps 21 major causes, 1980-2014

Researchers from the University of Washington and the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands have charted county-level data for 21 major causes of death in the U.S. from 1980 to 2014. The study, published in The JAMA Network, found that "geographic regions with elevated mortality rates differed among causes." For example, the map below shows that mortality rates from self-harm and interpersonal violence were particularly high in southwestern counties and in Alaska.

The study includes information on communicable, maternal, neonatal, nutritional and noncommunicable diseases and injuries. Below, a screenshot of the study's interactive map shows where substance-abuse disorders are most prevalent. Leading the way is Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, which is home to the Rio Grande Sun, which has extensively covered the issue, as well as Dakotas counties with large Native American populations and in Central Appalachia.

D.C. reporter who moved to county labeled worst in natural amenities says rural life is more than sum of data

What a difference a year makes. In August 2015 Washington Post reporter Christopher Ingraham made snarky comments about a rural town being ranked dead last among the nation's most desirable places to live—based on a natural amenities index—then in September accepted an invitation to visit the town, leading him to move his family to the town. As one of the newest residents in Red Lake Falls, Minn., population 1,410, Ingraham says that he has re-thought his take on statistics and that data points are unable to measure the true value of a town. (Ingraham photo)

"My relocation to Red Lake Falls has been a humbling reminder of the limitations of numbers," Ingraham writes. "It has opened my eyes to all of the things that get lost when you abstract people, places and points in time down to a single number on a computer screen. The government's natural-amenities index captures the flatness of Midwestern farm country quite well, for instance. But it misses out on so much about that landscape: the sound of the breeze rustling the grain or the way the wheat catches the light at different times of day, the dry-sweet smell of a field full of sunflowers."

"The data are blind to the ever-changing tapestry of colors and textures as crops grow, flourish and wane toward harvest," he writes. "You can practically set your calendar by whatever's happening on a section of farmland on a given day. Green shoots usher in the start of June. Those shoots turn gold to mark mid-summer's prime, and now, in late August, a chill creeps into the evening air as the combines go out to reduce the fields to stubble."

"The federal data set does reflect northwest Minnesota's bitter cold," Ingraham writes. "The average January low temperature of minus-4 degrees is baked into the data, but it doesn't tell you about how our new neighbors pulled together when it got so cold in February that the water main on our street froze solid and did not thaw out until April, leaving several houses without water for weeks. They hooked up hoses from the homes with water to those without, and the town made things easy by splitting up everyone's water bills as best as they could. By the end of the ordeal, nobody seemed to be worse for the wear."

"Nor, as far as I can tell, have we come up with a good way to quantify nostalgia," he writes. "Red Lake Falls feels like the kind of town your grandparents would live in, and I mean that in the best possible way... To an adult living here for the first time, it feels like the kind of place you remember visiting during summers in childhood, where memories are built on indolent afternoons spent in broad sunny lawns while the adults relaxed on a screened-in porch with cocktails in their hands." (Read more)

Data visualization tools available for journalists

There are plenty of data visualization tools available on the internet for journalists. A website called Data USA "bills itself as 'the most comprehensive visualization of U.S. public data' and aims to make open data more user-friendly," Shaunacy Ferro reports for Mental Floss. The site allows users "to explore the nation by pulling from data sources like the Census Bureau, the Department of Education, national health rankings, and more. With that information, Data USA helps you create data visualizations and breakdowns on topics as diverse as local commute times, a state’s most popular college majors, the average age of podiatrists nationally, and the highest paid construction-related occupations."(Data USA map: The average median age in every county in the U.S.)

Many sources of help are available. Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets "are good places to experiment and learn," John Wihbey reports for Journalist's Resource, a service of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University.

"Of course, one of the biggest hurdles beginners face is figuring out how to organize the data properly in rows and columns. Storybench has an excellent primer on examples of how to do this." Good examples of applications with increased design and storytelling capabilities are: CartoDB (makes uploading and visualizing geographical information easy); Plot.ly (good for beginners and experts); Chartbuilder (designed to empower more editors and reporters, not just specialists, to do their own data visualization); Datawrapper (allows for quick, easy visualization of many kinds); and Silk.co (great for exploring interactive data presentations and helps journalists tell interactive stories).

"Quartz has an excellent guide to 'bad data' – the typical problems inherent in datasets," Wihbey writes. "There are some go-to blogs on data and data journalism that are worth following. The Journalist’s Toolbox has a huge roundup of tools and resources related to data visualization. And the Data Journalism Handbook has some great case studies."

How does your state rank in Google searches? Is it better or worse in comparison to population?

How often do people use Google to search your state? Since 2004 the most searched states are California, Texas, Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Wyoming, the least populous state, is the least searched, followed by South Dakota, North Dakota, Vermont and Idaho.

"Sharp-eyed readers who have been around the cartographic block a few times are probably already protesting," saying states with bigger populations get more hits, while states with smaller populations get less hits, Christopher Ingraham reports for The Washington Post. "States with low population will have fewer in-state residents looking up things about that state on Google. And by and large, there will be fewer people doing the interesting things that cause outsiders to look up that state."

To take a closer look at searches, Ingraham looked at states that underperform or overperform "when it comes to search interest relative to their population," Ingraham writes. That drastically changes results. Alabama, the 24th most populated state, is the 15th most searched, making it No. 1 for overperforming. Many of the state's searches had to do with sports, which is not surprising considering the state has won five of the past seven NCAA football championships, with the University of Alabama winning four times and the Auburn University once. "Other big overperformers include Hawaii and Alaska, Colorado and Connecticut." Indiana, which calls itself the "Crossroads of America," was the most underperforming state, followed by Louisiana, West Virginia, New Mexico and Idaho.

Beware of GPS and Google Maps; you might end up at the wrong location or invade the wrong country

Flawed GPS and Internet maps are leading drivers to the wrong destinations, Karen Turner reports for The Washington Post. "A Google Maps error has been sending tourists seeking 'Mt. Rushmore, SD' to the wrong location for nearly five years now. Storm Mountain Center, a retreat center located some 13 miles from the real Mt. Rushmore, has repeatedly asked Google Maps to update the Mt. Rushmore address. Eventually, the center has resorted to installing a large sign (Rapid City Journal photo by Sean Ryan) at the front of their driveway instructing travelers that their electronic devices are wrong about Mt. Rushmore’s location. But whatever fixes proved temporary for unknown reasons—and as of this writing, the address is still wrong."

"Although Google Maps is fast becoming the ultimate authority on navigation, the program is proving vulnerable to mistakes and hackers with results that at times can be catastrophic," Turner writes. "One of the latest blunders involved a company accidentally bulldozing the wrong house due to faulty Google Maps directions. Google took responsibility for the maps error. In this case, two different houses were shown as being in the same location, a Google spokeswoman told CNN. In 2010, Nicaragua blamed an accidental invasion of Costa Rica on incorrect Google Maps information."

"These cases shed light on the software's susceptibility to errors and hacks," Turrner writes. "Google Maps is built on layers of information obtained from satellite images as well as photographs taken by Street View cars, which have driven and photographed more than 7 million miles of roads. Google also crowdsources location information through Map Maker, which allows users to directly update local addresses and details. An unknown number of people are employed by the company to comb through these maps for inaccuracies. But despite this multi-faceted system, location bugs and mistakes still happen. Trolls and pranksters have taken advantage of the crowdsourced feature by changing businesses to offensive names or by doodling on the map interface."

McGill University conducted research that "compared the brains of GPS versus non-GPS users and found that non-GPS users had more grey matter and higher functionality in their hippocampuses than those that relied on their devices," Turner writes. "Veronique Bohbot, a neuroscientist who worked on McGill's GPS study, suggests that we limit our GPS use to new destinations only and attempt to build up our cognitive maps by navigating to frequently visited destinations on our own, she said in an article on Phys.org."

W. Post reporter who made fun of rural northern Minn. county about to become its newest resident

A Washington Post reporter who made snarky comments about a rural town being ranked dead last among the nation's most desirable places to live—based on a natural amenities index—is now packing his bags and moving to the town. In August Christopher Ingraham wrote, "The absolute worst place to live in America is (drumroll please) Red Lake County, Minn.." Ingraham changed his tune about Red Lake after residents invited him to visit and he did.

Now, he's moving to Red Lake, drawn by the rural lifestyle. "I couldn't stop thinking about the places in Red Lake County I'd visited, or the people I met there," Ingraham writes. "People who'd shown kindnesses small and large—from a friendly handshake at the bar to an entire cake baked and decorated with cartographic precision as a map of the county—to a stranger who they only knew from a line of snark he'd tossed into a news story." (Star Tribune graphic: Minnesota Sen. Al Franken drew this U.S. map on the back of a Minnesota map for Ingraham)

"I kept dreaming about big skies. Broad rivers," Inrgraham writes. "Flat roads running to the horizon and towns that smelled of wood and grain and dry prairie air. ... I commute in to D.C. most days. A one-way trip, involving car, train, metro and a walk takes about 90 minutes on a good day. I count myself among that woebegone 2.62 percent of workers who spend 15 hours or more each week stuck in traffic, shivering on subway platforms, and otherwise squandering a huge chunk of their waking hours on one of their most-hated activities." But he says he can and will do his job, data journalism, from home.

"For me, a 15-hour commute meant a lot of things," he writes. "It meant going on blood pressure medication at the age of 34 because there's no time to exercise. It meant getting to see the kids for maybe 30 minutes on a good night, at the end of the day when we're all tired and ornery. It meant missed opportunities to read, write and think, because it's hard to do justice of any of those things in the calm intervals of a commute involving four modes of transit. And so, I decided, it was time to shake things up." His mom suggested, "What about moving to that nice place you visited over the summer?"

County level maps: Indiana's air is most polluted; South, Midwest lead list of top 25 polluted states

Indiana is the most polluted state in the U.S., according to county-level maps by HealthGrove ranking the 25 most polluted states, Christina Lavingia reports for HealthGrove. Rounding out the top 10 are Ohio; Kentucky; Tennessee; Alabama; West Virginia; Washington, D.C.; Maryland; Illinois  and Pennsylvania. At No. 11 is Georgia, followed by Virginia, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Nevada, Delaware, New Jersey, Arkansas, Minnesota, California, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nebraska. (Air pollution in Ohio)

Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HealthGrove analyzed average daily fine particulate matter from 2003 to 2011, Lavingia writes. “PM2.5 particles, classified as a fine air pollutant with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 micrometers, have the ability to penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream. A study published in The Lancet found that for every 10 ug/m3 increase of PM2.5 particles, lung cancer incidences increased by 36 percent. Potential sources of PM2.5 include motor vehicles, power plants, wood burning and other industrial processes.”

County-level model map shows location of CAFOs in Michigan; other states can be mapped by request

The Center for Food Safety has created a model county-level map of Michigan that includes information about concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs, also known as factory farms) in the state. The interactive map also includes tabs that reveal locations of schools, hospitals, watersheds, sub watersheds, lakes, rivers. Similar maps of other states can be created by contacting the website, states the Center for Food Safety. (Center for Food Safety map of Michigan: Orange circles are factory farms; black marks are schools.)

Almost all of the 75 factory farms in Michigan are located near waterways, Amanda Proscia reports for the Great Lakes Echo, a project of the journalism department at Michigan State University. "A 2013 Alma College study that found factory farms increase water pollution downriver of the operations. The nutrients found in high levels downriver of these large farms are the same nutrients linked to the harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie."

"The map includes the location and size of the factory farms and allows users to select layers such as: environmental violations, federal subsidies and nearby waterways," Proscia writes.

D.C. reporter visits county labeled worst in natural amenities and learns a lesson about rural life

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Amenities Index, which ranked the most desirable counties to live in based on scenery and climate, has received criticism for downgrading counties for having cold, wintry winters and lacking bodies of water and varied topography. Perhaps no reporter took more heat than The Washington Post's Christopher Ingraham, who offended residents of Red Lake County, Minnesota, for pointing out that it was dead last on the list.

"As a reporter, I'm used to folks disagreeing with me, especially when covering contentious topics like guns, gay marriage and drug policy," Ingraham writes. "But until I wrote about the natural amenities index I had never been disagreed with so much. And so politely. Could it really be that bad? I had to find out. At the invite of local businessman Jason Brumwell, I took a trip up there last week to see the truth behind the numbers. I wanted to find out what life in America's worst county was really like."

"Brumwell welcomed the media attention the county's last-place ranking brought and encouraged other businesses to do the same," Ingraham writes. "My original story hadn't quite framed it this way, but some locals took it to mean that we called their county ugly. So, soon after my article went up, restaurants and bars began offering specials on 'ugly burgers' and 'ugly wings.' Officials in Red Lake Falls, the county's largest town, with a population of 1,410, floated the idea of renaming next year's Summerfest the 'Uglyfest.'"

"In the course of my visit, I learned how crucial farming is to the local economy," Ingraham writes. "Agriculture directly or indirectly supports a lot of economic activity in the county. And the small-town narrative we're all used to hearing—of boom and decline, of good jobs leaving for overseas and Main Streets hollowed out by relentlessly low prices—doesn't really seem to apply here. The economic opportunity is a big reason many people stay, and some others who left eventually make their way back here." (Christopher Ingraham)

"Despite a population of only 4,000, the county supports two elementary schools and two high schools," Ingraham writes. "Each of the high schools graduates roughly two dozen students each year, and even the county's poor have a remarkably good shot of becoming middle class later in life, according to a 2013 study by Harvard University's Equality of Opportunity Project. In fact, by most economic metrics, the county looks pretty good. The unadjusted employment rate in July was 4.6 percent, well below the national average. The median household income is $48,000, while the median home value is about $89,000, according to the U.S. Census. The poverty rate is 11.9 percent, below the U.S. average of 15.4 percent."

"What I found most striking is how friendly everyone I'd met had been," Ingraham writes. "They were fiercely proud of their community in a way I'd never seen before—not even during my childhood in small-town upstate New York. . . . Over and over, the folks I spoke with told me it was that sense of community that kept them here, and that contributed to that enormous outpouring of civic pride in response to my original article."

"There's perhaps something amiss in a ranking that places Red Lake County at the absolute bottom of the nation when it comes to scenery and climate," Ingraham writes. "As I noted in my original story, the USDA's index places a lot of emphasis on mild weather and a little less on true scenic beauty, which of course is harder to quantify. But there's no doubt that the Red Lake County region is flat-out gorgeous. You can see that beauty everywhere, from the open farm country to the craggy bluffs and hills of the river valley." (Ingraham photo: Red Lake River)

"When people and places halfway across the country are just a mouse-click away on your computer, it's easy to assume that the we live in a nation made small and manageable by technology," Ingraham writes. "But traveling to a place like Red Lake County, hours away from any major metro area, is a reminder that in much of the country, the rhythms of daily life are, still, markedly different than the coastal city grind of long commutes and high-octane jobs. For some of us, it takes a place as small as Red Lake County to drive home just how big this country really is." (Read more)

Methodology used for county-level maps of most desirable locations for amenities criticized

UPDATED, Aug. 20: The index has come into question in many counties known for their natural beauties, especially because of the methodology, which penalized counties for having cold, wintry winters and lacking bodies of water and topography variation. Many people from Minnesota, known for its outdoor beauties, were upset that some the state's counties were ranked at or near the bottom. Louisiana counties, also known for beauty, were ranked low, for high humidity and lack of mountains. Most of the Great Lakes and Midwest were ranked fairly low and most of those residents would probably argue that the region's natural beauty can stack up against most any other region. Was your county unfairly ranked low? (Post map)

Where are the most desirable counties to live? Christopher Ingraham of The Washington Post has taken a federal government measure, the "natural amenities index," to create a county-level interactive map that reveals the most desirable counties to live in based on scenery and climate. "The index combines 'six measures of climate, topography and water area that reflect environmental qualities most people prefer,'" Ingraham writes. "Those qualities, according to the USDA, include mild, sunny winters, temperate summers, low humidity, topographic variation and access to a body of water."  

The top 10 ranked counties are all in California, Ingraham writes. "By contrast the Great Lakes region fares poorly, with most of the lowest rankings clustered around the Minnesota/North Dakota border region," with Red Lake County, Minnesota, ranking dead last, mostly because it's the only landlocked county in the country surrounded by just two neighboring counties. Hawaii and Alaska were not considered for the rankings.

"The USDA's original report on the natural amenities index found that these measures 'drive rural population change,'" Ingraham writes. "The USDA found that rural areas with a lot of natural amenities saw the greatest population change between 1970 and 1996." The report states: "The relationship is quite strong. Counties with extremely low scores on the scale tended to lose population over the 1970-96 period, while counties with extremely high scores tended to double their populations over the period."

By gosh, local-level maps show the most popular swear words in tweets in the 48 contiguous states

When people in the South swear on Twitter, their preferred word of choice is usually "damn." In other parts of the country, Twitter users are more likely to use words we won't print here. It's easy to identify the favorite swear words of people in your area, thanks to Jack Grieve, lecturer in forensic linguistics at Aston University in Birmingham, England, who created a series of maps "based on an 8.9-billion-word corpus of geo-coded tweets collected by Diansheng Guo in 2013–14," Stan Carey reports for Strong Language.

"The frequency of a word in the tweets from a given county is divided by the total number of words from that county (which correlates strongly with population density)," Carey writes. "The result is then smoothed using spatial autocorrection analysis, with Getis-Ord z-scores mapped to identify clusters." That shows that "damn" isn't widely used among Twitter users in one part of the South, Appalachia. Neither are other swear words in the study. To view the maps, click here. Be warned: the maps contain explicit language.

Ripped from the pages of literature, interactive map charts roads trips from 12 books

There's still time this summer to hit the highways and see America. For those looking for a grand adventure straight from the pages of some of literature's most beloved tales, the folks at Atlas Osbscura have created an interactive map that details road trips from 12 popular novels and memoirs.

"I am a freak for the American road trip. And I'm not alone, as some of this country's best writers have taken a shot at describing that quintessentially American experience," writes Richard Kreitner, who researched the routes, while Steven Melendez created the map. The map "includes every place-name reference in 12 books about cross-country travel, from Mark Twain’s "Roughing It" (1872) to Cheryl Strayed’s "Wild" (2012), and maps the authors’ routes on top of one another. You can track an individual writer’s descriptions of the landscape as they traveled across it, or you can zoom in to see how different authors have written about the same place at different times." (For a larger version, click here)

County and state-level maps show the largest populations by age groups

American FactFinder has created maps using Census data that chart county and state-level populations for the Greatest Generation (70 and above), Baby Boomers (50 to 69), Generation X (30 to 49), Generation Y (15 to 29) and Generation Z (0 to 14 years old), Ana Swanson reports for The Washington Post. (For a larger version, click here)

Greatest Generation populations are most prevalent in Florida but are also high in Arizona, Maine, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, Swanson writes. Large portions of Generation X have migrated to the cities, most notably New York, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas, Colorado and the West Coast. Those under 30 are being seen in faster growing states, such as North Dakota, Utah and California, with Utah having the most Generation Z and Washington, D.C., the least. Generation Y has the greatest population in North Dakota, where the oil and gas boom has led to mass migration. (For a larger version click here)

While Generation X has the most population in many states, Baby Boomers outnumber them in Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, South Carolina, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island, Swanson writes.

County-level map details where sun shines the most and the least in the lower 48 states

July is the sunniest month of the year, while the sun shines the least during December and January, with July 8 being the sunniest day of the year and Dec. 26 being the least sunniest, according to county-level data from 1979 to 2011 from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Christopher Ingraham reports for The Washington Post. Imperial County, California, gets the most sun, while Island County, Washington receives the least. (CDC map: For an interactive version click here)

Here's 'most distinctive' death cause in your state

While some causes of death such as cancer are fairly common everywhere, some causes of death are much more common in certain areas. The following map displays the "most distinctive" cause of death for each state, Rachael Rettner writes for Live Science.

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Some of the distinctive causes are common, such as the flu, which is listed as most distinctive for Maine, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. For Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky, pneumoconiosis—a set of lung diseases contracted through dust inhalation, usually by coal miners who call it "black lung" diesease—was the distinctive cause of death.

In Tennessee and Alabama, the distinctive cause of death is accidental discharge of firearms.

"Although chronic-disease-prevention efforts should continue to emphasize the most common [national] conditions, an outlier map such as this one should also be of interest to public health professionals," the researchers wrote in their report, which is published in the May issue of the journal Preventing Chronic Disease.

The researchers obtained a list of 113 causes of death from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Then they calculated the rate of death for each cause in each state and divided that rate of death from that cause in the entire U.S. (Read more)