I have fixed a problem in the spiral generating algorithm (forgot to convert from degrees to radians!) so now each city's events spiral out properly, the older events in the center.

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This is a long-overdue follow-up to my US/Allied Casualites in Iraq (I will soon be making some updates/improvements on this as well, thanks to the help of Frank_McVey )

To repeat what I wrote there:
Quote:

I have absolutely no political motivations behind this work, so please don't read into any Pro or Anti-War/Bush/Iraqi messages that just aren't there. I just feel for the people that have died on both sides of this conflict (innocent, civilian, military or otherwise), and would like to help other grasp the magnitude of this loss.




For this kmz I took data from IraqBodyCount.net's website (here). They take reports from reputable english-language news sites, at *least* two sources for each event, and have created an "reported" max/min number of Iraqi civilian and military/insurget loses.

At first I had a hard time representing 30,000 points on GE... just not enough space on the map without placing them too close together. So I decided to build up. Each vertical stack of placemarks represents an individual event (or news report). The points have been grouped with <MultiPoint> so that if you click on any one, you'll just access the same description on the top of the pile.

I tried to vary the colors a bit, but the euclidian spiral algorithm I used to place points gives the effect of radiating colors. These do not indicate the same event... each stack is its own. The total body count for each event appears in transparent white at the top of the stack... and a larger, red number is floating above each city is the total for that city (Baghdad is ~14,000).

the height of the tower/numbers of dots is an average of the reported maximum and minium losses for that particular event. Also, for events with more than 50 casualties, I decide to only show one dot for every 5 deaths. However, the overall height of the stack is still proportional to number of casualties. Otherwise it gets pretty slow. If you want the "full" res version, let me know.

Links to the news source websites (via a google search - too lazy to get them all), but not the actual news article is provided. Use the IraqBOdyCount ID at the bottom of the description if you want to look it up on their site.


There are a few some placement/latlong errors, but most should be right. I'm too tired to mess with it anymore... might fix glaring errors as they arise. the points in the middle of the lake (don't know the name) are from villages I couldn't find latlong for. Sorry they are in the water... but I figured that would be better than improperly placing them.

My Pentium M 1.6Ghz laptop with 1GB of RAM has a little trouble rendering... but as you zoom on, it gets smoother--less points to render simultaneously.


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224601-iraqi_death_war.kmz (16295 downloads)
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