ink_polaroid,

thanks for the ideas. You are right, using polygons would help performance problems. However, I've found that having individual points is more poignant in capturing the sheer magnitude of the situation (Although events with over 50 deaths have been scaled back : 1 dot = 5 deaths). Polygons makes it feel more like a graph or chart...

In fact, I had intended the Archimedean spiral to show oldest events in the middle, and newer ones farther out. But I forgot to convert from degrees to radians in the algorithm, and it screwed everything up. I have uploaded a fixed version that now spirals out properly.

thanks...