Maps of War

It's a little crude, but the flash animations at 'Maps of War' kept me fascinated for at least, i don't know, 5 minutes or so. The 'history of religion map is particularly interesting, if you disregard the rather glaring caveat that the map conveniently ignores all non-monotheistic religions except Hinduism, the divisions within Christianity and Islam, and the fact that religions, well, overlap, it's a nice overview of how major monotheistic religions spread.

UPDATE: OK, now I'm not so sure how much i like them: The American Leadership and War map seems to be making the claim that democrats are more prone to causing American deaths in warfare by making a running comparison of who was president during all declared American conflicts. Nevermind that since WWI and WWII were both fought under Democrats, the comparison becomes rather tenuous at best. And, of course, they're counting Lincoln and the Civil War as 'Republican', which also doesn't really hold water, since Republicans and Democrats have switched ideologies since then...

But on the plus side, you can click on any war to see the casualties. And it does chronicle how many fucking 'undeclared actions' there there have been in the last 200 years. Anybody else heard of the 'First Barbary War against 'African Pirates?'

And that's just the ones we know about...