The world can look a little dark and ugly sometimes. I think what we're supposed to do when we lose perspective (I'll never find a job I don't despise! I have no real friends anymore!) is to say bright, inspiring things to ourselves like, "You're healthy! Be grateful!" Or, "Somebody somewhere loves you!" Or "You're not starving in drought-ridden country with no medical attention!"

This never works for me.

Which is why I was so happy to stumble onto this Sightseeing Heat Map of Popular Spots Around the World on Peta Pixel yesterday.The map is generated by a site called Sightsmap that takes "the geographic data from the photos uploaded to Panoramio...and uses it to generate a..map."The point here for most of us is to visualize where the most popular sightseeing places on the planet are, and where people are taking the most amount of photographs. (If you were traveling and wanted to really get away from the hustle and bustle of it all, for example, you should go to gray Northern Russia). For those of us who are having a lack-of-perspective day, though, the map can help out. Barring war journalists and experimental artists, why do people take photographs? Because they see something beautiful—be it the Eiffel Tower in Paris or a mud puddle in Victoria, Texas or their mom, smiling in front of rickshaw in Bombay, India. Each dribble of purple or red or orange or yellow is a concentration of strangers realizing hey, there's something out there I want to remember, there's some wonderful worth looking at a second time. I'm just saying...that many people can't be wrong.

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