Those Anarchists are nothing if not ambitious! Curzon has a four-part series called Mapping the Gap. A quote from the Prelude:

Dr. Thomas Barnett divides the world into two categories: the functioning core and the chaotic gap. Where are the borders of this chaotic region?...

I like the concept of Core v.s. Gap. I just don't like how the border is classified. What makes countries like Turkey and Thailand part of the Gap but places such as Lesotho and Tibet in the Core? Equally, it seems ludicrious to include Chengdu, China (an industrial hole) in the Core and Ankara, Turkey (a developed quasi-European city) in the Gap. And it goes beyond that--how can you tell when the borders of the Gap shrink or expand?

You should check out the comments on this one which includes TPMB regular ZenPundit.

Curzon goes on to 'flesh out' the Gap with posts on War Risk Insurance, Homosexuality Laws, and Ungoverned Areas. Among other things, these posts feature some really nice, homemade maps. Go look! ;-)

I, for one, hope Curzon has more of these forthcoming. Any other data-sets like this come to mind for mapping the Gap?

[Tom's unavailable right now, but maybe we'll get some commentary out of him later...]

UPDATE: Lexington Green sends in a link to a post he did with a picture of 'An electromagnetic spectrum satellite photo of global lines of communication, 1999'. Lines us pretty well with Core/Gap. Keep 'em coming!