The Atlas of the Real World (pics) (telegraph.co.uk)

Pretty cool, but I'm not sure I understand all of the distortion. Perhaps if they are using much smaller territories than the color coding, for example each state of the US, that would give rise to some of the shear.

Fun to: guess what the map was representing, then scroll down to see if I was even close.

If you liked that, you will REALLY like http://www.gapminder.org

Funny to see the Netherlands appear on a worldmap for a change :)