Mapping America's Illnesses, In Near Real-Time

People in Seattle are suffering from coughing and the flu.

Headaches and fevers are going around in Washington, D.C.

A resident of Phoenix is down with the "man flu" – the possibly mythical condition in which men experience illnesses more painfully than women.

All this drippy, wheezy intelligence, possibly accurate or possibly not, comes courtesy of SickWeather, a website that attempts to crowdsource the health of cities around the world. (Motto: “Say It, Don't Spray It”). Co-founded by former U.S. Census crime-trend mapper Graham Dodge, the site presents a near-real-time map showing outbreaks of various illnesses as vast colored polygons; zoom in, and you can see the specific neighborhoods where people are kvetching about being laid out.

Hypochondriacs can spend a half hour or so filtering the results by malady. There are the usual suspects: common cold, stomach flu, pink eye, allergies, chicken pox. A few lesser-known afflictions also pop up, such as croup and “love sickness.” When the terrorists finally find a way to weaponize the latter, we'll all be doomed.