Arts & Life

Beer snobs and craft brewers alike have rediscovered beer cans in recent years, defying the old stereotype that quality beer comes only in bottles, or that cans are just for mass market stuff. But for the smallest microbreweries, the question wasn't "can or bottle," it was whether they could afford the equipment and storage space to package their beer at all. Many could not.

This map is disturbing, once you understand it. It's a new attempt to visualize an old problem — the shrinking of underground water reserves, in most cases because farmers are pumping out water to irrigate their crops.