Google's ability to produce its Street View images still leaves me gobsmacked. Now see what the land survey industry has been up to in the digital technology department: Using a portable, eye-safe, laser scanner, and traveling at posted speeds, this vehicle collects data and imagery with survey grade accuracy: Yes, they need a better video, but still...

19 January, 2011

Scott Logan, who formerly served as Nova Scotia's Assistant Deputy Minister of Health Promotions, responds to our observation that John F. Kennedy would seem skinny today: This piece and the previous on "Your Lying Pants" speak so graphically to socialized norms. When the majority of people smoked it was "cool." When—for various reasons—the tipping point was reached where the majority were non-smokers, the efforts to reduce tobacco's harmful impact on society gained great momentum.  In tobacco, the strategy was based on "re-normalizing" society's previous normal view of smoking. In other words the "new cool" was re-cast in a non-smoking image. The health...

17 January, 2011

The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston has released a huge trove of digitized images and recordings of the late president. Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic's tech blogger, has published a selection. Here's what struck me: As a young naval officer, Kennedy was certainly slim, but no one would have thought him gaunt or emaciated. Yet Kennedy's Navy ID card reveals that he was six feet tall and weighed just 150 pounds. Six feet, 150 pounds! How our standards of girth have changed (as previously noted)....

15 January, 2011

The frequency with which certain terms appear in Google search queries foreshadows reports of actual 'flu activity from agencies like the Centres for Disease Control by about two weeks. Google tracks the frequency of 'flu-linked search terms and maps the results by region. The current map for Canada shows low frequency in the west and east, moderate in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and high in Ontario and Quebec. This is a screenshot. The actual map is interactive, so you can click on a province and see the search trends there over time. Check out the explanatory video. H/T: Steve Manley, 'flu sufferer....

13 January, 2011

Citizen-artist and longtime culture critic Andrew Terris likes the realignment of culture portfolios in Tuesday's cabinet shuffle. In addition to explicit cultural entities, the new Department of Communities, Culture, and Heritage will be responsible for the Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, and the provincial library system. It will administer the offices of Acadian Affairs, Gaelic Affairs, and African Nova Scotian Affairs. Over the years, culture has regularly been batted around within the bureaucracy, often ending up with dubious partners. First there was Culture, Recreation and Fitness (we used to call it Cult, Rec and Fit), then Tourism and...

13 January, 2011

Rosa Donham, age 4, got a USB microscope for Christmas. This week, she began photographing some of her favorite objects around the house, including this one: It's the mouth of a sand dollar....

13 January, 2011

If agencies produced birthday parties, they'd all rock like Chelsea Bedano's 8th. You have only to sit through a few agency pitches to know how close to the mark this is. H/T: DR, via Adfreak.com. The ad agency is john st., Toronto....

11 January, 2011

A lot of energy is produced when a moving vehicle slows or stops. Usually that energy is wasted — dissipated as heat in the vehicle's brake drums. Hybrid vehicles capture this energy by converting it to electricity for storage in a battery and later re-use for propulsion. GE, which makes hybrid locomotive engines, produced this video to illustrate the forces at play. Hat tip: Flowingdata....

09 January, 2011

Claire Hirschkind, 56, is a rape victim. She has a medical implant similar to a pacemaker. She set off an airport security metal detector. Solution? Grope her. When she objects, shove her to the ground, cuff her, and drag her out. Text version here. H/T: KVUE News via Daily Dish....

26 December, 2010

For all its foreign policy lapses, the United States has long stood as a beacon of individual freedom. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights constrain government action against individuals to a degree unimagined elsewhere in the world. Even the most criticized parts of the Bill of Rights, like the Second Amendment guarantee of the right ro bear arms, are, in William O. Douglas's felicitous phrase, "designed to take the government off the backs of people." It is commonplace to observe that the September 11 attacks undermined those constraints. In the run-up to Christmas, Glenn Greenwald, Salon's tenacious legal affairs reporter, produced...

26 December, 2010
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