Very interesting for history classes:
New – Rumsey Historical Maps are in Google Earth! See 16 historical maps in the Featured Content layer of the Google Earth 3D Globe. The georeferenced maps wrap the virtual globe in their modern spaces, allowing explorations of both time and space. Read more.
Technorati Tags: maps, socialstudies
http://www.yourdailyawesome.com/2007/03/02/ira-glass-on-storytelling/
Four short videos.
Technorati Tags: iraglass, storytelling
Gender diversity is popping up again in the blogs. Just thought I’d pass these along.
http://www.kottke.org/07/02/gender-diversity-at-web-conferences
With that in mind, I collected some information about some of the most visible past and upcoming conferences in the tech/design/web space. I’m reasonably sure that the organizers of these conferences were aware of at least one of the above recent complaints about gender diversity at conferences (they were both linked widely in the blogosphere), so it will be interesting to see if those complaints were taken seriously by them.
And a site that lists potential speakers for conferences:
http://www.personism.com/2006/10/11/list-of-women-speakers-for-your-conference/
Making a list is just a start, but what a freaking list it is. I am psyched.
Many thanks to all the contributors to comment threads here on Personism, and over on design*sponge. Marc and Sara over at Wooster Collective also provided some excellent suggestions.
Technorati Tags: gender, pdx, pdxpug, perl, philosphy, diversity
http://www.betterhomebetterplanet.com/index.php?mode=systems
From BASF, but the website has a fair amount of detail. And they make some pretty crazy claims:
The BASF Near-Zero Energy Home-Paterson, N.J., harnesses the power of the sun to generate electricity and heat water. As a result, the home draws almost no power from the grid, greatly reducing utility costs. Two solar energy systems are integrated into the BASF ULTRA-Cool® coated metal roof from Englert.
Technorati Tags: design, efficiency, environmentalism, homedesign, sustainability
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6397001.stm
Dr Mark Thomas, from UCL, said: “The ability to drink milk is the most advantageous trait that’s evolved in Europeans in the recent past.
â€Although the benefits of milk tolerance are not fully understood, they probably include the advantage of a continuous supply compared with the ‘boom and bust’ of seasonal crops, its nourishing qualities, and the fact that, unlike stream water, it’s uncontaminated with parasites, making it safer.
“All in all, the ability to drink milk gave some early Europeans a big survival advantage.â€
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8251
For $12.99, but its out of stock.
I was thinking of rigging something up for a waterer for my chickens – something that trickles normally, but shuts off a valve when their water container is full.
Technorati Tags: design, efficiency, make, batteries, recharger, solar
Here’s that article that I was reading yesterday about bikes in portland –
http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/health/12/10/10bikeportland.html
I thought these two quotes were interesting:
In 1971, Don Stathos, a Republican state representative angry that his grandchildren couldn’t ride safely to school, penned the Oregon Bicycle Bill. That law set aside 1 percent of all state highway funds to build and maintain bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.
In Portland, an estimated 5 to 6 percent of trips made each day are done by bicycle. City officials wants to boost that number to at least 15 percent.
Technorati Tags: bikes, blog, planning, sustainability, urbanplanning
Just came across this today –
http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/viewsource/2003/espn-interview/02/index_en.html
From 2003, but very interesting interview with Mike Davidson, Art Director for the ESPN website. In particular:
One other unique aspect of ESPN.com is that we have built in the ability to lay our front page out differently depending on how big any piece of breaking news is. Essentially, we have four publishing modes: regular, twin-top, skirmish, and war. “Regular†is pretty much how you see the page 90% of the time—a big top story and a group of headlines on the right. “Twin-Top†is when we have two major stories of interest. In this case, we have our big top story and then a smaller top story box on the right.
http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/askpablo-is-netflix-saving-the-002416.php
So the total emissions from sending one billion DVDs to its customers is 320 tons (3,200,000 tkm x 100 g/tkm). Keeping in mind that those DVDs are also returned to the same facility we need to double that result to 640 tons of CO2 emissions. If Netflix wanted to offset this amount, which I hope they will, they could do it for around $4500 with DriveNeutral or $8448 with Native Energy.
Technorati Tags: blog, netflix, research, sustainability