Computers, Society, and Nature

From @Jackstilgoe
Interesting editorial in Nature called Political Science, which critiques Paul Nurse’s Dimbleby lecture. Bottom line: The practice of science cannot and must not divorce itself from politics.

My critique of the critique, which asserts that “although political (and religious) ideology has no place in deciding scientific questions, the practice of science is inherently political.” Rubbish. Whether or not you want to believe ideology has no place in deciding scientific questions, it does (e.g., denying evidence of homosexuality in the animal kingdom). The point is to appreciate that the theory AND practice of science has political assumptions. The scientific community is sufficiently robust to explicate the socio-political assumptions and conduct peer review of the quality of the underlying research.

Of e-goods? You’re not the only one.

Among other findings from a survey released today by the Consumer Electronics Association [Going Green: An Examination of the Green Trend and What it Means to Consumers and the CE Industry (December 2008), which is the correct link, not the one on the nytimes site], an industry group representing computer and gadget manufacturers, 89 percent of consumers said that energy efficiency would be a factor in choosing their next television — even as less than half of the 960 people surveyed said they’re generally able to make sense of the environmental attributes attached to electronics on the market.

Consumers don’t trust the companies or they can’t understand the standards or haven’t been made aware of industries’ eco-efforts. Whose fault is that?

New York has crime. It has dropped precipitously since a couple decades back, but I have seen a couple scuffles a robbery, and a few high-speed car chases with my own eyes. I have seen cops using faux taxi cabs to head-off the suspects they were pursuing, 2 officers running out with guns drawn and literally jumping onto the hood, aiming through the windshield while yelling threats.

Like this one:

So, it is too bad that these typical mash-up portals log fewer than a couple hundred incidents:

SpotCrime
Gothamist
and even something from The New York Times

Perhaps instead of advertising “If you see something, say something” and then congratulating themselves on “1,944 people said something” — a statistic with little consequence, it turns out — perhaps the NYPD should encourage more digital participation.

Ironically, hundreds upon hundreds of people no doubt sent pictures from their camera phones/ BlackBerry phones when the 41st street manhole cover blew its stack (My friend included. He went so far as to voluntarily send 2 videos and 9 photos.)

How much do you like the classic Nintendo® Gameboy® Portable Hand-Held Game Conlose? Enough to buy clay brick replicas of the original for your home garden to the tune of €10?

If you answered ‘yes’ to both of these questions, click here.

Do you know what is happening with the whaling industry these days? In terms of commercial operations, not much. In terms of research, crimes, and misdemeanors, the Japanese have been running a few outings in vessels in the last couple years.

It was headline news when they announced the launch of these missions in the name of science. Among their claimed investigative agenda items were memorable tasks including 4 points:

1. Estimation of biological parameters to improve the stock management of the Southern Hemisphere minke whale,
2. Examination of the role of whales in the Antarctic marine ecosystem,
3. Examination of the effect of environmental changes on cetaceans and,
4. Examination of the stock structure of the Southern Hemisphere minke whales to improve stock management.

The Japanese defend their activities as safe and sound (IRCW). Opponents and government agencies both have argues that solely non-lethal means of conducting research can and should be used. Instead, they are sometimes ignored in favor of a trusty, rusty harpoon. How else can you do a whale autopsy?

True to form, Greenpeace has been out on the high sees, poking around and literally getting in the way. Greenpeace has even been seen to ‘chase away’ Japanese vessels in the midst of a point-shoot-kill-capture operation (YouTube and The Guardian).

Thanks to covert operations, Greenpeace agents have intercepted a box of illegal whale meat — on of many such containers, each worth $several thousand — destined for the black market. To quote a recent Greenpeace call-to-action: “The best cuts of whale meat, used to make whale bacon, are smuggled into crew cabins, preserved in salt, and then shipped home in boxes marked “cardboard” or “salted stuff” to be sold on the black market.”

Kudos to Greenpeace undercover.

My all-time favourite science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke, has just died. He of course is best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey but his prediction of geosynchronous telecommunications satellites made him a futurist of unparalleled proportion. His three laws are timeless lessons in the art of science:

¶“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

¶“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

¶“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

I was deeply influenced by Childhood’s End and Against the Fall of Night and it led to my love of science (and my reading of every one of his books). His book Imperial Earth, predicted mobile computing devices while all the other sf writers continued to write about centralized computing. His later books, particularly the co-written works, never possessed the creative energy of his earliest works. But even those held predictive power (His book with Stephen Baxter created a strange but compelling portrait of an earth bereft of privacy). This is a sad day for me and for sf.

Battlestar Galactica in 8 minutes.

blame Liam for hooking me on BSG.

Environmental implications are vast (e.g., how exactly do you safely dispose of nanotech?) but the technology is sooo cool.

(written by Intro to GIS student, A. W.)

The advent of the online map has spelled a further expansion of advertising from the real world to the online world. Map users are increasingly using visual representations of geographic information (i.e., maps) and related software to, for example, find directions, familiarize themselves with an area, and navigate around areas. Now, users will need to face the reality that the online map is a great medium for marketing. Several GIS Marketing companies like Safarri and Lat49, plus search-engine powerhouses like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are taking advantage of what are excellent advertising platforms. When one thinks of the high costs of creating and displaying high quality online maps, most which are accessible to the public for free, it is logical that software companies would reserve the right to use those spaces for revenue. The use of text, banners, images, audio and video are all methods of advertising on electronic maps. Geocoded advertisements tie a particular message to a specific address or landmark based on its latitude and longitude. As a query response for information in a geographic region, ranked ads are plotted on or in association with a map or satellite photo (Google uses AdSense and AdWords). The number of ads either plotted or listed would vary as a function of the map type and image resolution. GIS Monitor Archive explains how ads are ranked or scored, with their attributes or features as a function of such a score or ranking.

Until recently, it was difficult to know at what map scale and extent to pitch a geocoded ad. This meant either insufficient information or an overcrowding of it depending on the map’s resolution. The user’s viewing area (i.e., map extent plus scale) may overlap multiple cities, regions or areas. This is unappealing to the advertiser who may want his/her ad to appear within a specific area. The solution would be to determine whether a map extent overlaps sufficiently with the advertiser-identified threshold area of a map. The inability of current mapping software to distinguish boundaries of geographical areas presents a problem. Even if an online electronic map was a copy of a printed map, the boundaries on the printed one would not necessarily be geocoded for the software’s use. The display issues haven’t been resolved.

Google has discovered a method to identify and locate these boundaries around geographic regions. This means it can build spatial indexes to service particular geographic areas related based on a geocoding principle. For instance, when the map user is doing a search at a city level, certain ads will appear to them that may not be visible at the state level. This is how it works, according to Google’s patent:

From a set of coordinates within the area (e.g., latitude/longitude coordinates), a grid of relatively small cells of geographic data is overlaid upon those coordinates and associated with the area. Each initial cell is iteratively replaced with a larger cell that encompasses the initial cell, unless the replacement cell intersects a cell associated with some other geographical area, or until some other boundary condition is met (e.g., a threshold number of replacements is performed).

The reality is that online maps are increasingly being used for advertising, and advertising is not likely to quell its intense interest in the medium. However, digital earths like Google Earth, which are opening the possibility of geolocating advertisements, may decline in popularity if the digital earths become overcrowded, since they are not primary tools for navigation.

I guess you just have to live forever.

Here’s a wonderful series of painting done by artist Isabelle Kirkland. In what first appears to be a traditional discovery-of-the-new-world approach to taxonomically detailing species, Ms Kirkland has instead subverted the tradition to show how we maintain our authority over wildlife. Each painting is set in an easy to use interface. Visitors to the site can zoom into a canvas; this zoom in function allows for quick movement across the extent while retaining the incredible detail of the image. Indeed, one needs the zoom to find some of the individual species. A scrollable species key is provided to the right of the canvas.

Gone illustrates species that we have driven extinct. When you’ve become sufficiently depressed (and after you’ve read the evocative and poignant annotations on some of the eggs), you can scroll through the more uplifting Back.

Chris Jordan has produced some truly amazing art that uses, as his medium, the vast amounts of goods we waste (among other things) to paint a compelling picture of how we live. These are massive images (~5*10′). My favourite shows the number of cellphones (almost half a million!) retired in the US every single day.