Aug

30th 2008

Yummy Mapping

Filed Under Geography for Kids | Leave a Comment

Here’s a fun mapping project from the Democracy Project hosted on the PBS site.  The exercise combines a tasty treat with map reading skills.

Read more: Tasty Mapping

Aug

30th 2008

Ten Differences between the North and South Poles

Filed Under Trivia, World | Leave a Comment

Do you know what the differences between the Antarctic and the Artic are?  Which one has penguins and which one has polar bears?  Do you know which one is colder?  To learn these answers and more check out LiveScience site’s North vs. South Poles: 10 Wild Differences.

Aug

26th 2008

Cow Magnetism

Filed Under Ecology, Google Earth | Leave a Comment

Google Earth has a new function: determining the preferred orientation of cows.  Sabine Begall and Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen looked at over 8,500 cattle from around the world using imagery from Google Earth and discovered that cattle grazing or resting tend to orient their bodies north-south.  The exact benefit for cattle isn’t understood.

Read more: Cows Automatically Point to the North - UK Telegraph

Aug

23rd 2008

Mexicans Using GPS Microchipping to Combat Kidnapping

Filed Under GPS | Leave a Comment

With a 40% rise in kidnapping over the past few years, Mexico has the unenviable status as ranking with wartorn countries such as Columbia and Iraq as a high risk place for abductions.  One way that affluent and even middle class Mexicans are combatting the problem is by embedding GPS microchips into themselves in order to help locate them once they’ve been kidnapped.  A Mexican security firm, Xega, sells the technology for $4,000 plus an annual $2,200 fee.  The small rice grain sized chip needs a larger GPS-enabled device to provide the geolocation abilities the clients are looking for.  This has led to criticisms that the technology is not providing the security blanket many are looking for:

Katherine Albrecht, a US consumer privacy activist, says the chip is a flashy, overpriced gadget that only identifies a person and cannot locate someone without another, bigger GPS device that kidnappers can easily find and destroy.

Read more: Mexicans get microchipped over kidnapping fears - New Scientist Tech

Aug

22nd 2008

Wanderlust Explored

Filed Under Cartography | Leave a Comment

Good Magazine has a fantastic series that explores some of the most famous historical global journeys, both in real life and in fiction.  The piece takes visitors through a step by step annotation of some of the greatest treks ranging from melia Earhart’s 1937 Circumnavigation Attempt to a reenactment off Jules Verne’s 1873 Novel “Around the World in 80 Days“.

Visit: Wanderlust: GOOD traces the most famous journeys, from Magellan to Kerouac (seen via The Map Room)

Map showing the voyage described in Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days
Map showing the voyage described in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days

Aug

21st 2008

Women and Motherhood Changing in the U.S.

Filed Under Current Events, United States | 1 Comment

A new U.S. Census Bureau report shows that fewer women are opting for motherhood and those that do tend to have fewer children than those in the 1970s.  One in five women aged 40 to 44 have no children and the average number of children for women in their 40s is 1.9 compared with 3.1 in 1976.  Higher educational attainment is one indicator of childlessness with 27 percent of women with graduate or professional degrees remaining without child as compared to 18% of women with only high school diplomas. 

Read more: More Women Than Ever Are Childless, Census Finds - NY Times

Aug

19th 2008

Geobroadcasting

Filed Under GPS, Google Maps | Leave a Comment

Seero.comis reenacting famous car scenes from movies by overlaying the route of the car scene onto Google maps:

I’m a huge fan of ‘the king of cool’ and of all movie car-chase scenes. I thought it would be great to mashup famous chases with their GPS tracks. Keep in mind some of the chases cut from one place to another…so I tried to be as accurate as possible.

Check out the Steve McQueen reenactment.  Read more about the site on Wired’s Re-enact Bullitt With GPS Maps.

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