Events

This month's Atlantic explains: "So you want to make a map," [former NASA engineer Michael] Weiss-Malik tells me as we sit down in front of a massive monitor. "There are a couple of steps. You acquire data through partners. You do a bunch of engineering on that data to get it into the right format and conflate it with other sources of data, and then you do a bunch of operations, which is what this tool is about, to hand massage the data. And out the other end pops something that is higher quality than...

They just launched high-resolution aerial photos of another batch of cities: Improving the availability of more high quality imagery is one of the many ways we’re continuing to bring you the most comprehensive and accurate maps of the world. In this month’s update, you’ll find another extensive refresh to our high resolution aerial and satellite imagery (viewable in both Google Maps and Google Earth), as well as new 45 degree imagery in Google Maps spanning 30 new cities. Google Maps and Earth now...

President Clinton Wednesday night: President Obama last night:

Apparently all that junk DNA in your cells isn't junk after all: Now scientists have discovered a vital clue to unraveling these riddles. The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as “junk” but that turn out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave. The discovery, considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough, has enormous implications for human health because many complex...

Seriously: Within the bottle, a postcard written in June 1914 by Captain CH Brown of the Glasgow School of Navigation promised the finder a reward of 6 pence. It had been part of a scientific experiment in which 1,890 such bottles were released, in a bid to chart currents around Scotland. Even odder, the person who found this 98-year-old message worked on the same boat as a man who found a 93-year-old message back in 2006. The bottles were part of an early-20th-century research project to map Scotland's...

We're doing some very cool things at 10th Magnitude. Here's my boss, CEO Alex Brown, explaining: Notice, by the way, how often I have mentioned an employer on this blog. I'd discuss the company more right now, but I have to get back to writing some pretty cool Azure code...

Just when you thought it was September, along comes more hot weather. Chicago officially hit 32°C for the 46th time this year, putting us one away from tying the record number of days above that temperature in recorded Chicago history. Can we please have autumn now?

I've just finished Jane Jacobs' foundational work on urban planning. I first came across the book in 2010, started reading it in May, then put it down and picked it up a few times. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published 51 years ago, Jacobs demolished the philosophy of urban planning that had prevailed since the 1920s. The Cabrini Green housing projects, massively disruptive road-building like the Dan Ryan and Congress Expressways, and a way of top-down analysis that looked at...

Beloit College's Mindset List has me thinking: what will future lists look like? Some ideas: The 2024 List The Class of 2024 were born in 2002. They never saw Captain Kangaroo or Mr. Rogers on live TV. The World Trade Center has never existed. There has always been an American military presence in Afghanistan. Monica Lewinsky means as much to them as Christine Keeler meant to their parents. The 2034 List The Class of 2034 were born in 2012. Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, John Hughes, and Brittany Murphy...

Clearing out the ballast: Despite the initial forecasts, Hurricane Isaac's remnants missed Chicago. Beloit College, just outside Rockford, Ill., has published its Class of 2016 Mindset. Since 1998 they've published a list of facts about the way incoming first-years think. This year's list includes "Women have always piloted war planes and space shuttles" and "A bit of the late Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, has always existed in space." The Economist's Gulliver blog bemoans Tampa's and...