International Anthem from Entschwindet und Vergeht

Dougie has outdone himself again..
http://youyouidiot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-international-anthem.html

Kate Hartman on TED

This excellent Ted talk by Kate Hartman, has almost all the things theSlog is interested in: design, glaciers, funnies..

Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world

Another great TED talk, this time about algorithms, man/machine interaction, terraforming.. It's got it all! Thanks to Carlo. from Roy.

David McCandless (Information is Beautiful) on TED

TheSlog favourite David McCandless gave a TED talk recently - its great to hear him explain some of his visualisations and how he got into doing them. Thanks to Georgey for first pointing out his blog.

If it was my home

A scary tool that shows you how big the gulf oil spill would be if it was centered on your home.

gareth

Maps!

Delightful exhibit on at the British Library until September: Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art. For those that haven't figured it out yet, yes I am a map addict, but bias aside, I love this map. Click through to explore...

gareth

The Do Lectures

"The Do lectures are all about getting a handful of speakers together in one place, in the hope that they may inspire you to go Do something. To give you the tools and the desire to change the things you care about."

Streetview!

Now available in Calgary...

Walkability

Cool tool assessing the walkability of where you live. I.e. how many destinations can you get to without the need to get in a car. It's not perfect (uses as crow flies distances) but certainly gives you a flavour of how walkable a place can be.

p.s. our house gets a "very walkable" 71 whilst the old rupert street pad scores a "walkers paradise" at 93. Unfortunately the comparison tool only works for US cities, maybe they'll get on that and we can see how we rank compared to our urban neighbours....

Canadians love rocks

I thought this might be relevant to the readership..

350

There seem to be endless campaigns for climate change and the environment, (we, the climate project, the big ask etc etc) but I like the simplicity of this one. And something about using numerals and sign language to reach as many people as possible is neat. How the heck we get to 350 is another question...

Ponoko Blog

Ponoko Blog

I'm starting in a new role writing blog posts for Ponoko this week - should be fun and a good opportunity to write and think more about OSPD. It certainly means writing more!

Endangered Machinery

Endangered Machinery :: Industrial and Industrial Heritage Photography :: Haiko Hebig

I do like this.

See here too, for more industrial beauty.

via Core77

Latest Google Toy

Okay, its probably not the latest (i think that must be the Google Sky application which is a whole other post) but this is very very cool. Geo-referenced 3D rendered buildings... Just follow the link above and click on the '3D warehouse network link' then open the kmz with google earth...

200th Post is Black

This is the 200th post to theSlog, and it comes via Padraig!

When your pc screen is all white (like a word page, for example),
your computer comsuption is about 74 Watt. When it's all black, the
average ist about 54 Watt.

Because of this, a few month ago, Mark Ontlush wrote an article
about the amount of energy that could be saved if Google had a black
background instead of white.

Considering the high popularity of the website, according to
Mark, the energy savings would be about 750 MW-Hour per year.
Answering to this post, Google created a black version of it's
search engine named Blackle.com ( http://blackle.com ) , that works the
exact same way as the original version but uses less power.
Pass it on to friends, family and discussion list...let's all
give our support to Blackle!!

I love map

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches

I think this is quite interesting. An article about information representation on the web.

Front page news!

Calgary made front page news today on Guardian Unlimited. For all the wrong reasons...
It's a fair comment, but after being here 9 months and seeing a little of what Calgarians can and are doing in regards to climate change and sustainability issues, I'm a little more optimistic that things wont be as bad as Klein makes out. I may however have just caught the Cowtown bug. Yeehaw!

The role of Governmental websites.

I have always thought that progressive, democratic societies are built upon fundamental ideas such as freedom of speech and the right to a decent education (amongst many others). Considering both of these points makes me think about the internet.

Everyone has the right to write anything they so wish (as I am doing right now) and publish this on the internet, a freedom of speech that is incredibly difficult to restrict. Educationly, the internet has also enlightened many, even with a crappy 28.8k connection one could imagine that access to material (granted some of dubious educational quality) never before available to some has improved vastly. Corporations, NGOs, Universities and National Governments have all used the internet to their advantage, to inform and to educate the general public in whatever way they wish.

There is the problem however of institutional bias. What an NGO and a Corporation say about the same situation could be hugely different. This, I think, is unavoidable and it is up to the reader to decide who they believe. However, should this be the case when it comes down to websites operated by national governments? Should spin be allowed? I think not. I think there is a responsibility on governments, as the bastions of progressive, democratic societies, to provide the 'decent education' as I mentioned above.

Which is why when I recently checked out the Government of Canada's official Climate Change website I was so sorely disappointed. To be fair, you can eventually get to some musings on climate change after following a bunch of links from one government department to anothers website. But I was honestly shocked that one could simply declare an issue as huge as Climate Change a closed book, one that this government has decided simply to not provide any easily accessible information on. Could you imagine if they decided to not provide any information on HIV/Aids or simply had a page for a website instructing the reader that the site is 'temporarily unavailable'?

Perhaps there is no responsibility on any government to provide free and accessible information on any issue. One could argue with the reams of information on everyone elses website that this would be pointless. Perhaps that is what institutions like the UN are for, but at least, if you have an official page on an issue, maybe it should have a link to that institution?

It's a thinker...

'Compared to this, Iraq was easy'

'Compared to this, Iraq was easy'

Guardian correspondent Declan Walsh reports from Afghanistan, embedded with the 10th US mountain division, in a series of narrated slideshows. Good stuff.

Soviet bus shelters

Polar Inertia, a photography site has an interesting gallery of Soviet bus shelters, of which this is one.

via Core77