Map Of Australia With A So Called ‘remoteness Index’, Illustrating How Far Locations In Australia

The Scripps CO2 measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory on the big island of Hawaii have shown that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels climbed above the 400 parts per million (ppm). Because CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a very long time, some scientists say for millennia, our global fever has reached the point that no one alive today, and those that follow us, will ever know a world below 400 ppm again.

This week will be the last time anyone alive experiences a CO2 level below 400 ppm. (Saturday Nov 21, 2015)

A Mesmerizing 3-D Vision of New York as Pure Data

Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th

(cross-posted on the MIT Center for Civic Media blog)

A few years ago when I was working on the Civic Commons project with Code for America and OpenPlans, I did a presentation at Living Cities called “Cities that Work Like the Web” which discussed using open standards and…

NASA is training space robots using virtual reality

 NASA and Sony have teamed up to use Playstation VR to train humanoids, or robot like humans, which would work in space. The project called Mighty Morphenaut sees a VR app allow a human to see through the eyes of the robot and control the robots movements using the Playstation VR system.

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Villagers to Refugees: Please Don't Fear Krampus

Officials in the village of Virgen worried about how new arrivals from the Middle East would react to the local tradition of meeting so-called "Christmas Devils" who pretend to abduct kids.

Fearing the spectacle would be misunderstood, community representatives last week visited the 22 migrants — including 12 children — who have been housed in the Alpine village since the end of October.

They were shown the frightening masks and given insight into the event’s history with the help of an Arabic translator. The verdict? The newcomers had “lots of fun,” according to social worker Nicole Kranebitter.

The migrants “will now know what to expect when St. Nicholas and the Krampus creatures knock on their door,” Kranebitter added.

She said the next event planned for the families who fled war-torn homelands will be traditional cookie baking.

sometimes the world is okay

Car accidents aren't accidents

The use of the term “accident” gives cops and courts the cover to excuse murder. In a brutal editorial, Hsi-Pei Liao talks about his daughter, who was killed by a driver when she was three. The driver got a ticket for failure to yeild and failure to use due care, and those tickets were eventually thrown out by a DMV judge who considered the case for 47 seconds.

I was nearly killed by a hit-and-run drunk driver when I was 21, who was caught and then given a $1,000 fine and a six month license suspension (when he hit me, he was already driving without a license, having had his license pulled for a previous DUI). The Ontario prosecutor didn’t give me notice of the hearing and I wasn’t allowed to testify or give a victim impact statement.

Big city cops, especially the NYPD and SFPD, are notorious for excusing people who kill with their cars, especially when the victims are cyclists. An activist group called Families for Safe Streets is campaigning to replace the term “accident” – which implies that the incident was a kind of unpredictable, unavoidable effect of the universe’s uncooperative inanimate objects – with “crash.”

In New York City, they campaigned for the Right of Way Law, which came into effect in June 2014, which allows “police to bring a misdemeanor charge if a driver kills or seriously injures someone who has the right of way in a crosswalk or a bike lane.” It’s pretty amazing that a new law was needed for this – but even more amazing was the city bus drivers’ campaign against the law, because they didn’t want to “criminalize accidents.”

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Well I’M ready for the holidays. 

An Urbanizing Planet

The video, entitled An Urbanizing Planet, takes viewers on a stunning satellite-viewed tour around our planet. By combining more than 10 datasets, and using GIS processing software and 3D graphic applications, the video shows not only where urbanization will be most extensive, but also how the majority of the expansion will occur in areas adjacent to biodiversity hotspots.

The video was produced to present the framework of a new book Global Urbanization, Biodiversity, and Ecosystems: Challenges and Opportunities — A Global Assessment. The scientific foundation of the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook project, the book presents the world’s first assessment of how global urbanization and urban growth impact biodiversity and ecosystems. It builds on contributions by more than 200 scientists worldwide.