links for 2009-07-02
July 2, 2009 - Filed Under links
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With images from the L.A. Basin and the Himalayas. "The GDEM is produced with 30-meter (98-feet) postings, and is formatted as 23,000 one-by-one- degree tiles. The GDEM is available for download from NASA's EOS data archive and Japan's Ground Data System."
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"The previous digital elevation model, the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, covered 80 percent of the Earth’s surface."
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"The new global digital elevation model of Earth was created from nearly 1.3 million individual stereo-pair images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or Aster, instrument aboard Terra. NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, known as METI, developed the data set. It is available online to users everywhere at no cost."
Karen In Public Health Option Video Spot
July 2, 2009 - Filed Under family & friends, government, health
Below is my friend Karen Gadbois (looking good!) in a MoveOn.org video speaking on behalf of the public health insurance option. Karen is a breast cancer survivor and one of many New Orleanians suffering without proper healthcare since The Flood and what I call Recovery Stalling severely crippled the Charity system. Honestly, I don’t know whether the public option is a good idea or not. Will it ensure healthcare access for every American or is it simply robbing Peter to pay baby boomer Paul’s upcoming social security and Medicare tabs?
I am quite sure of two things, however: 1) As it stands now, private insurance is not you handling your money or choosing from a long list of competitive health brokers. It is not The Individual’s Choice when you are saddled with a large insurance company that your employer has partnered with and are subject to their plans, rates and doctors. So, enough talk of the Glorious Free Market when that market is mostly two big insurers with enough government backing to be the damned government, and 2) Employment and personal wealth should not be the only ways for an American to access a basic and low-cost yet good healthcare plan.
The current system sucks, but is this the answer? All I know is Karen, her daughter and many other hardworking Americans should not have to languish in ill health because of a private or public bureaucracy’s greed.
With Respect To
July 1, 2009 - Filed Under kuwait, mapping, midwest, the game of life, visualization
It’s July 1st, so I’ve been back in the Midwest for, what, three months? A quarter of a year.
After fits and starts, travel and more travel and D gone for half of each month, we are beginning to own our home, home-ownership and the giant yard that always needs tending. While D mows, I trim the plethora of plants we inherited and attack the weeds which threaten to take over after every rain. While he puts food on the grill, I sort through the piles of mail addressed to Our New Neighbor or Bamani Venkat (my new name, which I am sure is a result of the following thought process over at Ohio Snail Mail Spam Central: “Maitri Venkat-R … what? Aaaah, new name! *FREAKOUT* Damned furners. *FREAKOUT* I don’t know what to do! Let’s just put it down as Bamani Venkat. Next!“ I am told not to complain as this is a great way to cull the junk mail.)
I had forgotten how beautiful the midwestern countryside is. From atop a western hill, we often lose hours staring at the fields between our house and the county to the south, and the sun setting behind a limestone cliff. Or a wild turkey or ten and deer that invariably spring forth from the same spot in the woods to the southwest. D watches them without a single movement, like an Ent or a patient predator, while the city girl in me moves and tries to get as close as possible without scaring off the critters. I scare off the critters. Apparently, they have great eyesight and like neither bright colors nor sudden movements.
Summertime, and the sun takes forever to wane in these northern latitudes. At 10pm last night, patches of fuchsia and imperial violet sky peeked out from breaks in the trees and rocks. Breathtaking. And that’s when the fireflies and stars come out. As the sun sets, they rise higher and higher, until you cannot tell where the fireflies in the tall trees end and the stars in the sky begin. The stars. Oh, the stars. You can see every last one of them lying in the soft grass. The Big Dipper, Draco, Cassiopeia, the rest of the northern sky, they’re all there. I asked D if this is what it was like for him growing up in the Wisconsin back 40. He nodded. Wow. I grew up in the Kuwaiti desert, where few ventured out at night and the twinkling red lights over the city’s skyscrapers were all the stars you needed. Besides, living in the midst of the merciless urbanization of a coastal desert environment, the only animals we got to see were jack, squat and the occasional feral cat rummaging through the garbage. Now you know why I want to say “Yeah, and one day we put dear old Humpy down and ate him with buns and ketchup” each time someone asks me whether I grew up with a camel in my backyard.
Might I have been a different person raised in a country house surrounded by trees, fresh air and animals? Who knows? Was I envious of kids raised here? Possibly. I remember midwestern farm kids, though, who wanted to trade places with me, bored of shucking corn, scrubbing the horses and other endless chores. I may not consider a city, be it Kuwait City or New York City, an ideal place to raise a kid, but people live every which way and that is how it is, equally legitimate. The way to go then is to enjoy our geographic variety as a species and live alongside, with respect to. When I once asked my Barcelona-dwelling friend Annie if she would ever move back to northern Wisconsin, she replied, “It’s not a great place to be, but a wonderful place to be from.”
Care Bears On Fire – Everybody Else
June 29, 2009 - Filed Under music
Looks like it’s video week at VatulBlog. Nyeah na na na na na na na … don’t want to be like everybody else:
What is GIS?
June 29, 2009 - Filed Under education, mapping, science & technology
A presentation on GIS put together by Allan Laframboise for middle-schoolers. It is visually-pleasing, crisp and understandable, thus making it a must watch for all ages.
Dance, Primates, Dance
June 29, 2009 - Filed Under culture-society-history, monkeys & goats
A bit harsh, but not totally untrue (and it’s primates; the monkeys want to have nothing to do with it):
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