Research & Rescue

Where can you build an earthship?

Earthship Biotecture in Taos, NM has a map on their blog this week that shows you on a county-by-county basis, where you can fairly easily (or not) build a carbon-zero home throughout the United States. On the site is an interactive version of the map shown below, as well as a video explaining the map. The red on the map represents a large amount of permitting, cost, etc. in order to build. It was very surprising to learn that they tried to retrofit a house in California - not even build new - and met with prohibitive regulation. Great to see that the I-25 corridor has a lot of green. I don't know if that is because those are the people who are most likely to make a trip down to an earthship community and actually "get it" or what but I feel privileged to live in NM. where it's relatively easy to obtain permits for retrofit or building.

via earthship.com

PCWorld says Don't Be Misled by Android Sales Stats

Android has finally done it! For the first time ever, the volume of Android devices sold beat the volume of Apple iPhones sold for a given quarter. However, the statistics are misleading and point to a somewhat hollow victory.

Read the rest at www.pcworld.com

Designing the ultimate TED talk

The. Best. TED. Talk. Ever. Sebastian Wernicke performs a statistical analysis on TED talks and comes up with a method for designing the ultimate (or the god-awful worst) TED talk, based on user preferences. Both brilliant and hilarious.

I tried out the tedPAD myself and here are my little TED talk passages, generated by the tool:

Good talk:

(Applause.) Thank you very much. This shows that happiness is a piece of art. You don't have to have three or four cups of coffee - you know it will be wonderful. I'll give you some related data on the quality of our lives. I'll give you a couple of things to ponder regarding this choice to consciously solve a problem. To illustrate my point, I'll give you a very dramatic example of a patient who was very comfortable with himself. If you look at the science behind it, happiness cannot be pinned down, it is evasive. It's the same way that in the middle of voyages, there are often beautiful places that you miss. I would like to compare this to a patient that ended up doing good for the world. I'll give you a couple of examples. You. can see the beauty sink in once you take the time. Then all of a sudden it becomes easy for the brain to weigh emotion and experimental evidence.

Bad talk:

Now you're even inclined to rely on a computer whose mission is to make sure that we get things right. Therefore, we launched this project where there isn't a single aspect I don't understand. Naturally, this required building this only a few years later. However, I'm here to look at this as a success story. So we needed more time to make sure that we get more attention on the web. And we needed a design solution that's essentially trouble-free. I don't understand why hardly anyone uses this urban design which is going to make sure that we succeed. Furthermore, we needed help in building a political case for the New York Times. This has become a project to investigate all that we don't know about. Now you're even inclined to rely on a computer room equipped with what I can't have. This room would be based on a patent-pending design - it belongs at the front page of the New York Times.

Hmm. Even based on the good one, think I'll stick to attending and volunteering for TED.

What if the Gulf oil spill were over Albuquerque?

[OK - this is how awesome and unbelievable the size of the spill is. I originally typed 2500 sq. ft. below, rather than the 2500 sq. MILES it really is.]

I seem to be really into scary pictures and websites lately but I ran across a google map scenario tool set up by Dr. Paul Rademacher and it let you compare the oil spill to various areas in the United States or one of your own choosing. Of course, we're all awed by the some 2500 sq. mi. of oil floating on the Gulf waters but this really brings home the enormity of the situation. Here is a picture of a map I created with Rademacher's tool, showing the oil spill covering the city and environs of Albuquerque.

 

You can see the specs for the analysis and create your own map here: How big is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?.

Just how much oil is leaking into the Gulf?

PBS created this widget to estimate how much oil has spilled into the Gulf, based on sliding estimates (you slide 'em) from a minimum of a little over 200K gal. per day [NOAA] to the worst case scenario by BP, which is 2.5 million gal. per day. Frightening no matter which of the numbers you use. You can get the widget for your own website on the PBS page.

States Where You Can Marry Your Cousin

Sometimes GOOD magazine just scares me. OTOH, the data geek in me thinks this is clever.

 

Get the details at www.good.is

Mining the Like Button

I'm not sure if this is cool or creepy. I felt a lot better after logging out of Facebook and then looking at it again to verify I couldn't see anything about myself or my Facebook friends. If you go to the site while you are logged into Facebook, you will see all kinds of things about what your friends like or posted.

 

This is actually how the Like button on this site works (beta from TypePad). You only see people on the left in the Like box, if you know them. Other people show up in the total but you can't see their names or avatars. Additionally, if you aren't logged in when you come to our site, you will only see the total number of persons who Like the site.

I'm darned close to uninstalling the Facebook Like button on this blog, just because there's too much experimental work being done on what we all signed on for as protected data. Just so you all know, I don't plan on collecting any data or looking at data if they exist. What I thought it might be good for was to automatically feed my posts to Facebook and give folks a choice instead of just broadcasting my posts. Frankly, though, it's not that big a deal for me to check the little box to share my individual posts (as I did here).

For the few of you who have already hit the Like button here, we won't be offended if you Unlike it. The newsfeed function in beta is not working at present, so these posts will be shared manually. If you care to stay, rest assured we will not be data mining these data.

Here is the disclaimer from the Like Button aggregator, should you decide to check it out.

Like Button is a collection of links shared by your Facebook friends from most popular sites. For you privacy concerned people: don't worry, like button has no access to your personal information. Think of each box as a very specific miniature Facebook page inside of this site. Like button makes a great home page. Got it? Hide this message

Try it out at Likebutton.me

World Bank data visualization available

Fantastic data geek news over at Flowing Data today:

In another step towards open data and all that jazz, the World Bank released World Development Indicators 2010 today, which is meant to serve as a progress report of the world.

Get all the details at flowingdata.com

Census Counting of Prisoners

According to the ACLU, incarcerated individuals counted in the Census are being included in the totals for the district of the prisons in which they are confined, not their place of residence.

Anyone imprisoned in the United States as of April 1 will remain behind bars for the next decade — at least as far as the U.S. Census is concerned.

Even if their sentence ends today, the census still counts them as residents of the town or city where they were imprisoned on April 1 — not as residents of the communities where they lived before going to prison and to which they are most likely to return.

Since this skews the counts for the district, one can't help but ponder whether this is one of the determining factors when a community lobbies for having a prison nearby. It would certainly increase the population, if only temporarily, and thus give the district rights to more funding and possibly realign the district for representation.

via www.aclu.org

Overeducated And Unemployed? Try The Census

April 1 is the day the U.S. Census Bureau wants you to turn in your census form. They're trying to put together an as-accurate-as-possible count of how many people there are in America on that day.

If the count is more accurate and efficient than usual this year, it may be due to the economy. Because of the recession, the Census Bureau has more highly qualified people helping to carry out the count than ever before.

Read the rest at www.npr.org