ubikcan

Congrats to Spain on being crowned Euro Champions, and especially to Liverpool striker Fernando Torres for scoring the winning goal!

In fact several Liverpool players are on the Spanish team including Pepe Reina and Xabi Alonso (who may be moving). In the battle between English clubs Liverpool emerged the winner (vs. Ronaldo for Man Utd/Portugal and of course Michael Ballack for Chelsea/Germany).

Now let’s see the goal:

Torres beats the defender for pace and clips the ball over the advancing Lehmann…

Torres leaps over the felled Lehmann, the ball spins toward goal…

Thumb-sucking time! 33 more of these for Liverpool, please mate!

Chris Bowers discusses the six windows of progressive opportunity in this country, and a possibly forthcoming seventh window (compare Packer’s article in the New Yorker on the collapse of conservatism). But whether and how this opportunity is grasped is not certain.

The indefatigable Glennzilla is surely right to point to the extraordinary quotes coming from former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan:

In a minimally rational world, this extraordinary passage, from the new book by Scott McClellan, would forever slay the single most ludicrous myth in our political culture: The “Liberal Media”:

If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. . . . In this case, the “liberal media” didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.

Just consider how remarkable that is. George Bush’s own Press Secretary criticizes the American media for being “too deferential” to the Government. He lays the blame for Bush’s ability to propagandize the nation on the media’s uncritical dissemination of the Republican administration’s falsehoods. And most notably of all, McClellan actually uses cynical scare quotes when invoking the phrase which, in conventional political discourse, is deemed the most unassailable truth of all: The Liberal Media.

As a neutral in this game I would have been happy if neither team won, but certainly there’s no way I would have preferred Chelsea to win. So it is my happy duty to report that they didn’t, and even better schadenfreude that Didier Drogba was sent off during the match to seal Chelsea’s miserable fouling reputation.

A special plenary session on “The Future of Mapping” has been announced for the forthcoming IBG/RGS Conference in London in August (Institute of British Geographers/Royal Geographical Society).

The Future of Mapping
A panel discussion with Ed Parsons (Google), Mary Spence (BCS), and Dr Denis Wood (independent scholar).

Thursday 28 August - 16:50-18:30 -  Ondaatje Theatre.

(BCS = British Cartographic Society). As you can see, the topics will probably cover geoweb/maps 2.0 kind of stuff, as well as the role of the map in creating knowledge.

(Slightly off-topic, I have to say there’s an amusing Fake Ed Parsons blog out there that parodies him in good fun.)

A recent post on anthropology.net touts the use of Google via a recent article in a peer reviewed journal (The Journal of Human Evolution):

An article in advance in the Journal of Human Evolution introduces how the most basic version of Google Earth can be easily used in lieu of other GIS software to display and share paleontological data. This is definitely not the first time we’ve seen news on how Google Earth has aided anthropological research, but it is one of the first times I’ve seen it be embraced in an academic, peer reviewed journal. So if you’re interested in how Google Earth can help you with managing your data, without having to invest a lot of time, effort, and money in complex GIS software, check this paper out: “Google Earth, GIS, and the Great Divide: A new and simple method for sharing paleontological data.”

The authors of the paper walk people thru how Google Earth can be used to map localities. They also ramp up the intensity, and introduce how Google Earth maps can have other maps overlaid, and how the KML files can be shared amongst people. Ultimately, they make the claim that Google Earth is the tool to disseminate paleontological information but they miss talking about some critical points.

Actually the article is in the News and Views section and can be found here. In my experience it’s archeologists that use GIS the most (in the US, archeology is part of anthropology, in the UK it tends to be stand alone).

As someone points out, Google is proprietary, whereas something like NASA World Wind is not and may be preferable. Eventually I can also see something like Openstreeetmap being used. You can already bring in Yahoo satellite imagery there and export maps as pdf, tiff, jpg and I’m sure soon there will be other exporters. (My class this semester investigated and used OSM.)

Still, nice to see the map message getting out. Via Savage Minds.

Daily Kos discusses the maps:

So the pro-Clinton camp is circulating these Electoral-Vote maps to “prove” that Clinton is more “electable” in the fall:

Clinton v McCain:
McCain: 239
Clinton: 289
Ties: 10

Obama v McCain:
McCain: 254
Obama: 269
Ties: 15

I can quibble with the methodology, but I won’t. There’s a larger point to be made using those maps. The author has helpfully divided the states into Strong, Weak, and Barely Dem/GOP. Let’s see how our two candidates fare:

Obama  Clinton Strong Dem 67      74
Weak Dem 144      98
Barely Dem 58     117
Tied 15      10
Barely GOP 76      13
Weak GOP 44      89
Strong GOP 134     137

What’s this tell us?

• It tells us that Obama’s base is stronger: “strong” and “weak” Dem add up to 172 for Clinton, and 211 for Obama. We have to play less defense.
• With Obama, McCain’s base is weaker: 226 EVs versus Clinton, and 178 versus Obama.

If this is serious and not a wind-up, I think it says quite a lot about the poster, certainly more than it says about Daily Kos, probably the most well-read political blog on the Internet:

#4 Al on 2008-04-11 01:26 (Reply)

Al: no. (This has been another edition of answers to easy questions.)

Here’s another one:

I would never link to a story on any “left leaning” blog like Adena did. I’ve been a huge fan of Adena for many years, but this has to be the first time I’ve seen her make a HUGE mistake like this.

“Huge mistake?”

Jonathan Crowe tries to restore order.

These guys remind me of the Peters projection denialists.