“We had people telling us how they learned a lot about geographic visualization in the process,” says Wichary. “We’ve heard from people contacting their city officials to release their neighborhood data to the public—and even from city officials themselves. We’ve also, naturally, witnessed a lot of complaints about the shapes and names of neighborhoods, and our answer is always the same: it’s all open data, so just send us your changes. If Click That ’Hood convinces someone about the value of open source projects, or the importance of open data, that’s already a victory.”
I wrote about Code for America’s Click that ‘Hood game, a mapping tool that teaches local geographies, for CoExist.
9:31 am • 15 March 2013 • 1 note
“The name is meant to probe what’s at stake with regard to production, consumption, and waste,” says Hallacher. “My goal was to discover inconsistencies in production versus consumption at a local level. In the states I worked with, more beef is produced than the population of that state could consume. This means the American beef industry is dependent on its product traveling around the country and beyond, creating an environmentally and financially costly system behind eating beef.” Nebraska, for instance, produces 70 times the beef its population consumes.
I wrote about Sarah Hallacher’s “Beef Stakes,” in which the artist sculpts clay into U.S.-state-shaped steaks, for CoExist. The project is a visual feast, from her convincing renderings of meat to her handsomely designed faux supermarket packaging.
It’s also a reminder that regardless of the popularity of locally sourced meat, most of our meat (and food in general) travels great distances between farm and table.
8:59 am • 12 March 2013 • 1 note
Here are five common usage mistakes, brought to you by DFW.
Via Open Culture
10:01 am • 9 March 2013 • 1 note
Gay Telese’s outline for his 1966 profile of Frank Sinatra
nprfreshair:
Listen to Talese read from the classic profile of Sinatra here.
Read the piece in its entirety over at Esquire here.
theparisreview:
Gay Talese’s outline for “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” 1966, written on a shirt board.
(via matthewnewton)
8:58 am • 20 February 2013 • 563 notes
Lost Angeles (at Elysian Park Trail)
1:07 pm • 16 February 2013
Our greatest cities are often the sources of the most light pollution. In those places, we rarely see the stars. But, with a clever method of composite imaging, the French photographer Thierry Cohen has turned the lights out in the city to reveal the stunning stars that have always been overhead.
I wrote about Cohen’s “Darkened Cities” for Fast Company’s CoExist site.
6:31 am • 13 February 2013
John Nelson designs fantastic maps that illustrate how we get from here to there; in each map, every dot you see represents an individual commuter, with each color corresponding to a different mode of transit. I wrote about his series on transit in Seattle and in the 10 most bike friendly U.S. cities for Fast Company’s Co.Exist site.
9:12 am • 31 January 2013
