Thanks to the IEEE The Risk Factor blog for this story:

Google showed off a new version of Google Earth that will allow users to explore the oceans of the world.

According to a story in the San Jose Mercury News, “The program combines satellite images, ocean photography and scientific data to create interactive 3-D images of the oceans’ floors … Users can study global sea temperature changes and track migrating whales.”

Google used data from the National Geographic, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the US Navy, Scripps Oceanography, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, among others to generate the maps.

The company plans to launch software called Latitude on Wednesday that lets mobile phone users share their location with close contacts. Google hopes it will help people find each other while out and about and to keep track of loved ones.

The maps of 2008:  spontaneous mapping of live events like the terrorists attacks in Mumbai, the first Moon walk overlaid on a soccer field, and of course the presidential election result maps.

July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong and ‘Buzz’ Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon:

Map of the 2008 presidential election results by county:

Map of the 2008 presidential election results by county where the county size is based on population, highlighting the voting weight of populated vs. rural areas:

See more maps from Mr. Newman, a physicist at the University of Michigan.   Make your own on this NYT page.

SNL’s Fred Armisen demonstrates their “Megapixel Giant Touchmap” (MegaMap), a parody of CNN’s ridiculous-yet-awesome “Magic Wall” (”Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall”).  The MegaMap demo starts about 1:30 into the video.

Via The Map Room

Mt Rushmore and the Black Hills, SD

The Badlands:

Badlands, SD

Devils Tower, WY

First off, the ruins of the old mills.

The city of Minneapolis grew up around the grain processing and flour producing businesses, powered by the energy of the Mississippi river and the St. Anthony falls. They were able to channel part of the river into the banks and use water turbines to drive their machinery. The hydro power plant located at the falls is the second oldest (by only a couple weeks) hydro power plant in the western hemisphere! It began operation in 1882. There is a hydro plant still in operation today at the same site.

An old turbine and the museum:

The partial remains of the old mills are still visible today and there is a Mill City Museum (will visit soon) to capture the history of the industry in the city.

And even some wildlife among the ruins along the riverbank:

Minneapolis was the flour milling capital of the nation from 1880 to 1930. Gold Medal Flour is now General Mills and now owns Pillsbury (since 2000).

A series of 29 locks and dams along the Mississippi River has been installed to make the river deeper and wider. They are designed to maintain a depth of at least 9 feet along the entire river. Here’s a tour boat rising through the lock near the falls:

Running from Lake Itasca, Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi is the 4th longest river in the world, behind the Nile, Amazon and Yangtze and drains over 40% of the lower 48 states.

St. Anthony Falls:

Some sights along the river…A view of the under-construction I-35W bridge just downstream:

The photogenic Guthrie Theater with its Endless Bridge (the bridge has no end!) jutting out over the street:

(view from the river).

The architect recently won the prestigious Pritzker Prize in Architecture.

A flock of segways on a tour:

Can someone tell me why all these trees are leaning the same direction? (east bank of the river)

The Minneapolis skyline from the stone arch bridge:

The rest of the pictures here.

NYT:  High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers

Universities call it “rikei banare,” or “flight from science.” The decline is growing so drastic that industry has begun advertising campaigns intended to make engineering look sexy and cool, and companies are slowly starting to import foreign workers, or sending jobs to where the engineers are, in Vietnam and India.

It was engineering prowess that lifted this nation from postwar defeat to economic superpower. But according to educators, executives and young Japanese themselves, the young here are behaving more like Americans: choosing better-paying fields like finance and medicine, or more purely creative careers, like the arts, rather than following their salaryman fathers into the unglamorous world of manufacturing.

In the meantime, the country has slowly begun to accept more foreign engineers, but nowhere near the number that industry needs.

While ingrained xenophobia is partly to blame, companies say Japan’s language and closed corporate culture also create barriers so high that many foreign engineers simply refuse to come, even when they are recruited.

Nonetheless, labor experts warn Japan may be doing too little, too late. They say the country has already gained a negative reputation as discriminating against foreign employees, with weak job guarantees and glass ceilings. Experts say Indian and other engineers will often opt for more open markets like the United States.

Click the image to see at full resolution.

This type of mapping metadata has been available in Google Earth for a long time, I’m actually surprised these features weren’t available sooner.

Did you know… the Memphis airport is the world’s busiest cargo airport. The airport owes it’s status to FedEx’s “world hub” in Memphis.

Minne-Etymology lesson:

The word Minnesota comes from the Dakota language name for the Minnesota River: Mnisota. The root Mni (also spelled mini or minne) means, “water”. Many locations in the state have similar names, such as:

• Minnehaha Falls (”waterfall”, not “laughing waters” as is commonly thought)
• Minneiska (”white water”)
• Minnetonka (”big water”)
• Minnetrista (”crooked water”)
• Minneapolis (”water city”, polis is the Greek word for “city”)

Driving on a huge lake gives you that same feeling you get on a huge roller coaster. You think in the back of your head that you might fall through a crack in the ice and freeze to death while at the same time you reassure yourself that there is the chance of that happening is practically zero and besides, there are so many other people doing it, so don’t worry!

State law says that all ice fishing houses have to be off the lake by April 1st, so if you want to come see one, you had better hurry!

Besides the ice fishing there was snowmobiling, four-wheeling, motorcycle racing end even one person para-gliding.

More pictures here:

Ice Fishing and other Snow Sports on Lake Minnetonka, 2008-01-27

The south predominantly says Coke; the northeast, California & Arizona use Soda and the rest of the northern US call it Pop.

There are some irregularities where Soda is used around St. Louis & eastern Wisconsin.

It is common to use Coke as the generic term in other countries, such as India.