datalibre.ca a group blog associated with and inspired by CivicAccess.ca was launched this week. I think this will be a nice addition to the ongoing work of CivicAccess and the CivicAccess List.
I think it will fill a journalistic void on the topic of access to data in Canada! Lets see!
If you have ideas for it send them along!
Just got this from Blog like you give a dam! Thanks Kate for sending it!
This is just a fantastic photo series - Go see the photos directly - Wow!
Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait
This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.
Yap! You read it! Freeganism!
I came across the term for the first time in this great NYTimes article Not Buying It. The folks in the article were involved in some serious end of college term dumpster diving, I know Ottawa always yields great loot, from feathered duvets to table lamps or cheezy teddy bears at that time of year.
In my neighbourhood there is an unwritten code where we strategically put stuff in full view on the curb slightly away from the refuse as we know others will want those treasures. Sunday nights are always an interesting evening where can & bottle collectors do their rounds (often very elderly Chinese Ladies), and people walk about looking for finds. My neighbour Megan collects our weekly reading of trashy magazines on paper nights (Harpers, MS, People, and so on), often I find chairs which i have distributed to friends as far away as Montreal, tables for decks, pots for plants, lawn chairs, fabric, desks, lamps and so on!
When I organized the peace walk in Japan in 1993, we fed 200 people for 1260 KM for 2 months with dumpster dived, or discarded food. We used to get bread crusts from bakers, noodles from 7-11 bento boxes, fruit and veg behind grocers and collected wild vegetables along the walk. Japan was ideal for this as there is such a high sense of aesthetics with food that the smallest of imperfections will land the product in the gomi. In fact we found the 48 hour shift of collecting and preparing food for the walkers to be a most impressive and fun learning experience. And well i was considered the Queen of Recycling in Japan! I still luv collecting things in that way!
Freeganism is an anticonsumerism lifestyle where people employ alternative strategies for living based on "limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed." [1] The word "Freegan", is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". [2] Freeganism started in the mid 1990s, out of the antiglobalization and environmentalist movements. Groups such as Food Not Bombs, served free vegetarian and vegan food to that was salvaged from food market trash. It also has elements of Diggers, an anarchist street theater group based in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960’s. They also gave away food and social services. [2
Am i a freegan! Nah! I like nice things, good food and comfortable shoes, and I am not very ideologically driven with the collecting, i just do it for the luv and pleasure of it. But I most certainly appreciate the folks who do make it a pursuit.
Yes! I just got my hand delivered straight from San Diego signed by the editor copy of Research and Theory in Advancing Spatial Data Infrastructure Concepts a peer reviewed book published by ESRI Press under a Creative Commons Licence.
Harlan Onsrud - in my mind is the guru of access to spatial data - the Editor for the book did tremendous lobbying, research and legal work to get this book’s content published under that license. My chapter was co-authored with my Academic Advisor D.R. Fraser Taylor - Geospatial Data Infrastructure for the Sustainable Developent of East Timor. This chapter is a brief of my Master’s thesis which helped yield a UN resolution for the support of the creation of a GDI for the small island state in the south pacific.
I am pleased to see this in print and to know that academic work if one wants can lead to positive and meaningful change.
Omar sent me this BBC link from Holland!
What is going to bring us to our sense???????
The In Depth vignette explores casualties in Iraq, UK, US and Civilian as well as the sectarian issues illustrate above. They have done a great job representing the uncertainties in the data, sharing their sources and finding ways to communicate the issue in a tangible way.
Dam! My soccer team the Untamed is in the top position at the moment! This is unbelievable! We went from the worst team at the bottom of the standings 4 years ago and now we are at the top! This is a team started by a group of womyn who never played, did not know the rules, who barely comprehend off sides still today, and were terribly out of shape. Now the team is the top in a league full of pony tailled 20 year old amazons! Only 2 goals scored against us! Lets just say that yours truly’s obsession with keeping the ball away from the goalie is paying off! It is great to focus on one thing - a round white bouncy thing. Very zen really!
Mapping the Internet
Routing traffic through peer-to-peer networks could stave off Internet congestion, according to a new study.
By Duncan Graham-Rowe
The researchers’ results depict the Internet as consisting of a dense core of 80 or so critical nodes surrounded by an outer shell of 5,000 sparsely connected, isolated nodes that are very much dependent upon this core. Separating the core from the outer shell are approximately 15,000 peer-connected and self-sufficient nodes.
Take away the core, and an interesting thing happens: about 30 percent of the nodes from the outer shell become completely cut off. But the remaining 70 percent can continue communicating because the middle region has enough peer-connected nodes to bypass the core.
Amnesty International with the help of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) have acquired commercial grade satellite imagery (GeoTiffs) at a reduced price from DigitalGlobe the main supplier to GoogleEarth and have created a
program that provides technical expertise to human rights groups by helping Amnesty International USA with a new online effort to monitor threatened settlements in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan and provide evidence of destroyed villages.
The project is at the forefront of efforts by human rights groups to use satellite cameras to help protect vulnerable populations. It will allow computer users around the globe to visually track the status of settlements Amnesty International considers possible targets of attack.
The new site includes up-to-date images on 12 intact but vulnerable villages as well as archival satellite photos documenting the destruction of a dozen settlements in Darfur since January 2005. Lars Bromley, project director for the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program, said the commercially available photos can show objects as small as two feet across, sufficient to show destruction of huts and other structures.
"We provide the geospatial support," Bromley said. "We’re just providing a new form of content," but content that can have dramatic impact. "By analyzing geospatial images, we can see that whole villages, some with more than 1,000 homes, have been destroyed" since the beginning of 2005, Bromley said. The images also show the appearance of makeshift settlements of displaced persons in close proximity to the small contingent of African Union monitoring forces in Darfur.
This is a fantastic and new form of collaboration between scientists, geomaticians, human rights advocates, and satellite image providers. The program received a one-year pilot grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation that recently was renewed for three years. This project is harnessing powerful elements of communication and geospatial data infrastructures and making them work for citizens everywhere and in this case the most vulnerable.
In addition to Amnesty International USA, the AAAS geospatial imaging program’s partners include the U.N. Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide; the National Resources Defense Council; the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; the U.S. Campaign for Burma and EQUITAS, the international center for human rights education. Three satellite image companies—DigitalGlobe in Longmont, Colorado, GeoEye in Dulles, Virginia and ImageSat in Netherlands Antilles—have provided images at discounted prices. In addition to Zimbabwe and Darfur, the AAAS program also has done some work on Lebanon and will be turning its attention to Burma (also known as Myanmar).
These folks have done a wonderful job here!
Today marks an important day in the net neutrality debate in Canada. With the launch of www.whatisnetneutrality.ca (WiNN), Canadians have a valuable resource with which to educate themselves about this emerging concept.
While it sounds like an issue for experts, net neutrality is a debate that will affect the future of communications in Canada for everyone. WiNN aims to help Canadians understand this debate, and why it should matter to them. We’re not advocating a specific solution to the debate. Our goal is to inform and educate Canadians about a poorly understood and sometimes intimidating issue. Our lives depend on communications, and the Internet is growing to encompass television, telephone, journalism and entertainment. Net neutrality is a principle that will shape this powerful communication tool.
Please visit the site and look around. The site touches on the business, technology, and policy aspects of this issue. Each section has short and detailed answers, depending on your interest. The dictionary gives simple explanations of many of the regulatory and technical terms in use. The blog will track any developments of the debate in Canada.
This web site is a project of the Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN), a research network comprised of academics and community technology practitioners from across the country. CRACIN is dedicated to community-based research and innovation in the use of new information and communication technologies to empower local communities.
While only available in English for the moment, WiNN will be translated in coming weeks to be fully bilingual.
Thanks for your time,
Neil Barratt
Michael Lenczner
Alison Powell
Access to data is not a cost issue for government but is a policy issue for government (Zeiss comments at GIAC Meeting).
The government therefore needs to become a leader and make the access to data at not cost a policy decision and then watch citizens and small business be innovative, creative and participate in the democratic process in and informed way.
