“Today nearly one-third of all Americans are poor or nearly poor. One in three poor Americans live in the suburbs. If you’re poor in the Seattle, Atlanta or Chicago regions, you’re more likely than not living outside the city limits.
Great shot..
“Mr. Obama has a firm grasp of the climate issue, and no one doubts that he cares about it. But as is often the case with this president, the question is whether he will exhibit a sense of urgency to match his intellectual understanding.
“Open and machine-readable”, the president said, is “the new default for government information.
Google+ demonstrates deforestation and other man-made climate disasters with satellite images
May 18, 2013It’s one thing to talk about deforestation, disappearing habitats, and shrinking glaciers and water resources, and another thing entirely to demonstrate it with actual satellite imagery. And thanks to Landsat images and the Google Earth Engine, we’re getting a glimpse at some key locations across the planet as they are changed by the hands of man. A series of interactive timelapse GIFs that use Landsat satellite data to display massive changes to the Earth’s surface could be a potent tool for motivating individuals and organizations to take action on key issues.
Google’s Animated GIFs of Earth Over Time focuses our attention on key features of our planet, such as the Amazon rainforest, the coal beds of Wyoming, the Columbia Glacier, the Aral Sea, and the deserts of Saudi Arabia.
Today, we’re making it possible for you to go back in time and get a stunning historical perspective on the changes to the Earth’s surface over time. Working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NASA and TIME, we’re releasing more than a quarter-century of images of Earth taken from space, compiled for the first time into an interactive time-lapse experience. We believe this is the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public.
Some of the visualizations are kind of subtle, and need to be put into context to really hit home (such as the massive increase in irrigated areas in Saudi Arabia, which affects local water supplies, or the urban sprawl of Las Vegas, which also puts increased demands on local resources), but some of them, such as this one documenting the rapidly disappearing rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon, speak for themselves:
Explore a global timelapse of our planet, constructed from Landsat satellite imagery. The Amazon rainforest is shrinking at a rapid rate to provide land for farming and raising cattle. Each frame of the timelapse map is constructed from a year of Landsat satellite data, constituting an annual 1.7-terapixel snapshot of the Earth at 30-meter resolution.
- Google Earth Engine
These interactive time-lapse images can be manipulated by pausing or zooming in to them, as we’ve come to expect from Google Earth, and may serve as a pivot point for those who are on the fence about the effects that our booming population and its increased demand for resources has on our Big Blue Marble.
You can view all of the images at Google +, and you can read a backstory at TIME.
(via andybrwn)
Accenture Survey Shows Innovation ROI Remains Elusive
“Only 34 percent believe their company has a well-defined innovation strategy, 46 percent say they have become more risk averse in considering new ideas and 45 percent see their company pursuing a portfolio of smaller, safer opportunities rather than seeking the next breakthrough. On a variety of measures—initial idea generation, product development, manufacturing, testing, commercialization and launch, portfolio optimization and realizing a positive ROI from innovation—executives are less satisfied today than in 2009.”
“Americans drive fewer total miles today than we did eight years ago, and fewer per person than we did at the end of Bill Clinton’s first term. The unique combination of conditions that fueled the Driving Boom—from cheap gas prices to the rapid expansion of the workforce during the Baby Boom generation—no longer exists.
The Web’s Next Phase?
The first wave of the web was all about getting online. The second wave was about connecting online (social media, Facebook). Now, we’re on the precipice of a third wave, one that’s about taking those online connections and manifesting them in the real world.
“Virtually every automobile ride, every plane trip and, in most places, every flip of a light switch adds carbon dioxide to the air, and relatively little money is being spent to find and deploy alternative technologies.


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