The Earth Is Square

Ok, it is one thing to be an armchair archaeologist or geologist using Google Earth.. but I am sorry, I have to draw the line at archir scientist and pseudo-science.  Not sure what I am talking about?  What I am talking about is a "scientist" looking at imagery and going "Hmm, they seem to be pointed North all the time.  So it has to be the Earth's magnetic field doing it!"

Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen looked at thousands of images of cattle on Google Earth in Britain, Ireland, India and the USA. They also studied 3,000 deer in the Czech Republic. The deer tended to face north when resting or grazing.

And just by looking at imagery...

"We conclude that the magnetic field is the only common and most likely factor responsible for the observed alignment," the scientists wrote in an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

What they did was correlation, a very tiny part of a scientific study and not something to put a whole theory on.  So, I REALLY hope this article just made it look like they just used Google Earth.. because of that is all they really did.. that is a sad state science is moving too.

For my insight into this "study".. I grew up on a farm, there are dairy farms all around.. cows will face ALL directions when at rest and will roam anywhere.

Received an email from Mike today in reguards to my latest post on the mis-matching of Google map data.

It makes for some interesting research and reading, and also a class project.

Hi!

This Orangeville, PA thing has me real intrigued to find out what is correct.

I work as a GIS planner for a county in Pennsylvania. One of the problems I've had has been the source of the information we present to people. I've created a ton of work for myself by questioning the source of information that came before I have been employed here. So this is right along the lines of what I do a lot.

The online maps that use Navteq (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Mapquest) show Railroad St and Ricketts St as you have in your GMaps example.

The maps that use TeleAtlas (Google Earth, Wikimapia, Acme Maps) show Ricketts St and no Railroad St.

OpenStreetMap show Railroad St going to the intersection of Creekside Dr and the rest of the street being Ricketts St.

So having found three separate 'opinions', I checked with the Penndot Local Streets layer in ArcMAp ( downloaded from PASDA). It shows the street as one segment, but has no labels.

Then, I went to the Columbia County website to see if they had a street map as well. They did, but it is not working at this time. Oddly enough, the parcel search was working, but it only showed text results. A search for Railroad St parcels pulls up quite a few results, but a search for Ricketts St parcels pulls up no results.

Then I remembered PA DOT has a township and borough map page. The map there shows that Navteq was correct.

Whew. That was a good exercise in comparing sources of information and tracking down the answer.  Great way to spend a lunch hour.

Here a list of the links:

I used wikipedia's map source page for a listing of the online maps for this location:
http://stable.toolserver.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Orangeville,_Pennsylvania&params=41_4_43_N_76_24_52_W_city

Online maps that use navteq:
yahoo: http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=m&lat=41.079157&lon=-76.413979&zoom=17
microsoft live local:
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=41.078948~-76.415105&style=r&lvl=17&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1
mapquest:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Orangeville&state=PA&country=US&latitude=41.078098&longitude=-76.414703&geocode=CITY

TeleAtlas:
wikimapia:
http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=41.0790196&lon=-76.4141285&z=17&l=0&m=m

unknown:
OpenStreetMap:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?mlat=41.078611&mlon=-76.414444&zoom=11

PADOT Borough and Township maps:
http://www.dot.state.pa.us/internet/bureaus/pdplanres.nsf/infoBPRTownshipandBoroughMaps?OpenForm&AutoFramed

Orangeville Borough Map:
ftp://ftp.dot.state.pa.us/public/pdf/BPR_pdf_files/Maps/boro/Columbia/19408.pdf

I am going to suggest this to a friend of mine who teaches GIS as a great exercise in considering your sources.

Well, because we all know that without the iPhone, civilization will end. Wired has gone out and mapped where all the iPhone users are (really, it is a better map of just the network) in the USA.

As you can see, the east coast and breadbasket of the US have civilization as does the west coast.  But the middle of the US.. anarchy is the rule.

On a serious note, iPhone aside, (it is cool, but really.. nothing THAT special) this does show a mostly accurate map of what AT&T's 3G coverage is.  Areas you would think to be strong are coming up as the opposite.  (As for me, I max out because at home I have an AT&T tower 900 feet away.. but other than making phone calls.. I don't use anything else)

I am just an unfrozen caveman lawyer, you're iPhone scares and confuses me.

Well, in my case at 11:50pm last night.. local knowldge.  While coming home from an unexpededly long road trip, I came up to a part of I-80 that was (had been since 5pm) closed because of an accident.  Most the drivers, not being locals just pulled up to a stop and went to sleep while waiting for hours for the road to open, because they did not know how to get around it.  Luckily for me, I spoted an exit that I knew exacly where the road would take me.. and that was to a second road that would take me home.

The nav I had with me, could not find any routes around the closed road, so that was a 140$ paperweight at that moment.  But with knowing the roads, I only had to add 30 minutes to the drive instead of hours.  Granted, if I was in an area I did not know.. I probably would be one of those people sitting along side the road waiting the night out.

First up is my new favorite blog to look through to kill time, Strange Maps.    There are maps shown on there that you just would not think of having or creating.  Kills a nice chunk of time when I start browsing through the archives.

workingDog has a first run release of a Ruber Band Selection Tool available for download and experimentation for WWJava.

The code allows various shapes to be drawn using the mouse. Shapes such as sector, circle, poylgon, polyline and a freehand shape. The idea is to use these shapes to encircle/select features of interest in worldwind. You can then process the selected features as you wish.

And last, but nowhere near the least, Pangloss has an update to the Worldwind.net Saturn add-on.  This update adds new maps and placenames for Enceladus and Tethys. You need to have Saturn 1.2 installed for 1.2a to work.

this is from a mailing list I am on.. a good explanation as to why you don't see more commuter trains around.

>> The commuter train from Fort Worth to downtown Dallas has open Wifi. Pretty
>> decent speed, to.
>
> They got commuter trains in the US?
> I have only heard and seen highways and big trucks going a mile a gallon.
>

You have to look hard for them.  They hide a lot so no one knows that they are around, that was no one knows we have them in the US.  But they are very territorial and rarely go far from the nest, so that is why we don't have them everywhere.