28 November 2003

"We cannot solve the significant problems we face at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." -- Albert Einstein

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are right now" -- Unknown

"If you can't explain it simply, you probably don't understand it." -- Albert Einstein

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." -- Peter Drucker

"In GOD we trust. All others bring data." -- author unknown

"Be Alert. The world needs more lerts." -- Unknown

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" -- Albert Einstein

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" - Albert Einstein

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." -- A. Einstein

"Until you have data as a backup, you're just another person with an opinion" - Dr. Perry Gluckman

"If Columbus had listened to his wife and gotten a real job, he would never have discovered America." --Vicki Clift

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." --Victor Hugo

"What ever you can do, or dream you can, begin it, Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." --Goethe

"If you can't explain what you're doing to a four-year-old, you don't know what you're doing." --Peter Lloyd

"I wonder why I wonder why. I wonder why I wonder why I wonder. I wonder why I wonder why I wonder why I wonder!" --Richard Feynman

"Men and women want to do a good job, a creative job, and. . . if they are provided with the proper environment, they will do so." --William R. Hewlett

"To make a great dream come true, you must first have a great dream." --Dr. Hans Selye

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know." -- Mark Twain

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat" -- Lewis Carrol

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." -- Douglas Adams

The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.

You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.

"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk." -- Thomas Edison

Minds, like parachutes, only function when open


Art and ideas on the fringes of intellectual property law.
The exhibit, Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age, will take place in New York from Nov. 13 to Dec. 6 and in Chicago from Jan. 25 to Feb. 22.
"Almost all art, to a certain extent, is unoriginal," said Carrie McLaren, publisher of Stay Free! magazine and organizer of the exhibit. "(In) an environment where you can have free exchange of ideas, you get better art."
The show will examine the intersection between intellectual property and the First Amendment. Some pieces have been the focus of court battles, while others have eluded copyright lawyers. Digital rights activists argue that creativity is under assault with the recent passage of laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Current copyright laws discourage the creation of new works, McLaren said. For example, filmmakers typically screen anything that appears on camera for copyright violations. Some digital rights advocates believe that Eldred v. Ashcroft could shift the balance of power. >Exhibit organizer McLaren hopes Illegal Art will "wake people up" to restrictive copyright legislation. "When people see this exhibit they won't want to support the laws that make this type of work illegal," she said.
The exhibit surveys a variety of mediums -- from collage to audio and film -- and includes pieces that flout intellectual property law by violating copyrights or infringing on trademarks.
The visual art exhibit, viewable online, features murdered Disney characters, a parody of the Starbucks logo and a painting of a lace doily that incorporates the Texaco logo.
The exhibit's site also highlights illegal films and videos that appropriate others' intellectual property through the use of found footage, unauthorized music, or shots of copyrighted or trademarked material.

27 November 2003

home of the Manifold® System Users Group
http://test.geomatica.ca


Napi Map http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BPMaps/message/18
The Rocky Mountains of Alberta are said to represent the backbone of the OLD MAN. Ka na nahtsis is his headress, the Nose Hill in Calgary is the center of his face, the Elbow River is a part of his arm, the Bow River is his bow, the Little Bow used to be his arrow, the Porcupine hills are his breast plate, the buffaloe jump is the bottom of the rib cage. There was the Heart River, the Belly River, Chief Mountain was his organ. There was the Thighs River, the Knees River and down by Missoula, Montana there still is the Blackfeet River.
The OLD WOMAN has her body parts are marked out in the vicinity of Medicine Hat, the Cypress Hills and Milk River region. Elk Island is her dress, the Cypress hills are her womb, Milk River is her lactation, Po kaw ke lake is her name and Seven Person's is her children.

I saw your query about the world's largest map. And I saw the response describing the Eartha globe. See: http://www.delorme.com/companyinfo/eartha.htm

In ancient times, a *very* large map of the world was produced as a mosaic on the floor of a church in Madaba, Jordan. See: http://198.62.75.1/www1/ofm/fai/FAImap.html
For a better picture of this map, see : http://online.sfsu.edu/~hl/madaba.html
There was some discussion about the impossibility of making a 1:1 representation of a large geographic area. However, anthropomorphic (body-part) maps were "constructed" at this ratio over 3000 years ago. These "maps" were made
by configuring the human-like body of a god or goddess on the face of the earth and then allocating the name of each body part to the area or feature that was under that part.... ( I learned about this technique from Dan Moonhawk Alford and Stan Knowlton. They described the map of Napi, the creator of the Blackfoot indians, in Alberta, Canada and northern Montana. For more information, do a Google Web search on "Turtle Island" + Knowlton. Turtle Island is an American indian designation for North America. At 1:1, that's a very large map. :-)

26 November 2003

SVG Graphics http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/censusmaps/index_new.html
updated Adobe SVG reader (3.0.1) loaded on Compaq but not workstation (yet)

Representational thematic mapping (where size of geographical area does not visually skew the results being presented;


http://www.wisdom-soft.com/products/screenhunter.htm
Screen Capture program

attempt at using Flash to simulate hand writing http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/af/htmlsite/story.html
way tooo slow

Syntopicon Content http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/syntopicon.html#Knowledge


Idea of (anti-focus) "scatoma" (sp?) viewer; black dot in centre (text over?), surrounded by clear ring of imagry, and fuzzy beyond.

Idea to make Map Mat/Border word-coordinates a hot spot linked to an online Manifold "View".

Banff, Alberta, Canada is the stunning location of three major AI conferences in July 2004, namely, the International Conference on Machine Learning, Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, and the Conference on Learning Theory;
COLT Conference on Learning Theory July 01 - 04, 2004
ICML International Conference on Machine Learning July 04 - 08, 2004


Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Machine Learning (AICML)
http://www.aicml.cs.ualberta.ca/index.php funding for a research assistant


Idea to map a year "2003" http://timelines.ws/21stcent/2003I.HTML
using concentric time circles and 8 pie segments (categories).


Idea to do a daily map (distributed like daily joke, quote, inspiration etc.)
of one of the Great Ideas.

Idea to put map on hood of car

Idea to produce a cheap plastic screen "border" with info and reference URL info.

25 November 2003

Stanford link for "Collaboratory"Map hotspot;
Ambitious web mapping project; http://www.opte.org/maps/
"Big Project" Philosophy;
"The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit".
- Nelson Henderson