Tag Archives: cool finds

This Map From 1812 Is Missing a Whole Continent

by bfys19 Posted on October 21, 2013

1812 was a weird year. The U.S., as a country, was still a baby. For the second time, America was at war with the British, and Canada had just burned down the White House. Looking back after 200 years, this map, made by esri, provides a view of how things have changed: it’s an interactive window on political geography, that layers the old and the new.

So how was the world of 1812 different from today? Well, for one, the U.S. was much, much smaller.

Photo: esri

The U.S., in green, is just a fraction of its current size. Louisiana, now part of the U.S., fresh off the Louisiana purchase of 1803, is in yellow. But off to the west, large tracts of land were still controlled by Spain, while the northwest was under British control.

North America wasn’t the only country with shifting political boundaries. Australia, until 1824, was known as New Holland.

Photo: esri

In 1812, European mapmakers like John Pinkerton (who published the older map) were lacking in knowledge of certain parts of the planet. Colonial interest in Africa didn’t reach its fever pitch until a few decades later, and in 1812, a mapmaker could get away with leaving blank huge parts of sub-Saharan Africa and labeling them “Unknown Parts.”

Photo: esri

In Africa, Eurocentric mapmakers at least thought it was worth noting what they didn’t know. But, elsewhere, whole parts of the Earth were missing. The map of 1812 was shorter than the world as we know it. The North was cut off past Svalbard, and Antarctica is entirely absent, despite the fact that the southern continent was discovered nearly half a century earlier. Then again, even today maps often skip Antarctica, even though it’s a fair bit larger than the U.S.

Photo: esri

Photo: esri

More from Smithsonian.com:

170 Years of America’s Evolution In One Animated Gif
Today We Celebrate the Time Canada Burned Down the White House

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This Map From 1812 Is Missing a Whole Continent

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America’s Chinatowns Are Disappearing

by ztx6uu6c Posted on October 11, 2013

Image: Dan Nguyen

When was the last time you took a trip to Chinatown? You might want to head there soon, because they might not be around for much longer. According to the Asian American Legal Defense and Education fund, Chinatowns all over the United States are being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas due to gentrification. At Wired‘s Map Labs blog, Greg Miller breaks down this break-down. Based on the maps, Boston has it the worst:

According to Census records, the percentage of the population that claims Asian heritage in Boston’s Chinatown dropped from 70 percent in 1990 to 46 percent in 2010. New York and Philadelphia’s Chinatowns did not see big change either way by that measure during the same time period, but in all three cities the proportion of homes inhabited by families and the proportion of children in the population dropped considerably. To Li that suggests that multigenerational immigrant homes are breaking up — or moving out.

To figure out the composition of these Chinatowns, volunteers went out and surveyed what types of restaurants, businesses and residential properties were in the area. Restaurants in particular are good barometers for a neighborhood’s service to immigrants. In other words, more Asian restaurants means a more robust Chinatown. But as the survey found, other restaurants and shops are moving in quickly.

The very existence of Chinatowns are a product of discrimination—immigrants created these communities to live in because they were excluded from pre-existing ones. And that tradition continues today, according to Bethany Li, author of the report. But with pressure from condominiums and high-end shops from all sides, many Chinatowns are slowly shrinking. While communities are fighting back, Li’s report says that without help they’ll be pushed out again:

Without the fights against unfettered development led by members from groups like the Chinese Progressive Association in Boston, Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association in New York, and Asian Americans United in Philadelphia, these Chinatowns would likely contain even more high-end and institutional expansion. City governments removed and replaced working-class immigrant residential and commercial land uses in each of these Chinatowns.

Bonnie Tsui at Atlantic Cities breaks down what some of those actions might be:

What’s to be done? Recommendations include allocating public land and funds for low-income housing development and retention at a more reasonable proportion to current high-end development; supporting small, local businesses to offset rising rents, given the symbiotic relationship with residents; prioritizing public green spaces; and engaging community organizations, residents, and the larger satellite communities to maintain Chinatowns as shared cultural history and home to working-class immigrants.

For many, Chinatowns are an attraction to a city, and many cities boast about their robust cultural neighborhoods. But they might not be around for much longer.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Many Chinatowns of North America
San Francisco’s Chinatown at night

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America’s Chinatowns Are Disappearing

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This Gadget Charges Your Phone With Fire

by Larry Daichea Posted on October 3, 2013

Sometimes it’s nice to unplug and get away from it all. But just because you’re not connected to the internet doesn’t mean you won’t use your smartphone. It can be a flashlight, for lighting the way; a map and and a compass, for navigating; or a camera, for capturing scenic vistas. But if you need power to get home and that ever-important battery starts to wane, suddenly the wonder tool can seem rather useless.

There are options for recharging in the field, from hand-cracked chargers to portable solar cells. But a new device that just cleared its Kickstarter funding goal has a different take. The FlameStower, says Laughing Squid, uses the heat from a fire to generate electricity.

According to the FlameStower team, “The FlameStower Fire Charger works with the energy of your cooking or camp fires. Once the blade is in a fire, the thermal energy is transferred to the Thermoelectric Generator (TEG). The opposite surface of the TEG is in contact with the water reservoir – hot side gets hot, cold side stays relatively cool, and the temperature difference generates electricity.”

This isn’t the first portable device designed to produce electricity from fire—there’s also a purpose-built cooking stove or a small fuel cell. While the FlameStower is geared towards outdoor enthusiasts, there are other uses for these sorts of chargers, too. They could be useful during natural disasters, particularly for responders who drain their batteries finding their way, keeping in touch and documenting damage, or in countries without well-developed electrical systems.

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This Gadget Charges Your Phone With Fire

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Watch NASA’s Next Mars Orbiter Be Put Together, Piece by Piece

by Leon51tt8 Posted on September 16, 2013

In just two months NASA is going back to Mars. The agency’s MAVEN orbiter, set to launch November 18, will circle the red planet, studying Mars’ incredibly thin atmosphere and trying to figure out how it interacts with the solar wind. But before MAVEN can be launched from Cape Canaveral, it had to be put together, by hand, piece by piece.

Lockheed Martin, the company that built MAVEN, recorded this time lapse of the satellite’s construction, showing you just how much work goes into assembling one of these things.

h/t Emily Lakdawalla

More from Smithsonian.com:

This Is What a Watery Mars May Have Looked Like
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Watch NASA’s Next Mars Orbiter Be Put Together, Piece by Piece

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Watch NASA’s Next Mars Lander Be Put Together, Piece by Piece

by Thorzar Posted on September 16, 2013

In just two months NASA is going back to Mars. The agency’s MAVEN orbiter, set to launch November 18, will circle the red planet, studying Mars’ incredibly thin atmosphere and trying to figure out how it interacts with the solar wind. But before MAVEN can be launched from Cape Canaveral, it had to be put together, by hand, piece by piece.

Lockheed Martin, the company that built MAVEN, recorded this time lapse of the satellite’s construction, showing you just how much work goes into assembling one of these things.

h/t Emily Lakdawalla

More from Smithsonian.com:

This Is What a Watery Mars May Have Looked Like
Curiosity Nails It: Mars Used to Have Flowing Water

Read article here:

Watch NASA’s Next Mars Lander Be Put Together, Piece by Piece

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Mooncakes Are China’s Fruit Cake—Traditional Holiday Gifts No One Actually Wants

by Lubao2pzs Posted on September 10, 2013

Image: Franz&P

Last year, China threw away 2 million mooncakes—the little cakes eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. According to the Wall Street Journal, the country has 10,000 mooncake makers, who last year produced more than 300,000 tons of the sweets. And many of them, along with their elaborate packaging, ended up in landfills. So many, in fact, that this year the Chinese government has issued guidelines to cut down on the mooncake waste.

The guidelines lay out rules about packaging, urge manufacturers to reduce, reuse and recycle and to choose materials that are easier on the environment, should the cakes be tossed in the trash. Mooncake disposal isn’t a new problem, either. In the past, the government has issued rules that the cost of packaging the little cakes cannot exceed the cost of making the treats by more than 25 percent.

According to Green Power, a Hong Kong–based environmental group, the number of mooncake casualties hasn’t really gone down. They say that the average household purchases 2.4 boxes of mooncakes—often intended as gifts. Multiply that by the number of people celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival, and you’re at 4.6 million units of cake.

The Journal‘s Te-Ping Chen says that the best way to cut the mooncake craze might not be regulation, at all, but rather painting mooncakes as an evil excess:

But in the end, the most effective catalyst for trimming Mid-Autumn waste may be China’s anti-corruption drive, with the Communist Party recently making mooncakes the latest casualty of its quest to keep officials clean. Last month, the state-run People’s Daily announced a drive for more mooncake austerity, saying that “polite reciprocity, when overdone, becomes a kind of squandering of cash.” According to a People’s Daily report last week, sales of luxury mooncakes this year have dropped by as much as 12% in certain locations.

So, it seems that, in China, the new orders are: “Let them not eat cake.”

Smithsonian.com:

The Mooncake: A Treat, a Bribe or a Tradition Whose Time Has Passed?

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Mooncakes Are China’s Fruit Cake—Traditional Holiday Gifts No One Actually Wants

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LEGO Reveals a Female Scientist Minifigure

by nowabazaBS1 Posted on September 3, 2013

Image: LEGO

It is the summer of lady scientist toys, it seems. Just a few weeks ago Barbie released their “Mars Explorer” doll. And today LEGO unleashed their female scientist block figurine.

Maia Weinstock was there for the release of the toy. She writes, at Scientific American’s Guest Blog:

Today is release day for Minifigure Series 11, and I am here for the Scientist.

Finding her will take a bit of doing, but I’ve done my homework. Each of the Kelly green pouches looks the same, so most customers will simply grope the bags and try to guess which fig lurks inside. Thanks to advanced scouting from fellow adult fans of LEGO, however, I know precisely what to feel for—two tiny Erlenmeyer flasks—as well as what hidden code to look for on the backs of the packages.

Weinstock hits gold on her first bag, unveiling the tiny block lady holding two little flasks and boasting a sly grin. This isn’t the first time LEGO has made a scientist, but often they’re steeped in “nerdy male mad scientist” imagery. There is actually a “Crazy Scientist” with the wild hair. The Computer Programmer dude actually has broken glasses. Very few of them have been women. Weinstock writes:

One collectible minifig is a surgeon, complete with mask, syringe, and X-ray slide. If you consider wild animal care a branch of science, then you can include the Zookeeper among LEGO’s STEM professionals. Several generic female “scientists” were also released as part of the FIRST LEGO League, but they and their male partners were scientists in name only; their clothes had no markings, nor did they carry any scientific instruments.

Lego describes the Scientist this way:

I wonder what will happen if I put THIS together with THAT…”

The brilliant Scientist’s specialty is finding new and interesting ways to combine things together. She’ll spend all night in her lab analyzing how to connect bricks of different sizes and shapes (she won the coveted Nobrick Prize for her discovery of the theoretical System/DUPLO® Interface!), or how to mix two colors in one element.

Thanks to the Scientist’s tireless research, Minifigures that have misplaced their legs can now attach new pieces to let them swim like fish, slither like snakes, and stomp around like robots. Her studies of a certain outer dimension have even perfected a method for swapping body parts at will!

Weinstock hopes there will be more women figurines with more specific specialties, but so far Lego is doing better than Mattel, which sent Mars Explorer Barbie to space in a pink space suit without gloves.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Celebrating 80 Years of LEGO
Lego Faces Are Getting Angrier

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LEGO Reveals a Female Scientist Minifigure

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What Isaac Asimov Thought 2014 Would Look Like

by OfeliaPPN Posted on August 29, 2013

Photo: PLCjr

Past predictions about the future oftentimes fail miserably—or at least produce a few giggles. In 1949, Popular Mechanics predicted that future computers would at least “weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” In 1967, U.S. News predicted that scientists would be able to control the weather, and astronauts would have set foot on Mars by 2000.

Sometimes, however, futuristic predictions can be surprisingly accurate. Isaac Asimov, writing for the New York Times about the 1964 World’s Fair, was nearly spot-on with a few predictions for what would turn up at a 2014 World’s Fair.

“Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing. I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming.”

“Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence. “

“Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas — Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan. In the more crowded, but cloudy and smoggy areas, solar power will be less practical.”

“By 2014, only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works and in the 2014 Futurama will show a model of an elaborate Martian colony.”

“Mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.”

Of course, Asimov didn’t get everything right. Most people’s ceilings do not glow softly, and flying cars are still on Google’s to-do list. We haven’t moved into underground cities in order to replace the Earth’s surface with “large-scale agriculture, grazing and parklands, with less space wasted on actual human occupancy,” either. While Asimov predicted a world population of 6.5 billion, we’ve topped that at more than 7 billion.

And Asimov did fall flat on one other point: sadly, World’s Fairs are now a nostalgic fixture of the past.  Today, we instead have Expos whose primary focus is improving their host country’s branding rather than inspiring dreamy visions of the not-too-distant future.

(H/t Dan Fagin)

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Origins of Futurism 
The Future Is Here 

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What Isaac Asimov Thought 2014 Would Look Like

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Here’s an Incredible Image of Venus Passing in Front of the Sun

by 41laowo Posted on August 20, 2013

The sun is not a planet, but if it was it would probably be your favorite. Just look at this incredible image that NASA released recently.

Image: NASA

What you’re seeing is a strange solar eclipse, in which Venus passed in front of the sun. The tiny black dot on the top lefthand side is Venus. The giant psychedelic fireball is the sun, imaged in three colors of ultraviolet light.

NASA captions the image more technically:

An unusual type of solar eclipse occurred last year. Usually it is the Earth’s Moon that eclipses the Sun. Last June, most unusually, the planet Venus took a turn. Like a solar eclipse by the Moon, the phase of Venus became a continually thinner crescent as Venus became increasingly better aligned with the Sun. Eventually the alignment became perfect and thephase of Venus dropped to zero. The dark spot of Venus crossed our parent star. The situation could technically be labeled a Venusian annular eclipse with an extraordinarily large ring of fire. Pictured above during the occultation, the Sun was imaged in three colors of ultraviolet light by the Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, with the dark region toward the right corresponding to a coronal hole. Hours later, as Venus continued in its orbit, a slight crescent phase appeared again. The next Venusian solar eclipse will occur in 2117.

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Here’s an Incredible Image of Venus Passing in Front of the Sun

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These Scientists Just Spent Four Months Pretending They Were on Mars

by Christopherd3o Posted on August 14, 2013

The HI-SEAS dome. Photo: Sian / HI-SEAS

One hundred and twenty-one days ago six people, including science journalist Kate Greene, shut the door to their new home, a 1,300 square foot dome on the slopes of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano. They were there to try to understand what life would be like living in a small colony on the surface of Mars. Their main goal of their mission, HI-SEAS, was to figure out how to feed people on such a long journey to a remote location.

Yesterday, the team emerged from their home “with their recipes and without the space suits they were required to wear each time they ventured onto the northern slope of Mauna Loa” says the Canadian Press.

Greene chronicled her adventures in HI-SEAS for Discover Magazine, including this Day-in-the-Life photo essay:

The other crew members kept their own blogs, too.

The Canadian Press:

The six researchers were selected by the University of Hawaii and Cornell University for the NASA-funded study to prepare meals from a list of dehydrated, preserved foods that are not perishable. They examined pre-prepared meals similar to what astronauts currently eat, and concocted meals themselves in an attempt to combat malnourishment and food boredom.

So what did they come up with? Spam. A lot of Spam. And lots of interesting ways to use Spam. “The researchers prepared several dishes using Spam, including a Cajun jambalaya and a fried rice noodle dish,” says the CP.

Spam sushi. Photo: Sian / HI-SEAS

The struggle was trying to come up with how to build varied recipes from a set list of ingredients which include a lot of canned, dried and frozen things, and very few perishables. NPR:

NASA makes an excellent apricot cobbler and a sweet and sour pork in ready-to-eat pouches, says Jean Hunter, a food engineer at Cornell. But “on a planetary surface mission, the timeframe is long enough that the astronauts will have time to get tired of their menu, no matter how good it is,” she tells The Salt.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Solar System Lollipops And Other Food That Looks Like Things
Unpack a Meal of Astronaut Space Food

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These Scientists Just Spent Four Months Pretending They Were on Mars

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