tissot’s indicatrix

Even including a nod to the West Wing “Big Block of Cheese Day” episode that introduced most of us the Gall-Peters projection that right-sizes Europe and reduces polar flair, the Guardian reports that some Boston schools are dropping maps that have perpetuated this alternative geography for the past five centuries. Developed by a German historian in 1974 after researching a novel equal-area map from a nineteenth century Scottish catographer, some distortion is unavoidable (here is another non-traditional approach) when translating a three-dimensional globe to a flat visualisations but depicts landmasses by their relative size and hopefully eliminates some of the implicit bias of the West, reinforced by the industry-standard Mercator projection.

keystone

An architectural studio called oiio, as Hyperallergic informs, has released design proposal for a skyscraper they’re calling the Big Bend that’s being hailed as the world’s longest structure—at 1,2 kilometres in the form of a long, skinny arch. In an already crowded Manhattan neighbourhood, this innovative proposal occupies a fairly small footprint yet manages to optimise space for working and living. I wonder what it would be like to like the Wonkavator at this address.

red earth

Via Colossal, we are introduced to the detailed ephemeral warp and weave of artist Rena Detrixhe, who uses the sifted red earth from outside her Tulsa, Oklahoma studio to create intricate mandalas of blankets and rugs.
This dirt was collected by hand and is symbolic of the “beauty and pride of this place and also a profound sorrow,” witness to the forcible relocation of Native American populations with the Trail of Tears, further land-grabs and displacement, extreme weather, the hunting to the brink of extinction of the bison and the environmental disaster that the loss of grassland precipitated in the form of the Dust Bowl and presently the land of fracking.  Be sure to visit the links up top to see more of her work and the creative process.

senor and sensibility

Similar in principle to the technique of phreaking to hijack switchboard exchanges, hackers may be finding other outlets to violate the sanctity and security of our phones, drones and other networked, autonomous appliances (and driverless carriages) by targeting them with blasts of very specific acoustic signals.
These sound waves are not necessarily a way of commandeering a device directly but is a way of altering its perceptions, blinding it or throwing it off balance, by skewing its senses—either resulting in paralysis or propelling itself into surrounding obstacles. What do you think?  I do not see the point of creating smart toasters, baby-monitors, refrigerators, umbrellas (that beg to be taken if the weather forecast deems it necessary), and microwave ovens if they open up a path of least resistance to our wired ecosystem and doubt the convenience justifies the risk.  Even changing the reading of a small component could set off a cascade of a catastrophic effects.