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At long last
Google has just released their API for Google Maps! First Google Earth, now this. Google really is an awe-inspiring company. Look for a week in the life of Steve very soon.
And as I’m writing this, Mike just sent me a link to it.
And for those of you following the screw-you homeowner Kelo Supreme court ruling, check out Hotel Lost Liberty.
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Wednesday rapid fire
- A post well worth reading at Asymetrical Information
- Solar Drone New Endurance Champ
- Orwell on Fascism
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Interesting
Sadly, it seems that PBS will be fully funded, here is what the executives make.
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Google Earth is staggering
Google Earth was released today and I’m blown away. Basically it’s a free version of their KeyHole software, but with incredible capabilities. Skylines, tilting and foreign cities, it’s all just staggering.
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The winner for weirdness
From an interview with female Palestinian suicide bomber
According to the Koran, male martyrs are welcomed to Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. Ayat, as with many of the women she is incarcerated with, believes that a woman martyr “will be the chief of the 72 virgins, the fairest of the fair”.
From the Telegraph UK.
Second class even in the afterlife.
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More Ajax Links
Google-xjaxslt via the Google Blog.
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Oil
I came across an interesting article by Alan Reynolds on the Cato site:
We import nearly 58 percent of all petroleum, yet only 45 percent of each barrel is used to produce gasoline, and a significant portion of that gasoline is used in delivery vans and taxis. Commuter and leisure driving accounts for little more than 40 percent of the oil we consume — far less than the amount we import. The rest of each barrel of crude is used for heating oil and diesel fuel for trucks, busses, farm machinery and ships (23 percent), petrochemicals (17 percent), jet fuel (9 percent), asphalt (4 percent) and propane (4 percent).
…
The U.S. index of industrial production peaked at 116.4 in June 2000 and then fell to 109.1 by December 2001; the price of West Texas crude simultaneously fell from $32 to $19. U.S. Industrial demand for petrochemicals declined, and so did the related need for fuel used to transport industrial supplies and products.
Similar effects were magnified worldwide. Falling industrial production in any region has the same effect on oil prices, so crude fell from $25 to $12 in the wake of the Asian currency crisis of 1997-98.
and
Nobody in Washington shows the slightest awareness of the global nature of the oil market, of the fact that industrial damage from high oil prices has nothing to do with whether a country imports or exports oil, or even the fact that there is a crucial two-way linkage between worldwide industrial production and worldwide oil prices. When it comes to causes and effects of high oil prices, nobody in Washington shows much interest in logic or facts. It might be sad if it wasn’t so pathologically pathetic.
RTWT.
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Unexpected to see
I came across this odd site yesterday while biking on my usual route. I don’t remember seeing any of this before, either the dumpster or the garbage, thought I think there is usually more underbrush in this area. Behind the wheelchair was a poster for Terminator 2, which came out in the early 90s.
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Live Aid / Live Eight
I came across a very interesting article in the Prospect (UK) about the original Live Aid funds. It touches on a corrolary to what I believe is Friedman’s Law, to wit the government can’t give anything away.
But did the mobilisation of public opinion through celebrity endorsement really play the positive role with which it is now credited? To ask this question is emphatically not to turn hagiography on its head and to demonise either Geldof or Live Aid. There is no smoking-gun evidence demonstrating that Live Aid achieved nothing, or only did harm. But there is ample reason to conclude that Live Aid did harm as well as good. It is also arguable that Live Aid may have done more harm than good.
and
With the exception of MSF, what neither the relief world in general, nor the UN, nor Geldof and his Live Aid team have ever come to terms with is that the Mengistu regime—finally ousted in 1991—also committed mass murder in the resettlement programme in which Live Aid monies were used and in which NGOs that benefited from Live Aid funding were active. The Dergue was in control, and it did with the UN and the NGOs what the Nazis did with the International Committee of the Red Cross: it made them unwilling collaborators.
A very interesting article. I had no ideas of the similarities to the Ukranine in the 30s. RTWT.
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Links for future reference