notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Berlin at night from space, with the old west and east still visible:

“Berlin was divided into two parts for over 40 years,” explains Christa Mientus-Schirmer of Berlin’s city government. “And although we’ve made a lot of progress in the 20 years since the wall fell, we haven’t had the money we would have liked to equalise the two parts of the city.”

Daniela Augenstine, of the city’s street furniture department, says: “In the eastern part there are sodium-vapour lamps with a yellower colour. And in the western parts there are fluorescent lamps – mercury arc lamps and gas lamps – which all produce a whiter colour.” The western Federal Republic of Germany long favoured non-sodium lamps on the grounds of cost, maintenance and carbon emissions, she says.

Guardian quote via chriswoebken.

(Source: facebook.com)

toffeemilkshake:

Every meteorite fall on earth mapped

It’s amazing how metorites seem attracted to centers of human population and never ever fall in the sea.

Of course, the name of the graphic should be “every recorded meteorite fall on earth, mapped”.

See also: Astronomers lose access to military data, Nature, June 2009:

The change is a blow to the astronomers and planetary scientists who used the information to track space rocks, especially those that burn up over the oceans or in other remote locations. “These systems are extremely useful,” says Peter Brown, an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. “I think the scientific community benefited enormously.”

The USAF later said the data would be made available again, but I don’t know if that happened. If it did, it may well be a better source than the data the Guardian worked from.

Top: three infographics produced by HM Treasury, as posted to Pinterest and Flickr.

Bottom: chart produced by the Guardian based on Resolution Foundation data, showing the impact across income deciles.

From the Guardian’s Picture desk live: the best news pictures of the day:

A young Japanese woman looks at stars displayed during the ‘Star Cruise Planetarium’ at Roppongi Hills in Tokyo, Japan.

Photograph: Franck Robichon/EPA

Steve Bell on the arrest of a teenager over picture of burning poppy in the Guardian.

Two recent non-map visualisations of the route to the White House.

Top: New York Times, 512 Paths

Bottom: The Guardian, You Decide

The Guardian: Japanese workers face smile scanner (via iamdanw):

“Each morning, according to reports, the 500 or so employees of the Keihin Electric Express Railway Company have to beam stupidly into a camera hooked up to a computer. The machine then analyses things like eye movement, lip curvature and facial wrinkles, and rates the overall quality of their smile on a scale ranging from 0 (suicidal) to 100 (delirious).

Apparently, should the computer deem workers to be too gloomy it flashes up helpful advice like “You still look too serious”, or “Lift up your mouth corners”. It then prints out a personalised “ideal smile” for employees to carry with them and refer to should they feel their spirits flagging at any point during the day.”

From jocochrane, the cover of g2 containing Oliver Burkeman’s excellent article on how Google and Apple’s digital mapping is mapping us. Some choice quotes:

In an era of previously unimagined opportunities for exploring the far-off and strange, we want mainly to stare at ourselves.

It’s hard to interpret the occasional aerial snapshot of your garden as a big issue when the phone in your pocket is assembling a real-time picture of your movements, preferences and behaviour.

What happens when we come to see the world, to a significant extent, through the eyes of a handful of big companies based in California?