2012-10-30
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A tale of two covers: the UK and US Cloud Atlas editions.
See also: the movie tie-in cover; Random House Canada’s side by side of different books (including this one).
2012-08-11
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2012-05-30
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Rare Cloud-Free Satellite Image of the UK
Taken 26/05/12. Full resolution version can be found here
Previously in British Isles From Space: cloud free, 26th March (so, not quite that rare, eh?); snowed in, 7th January 2011.
2012-05-07
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Proposed flag designs for a “Great Britain” in the early 1600s, when James became king of both still-independent countries, as covered in BBC Radio 4’s The Flag That Failed, part of the Shakespeare’s Restless World season.
Handily, there’s a transcript available:
Looking at our flag designs, you can see the intractable politics of union being played out in graphic form. All the designs stumble on the one key problem facing James’s project: how do you combine two kingdoms, but allow each to retain equal status? Crudely put, which national cross gets to be on top, St George or St Andrew’s, and does size matter?
If you’ve never seen a Union Jack, it is surprisingly difficult to come up with an even-handed solution to this particular problem.
The programme page has a zoomable image of the designs. As it was, in 1606 a recognisable Union Flag that has evolved into the current design was used, although England and Scotland were not formally joined as a single country until 1707, after the failure of the Darien Scheme (as covered by CP Grey in one of his informative videos).
2012-04-23
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Political Landscapes of London at Views of the World (hat tip):
In my analysis of the 2008 election (data was kindly provided by Michael Thrasher of the University of Plymouth), I took a look beyond the two main parties and mapped the proportional distribution of votes for all political parties that had a candidate standing for election at the 2008 mayoral election. The geographical patterns that emerge are expression of the diverse demographics that compose the social landscape of the capital. In the map, each party’s individual shares are mapped onto a gridded population cartogram of London.
It is important to keep in mind that each of these patterns stands for considerably different total votes.
2012-04-09
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Eastern North Atlantic at Night, from the International Space Station, 28 March 2012. Photograph: André Kuipers. (Posted to Flickr by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, via iamdanw.)
2012-04-05
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A drone used by police on Merseyside crashed into the River Mersey during a routine training exercise.
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), which was fitted with CCTV, apparently lost battery power while being flown by officers in Aigburth in February 2010.
Attempts to make an emergency landing failed and it crashed into the water.
Merseyside Police said it would not replace the £13,000 drone due to problems with its performance and the cost of training staff to use it.
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