Self-Smart Yourself

I'm sure you've seen the self-smarted video - you know, the guy who doesn't need books or things, but is just self-smarted by himself...

So, to prevent you from reading books (which for to be can make you dead) to learn some more stuff about the world around you, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on the blog - and maybe just blow your mind. But don't worry - I'll save some room for oxygen and, like, stuff.

One episode of the West Wing (WW) was recently brought to my rememberance - it was one of the "big block of cheese day" (BBOCD) episodes. On the BBOCD, as Leo likes to explain it, the White House (WH) opens its doors to those groups who typically would not get an audience with members of the WH Staff. Several WW fan sites report the following information:

Big Block of Cheese Day is a fictional workday on the television program The West Wing. On Big Block of Cheese Day, the White House Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry, encourages his staff to take meetings with fringe special interest groups that normally would not get attention from the White House. Big Block of Cheese Day is "celebrated" in episodes 105 and 216.

White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler refers to it as "Throw Open Our Office Doors To People Who Want To Discuss Things That We Could Care Less About Day," and Deputy Communications Director Josh Lyman refers to it as "Total Crackpot Day".

Get the idea?

I was reading my morning slice of knowledge from my company's library team and skimming for recent reports or articles that were of interest to me. One of the proffered articles included a discussion of events in a different part of the world, and included an image showing a map of the area with other details.

It was looking at this map that reminded me of this discussion that C.J. Cregg has with a [fictional] group called the Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality (OCSE).

Now, you're probably used to seeing a map that looks like this:

The US is on the left-hand side, Greenland takes up a good chunk of the top-middle, and then the former Soviet Union stretches out across most of the rest of the map. This map is a Mercator projection map, based on "a cylindrical map projection presented by the [...] cartographer Gerardus Mercator, in 1569. It became the standard map projection for nautical purposes because of its ability to represent lines of constant course [...], as straight segments."

Well, that's good, right? We want to be able to travel around and sail the high seas! However, the encyclopedia article points out some drawbacks to this method: "While the linear scale is constant in all directions around any point, thus preserving the angles and the shapes of small objects (which makes the projection conformal), the Mercator projection distorts the size and shape of large objects, as the scale increases from the Equator to the poles, where it becomes infinite."

The challenge with making maps is that the Earth is a sphere,

(although slightly "smushed" [yes, that's an appropriate term to use when self-smarting yourself], which is why some individuals got together and created a system to help locate yourself on the Earth and navigate around it accurately, since the shape was more ellipsoid that spheroid. In the 1950s, the US Department of Defense (DoD) "began to develop the needed world system to which geodetic datums could be referred and compatibility established between the coordinates of widely separated sites of interest". This led to the creation of the World Geodetic System (WGS), which has updated and modified since by the DoD, going through several revisions (WGS-1966, -1972) to get to where it is today -- WGS 84. This system, like several others, was developed by the military, but benefits you as a citizen today [what would life be like without checking out the world through satellite photos incorporated into Google Earth, or without being able to plug in an address to your GPS unit and get directions to somewhere new?].)

and maps are obviously flat. You probably did the hands-on lesson in school, trying to peel and orange and lay the peel out flat...

But there are other ways to depict the Earth's spheroid surface on a two-dimensional plane. Diversophy has a great article about map projections, focusing on the Peters World Map. It too starts off by showing a Mercator map:

and then by presenting this discussion relating to the distorted proportions mentioned earlier as a drawback:

The Mercator is also a "conformal" map projection. This means that it shows shapes pretty much the way they appear on the globe. The mapmaker's dilemma is that you cannot show both shape and size accurately. If you want a true shape for the land masses you will necessarily sacrifice proportionality, i.e., the relative sizes will be distorted.

Africa: 11.6 million square miles

Greenland: 0.8 million square miles

Do you see that? Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, but is actually a fraction of the size when you compare land mass (million square miles).

Diversophy continues:

The Mercator projection creates increasing distortions of size as you move away from the equator. As you get closer to the poles the distortion becomes severe. Cartographers refer to the inability to compare size on a Mercator projection as "the Greenland Problem." Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, yet Africa's land mass is actually fourteen times larger (see figure below right). Because the Mercator distorts size so much at the poles it is common to crop Antarctica off the map. This practice results in the Northern Hemisphere appearing much larger than it really is. Typically, the cropping technique results in a map showing the equator about 60% of the way down the map, diminishing the size and importance of the developing countries.

This was convenient, psychologically and practically, through the eras of colonial domination when most of the world powers were European. It suited them to maintain an image of the world with Europe at the center and looking much larger than it really was. Was this conscious or deliberate? Probably not, as most map users probably never realized the Eurocentric bias inherent in their world view. When there are so many other projections to chose from, why is it that today the Mercator projection is still such a widely recognized image used to represent the globe? The answer may be simply convention or habit. The inertia of habit is a powerful force.

A different type of projection is an "Equal-Area" projection. This shows sizes in proportion while sacrificing true shape. The Peters Projection is one type of equal area map. Is it the only one? No, there are hundreds of others, but only a handful of others are in common use. The Mollweide projection, developed in 1805, is commonly used for displaying distributions (people, telecommunications equipment, the world's religions, etc). Karl B. Mollweide (1774-1825) specifically sought to improve upon the weaknesses of the Mercator projection. The Eckert IV is another equal area projection developed in the 1920's by Max Eckert (1868-1938). This has the advantage of less shape distortion near the equator and the poles. A fourth equal-area map is Goode's Homolosine created in 1921 by J. Paul Goode (1862-1932). This interrupted map looks like an orange peel (see figure below) and has less shape distortion than the other equal area maps.

Is one projection "better" than another? No! There are simply different ones for different purposes. The Peters projection is commonly used in contrast to a Mercator projection, and is visually engaging because it is so jarringly different. At ODT, Inc. we prefer it above other equal area projections because it shocks viewers into questioning their assumptions, about maps specifically and about life in general. It helps people to "think outside of the box" by exploring how what they see is predicated on what they expect to see.

So let's look at some of these other projections mentioned:

Peters

Mollweide

Eckert IV

Goode's Homolosine

Continuing the Diversophy discussion:

Other projections in use today include "Compromise" ones: projections that try to show shapes more or less as they are on the globe without distorting relative sizes too badly. The Van der Grinten projection was developed in 1904 and was the official projection of the National Geographic Society from 1922 to 1988. From 1988 to 1998 the National Geographic Society used the Robinson projection (created in 1963 by Arthur H. Robinson). Recently the National Geographic Society adopted the Winkel Tripel projection. Oswald Winkel developed this projection in 1921, and it has the advantage of minimizing shape distortion in the polar areas.

Here's a Van der Grintern:


I'm sure you're aware of the power of images. The 1960 debates between Nixon and Kennedy highlighted the power of the television image. According to the CNN AllPolitics website, "What everyone remembers is the first debate, where the telegenic Kennedy won the image battle over Nixon who, recovering from the flu, appeared pale and refused make-up."

What we see and what we believe are interconnected. A book I read in college, called Ways of Seeing by John Berger, begins:

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.

But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight. The Surrealist painter Magritte commented on this always-present gap between words and seeing in a painting called The Key of Dreams.

The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe. In the Middle Ages, when men believed in the physical existence of Hell the sight of fire must have meant something different from what it means today.

Our minds and our eyes are interesting organs. Here's another example -- maybe you've seen this in your inbox:

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

So - where am I going with all of this?

Have you ever thought about your "place" in the world? What if your world was flipped upside-down?
Like this,

or this:

This second map is a Peter's projection map that has been rotated 180-degrees. It shows the positions and the relative sizes of the continents more accurately than the Mercator map from the beginning. With the world upside (and some countries less "in the spotlight"), how do you think about the world now? Why should North be "up"? Isn't the person standing at the South Pole "on top" of the Earth, since his feet point towards the center?

Deep stuff.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, watch C.J. meet OCSE, and ask, "Why are we changing maps?" Pretty much everything I wrote above, summed up in about 3 minutes 49 seconds.

motormania

Don't sell yourself short

From the Harvard Business Blog

JULY 15, 2009
How to Sell Yourself in 15 Seconds or Less

Finding a job in this economy is difficult and competitive. Make sure you can pitch yourself effectively, even when you've got nothing more than an elevator ride with a potential employer to make your case. Use these tips to sell yourself in 15 seconds or less:

• Practice, practice, practice. Don't be caught off guard. Practice your self-pitch many times before you need it.
• Focus on impact. Don't recite your resume. Instead of focusing on years of experience, describe your impact in previous jobs and what you hope to accomplish next.
• Forget what your mother told you. We were all told not to brag, but selling yourself requires breaking that cultural taboo. Be prepared to toot your own horn, gracefully.

For more, read the article by Daisy Wademan Dowling at the Harvard Business Blog.

Wizards

As Jill mentioned on her blog, we've been catching up on the Harry Potter movies so we can be ready for the next movie to come out. While we've been watching the wizards and witches of Hogwart's do their thing, I've been reading about some other, real-life wizards.

The book I just finished is called The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. It discusses the efforts of the Directorate of Science and Technology, some of the bureaucratic wrangling involved as the office changed over time, and some of the cool things they did (both failures and successes).

You probably knew that the CIA created spy satellites and participated in the botched Bay of Pigs invasion.

But - did you know that:

• Established ground stations in Iran, Norway, and China to monitor Russian missile launches, called TACKSMAN I and II
• MKULTRA drug experiments
• Employed psychics
• Tried to implant microphones into cats (using their tails as antenna) in a project called Acoustic Kitty, only to have the cat hit by a taxi during its first real mission
  
• Used birds as an intelligence collection platform
• Started a UAV program in the 1960s and 70s
• Made technologies available to help fight breast cancer
• And helped advances with pacemaker technology through their research into lithium iodine batteries (intended to benefit satellite operations)

Read the book to find out about more cool things these scientists and researchers did to improve the intelligence community's ability to collect information about America's enemies -- and helped out you and me along the way.

The Original Wizards of Langley
I also thought I'd point out that the CIA has a website up with a list of over 35

"documents and other material related to the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) offer a glimpse of CIA's overall contribution to the analysis of Soviet capabilities in science and technology during the Cold War. It is by no means intended to be definitive, or even complete, with respect to all the activities associated with the Agency's scientific and technological capabilities, analysis, and resulting reporting. It does, however, highlight some key events and selected activities that contribute to our understanding of the unique role OSI played in the Agency's history."

The site highlights the Office of Scientific Intelligence, and makes a document available from the "Original Wizards of Langley" symposium.

Ladies and gentlemen, the wizards are at work.

cyborg backronym

Get Your Cyborg Name

spoof

Jill just blogged about this video [Beyonce - Single Ladies], but we found this spoof - and it was just too funny not to share.

Fun in the Sun

Today [so I totally forgot to post this Saturday; this is what we did on 27 June] was a busy, fun, warm, fun, humid, fun, clandestine, -- and did I say, fun? -- day.

To start off the morning, I spent about an hour helping load a truck at someone's move.

After that (and a quick shower), Jill and I drove into the city to meet some friends for some counter-terrorism (CT) activities.

We completed an outdoor, interactive, GPS-guided, IR-enhanced, and location-aware mission that is part of the Spy Museum's "Spy in the City" program.

We walked around part of the District, saw some memorials/sites we hadn't gone by before (Navy Memorial, Newseum, fountains by the Federal Trade Commission buillding, Ford's Theater, etc.), got messages from our Special Security Division (SSD) "handlers," and foiled a mock attempt to set off an electromagnetic device in the District. We "used" optical scanners, chemical signature detectors, radio receivers, and other "spy gear" to crack cyphers, identify the bad guys, and disarm the "bomb".

Needless to say, we had a blast.

Then, we walked over to the Safeway BBQ Battle that was going on, taking up several blocks of Pennsylvania Ave. Our friend, Clint, with whom we've had other adventures (Tacqueria Poblano), got our entrance tickets, and we wandered around with him and his friend, Megan (a very nice Georgetown law student).

We tried to rope the steer to win a prize, but they were cheating and trying to make us do it with a heeling rope. We took pictures with 3-foot long, plastic Oscar Meyer Weiner dogs in front of the Weinermobile. We sampled Italian ice, different juices (one was like an orange creamsicle in a bottle!), watermelon (served by the Misses Alabama and South Carolina Watermelon Princess), bbq chicken and pork, and steak -- all while standing in the huge, long line for the Safeway tasting booth, which had chicken, brats, hamburger, chips and salsa, juice, pineapple, this spicy tomato drink, and more.

Unfortunately, the sample line took so long--and we had parked in metered parking--that we had to run as soon as we got our fill.

In any event- we had a great day!
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