Tightgrid | Geoff Edwards

Archive for September 2008

Paul Virilio, on possession and movement

Whoever controls the territory possesses it. Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation.
—Paul Virilio (2000)
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Military applications of civilian technology?

Has there been any discussion of the military’s growing reliance on “civilian” research and development, when for at least the past half-century it seems to have been the other way around? I’m thinking of video games, in particular, but I’m sure one could dredge up an abundance of other examples. And I’m not referring to [...]

Sublime hurricane photos from the space station

By way of Kottke comes this exhilirating collection of hurricane photographs taken from the International Space Station.
Sublime.

The first week of school

On Wednesday I began attending classes in the Ph.D. program in Urban Affairs here at the University of Delaware. With the exception of a minor registration problem, everything has gone smoothly. I’m most impressed by the professionalism of the staff and by the number of lines in which I’ve had to wait since arriving on [...]

The best L.A. films of the past quarter-century

The L.A. Times offers their list of the 25 films from the past quarter-century best capturing the essence of Los Angeles.
I was most surprised by this little nugget, from the blurb for Speed (#17):
One out of every 31 Americans lives in Los Angeles County.
I’m fine with Jackie Browne at the third spot (instead of Pulp [...]

Boat launches and rescue infrastructure

In one of many Current TV pods marking the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Jared Arsement documents a volunteer effort to rescue those stranded in New Orleans using an army of citizen owned and operated flat-bottom boats. Arsement observes something a few moments into the story that caught my attention:
“…it’s an interesting situation to try [...]

Mapping with Google Insights

David McRaney recently used Google Insights to discover and map the spatial distribution of Google searches involving the search term “sweet tea”. I love the idea, but I wish that Google allowed us to normalize the data against something like the number of total searches made per state or the populations for each. Or does [...]