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January 7, 2015

5it: data

1. A plan for a "cyborg coast" in Louisiana.

"Cantrell, now an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, became fascinated with the river while teaching at Louisiana State University’s school of landscape architecture. He’s hardly the first to note that humans have reshaped the Mississippi with disastrous ecological consequences. The Army Corps of Engineers famously spent the last century squeezing the river between high levees to protect cities from flooding and preserve a deep navigation channel, thus ending the river’s periodic floods that spread rich mud across the delta. The result: the rapid disappearance of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands, which are disappearing a rate of one football field each hour as they sink into the sea. The solution, as Cantrell sees it, isn’t for a return to the old ways of nature. Instead, he wants humans to become more thoughtful about what he calls the 'choreography of sediment.' In his work, he dreams up technological systems that can be inserted into the ecosystem and become an elegant part of ongoing natural processes."

2. Colombian military officials hid a Morse-coded message for hostages in a pop song, with the help of a celebrated advertising executive.

"Portela says they played with the Morse code using Reason software, which gives each audio channel or instrument its own dedicated track. With a separate visual lane for certain elements, it was possible to match the code to the beat of the song — and, crucially, blend it in. Hiding the Morse code took weeks, with constant back-and-forth with Col. Espejo and the military to make sure their men could understand the message. 'It was difficult because Morse code is not a musical beat. Sometimes it was too obvious,' says Portela. 'Other times the code was not understood. And we had to hide it three times in the song to make sure the message was received.'"

3. The only way for the public to know when votes are happening in the House is through an app that listens for the frequencies of the physical bells that are rung in the building.

"Before Capitol Bells, knowing when votes were taking place within the House in real-time as a member of the public was impossible, preventing swift reporting and real time awareness of lawmaking by the public. As a staffer for former Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.), Ted Henderson had been privy to the alert system of ringing bells and flashing lights that go off throughout the House office buildings to indicate when and what type of votes take place. By listening for the radio frequency of these real life bells, Ted created an application on iPhone and Android that enables anyone to be notified when a vote is taking place at the same time as lawmakers, wherever they are."

4. An article on Silicon Valley's diversity problems... from 1998.

"Some firms say it's hard to build a diverse workforce when you're growing like a weed and racing the competition to get your product to market. Netscape Communications in Mountain View, for example, was cited by the federal government in 1996 for missing the deadline to set up a diversity program. 'Being the fastest-growing software company ever, we shot past the mark that the government sets down for putting an affirmative action plan in place,' said Bob Sundstrom, diversity programs manager at the Silicon Valley's best-known Internet software firm. Others say it's not the industry's fault that there are so few blacks and Latinos qualified for professional high-tech jobs. 'It's the American public's duty,' said Mary Jane Weaver, a San Francisco immigration attorney who represents many high-tech firms. 'I don't think it's fair to make corporations responsible for education.'"

5. When Twitter gets to be too much, try visiting Kcymaerxthaere.

"Kcymaerxthaere is a parallel universe that includes in its embrace our linear world—by which we mean our 3 dimensions of space—to the extent that places we encounter on what we call the Earth can become points of some kind of departure to these other realms. Interestingly, Kcymaerxthaere is not nearly as enmeshed in our dimension of time. Kcymaerxthaere is also a global project that tells the stories of this parallel world through books, performances, Internet, embroideries, guided collaborations, but perhaps most distinctively through installations—especially bronze plaques and historic sites that honor the parallel world in our linear world."

Today's 1957 American English Language Tip
data is plural only (The data are, NOT is, insufficient./What are the data?); the singular, comparatively rare, is datum; one of the data is commoner than a datum; but datum line, line taken as a basis is common.
+ This battle was lost long ago.

The Credits:  1. nautil.us / @djp1974 2. theverge.com 3. dclegalhackers.org / @internetrebecca  4. sfgate.com / @juliaangwin 5.kcymaerxthaere.com

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