Tag: visualization

Virtual Angkor

a groundbreaking collaboration between Virtual History Specialists, Archaeologists and Historians designed to bring the Cambodian metropolis of Angkor to life. Built for the classroom, it has been created to take students into a 3D world and to use this simulation to ask questions about Angkor’s place in larger networks of trade and diplomacy, its experience with climate variability and the structure of power and kingship that underpinned the city.

see also

the colossal, densely populated cities would have constituted the largest empire on earth at the time of its peak in the 12th century.

Claymation Education

Human beings are strange. The unimaginative jackass Logan Paul has 18m YouTube subscribers, while the fascinating and talented Maxwell Helmberger has 105 subscribers. In my opinion, Paul should have 105 subscribers and Helmberger should have 18m. Helmberger’s claymation video about how the pincushion millipede (smaller than a grain of rice!) defends itself against ants trying it eat it has 94 views. Please watch and share with your friends. I want to encourage him to do more.

Clean energy jerbs

Fastest-growing jobs: solar panel installer, wind turbine techs

2021-04-14: The way to do this is not with silly nonsense like union jobs

What we need to produce are very cheap renewable technologies, ones so cheap that the poorer countries of the world will adopt them as well. If we insist on packing a lot of labor costs (“good jobs”) into our energy technologies, we will not come close to achieving that end.

I was disappointed and unnerved by recent comments from Brian Deese, President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser, who in the context of climate change remarked that “…investing in infrastructure can be one of the most effective ways to do that in a way that creates lots of jobs.” The correct Econ 101 answer, of course, is that a low-jobs energy infrastructure liberates labor to produce other goods and services for us, leading to higher overall output. Such policies remind me of the “make-work” fallacy, namely the view that the deliberate creation of domestic jobs (for instance through tariffs) will lead to a better economy. We will wind up with more good jobs in total if we seek to lower green energy prices, not raise them.

Land Use

Fascinating. So much land wasted for shitty burgers.

33% of US land is used for pasture — by far the largest land-use type in the contiguous 48 states. And 25% of that land is administered by the federal government, with most occurring in the West. That land is open to grazing for a fee. There’s a single, major occupant on all this land: cows. Between pastures and cropland used to produce feed, 41% of US land in the contiguous states revolves around livestock.