In Make magazine (highlighted below) I found a reference to a cool application with the rather unfortunate name of The Rasterbator. Regardless of the name, it lets you blow up any photo to pretty much any size (I think the limit is 20 meters by 20 meters) and print it out on your own local printer. The image is pixellated at the page level, but then you take your pages, put them in order, tape them on your wall or wherever, and magically your original picture reappears at a much larger dimension. Pretty cool. 

I love this new application. It allows you to drill down from outer space right down to your home. Well, it depends precisely on where your home is! It is great fun though. It works extremely well in Tokyo. You can try it out for 7 days free of charge--but you probably need a 3D video graphics card. Check it out at www.keyhole.com. 

National Geographic has a great interactive site highlighting the major ecosystems of the world. You can drill down and get a lot of detail about many different parts of the world. Try it out at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/wildworld/. Combine this with the page at www.keyhole.com for a different perspective.

For a truly global set of issues, check out the Copenhagen Consensus. This innovative project is a process that attempts to rate and rank the world’s largest problems. They are using economics as the basis for prioritizing these projects. I came across this first in an article in Fortune magazine, who suggested that this would be a good way to prioritize “if you had $50 billion dollars, what should you do first?” The ten top problems they have identified are climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts, education, financial instability, governance and corruption, malnutrition and hunger, population and migration, sanitation and water, and subsidies and trade barriers. Should make for an interesting discussion to say the least. 

Thanks to Nicholas Kristof I just found a nice page on long distance hikes in the US. The site actually is looking at a proposed sea-to-sea trail across North America. There are also a lot of links to several of the component trails. Definitely worth a good look. Not that I’ll ever do that long of a hike but some pieces would be great fun.

I recently learned about an artist/designer of light fixtures by the name of Ingo Maurer. Check out the website for more. I like the one named Porca Miseria! -- it’s wild. 

We are studying the various books of the Bible in our Sunday School class. Along the way Leslie found this terrific 21st century version of the Book of Leviticus. Every parent will appreciate this one.

I’m liking the technical news at newsfactor.com. Seems like good balanced reporting on a number of computer-related topics. For a very that is more hip of course, use www.slashdot.com. Can’t much stand the long long list of rambling argumentation, but the topics are timely and the edited Q&As are quite good. 

The Glass Flowers Museum at Harvard is a fascinating place. Check out the article in Scientific American for an overview, and also read the article at Research/Penn State for more on how they might have made them. 

I enjoyed browsing at www.toonopedia.com. Remember Atom Ant?

Abby’s home page is cool! Check it out at www.rose-hulman.edu/~rebhoraj. Plus, my new favorite advice columnist has her dating tips at The Thorn Online.

The Hubble Space Telescope site is way cool (near absolute zero in many cases): hubble.stsci.edu

The National Mall in Washington, D.C. is one of our nation’s architectural treasures. Too bad everyone views it as a place for new development. Read the story here: http://www.calendarlive.com/galleriesandmuseums/knight/cl-ca-knight20apr20.story I’d not be very cool with a Reagan memorial myself. Let’s find another spot please!

For tons of statistics and country information, try www.nationmaster.com/index.php. I promise you will learn something new! 

Had a brief earthquake here on June 14 which just caused a little swaying. As a result I found an interesting site that lists earthquakes around the world in near-real time. Ours wasn’t that big but it was noteworthy how many good-sized earthquakes there are every day on our planet -- usually at least 6 or 7 that are over 4 on the Richter scale. You can see the current list for yourself, along with other links to earthquake statistics, at http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/#quality.

If you’ve ever had a need to find out information about which flag belongs to which country, check out http://www.immigration-usa.com/flags/. It’s got information about pretty much any flag you need, plus it has a very nice interactive flag finder. Take any flag, and answer a few short questions about design, color, and configuration and voila -- you can figure it out. Use this site to avoid the social embarrassment of flying the flag of Monaco upside down!  The Poles will be happy.

I bet you thought that paper sizes (like 8 1/2 by 11) were just random.  Only in the US.  Now I know better -- the metric, or A4 size, is very methodical. Find out everything you wanted to know -- and more! -- about paper sizes at this nice site by Markus Kuhn: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html.

Wow, the National Geographic site has some fabulous photographs. 

I still like the up-to-date urban legends reference pages at www.snopes.com.  I have found it to be very useful during the last few months.

NASA's photos of a nighttime earth are fascinating.  There’s an index of several earth from space photo sites at http://geography.about.com/cs/photos/.

Space trivia: has there ever been a photo taken showing both the Earth and the Moon, but from outside either Earth orbit or the Moon’s orbit? Find out the answer here.

Rose-Hulman’s Catapult program has daily updates.

Interesting to note: If the baseball season were to end today (May 9th, 2004), the teams in the playoffs would be Boston, Anaheim, Texas, and the White Sox or Twins in the AL, and Florida, Houston, Los Angeles and San Diego. I guess that would leave St. Louis and the Yankees looking for a consolation game in Japan someplace....

Updated: Looks more like prediction, but not exactly: Yankees, White Sox, Oakland, and Boston in the AL, with St. Louis, Florida, Los Angeles, and Cincinnati in the NL. The NL is pretty wacky right now (June 14th) Oakland is on an 8 game win streak.

By July 17th, things are shaping up somewhat: Yankees and Cardinals are up by about 7 games. Chicago White Sox and Texas would win their divisions, with the Red Sox and Oakland battling for the wild card in the AL. Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and San Francisco would join the Cards in the NL. The Cubs, Braves, and the Twins would be just off the list. It’s a wild season!

End of August --shaping up pretty clearly in most divisions except AL West. I need to make a better chart! Key for me is that Cards are up by 13.5 games over the Cubs, who are working hard to make a wild card bid. Should be a MOST interesting post-season.