Kottke: Fantastic time lapse map of Europe, 1000 – 2005 A.D.
In Vancouver, Buzzer Blog: New wayfinding signage is going up around the region
Massive Tornado, Can it Happen Here? [MPR succumbs to Sweeps Month] If you’re stuck in traffic, you have no good choices”
A local Car Dealer (Walser) is encouraging trading in used cars for bikes (and cash). The campaign is here: New Wheels
The Scholarly Kitchen: The Emergence of a Citation Cartel :
“In a 1999 essay published in Science titled, ‘Scientific Communication — A Vanity Fair?’ George Franck warned us on the possibility of citation cartels — groups of editors and journals working together for mutual benefit. To date, this behavior has not been widely documented; however, when you first view it, it is astonishing.
Cell Transplantation is a medical journal published by the Cognizant Communication Corporation of Putnam Valley, New York. In recent years, its impact factor has been growing rapidly. In 2006, it was 3.482. In 2010, it had almost doubled to 6.204.
When you look at which journals cite Cell Transplantation, two journals stand out noticeably: the Medical Science Monitor, and The Scientific World Journal. According to the JCR, neither of these journals cited Cell Transplantation until 2010.”
David Levinson, Transportist 
“You might be lucky enough to be in front of an electronic highway sign that can send an immediate warning, or receive an alert on your smart phone that a tornado is near. But without a way to pinpoint the location, the information could lead to a fatal mistake.”
I’m no expert on the technical issues involved in its creation, but it seems to me that it wouldn’t be so hard for a phone app to take real-time forecasts of a tornado’s path and information on the local road network, and to tell you in which direction and how fast you would need to go if your plan was to outrun it. Obviously, liability issues would be a bear, and I imagine the frequency with which it would actually be usefully would be pretty low, but the technical problem of pinpointing locations and velocities doesn’t seem like it should be a major obstacle.
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