How Policy Distributes Wealth in the U.S.

This is the first part in what will probably be a three part series. It’s well-done and can be easily followed by most high-school students, though I’d also recommend Veronica Mars as another way to deliver the same message.

Unbuilt Robert Moses Highway Maps

Not only does this post include two great (and chilling) maps of how Robert Moses’ New York City might have looked, but it warns us against our impulse to accept online base maps as apolitical representations.

I present my Google Maps version of the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway and Mid Manhattan Expressways … Now there have been maps showing these proposed highways before … but the point of doing it up to look like a Google Map was to put these highways in a modern context … We have become so accustomed to viewing the world through Google Maps (or some other online mapping software) that I feel like these maps are starting to shape our view point of the city.

I’m reminded of the introduction to Denis Wood’s The Power of Maps, in which he says maps “enable the past to become part of our living . . . now . . . here.”

Darwin

This and others like it are for sale via Zazzle. The artist is donating profits to the National Center for Science Education.

Trawlers are 'destroying history on the seabed'

The chains and cables used by commercial fishing ships are wrecking British shipwrecks.

Investigations using robot submarines have revealed that serious damage has been inflicted on vast numbers of the 32,000 pre-1945 ships whose wrecks litter Britain’s coastal waters. Examples include the recently discovered 18th-century warship HMS Victory, which led Britain’s fleet before Nelson’s flagship of the same name. In 1744, Victory sank with all hands near the Channel Islands. Cannon hauled from the wreck showed it had suffered severe damage from trawlers.

25 Famous Librarians Who Changed History

Were he alive today, Philip Larkin might have taken offense to his name being so close to that of Laura Bush.

The section listing political figures is worth reading; Mao Zedong, Golda Meir, and J. Edgar Hoover were all librarians before embarking on the careers for which we remember them today.

Historical superimposition

‘Untouched’ East German flat discovered
[via hawktrainer]

It appears the inhabitant of the humble flat fled in a rush.

Grocery brands from the Socialist state filled the kitchen and old bread rolls still lay in a string bag.

A wall calendar showed August 1988 and an empty bottle of Vita Cola, Marella margarine, Juwel cigarettes and a bottle of Kristall vodka were in the kitchen.

The only foreign product to be found was a West German bottle of deodorant.

See also the most popular bookmarks tagged ‘abandoned’ on delicious.com.

The Siege of Leningrad ended 65-years ago today
[via bldgblog]
Old photographs from the Siege of Leningrad superimposed over photographs from the city as it is today. (English translation of the original page.)

“rising like alien plants on the terraformed lakebed”
[via mtchl]
In order to minimize the carcinogenic dust storms off of barren Owens Lake, the City of Los Angeles built a series of over 5,000 irrigation bubblers on the lakebed at a cost of $425 million. Pruned compares these bubblers—sad, broken sprinklers, really—to fountains:

since time immemorial, fountains have been creating micro-climates, cooling gardens, palaces and sartorially bedecked aristocrats. The array of bubblers, you could say, is also a type of weather modification system: an anti-dust storm.

Looking toward EveryBlock’s future
[via migurski]
Adrian Holovaty announces the EveryBlock publishing system will go open-source when their grant ends five months from today. With so many smart people able to get their hands on that code, I wonder how long until we have the beginnings of a Craigslist for location-based local news.

I also wonder if this decision by EveryBlock will force Sufjan Stevens into open-sourcing his album-writing formula so the rest of us can release material based on the other states.