Harris Silver, founder of CityStreets will be speaking at the Apple Store SOHO Thursday night at 6:30 pm as part of Apple’s ‘Made on a Mac’ lecture series. I’ve known Harris for a long time, he’s brilliant, provocative and full of ideas. This will be interesting.

The cool factor of the following maps just barely outweighs the revolting “look at how worldly I am” quotient. I wouldn’t have posted them except that the site which generates the graphics is so well done and my curiousity about GIS data is growing.

create your own visited states map

create your own visited country map

This place is a mess.

Ninety minutes later: Dumb in public, updates throughout…

If my interpretation of this map (bottom of page) is correct [it wasn’t] and the markings are kilometers, [they’re not] the Spirit and Opportunity rovers have landed about 130 km apart (80 miles) [on opposite sides of the planet].

The Rovers’ top driving speeds are reportedly 5 cm per second, which is about 0.18 km/h (0.11 mph) or 4.32 km/day (2.7 miles/day). If they were to drive towards one another, they could theoretically meet in a little more than two weeks [if they were 130 km apart, which they aren’t]. Only 487,000,000 kilometers[pdf] (303,000,000 miles) later.

Actually, NASA’s stated mobility goal is only 40 meters/day, and the top speed after various hazard-avoidance and navigation procedures is only 1 cm/second.

Spirit’s Gusev Crater appears to be within 50 km (31 miles) [on the same side of Mars as] of Olympus Mons, the tallest known volcano in our Solar System. I haven’t read anything about seeing the volcano in any of the Spirit Panoramas, possibly because the volcano is actually quite flat, 20 times wider than it is tall [or, possibly because it’s really quite far away].The hill I thought might have been Olympus Mons is simply labeled ‘Southwest Hill 215 Azimuth 7,5’, the wrong direction by my reading of the (unmarked) map. [at least I had a built-in excuse—sort of]

Of course if those aren’t kilometers, almost all of this is wrong [emphasis added].

Update: And they weren’t kilometers, and a lot of that was wrong. The map is actually a Mercator projection of Mars, all of Mars. The unmarked numbers are Martian latitude and longitude. I suppose claiming illiteracy about Martian geography isn’t the worst thing ever. Here are links to some Martian maps which could have prevented some embarrassing speculation:

• Up to date, labeled Mars Map
• Interactive Map of Mars
• Older Mars maps

As an aside, is geography really the right word? Being derived from the latin root geo, it seems a bit terrestrial. From a linguistic origin point of view, Astrogeology seems kind of linguistically muddled and contradictory. The word we should be using has evolved an altogether different meaning: Astrology.

The verbs founder and flounder are often confused. Founder comes from a Latin word meaning “bottom” (as in foundation) and originally referred to knocking enemies down; it is now also used to mean “to fail utterly, collapse.” Flounder means “to move clumsily, thrash about,” and hence “to proceed in confusion.” If John is foundering in Chemistry 1, he had better drop the course; if he is floundering, he may yet pull through.

I’ve been meaning to link to Paula Bernstein’s site for months. Her most recent article from the New York Observer is a fun read,”Committed Couple Seeks Fred and Ethel: Country House a Plus” (NYO). It’s a great little essay about the difficulty couples (especially with kids) have in finding other couples to hang out with.

This part had me laughing out loud, partly because anyone who’s been to a crowded playground with a toddler has seen this happen over and over:

“There was another couple we bonded with while pushing our children on the swings at the Union Square playground, but any hopes of forming a fabulous foursome were quashed when our daughter brained their son with a toy truck. (It’s amazing how quickly a little spilled blood can get in the way of a meaningful relationship.)”

There’s lots more on her site, The Hat Police is another spot-on slice of urban parenting.