Of all the people in the world has a grain of rice represent one person and each pile has a theme that represents us. I like how this makes data accessible.

As you enter the performance space, you will be given a grain of rice. This grain is you. Inside people are waiting. Millions of them. Each represented by a grain of rice. 15 tonnes of rice – over 897 million grains – one for everyone in the Americas. As you explore the extraordinary landscape of rice hills and mountains stretching out in front of you, you discover every pile represents a different population. Together these piles tell hundreds of stories, stories of people and politics, history and current affairs.

A landmark case that may change how Europe addresses use and re-use of public data has been won in the Netherlands. Landmark Nederland has been struggling for 3 years in court over access to public geospatial data they assembled on environmental risks such as contaminated land. Their obstacle was

the City of Amsterdam [which] sought substantial compensation for supplying the data and also wanted to limit its reuse, arguing a substantial investment had been made in compiling the original dataset. However, after three years of legal hearings, the Dutch Raad van State, the highest Administrative Court in the Netherlands, ruled that the City of Amsterdam does not bear the risk of investment in the database as this has to be provided and funded anyway as part of the City’s public task. Consequently, the City is not entitled to attach excessive financial conditions and limitations to the reuse of the data by Landmark.

Article: Landmark Nederland helps to secure future availability of public sector information.
Via: Vector One

Some great thinkers and doers are coming together at this conference organized by the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI). The conference is organized around the following:

Sharing research data is essential for effective collaboration. Few scientists, however, have the time or resources to ensure sustainable access to data for joint projects, domain-specific applications or re-use.

The ICSTI 2009 conference will examine how researchers, librarians and publishers can work together to create structures for managing and communicating scientific data.

This is very important for Canada at the moment since we no longer have a science council, a science adviser, there are severe cut backs for scientific researcher and science publishing is being cut.

I will be attending and reporting on the conference.

Relativity makes the numbers tangible. Sugar Stacks makes sugar content labels that much more easier to understand.

via: Boing Boing

That is the title of a Wired Article I just read! Short! Sweet! and to the point as to ways to put good data to use!

Happy earth day all!

The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS)

is a large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials (such as reference grammars) by a team of more than 40 authors (many of them the leading authorities on the subject).

It also consists of

of 141 maps with accompanying texts on diverse features (such as vowel inventory size, noun-genitive order, passive constructions, and “hand”/”arm” polysemy), each of which is the responsibility of a single author (or team of authors). Each map shows between 120 and 1370 languages, each language being represented by a symbol, and different symbols showing different values of the feature. Altogether 2,650 languages are shown on the maps, and more than 58,000 datapoints give information on features in particular languages.

And it is available online for free! Kudos to the linguists!

Via: Open Access News

Philippe Rekacewicz — mars 2009, Monde Diplomatique

I came across this headline for a map – la Géographie des savants accompanied by the following article La guerre des idées this morning. I also discovered a treasure trove of global issue thematic cartographic representations.  There was also a great article that reinvoked that age old debate around visualization, art, objectivity, truth in La cartographie, entre science, art et manipulation.  It is very refreshing to see and read this material since in the non-French world we rarely use the word cartography in any popular sense anymore, and with the advent of google and mashups we are also seeing mapping, and GIS – which of course have their merits but do lack in the aesthetic communicative rigour. Cartography is a wonderful scientific art that both delights and informs, and what a pleasure to find a rich visual narrative of the world here at le Monde Diplomatique this morning.