Points of Interest: January 11, 2005

RADARSAT Tsunami Imagery. Canada's RADARSAT-1 satellite has been acquiring and continues to acquire imagery over the devastated regions in support of these efforts by international governments and aid organizations. Space-based imagery is being used to assess disaster areas and direct relief efforts to the hundreds of thousands of people struggling to survive in the wake of the December 26th 2004 tsunamis that hit South Asia.

Quote of the Week. Raman Roy, who leads India's largest call centre provider Wipro Spectramind in Delhi, told an Asian Network reporter: "Geography is history because distances don't matter anymore. India happened to have a competent and skilled workforce who can speak good English - which is why we have taken over the industry."

GIS Humor. Reader David passed on a bit of humor from the U.S. Census Bureau. It seems someone at Census renamed Bevis Lake north of Seattle to Butthead Lake. USGS calls it Bevis, but records show that before that name it was Beaver Lake. Most importantly, I suppose, is the name used by those who spend time there. That'd be local Boy Scouts. They call it Brinkly Lake, after the camp there, Camp Brinkly.

Map Term Comes Out on Top. Attendees at the annual convention of the Linguistic Society of America on Friday chose the word or phrase that dominated national discourse over the course of the last year. It was ""red state, blue state, purple state." I suppose we should be honored that representational idea like this, keyed to a map, rose to the top of the pile. Perhaps, just perhaps, it will help non-map user respect the power and value of maps in politics and other pursuits.

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Source: Material used herein is often supplied by external sources and used as is.