Floundering Around Friday

The pace is picking up, and yours truly can't keep up. This summer I've had to overlook some stories and been left scratching my head by others.  Proof of my floundering around can be found below:

July 5, 2012: Gotcha! Google Street View Leads to Conviction. Besides suffering from Street View story overload - I think I don't get this one because there was something lost in translation..... 

July 18, 2012: APCO Unveils Vehicular Emergency Data Set to Encourage Deployment of Advanced Automatic Crash Notification by Vehicle Manufacturers.  OK, maybe I tuned this one out because it's a pretty dry story. But, some good folks put in many long hours to figure out communication standards that will allow automotive sensors of the future to automatically report the location and details of an accident to first responders.  Nice!  

July 19, 2012: Officials Approve Study of SF Bay Area Mileage Tax.  Best line in this story about using a GPS-based approach to track an individual's total miles driven, and specific roads used each day, is this quote: "The last thing we're interested in is where you go and what you do...." Huh?  See what I mean? I missed something.

August 21, 2012: U-M Transportation Research Institute Leads Way in 'Smart Car' Technology.  "Connected Cars, Confound Crashes" would be the short byline on this one.  The smarter machines get, the dumber I look.

September 3, 2012: Earthquake Damage: Are Bad Maps to Blame?  When I was growing up, Time magazine was one notch below Encyclopedia Britannica when it came to factual articles. With a title like that for this story, next thing you know Time will be blaming "Bad Maps" for a whole host of social ills like teen-age pregnancy, street crime, and bar brawls.     

OK, enough fooling around.  On a more serious note, here are three educational opportunities you may want to catch in the coming week:

• September 11, 2012: Understanding and Responding to Violence in Open Environments. Sponsored by our good friends at the Minnesota Chapter of InfraGard.  Click here for details.
• September 13, 2012: Quarterly Meeting of the MnGeo Emergency Preparedness Committee.  Meeting details can be found here.
• September 14, 2012: Connecting Grassroots to Government through Open Innovation. Webcast by the Wilson Center.  Details here.

 

And with that - have a great weekend!

Lead graphic:  http://www.luckyzucca.com