Schierer Space

As someone who works in the aviation industry where traffic patterns and morning pushes are a major input into our designs, its nice to just sit back and watch the beauty of it.

This art project by Aaron Koblin (as first seen on digg) renders the daily US traffic pattern as dynamic visual art.

As an engineer in this field, I see many familiar patterns. The recording begins in late evening with the traffic winding down. Then redeye flights from the west coast seem to trigger the morning ‘push’ at 6-7AM (ET), the slight lull before noon. The noon commuter flights on the East coast spreading across the continent. Finally the evening traffic which continues right up until midnight. You can also observe all of the European flights arriving in the morning, and leaving at night.

Edit:  After viewing the comments I found these somewhat more literal but also intersting visualizations (on You-Tube)

• 25 Hours of Fed Ex traffic
  
• Fed Ex Traffic Dodging a Thunderstorm

At the risk of scooping The Evil Eyebrow on a signage issue, this is actually a month old story…
As heard on As It Happens, Vienna is beginning to introduce gender neutral street signs to raise awareness of equality issues. Unfortunately, the spokesperson was somewhat difficult to understand in her excitement (you can listen to the interview). As a result, I was left with the impression that all signs denoting gender would be randomly dispersed with alternate signs showing the opposite gender. (Imagine the crisis at the urinal!)

Fortunately, the ACTUAL approach is considerably more practical. I tried to find some actual images of the new signs (I found this one, but from the radio interview, understand that this one was not actually used) , but instead found these somewhat cynical alternatives. In any case, basically the idea is that instead of an exit or crosswalk sign showing the typical male stick figure, there are equivalent signs with female figures. For the previous image of a woman changing a baby’s diaper, there is now a man changing a diaper (and I thought the US picture simply showing a diapered baby made sense). Here’s a short article on the subject.

I’m left wondering how the women are denoted since I’ve heard hints of controversy regarding the typical bathroom signs and their skirt wearing patroness.

As I’ve grown up the strange uniqueness of my last name has turned out to be not so terribly uncommon.  Even less so when all of the possible misspellings are considered.  For some reason I stumbled on this data for immigrant registrations under the name of Schierer.  Any number of those could be truly related to me.  Most probably aren’t.

Bill recently contacted us regarding a rumor that there is an upside-down traffic light (green on top) in a neighborhood in Syracuse.  I had heard the story before although I have not ventured to see it.  I think its time for a road-geek trek (to also look at another artifact that we are attempting to capture for the aforementioned persona).  To hold you over, here are a couple of references to the light (thanks Google):

Visit Syracuse Tourist Site

Upsate New York Roadgeek Meet October 2005

Due to the final arrival of winter, I had plenty of time on the way in to work today to stare at the license plate of the car in front of me.  I still don’t know what it means. 

Seen on a black (maybe dark blue) Saab: “EMDR HAP”

Anyone? Anyone?

With the holiday season upon us, I am once again pondering the political correctness of my traditional “Merry Christmas” greeting. On one hand, if the party I am greeting does not celebrate the secular or religious Christmas holiday, am I being insensitive by failing to acknowledge that they may not wish to celebrate Christmas? On the other hand, I have chosen to celebrate Christmas, and part of my observance is the wish for peace, love and joy to all. So is the greeting the extension of my holiday wish to them? Or the denial of any holiday practice but my own?

I’m often left to turn this around? Would I be offended if someone wishes me happy Channukah or Ramadan? To be honest, I suppose I would be be slightly surprised, but why? Is it so uncommon to wish someone good will on these holidays (certainly not)? Or is this lack of exposure simply a product of my WASP upbringing and surroundings?

“Happy Holidays” and related phrases always seem so hollow to me for their sort-of generic compliance. Although I would consider myself religious, I am also a pragmatist and engineer. Certainly “Happy Holidays” is the practical, safe thing to say, but why do I rebel? Is it my religious tendencies, or my independent streak?

I suppose I must be satisfied to realize that the fact that I have this mental discussion every time I greet (or am greeted) during this season at least means I am sensitive to the holiday needs of others. At the same time, I just find that I’m far more likely to wish…

Shocking as it may seem to some, I am not a coffee drinker. Coffee is inherently part of the engineering world, so there are industrial coffee machines which set next to the microwave at work. As I wait for my lunch to be irradiated -excited technically, but who would want to eat excited food- I find myself reading the warnings on the industrial coffee makers.

At first I was laughing at the typical overemphasized way the hot liquid had burned into the flesh off of the hapless soul who had opted to actually make more coffee. But then… in a flash of inspiration… I interpeted the image as a manifestation of the FSM reaching out with His Noodly Appendage to bless the maker of the coffee. Several Noodly Appendages are visible, along with lines which must indicate His aura. After a while I had managed to determine some alternate way to explain all of the icon’s features as extensions of this theory.

On the other hand, I might just have been hungry.