Interesting: A new year and a fresh batch of interesting reads

Happy new year! 2011 is widely tauted as a big year for visualization, crowdsourcing and social media and 2012 is predicted to be even bigger.

We are welcoming a new batch of students this week and will commence Semester 2 next week (January 9). In the meantime, below are a fresh batch of new reads from all over. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ken sent over some very thought-provoking, even controversial, articles:

• Climate change research stalled despite 2011's extreme weather events

• A professor of urbanisation says theories are practically useless and that good governance is the appropriate approach to reviving cities

From my Twitter feeds and other sources:

• Top 10 maps of 2011, according to the Spatial Analysis website of University College London

• Crowdsourcing is democratizing science

• A former Miss America (from Hawaii) is compiling a Map of the Human Story. This is an absolute must-read for all social scientists, as this project by Elizabeth Lindsey (an anthropologist specialising in cultural intelligence) incorporates mixed mediums (audio-visual, maps, text, etc) to examine spatio-temporal socio-cultural and political changes, and to convey the wisdom of the elderly. A brief introduction also here. Dr Lindsey also talks about 'curating humanity's heritage' in this Youtube video of her TED talk.

• Wow: A team of experts in Madrid have mapped air pollution in the city. The visual output is fascinating. 

• This newly published journal articles traces the evolution of crowdsourced street maps in Germany and compares OpenStreetMap data with commercial data from TomToms.

• Some suggestions from The Guardian on development studies reading material.

• Stone dragons mark ancient boundaries of London.