Friday, January 31, 2014

Exploring Boston: Mapping the lost 'Boston Neck'

Boston was originally a near island, connected to the mainland by a very narrow isthmus. The narrow strand was called Boston Neck. All foot traffic to and from Boston entered via the neck; shortly after its founding, the city built a defensive gate there.

The neck was so narrow that British solders dug a trench across it during the occupation of Boston at the outset of the Revolutionary War, turning Boston into a true island, for a while!

Here's a colonial map of Boston; I've indicated the neck with an arrow.

Here's what it looked like from the ground:


No trace of the original Neck remains today, but I was curious. I went looking for maps that would superimpose the colonial city on a current ,map, but could find none. Some old maps in the Boston Public Library offered hints, but also added confusion:

The original main street in and out of Boston changed names along its way: It began as Marlborough Street, changed to Newbury Street after a few blocks, and then changed again to Orange Street. After the Revolution, the street was given a unified name --- Washington Street.

Marlborough Street, Newbury Street, and Orange Street vanished, for a while.

Wikipedia says the Neck was about where this red circle is, at the intersection of what's now East Berkeley and Washington Streets:
I played with the maps, and --- after some futzing to get the sizes more or less correct --- overlaid the old, colonial map on the new Google map:


For clarity, I outlined the original shore:


This begins to show how much of Boston is reclaimed land: The original city was something like 4 square miles; it's now about 40 square miles (10sq.km/100sq.km).

Marlborough Street and Newbury Street eventually came back to life as new streets in the reclaimed section of Back Bay, wholly unconnected to their original locations. There's an Orange Street miles away, in another town; but the only remnant of Orange Street that remains in Boston proper is the name of the "Orange Line" subway!

And now we both know a little more useless trivia about Boston. :)


That horrible Obama, abusing Executive Orders... wait, what?

Executive Orders issued by Presidents (from Truman on, broken down by term):


Source: The American Presidency Project http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php

Weather geeks have it tough. (XKCD)



Monday, January 27, 2014

Google autocomplete reveals what people ask most about each US state.

Some silly fun:

@Amazing_Maps asked Google "Why is {name of state} so..." and compiled the autocomplete results in a map.

Some of the results are ego-bruising --- hello, Georgia ("backwards") and Illinois ("corrupt"); others are ego-buffing, like Massachusetts' "smart."   :)















Click for larger version to your own state:
https://twitter.com/Amazing_Maps/status/427137968789549056/photo/1

Saturday, January 25, 2014

In Science News | Report: Lake Ice Grows Safer To Venture Out On With Each Beer Consumed (via Onion)

 http://onion.com/1aQvCyp

This 5 min symphonette was created using 37 years of Voyager spacecraft data

"An Italian scientist has taken 37 years worth of data from both Voyager space probes and turned it into music. The result is surprisingly good.
"The composer, Domenico Vicinanza, is a project manager at Géant — Europe's high-speed data network that powers Cern and the Large Hadron Collider. He used 320,000 individual measurements of cosmic particle data taken at one-hour intervals using the spacecrafts' cosmic ray detector."

Details, 5-min audio (very pleasant!) via io9.com:  http://tinyurl.com/nel5pkx

(props: Karen Lopez ‏@datachick)

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

2013 tally: 7th warmest on record --- global warming continues apace.

"An analysis of global temperatures by NASA scientists shows that 2013 was the seventh warmest year since 1880 (tied with 2006 and 2009). Nine of the 10 warmest years on record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the warmest. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) reported that 2013 continued the long-term trend of rising air temperatures over the land and sea surface."  http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=82918&src=eoa-iotd



Monday, January 20, 2014

Rosetta, the comet-landing probe, should be awakening from its three-year hibernation about now...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqcDtRmJbKY

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta

http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Exploring Boston: Winter Birds on the Mystic

The Mystic River is a short waterway north of Boston that more or less parallels the lower end of the more-famous Charles River; both empty, side by side, into Boston Harbor.

Wikipedia says its name derives from the Wampanoag word "muhs-uhtuq", which translates to "big river." In an Algonquian language, "Missi-Tuk" means "a great river whose waters are driven by waves", alluding to the original tidal nature of the river. (The Mystic now has a flood-control dam that segregates its saline, tidal mouth from the fresh, tide-less upper river.)

During the "polar vortex" cold snap, the fresh-water portions of the Mystic froze solid, but with warmer weather, the flowing portions of the river have opened up again, and the local water birds have responded.

In addition to the usual gulls, the Mystic's open water near my apartment has seen an explosion of swans, canada geese, buffleheads, and large numbers of mallards and other common ducks.

A few cell phone snaps of the more unusual winter birds:

A hawk, probably a red tail:




A night heron, standing on the ice of  a small tributary of the Mystic:

 digital zoom (alas):

Swan on the partially-frozen river:


Someone forgot to tell the Sierra Nevadas...

...that global warming is a hoax.

SW US snowpack, last year vs this year:

(NOAA image)

Monday, January 13, 2014

Exploring Boston: Middlesex Fells Reservation Winter Hike

The "Friends of the Fells" sponsored a midwinter hike in the Middlesex Fells Reservation this past Sunday. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlesex_Fells_Reservation).

Oddly, the hike was more springlike than wintry: Saturday had seen torrential rains that melted much of the snow, and temps were around 40F/4C at the time of the hike. But it was still a pleasant ramble.

Some pix:

The heavy rains filled the smaller ponds so that what had been surface ice was now submerged. The layer of still, clean water over the white ice created some interesting mirror effects.
 photo P1120001Large_zps94ec2ca3.jpg

 photo P1120021Large_zps386368cc.jpg

 photo P1120006Large_zps8be74a74.jpg

 photo P1120009Large_zpsb7c4f3c6.jpg

The rising water also dislodged leaves, pine needles, and other debris, bringing some to the surface, to complement the ice-embedded and -covered items from before the storm.
 photo P1120007Large_zpsa1782260.jpg

 photo P1120024Large_zps4b0d2a05.jpg

The larger ponds still had mostly icy surfaces; the rain drained through crevasses into the main body of the water.
 photo P1120005Large_zps0a246ccc.jpg

A portion of Long Pond, in Winter.
 photo P1120015StitchLarge_zps4235057d.jpg

From last Summer, a shot from the nearly same vantage:
 photo 20130707_112326Large_zps8d484371.jpg

The light was oblique enough to bring out the mineral veining of the local rocks.
 photo P1120013Large_zps46370afa.jpg

 photo P1120031Large_zps6d28805f.jpg

 photo P1120032Large_zpsd1163a1a.jpg

We looped around to the west side of the large Middle Reservoir (this is a nearly 180 degree panorama):
 photo P1120027StitchLarge_zps39ab528d.jpg

It was a very pleasant walk, with the warm temperatures a special treat after the bitter cold of the "polar vortex" of the week previous!
 photo P1120019Large_zpsbebb672f.jpg

If you're in the area, Friends of the Middlesex Fells Reservation has regular hikes all winter long: http://www.fells.org/

Punctuation you've never heard of: the “gnaborretni.”

Info: Miscellany № 42: ¡gnaborretni?

Saturday, January 11, 2014

I wonder if I can hold them to this?

I renewed Lookout for my android devices yesterday, and this was the receipt. I highlighted the interesting part:


Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Boston First Night 2013-14

News Year's is celebrated at midnight just about everywhere, but First Night --- an extended, New Year's oriented, day-long, city-wide festival --- was started in Boston in 1975 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Night ). It's been copied in many, many cities and towns since then.

Last night's First Night in Boston was frigid (around 20F/-6C), but fun.

A few smartphone snaps follow; an album and slideshow are available; the latter works best at the "fast" setting.

Happy New Year!

 photo 20131231_165051_zpsa219e7f9.jpg

 photo 20131231_181102_LLS_zps80f3bbe4.jpg

 photo 20131231_181550_LLS_zpsd113376f.jpg

 photo 20131231_181606_LLS_zps9915bd04.jpg

 photo 20131231_181642_LLS_zpsedde3ca5.jpg


 photo 20131231_182849_zps6ef4a198.jpg

 photo 20131231_183317_zpsbc25bd7f.jpg


 photo 20131231_183434_zpsc57de4d6.jpg


 photo 20131231_190134_LLS_zps93427bcb.jpg

 photo 20131231_190152_LLS_zpse6e5dac3.jpg

 photo 20131231_190203_LLS_zps8d2622da.jpg