The downside of a mobile phone camera

I was too far away for a good photo to be taken with my camera phone but I still like the magic of this photo taken in the little park at the Ainslie Shops in the ACT.

The little kid, dressed as a fireman is lecturing to  his grandparents...and has obviously sparked the interest of the oversized bronze of a snail.

Ah, for a few more pixels and a slightly better angle.

Towards better journalism

One of the people on The Drum yesterday mentioned in passing a journalism  model being pioneered in the Netherlands for building trusted news sources.  "De Correspondent" is in Dutch but they are intent on creating an English version. 
The Correspondent wants to redefine what news is about. "we don’t cover the weather, we cover the climate", informing you about how the world really works.
Rather idealistically, here is what the site claims it is about:

1. We are an ad-free platform funded by paying members. We also accept funding from organizations whose investments contribute directly to our journalistic goals. Any such agreement will include one non-negotiable condition: full editorial independence.
2. We fight stereotypes, prejudice, and fear mongering
3. We don’t just cover the problem, but also what can be done about it
4. We collaborate with you, our knowledgeable members.
5. We don’t take the view from nowhere. We tell you where we’re coming from, At The Correspondent, we don’t think journalists should pretend to be ‘neutral’ or ‘unbiased’.
6. We protect your privacy, by minimizing the personal data we collect
7. We want to be as inclusive as possible. Journalism is at its best when it includes many different perspectives and worldviews. That’s why we seek to include people from a broad variety of backgrounds, both in our newsroom and on our platform.
8. We always put journalism before financial gain. We do not maximize shareholder return, limiting dividends to 5 percent of revenue.
9. We believe in transparency and continued self-improvement
10. We know we’re not ‘the fix’ for what’s wrong in journalism, and we know that there’s no one way to do it. When we make mistakes, we admit and correct them. 

To get a taste of what they are about, it is best to read some of their articles. Fortunately, the ones available from the site, flipped from Dutch to English by Google Translate, are remarkably readable.  I can see why some people are getting excited.  Here is an excellent example of what the final product is like. It delves into why Nigerians are risking death to migrate to Europe. 
More detail about the De Correspondent platform can be seen on Wikipedia

Pushing a future

Tesla's primemover sells not on sexiness but on economy

After reading so much doom and gloom about Climate, it is lovely to come across a well-founded, optimistic article about how we can fix so many of our current issues using tech.

The writer, Michael Liebreich, is a heavyweight Yankee consultant at Bloomberg who has been advising business for 20 years about how to navigate the changes now closing in.

He is optimistic that we can innovate our way out of the transport dilemma. He concludes we are already working on it.

“Since replacing expensive fossil fuels with cheap electricity should save money as well as reducing emissions, it does not require much more than short-term pump priming and regulatory alignment, rather than long-term subsidies or a carbon price. A huge market opportunity, that moves us closer to hitting the Paris goals, and that should not require long-term subsidies or a carbon price. What’s not to like?

This paper published this week, is a light wander (10 minute read) through some of those innovations that should shape our world for the good. If you want to look further, links are noted.

 ...and for fun, if you have the time, here is a 15 min YouTube vid exploring what we found to be true about the use of electric bikes when we visited China last year...it is a revolution.

We don't trust social media

What do social media news consumers dislike *most* about getting news on social media? Concerns about inaccuracy top the list https://t.co/xdLHyM2tYY pic.twitter.com/x9aJfLYTDu

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) September 10, 2018

Double your pleasure, double your fun

Old Lithium Metal batteries were replaced by The shorter life Lithium-ion type because of safety issues

True techie stuff but a different approach to Lithium batteries could drastically increase charge size, battery life and safety.

Manufacturers swapped to the Lithium-ion batteries when the plain metal batteries started catching fire.

If the breakthrough is real we could see a doubling of current mobile battery life. Implications for the economics and usability of EVs are profound.

Still a lot of work to be done but breakthroughs like this tend to be fast tracked to market 

https://techxplore.com/news/2018-08-battery-breakthrough-lithium-metal-doesnt.html

One lump or two?

The coal lobby has won.
Our new prime minister, Scott Morrison, has ended the fusion of the energy and environment portfolios in the Australian Government
On Sunday, he appointed one of the country’s most prominent anti-wind campaigners, Angus Taylor, as energy minister, while a former mining industry lawyer, Melissa Price, became the environment minister.
Morrison's chief of staff is John Kunkel, the former deputy CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia, the same group that thoughtfully provided a lacquered lump of coal for the then Treasurer to wave around parliament in February

This despite a Lowy Institute finding published in June that, overwhelmingly, Australians want to move to renewables.

Mapping for Google

One of my hobbies is contributing to Google Maps.

I have provided, over the last five years, 455 reviews, 3581 photos and discovered for Maps 24 new locations. Consequently, I do have a reasonable feel for where it is headed.
And I am not particularly happy.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to do anything but review accomodation, shops and restaurants. On any marked public space, Maps will ask if you want to "claim this business" and it has a constant problem with out of town businesses declaring themselves as located on public lands.
At the same time, significant cultural sites can be ignored or poorly marked. It is hard to do.
I live in the national capital of Australia, which is strewn with significant sites, symbolic monuments, museums and galleries and thus often have very human juxtapositions that should be noted.
For example, the Australian War Memorial has, over the term of the current conservative government, been steadily more politicised with promotion of militarism over the waste of war. The adjoining Poppy Restaurant actually promotes a current political figure. This is not sufficiently represented in Maps.

Across Lake Burley Griffin is Old Parliament House which is well marked but colourless in its entry, confused with the reviews of the Museum of Democracy, the cafe and the restaurant that it houses.  What we should have is more historical photos that put it in context much as the Australian War Memorial does.  For example, why not the inclusion of the front steps at the opening and again at the famous moment when Whitlam was dismissed?

Opening 1927

Whitlam Dismissal crowd on steps of the Old Parliament House

But perhaps the best example is the controversial and culturally significant Aboriginal Tent Embassy, on the lawns of Old Parliament House

It is described by Local Guide Chris Forker as the "Informal embassy of Australia's first people" is poorly represented photographically(but is elsewhere) with no commentary or link back to Wikipedia and split over two entries. Worse, the best entry is obscured under the vague and difficult to discover name "Sovereign Tribal Original Embassy of the land now known as Australia (Aboriginal Tent Embassy)" The fight to take possession of the adjoining abandoned restaurant has been well-documented in photos

All three sites are difficult subjects to map but somehow Google does have to come to terms with how to best map the cultural dimension to such locations.