Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Daily Archives: September 19, 2016

National Geo – How Mapmakers Make Mountains Rise Off the Pages

Greg Miller, National Geographic, September 16, 2016:  “The world’s most beautiful places are rarely flat. From the soaring peaks of the Himalaya to the vast chasm of the Grand Canyon, many of the most stunning sites on Earth extend in all three dimensions. This poses a problem for mapmakers, who typically only have two dimensions to work with. Fortunately, cartographers have some clever techniques for creating the illusion of depth, many of them developed by trial and error in the days before computers. The best examples of this work use a combination of art and science to evoke a sense of standing on a mountain peak or looking out an airplane window. One of the oldest surviving maps, scratched onto an earthenware plate in Mesopotamia more than 4,000 years ago, depicts mountains as a series of little domes. It’s an effective symbol, still used today in schoolchildren’s drawings and a smartphone emoji, but it’s hardly an accurate representation of terrain. Over the subsequent centuries, mapmakers made mostly subtle improvements, varying the size and shape of their mountains, for example, to indicate that some were bigger than others…”

Center for Research Libraries Moves to Open Source Collections to Public Domain Access

Bernard F. Reilly, President, Center for Research Libraries:  “…as of January 1, 2017, all digital materials hosted on the web by CRL, that derive from source materials in the public domain or for which CRL has secured the requisite rights and permissions, will be available without restriction. This decision has important implications for CRL, and the move… Continue Reading

Wharton – large and small firms discontinuing annual performance reviews

Knowledge@Wharton – “When it comes to workplace events that produce resentment and anxiety, few score higher than the big annual performance review. Calls to end this time-consuming and often unproductive practice have gone unheeded — until now. Recently, Adobe, Kelly Services, GE, Deloitte and PwC have ended them, and the rippling out to smaller firms… Continue Reading

Assessing Time Served

Woods, Patrick Arthur, Assessing Time Served (September 16, 2016). Cardozo Public Law, Policy and Ethics Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1, Forthcoming. Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2839720 “This article examines the utility of a new way of determining when increased punishment should be imposed pursuant to “three strikes” laws or other recidivist enhancements. In the… Continue Reading

Financial State of the States 2015

Truth in Accounting: “Government reports are complicated, long documents. At Truth in Accounting (TIA), we believe that citizens deserve easy-to-understand, truthful, and transparent financial information from their governments. Without this, how can they participate in democracy? In order to give citizens the government financial information they deserve, Sheila Weinberg founded TIA in 2002. At TIA’s… Continue Reading

CRS Report – FDA Regulation of Medical Devices

FDA Regulation of Medical Devices, Judith A. Johnson, Specialist in Biomedical Policy, September 14, 2016. “Prior to and since the passage of the Medical Device Amendments of 1976, Congress has debated how best to ensure that consumers have access, as quickly as possible, to new and improved medical devices and, at the same time, prevent… Continue Reading

Advocacy Groups to Congress – Strengthen Congressional Oversight of Intelligence Community

September 13, 2016 via 33 organizations: “Dear Speaker Ryan and Minority Leader Pelosi, We write to express our concerns about congressional oversight of intelligence activities. Congress is responsible for authorizing and overseeing these programs. In recent years, experts and policymakers have expressed concern that congressional oversight efforts are falling short. Experts have put forth reform… Continue Reading

Corporate Tax Chartbook: How Corporations Rig the Rules to Dodge the Taxes They Owe

Economic Policy Institute Report By Frank Clemente, Hunter Blair, and Nick Trokel, September 16, 2016. “In recent years, corporate profits have reached record highs, and so too has the amount of untaxed profits U.S. corporations have stashed offshore: $2.4 trillion. And it is estimated corporations could owe as much as $700 billion on those profits.… Continue Reading