Beautiful B-2 Spirit and not-so-beautiful DoD testimony

Let's look at pictures first, before getting into the nitty gritty of U.S. Air Force project management.

Putting a B-2 through its paces at 90° North

This is a beautiful photo of a beautiful B-2 Spirit approaching the North Pole.

Testing B-2 performance at a
geomagnetic extreme point 

The US Air Force provides some details about this test flight:

A B-2 Spirit flies to the North Pole on October 27, 2011, on a test mission from Edwards Air Force Base, California. The polar flight helped ensure that the B-2 maintains its combat capability in all environments...

The North Pole's coordinates are 90° North latitude and 0° East or 0° West longitude, take your pick. (For the sake of notational accuracy, it is usually expressed as 90° North but disregard that for the moment.) Patience, please, as I am going somewhere with this.

Comfortable expedition to the North Pole
thanks to Russian icebreaker (2013)

So, 90°N 0°E is merely a "quarter" rotation of the Earth away from coordinates of  0°N 0°E according to the map projection of the World Geodetic System 1984. WGS84 is an often used global reference system for modeling the Earth. The U.S. Department of Defense and GPS (Global Positioning System) both use WGS84. 

Notably, the DoD developed GPS AND made it freely available to all in the early 1980s.

Null Island is L0L0

If one is doing geocoding with GPS and WGS84, the Library of Congress describes 0°N 0°E as 

"a curious blend of real and imaginary geography, of mathematical certainty and pure fantasy"

Make America Porcine Again

Years ago, I found a post on the University of Michigan's Map Library blog. I consider it evergreen, as it is about two of my favorite things: Piggies and cartography!  Now seems like a good time to write about it. After all, maps were the safest way to travel during the COVID19 pandemic. Old maps even allow one to travel in time, with sufficient imagination.

In lieu of the Map Library blog, I turned to Big Think's Strange Maps. I located this excellent post, National Porcineographic: Portrait of America as a Young Hog.

Helping humans by helping pigs

William E. Baker was a 19th century tailor. He made his fortune thanks to a strategic alliance with what became the Grover & Baker Sewing Machine Company. (It was later acquired by Singer Sewing Machines.) Baker's philanthropy was extensive, but centered on his Hygienic Farming and Sanitary Cookery initiative. He wanted to improve human health by helping pigs.

Unvirtuous circle: Boston was a cesspool

New England rapidly industrialized, and the population grew along with it. An ecosystem evolved but it was of a distinctly pragmatic sort. The City of Boston instituted a garbage pick-up service but then disposed of the garbage anywhere and everywhere possible. Typical locations for garbage dumping were on the outskirts of the city or in neighboring communities. It was NOT environmentally friendly! Town and nearby country dwellers developed a recycling response: They fed the garbage to pigs.

W.E. Baker believed that this practice was the cause of much disease, in both swine and the people who consumed unwholesome pork. In 1875, he introduced a 'Sanitary Piggery' in rural Massachusetts. It was the cornerstone of Baker's contribution to the pure food movement.

"Baker’s Sanitary Piggery involved a clean environment and wholesome food for its porcine residents - it was even rumored they had individual beds, and slept under sheets. That may have been hyperbole, but it underscores Baker’s belief that public health depended greatly on sanitary food production."

He didn't blame pigs for the filth and squalor in which they, um, wallowed.

The world’s finest example of porcineography

The Porcineograph 

Cartography of Second Life

Surprise! Cartography enthusiast and mapping patron David Rumsey was there too: Viewing Second Life.

Me

I am Ellie Heartsdale. I owned a small corner plot of land on an island sim in the west. I built a little house there, for me and the piggies. I went to the Second Life synagogue, in Nessus, on Friday nights.

Piggies

My father was still alive then. I was working for the State of Arizona, Department of Health Services, Office for Children with Special Health Care Needs, as chief research statistician. That was my title, "Research Statistician, chief".

I was happy, but as usual, didn't realize it at the time.

Maps

Finding the L0L0 cat

In the days of Google's youth

This is one of my favorite April Fool's Day special features from Google. The video is brief, so do listen, please? 

Things were different then, even though the year was already 2012. The Google Tokyo employee in the video is a native Japanese language speaker. Notice how he has fun with us, pronouncing all his "L"s as "R"s in English?! There's the subject matter as well, evoking Nintendo, I believe? That living room is so elegant and beautiful. 

Another subtle detail is the date. It is 31 March. Why? Well, because the date was already 1 April in Japan! 

I enjoyed the dial-up modem sounds.

The Google NES 8-bit is a replacement for what I had in its place when I originally wrote this. At the time, I had segued to something cartographic using a GIF from Funny Blog. Unsurprisingly, Funny Blog and the source of the GIF are both long gone. You'll have to use your imagination. The GIF was a special feline hybrid: The Cat Erpillar!

Funny Blog has a funny cat for you!

Source: Silver Jewelry Life

Where is the L0L0 cat?

The idea for this came to me from the lolcat internet meme, although this is more cartographic, than feline. I'll give one clue to solving the mystery of the L0L0 cat's location, and why it is special. The clue is:

"What is the name of the official Google map product blog on Blogger?"

Not the URL, but the name of the blog. I must intercede with another update. The official Google map product blog no longer exists under its prior name. (The format is worse too. Like every other website, each entry is arranged as a grid of square blocks, making it difficult to ever find anything.) In the past, it was called the Google Latitude Longitude Blog.

Have a look at the map, and observe the caption at the bottom center. The caption is truly L0L0 rather than LOL or LOLO. 

The map may be enlarged here by clicking on it. It isn't necessary to open it on another page if you don't want to, although you can by clicking the underlined caption below. I didn't use Google Earth, only Google Maps, so no additional software is required to view. (Google Earth formerly required a download of software in order to support 3D rendering.)

Click here for a full-size view of the Land of L0L0

The triangular red map-marker--with an exclamation point--shows the physical location of the L0L0 cat but doesn't solve the puzzle.

I hope I haven't given the answer away.

Guide Me Home

A Near-Future Science Fiction Short Story

My journey began near the site of Google's offices in Beijing, shuttered and dark after permanent closure some years earlier by the government of the People's Republic of China. My destination was Camelback Road in Phoenix, in the U.S.A. My home. I could return. I had completed the assignment.

Pacific crossing

Time was not of the essence, thankfully. My transport choices in China were limited, to say the least. I didn't even have a bicycle! I would be traveling on foot for much of the journey. Fortunately, some ferry boats were still in operation. A kayak was waiting for me. Promises were kept. By ferry, occasional kayaking and motorboat relays, I returned to  U.S. territory at long last, to Guam. Hawaii was next. I arrived without incident, intending to rest for a brief time.

         View larger map

Hawaii was beautiful. Photos on The Map did not lie. But I couldn't linger. I returned to my Map. It would be impossible to cross the treacherous waters from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland without it. I traveled by ferry boat and assorted small craft. This was the most difficult part of the route home.

Finally, after more than 100 days in transit, I reached the coastline of North America. I entered via the more negotiable waterways near  Vancouver, although I would've preferred Seattle-Tacoma. The directions said that several short intervals of kayaking would be necessary. I was prepared. I had kept my kayak, but was glad to see the last of it!

Paseo del Norte

I was very worried about the notoriously strict Canadian border patrol.

Fortunately, my contact at Google's Redmond headquarters was informed of the situation. He met me at the border, plying the guards with two crates of brand-new, shrink-wrapped Microsoft PCs with optical processors inside. They are, effectively, quantum computers, yet have the footprint of a Windows 7 wireless phone. Such wonderful contraband, complete with factory installed Chrome Operating System!

Microsoft Optical PC: Small footprint prototype
 via the future and my imagination

You seem surprised. How so? Oh, my apologies!  I neglected to mention the massive consolidation that American industry and technology underwent during the economic and societal Aftermath.  That's how we refer to it now.

Euphemisms are a blessing.

Reconstruction

Let me pause a moment and get you caught up. This is what happened. Google and Microsoft consolidated. There were no succession problems following Bill's demise. Melinda Gates had years of experience as a Microsoft product manager prior to her marriage.

MS Google, as the combined entity was known, was warmly welcomed by locals in Washington State and Oregon after the auto da fe that destroyed Facebook. The populations of both states were delighted when Facebook's not-so-secret coal slurry and brimstone fueled data center was finally decommissioned!

Poor Apple. They were not social enough to get along with the others.

All that remained of venerable IBM were the Armonk and Almaden research centers. These IBM Research folk had PhD's and such, but very different attitudes compared to their predecessors. They quickly, and sensibly, requested a non-hostile takeover by Amazon Web Services. The merged entity chose to drop the "B" from the former International Business Machines, and became AWSIM.

AWSIM soon joined with Intel and AMD. Nowadays, AWSIM provides cloud computing, toasters and nearly anything else that MS Google or General Motors doesn't. AWSIM also acts as exclusive contractor to the U.S. Government. Probably will continue that until we get caught up again. There isn't any need for competitive bidding, not when I've just listed the only high-tech companies still in existence!

What was that you asked me? GM? Yes, General Motors is still here. We wouldn't have buses and blimps if they weren't! I don't recall the details, but I'm certain that GM did a reverse-IPO a long time ago. It continues to be a 100% employee owned and managed company.

Well! Enough of that! I must be on my way. I still have miles and miles to go before I sleep, working my way south, home to Phoenix. The thick blue path of The Map is my ley line. It glows softly yet does not flicker. I have no fear of getting lost with that to guide me. No, no fear at all.