JamesCronen.com

While chatting with Robin on the way home from dinner at some friends’ house tonight, we wondered what needed to be demolished to lay down Interstate 787 in Watervliet, New York. Anything? Was it a vibrant neighborhood, or just unusable swampland?

Google or Microsoft, this one’s up for grabs: Historical Maps. Add another slider to the Google or Bing Maps page that allows the view to go backwards through time.

I’m sure someone in the world owns the complete collection of topographical and general reference maps for specific time periods. It wouldn’t take too much effort to scan in all the maps and stitch them together. (Not too much effort, that is, if you’re a big company.)

Feel free to use that idea, Microsoft or Google (or Mapquest, if you’re still around). You don’t need to pay me any royalties. Just tell me what’s under I-787.

I always get a warm, fuzzy feeling when Google recognizes physicists in their Google doodle.

Today is Hans Christian Oersted’s birthday, and this famous physicist has been shown the love:

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Danish natural philosopher Oersted was one of the first physicists to link electricity and magnetism. His work paved the way for James Clerk Maxwell’s revolutionary four equations that perfectly mathematically-modeled electromagnetism.