Another brilliant XKCD

The accompanying website, Explain XKCD, offers some background. The explanation includes details like the map projection, so this is safe for Geomatics students, too.

Rooftop agriculture

A rooftop agriculture project at Thammasat University in Bangkok is getting lots of attention. The garden is designed to produce food across 7,000-square-meters of campus rooftops. And the landscape architect responsible for the project, Landprocess' Kotchakorn Voraakhom, has balanced art and science to create a remarkable experience.

"We tend to make a distinction between buildings and green spaces but green spaces can be part of building design in cities like Bangkok, which has few green spaces," said Ms Kotchakorn. If you haven't heard of Landprocess already, you will after this project.

Harbingers

Jason Kottke has a fascinating post about harbingers, "people who are out of sync with the rest of society." Since the paper is from B-school professors, it is focused on people who are out of sync with their purchases. There is a predictability in the people who embrace new products that will eventually fail. When marketers find out that these people like the new product, it is a bad harbinger for that product.

The part that really caught my attention was the geographic phenomenon of harbinger zip codes. These are places where doomed products (like Crystal Pepsi) thrive. What else could could harbinger zip codes tell us? What made them that way? Could they help us identify development patterns to avoid?

While the research paper does not single out Harbinger, NC, but it would be amazing if it were in a harbinger zip code.

Get better at studying

December 1.
It is time to get serious about studying.
The semester will be over in days.

Instead of dreading the final push, maybe you should take the advice from this author and learn how to enjoy studying.
The A you get in organic chemistry will just be icing on the cake.