“Everyone and their dog is creating maps online now.”
–Oliver O’Brien, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London.
[Source]
Quotes
Quote of the Day: Restoring Science to its Rightful Place
“I believe one of the most important jobs I have as president is to restore science to its rightful place.”
–Barack Obama, 17 November 2010
Quote of the Day: Dr. Sylvia Earle on GIS for the Ocean at the 1999 Esri User Conference
“This is the time, perhaps as never before, and never again, for a new ethic: to do for the oceans in the 21st century–through technologies, through new understanding, through new insights–what was done in the 20th century for aviation, for aerospace.
“Where does GIS come in to all of this? I’ll put it another way. Where doesn’t GIS come in to the understanding of the ocean? After all, marine ecosystems, just as those on the land, are geospatial, and therefore so are the solutions that we must craft as we go forward.”
–Dr. Sylvia Earle in her keynote address at the 1999 Esri User Conference
Quote of the Day
“The truth about conservation is that some of the best work is done by intelligent folks sitting in front of computer screens, tied to a global community by a tangle of phone and internet lines, or in a board rooms surrounded by like-minded Patagonia- and Carhartt-clad colleagues.”
Quote of the Day
“From now on, space by itself and time by itself are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”
— Hermann Minkowski, 1908
(via Dr. Duane F. Marble)
Quote of the Day
“Current tendencies in many countries towards teaching to standardized exams puts us at risk of sliding toward the educational equivalent of fast food, instead of toward education providing the critical thinking society demands.”
–Dr. Michael Gould, Esri
Quote of the Day: “…applying our scientific knowledge to real problems is the payoff”
“It’s true that, as scientists, our basic job is to describe the world as it is. But I don’t think that that’s the only thing that matters. In fact, I think the reason why we’re here, the reason why we think this is such an exciting topic, is not that we think that the new moral psychology is going to cure cancer. Rather, we think that understanding this aspect of human nature is going to perhaps change the way we think and change the way we respond to important problems and issues in the real world. If all we were going to do is just describe how people think and never do anything with it, never use our knowledge to change the way we relate to our problems, then I don’t think there would be much of a payoff. I think that applying our scientific knowledge to real problems is the payoff.”
–Joshua D. Greene
Quote of the Day
“All models are wrong but some are useful.”
–George E.P. Box [source]
Quote of the Day
“It is not enough just to assess an installation’s impact on the environment; one must also assess the impact of a changing environment on the installation. ”
– Cleo Paskal, Columnist and Adjunct Professor, Global Change, SCMS, Kochi, India [source]
Quote of the Day
“A stone is simple. But you can build cathedrals of stones.”
–George Whitesides @TED
GIS and Science 