But rebuild it they did. Once it was in flying shape the base commander congratulated them and said he’d find a new crew to fly it. Not surprisingly, Zeamer and his crew took exception to this idea, and according Walt Krell the crew slept in their airplane, having loudly announced that the 50 caliber machine guns were kept loaded in case anyone came around to ‘borrow’ it. There was a severe shortage of planes, so the base commander ignored the mutiny and let the crew fly – but generally expected them to take on missions that no one else wanted.
Month: October 2013
Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing. “I hope you publish this,” one of them said.
We have modified Banksy’s ‘Protester’ to show that the stereotypical violent protester is often an undercover cop,” said Keegan Stephan, organizer with Right of Way. “And we have expanded that message to show that the NYPD facilitates many types of violence. Here, we are highlighting their participation in traffic violence. Off-duty cops are driving drunk and killing New Yorkers; undercover cops are riding with motorcycle gangs that speed, ride recklessly, and worse; and on-duty cops almost always declare deadly drivers faultless and instead blame their victims. We need a wholesale shift in the NYPD’s attitude toward violence.
I recently asked Vaclav Havel about his admiration for the American rock star Lou Reed. He replied that it was impossible to overstate the importance of rock music for the Czech resistance during the years of darkness between the Prague Spring and the collapse of communism.
An ageing rocker by Salman Rushdie
Swiss Car, Bike, and Pedestrian Crash Map – Schweizer Unfallkarte
Swiss Car, Bike, and Pedestrian Crash Map – Schweizer Unfallkarte
Don’t get me wrong, this map is a great first start! While it is painful to understand that this map is a manifestation of lost lives and property, maps like this enable to turn software and data into dialogue to improve OUR STREETS.
BetaNYC’s testimony to the NYC City Council is exemplified in this map.
FIRST, if you use this map as a baseline to NYC’s crash map, it wouldn’t be possible to get down to the actual incident.
SECOND, you wouldn’t have the ability to see where on the road crashes happen.
THIRD, this data isn’t provided in realtime and must be refreshed by hand.
FOURTH, the data is “licensed” and is not available to third parties nor other developers to combine into more useful systems.
Kudos to the developers and liberators. You’ve given NYC a base point for discussion.
About the map.
The Swiss Crashmap is based on the accident register of the federal office for roads ASTRA. It contains all the 108’640 accidents registered by the police in 2011 and 2012 involving at least one vehicle. The data was collected by the police on the ground and anonymized by ASTRA.
The overview-mode only shows the black spots. By zooming in to street-level, the details of the different accidents are revealed. The causes of the accidents are deactivated in the detail-mode for legal reasons.The map was created by the Swiss newspapers SonntagsZeitung, Tages-Anzeiger and Le Matin Dimanche in collaboration with the Resarch Centre Sotomo of the University of Zurich. The data is licensed by ASTRA and may not be used by third parties without agreement
But for many occupiers, the primary reaction yesterday was one of indignation—while painting Occupy Wall Street as a public menace, the NYPD was infiltrating it with a man who is now facing assault charges.
“It’s interesting to think about how much stupid time and money and resources have been wasted surveilling us,” Clark Stoekley, a Newark artist and activist who was active in the early days of the movement says. “We’re nonviolent…Police are the enemy, not the occupiers.”
#betaNYC, a Code for America Brigade: Three wins – a recap on today’s #SafeStreetsMap hearing
#betaNYC, a Code for America Brigade: Three wins – a recap on today’s #SafeStreetsMap hearing
Long story short, NYPD said that NYC shouldn’t have a crime and crash map because the data would be confusing. When CM Dan Garodnick pushed if NYPD would improve their data collection, NYPD said that the state doesn’t ask for this data so not sure if NYPD should…
My testimony to NYC’s Council on #SafeStreetsMap Bill
Code for America / BetaNYC testimony for INT NO 1163-2013 at Transportation Committee on 10 October 2013.
Good morning Chairman Vacca and Transportation Committee. It is a great honor to address you and represent New York City’s technology community. Particularly, a rather active group of technologists – the civic technologist.
I am Noel Hidalgo. I work for Code for America, co-founded BetaNYC, and am on the City’s .NYC advisory board.
Code for America envisions a government that works by the people, for the people, in the 21st Century.
BetaNYC is a Code for America brigade in New York City. Additionally, we are members of the New York City Transparency Working Group that got the best Open Data Law passed. Our City’s Open Data law.
Every week, my community gathers around tables and computers to build better interfaces for government. We are comprised of hackers, mappers, and yackers. We have a community programming night – “a hacknight” – at NYU Rudin where we explicitly explore bicycle related data. In general, we take the City’s open data and put it to good use.
With our NYU Rudin event, we are concerned about safe streets for everyone – pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles. Because of poor, inconsistent, and non-existent crime and crash data creating tools to make safer streets is next to impossible.
As community members, we do not have the data to help citizens make smarter safety choices.
As City Council members, you do not have the data to know what is happening on the streets. Yet, the data exists!
In 2008, Washington DC challenged its civic technologists to start building apps on civic data. In its first year alone, 10 apps were created to build a safer DC. In 2009, NYC implemented BigApps – a program challenging its civic technologists to build apps on civic data. BigApps has gone through four iterations and fostered New York City to be New TECH City. Yet, because of NYC’s poor public safety data, we have not had the opportunity to build tools to make better and safer decisions.
I should point out that Ontodia/Pediacities, a winning BigApps team is here with us.
New York City needs your help. Because of NYC’s poor public safety data, we can not build tools for community boards to have insight into their communities. Because of NYC’s poor public safety data, we can not build tools to have immediate insight into crimes and crashes in your City Council districts.
Two weeks ago, when the Mayor’s office produced its “Open Data Plan,” NYPD did not include raw crime nor crash data. Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore, and our nation’s capital, Washington DC, produce open, detailed, and frequent crime and crash data for developers to integrate into their tools and generate insight.
We call on the council to amend this bill to cover crime AND crash data. Additionally, this bill needs to be amended to move away from legislating a user interface (a map) and focus on the raw and fundamental data. We need crime and crash data geolocated and published in a daily, disaggregated basis. The raw data needs to be openly available and frequently updated.
We need this data to build a city by the people, for the people, and for the 21st Century.
Today Rome does not burn – its stocks continue to rise, its wealthy continue to profit. Rome does not burn. Only its victims do.