got geoint?

Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post on got geoint? They say that an unclever person always brings up the weather when in conversation at parties or events. The sophisticates of the world believe that it is too easy to fall back on talking about the weather, and that we should be able to expound upon current events, arts and literature at any moment. Well, perhaps its because our subscription to The New Yorker recently ran out because the only theme we can think about this week is GEOINT and the heat. Yes, the east coast has experienced its first heat wave of the summer this week — causing children to be sedentary, as well as creating a run on hair products at CVS as many tried to combat any “bad hair trauma” caused the humidity. So, yes, welcome to our “unclever” FFT post all about GEOINT the high temperatures. We hope you enjoy!

Sun Mapping – It’s a Business
Google “Sun Mapping” and guess what comes up. That is right a company called Sun Mapping. Brilliant. Sun Mapping, LLC is a Certified MBE & DBE Business specializing in digital topographic mapping. Here’s some more from the web site: The owners and staff of Sun Mapping have vast knowledge and experience in the photogrammetric industry. Together the owners, James Ponce de Leon, Mona M. Stefanski & Antonio Leon III total over 69 years of experience in the mapping field. During that time they have obtained a full understanding of the photogrammetric process. So, wait. The owner of Sun Mapping is James Ponce de Leon? Did we get that correctly or is it just the heat getting to us?

So, What is a Heat Map?
Thankfully we have Wikipedia to answer that question. A heat map is a graphical representation of data where the values taken by a variable in a two-dimensional map are represented as colors. A very similar presentation form is a tree map. The term is also used to mean its thematic application as a choropleth map. Heat maps originated in 2D displays of the values in a data matrix. Larger values were represented by small dark gray or black squares (pixels) and smaller values by lighter squares. Sneath (1957) displayed the results of a cluster analysis by permuting the rows and the columns of a matrix to place similar values near each other according to the clustering. Jacques Bertin used a similar representation to display data that conformed to a Guttman scale. Did you get that? So, it does not map actual temperatures? Boy, we need to be reading more than the New Yorker these days.

Bad Hair Day
Okay. So, it wasn’t just the ladies complaining about the humidity this week and how it caused a string of bad hair days. We saw an increase in hair gel usage — thankfully not Jersey Shore level — from the guys. Bottom-line is a bad hair day can wreck everything for everybody. But, don’t get down. We have found the remedy for a bad hair day. How about the sweet sounds of the 80s metal cover band called “Bad Hair Day.” Formed in 1999, Bad Hair Day – The ULTIMATE Tribute to 80’s Hairbands – has performed all over the East Coast, bringing back the days of the Hairbands – Poison, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Warrant, Guns N Roses, Van Halen, Def Leppard, Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, Whitesnake, and many many more. Yes!! Perhaps we can hire these guys to play GEOINT 2010!

Songs About The Heat
For some reason, songs that metaphorically talk about heat are very popular. Despite the havoc it can cause on our hair, we like the heat. And, we like to rock out to songs about hot temperatures. So, here you go. A special Friday’s Food for Thought video series on heat. Enjoy.

Glenn Frey – The Heat is On


Billy Idol – Hot in the City

Nelly – Hot in Herre

Velvet Underground – White Light/White Heat

Violent Femmes – Blister in the Sun

The Cure – Hot, Hot, Hot

We hope you stay cool this weekend!

Tags: Billy Idol, Blister in the Sun, Friday's Food for Thought, GEOINT and the Heat, Glenn Frey, got geount?, Mapping of Heat, Nelly, Songs about summer, Sun Mapping, The Cure, USGIF, Violent Femmes