Monday Mailing
Year 21 • Issue 14 08 December 2014 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
The Secret History of Cars Begins With Bicycles Rebranding NASA For a New Space Age December Issue of Local Focus Now Online Bill Nye Takes On A Controversial Issue In A Way That Pretty Much Everyone Can Get On Board With This Graphic Designer Created a Beautiful New Way of Visualizing the Year in Weather. Symphony of the Soil – Free Viewing 4th Annual Women in Agriculture Conference Rural Hospitals in Critical Condition Can Business And Tech Transform The Way Our Government Works By 2020? RAC Launches Rural Obesity Prevention Toolkit
1. The Secret History of Cars Begins With Bicycles When Carlton Reid set out to write his book about the history of how bicyclists led the late-19th-century push for better roads—and later became the vanguard of the motoring movement—he thought it might be of interest to a relatively select few. He posted the project, titled Roads Were Not Built for Cars, on Kickstarter, and hoped for the best. Reid, the executive editor of the United Kingdom trade publication Bike Biz, was shocked when he met his £4,000 goal (about $6,250) in less than 24 hours. He eventually brought in more than £17,000 in pledges, and when he published the book this fall, the first print edition immediately sold out. Quote of the Week: “The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.” ~E.E. Cummings Oregon Fast Fact: The Oregon Trail is the longest of the overland routes used in the westward expansion of the United States. The Trail used from 1840 to 1860 began in Missouri and ended in Oregon. It was about 2,000 miles long.
Fortunately, Reid’s meticulously researched and handsome work is available for the iPad, where it comes with 10 videos and more than 500 fascinating historical illustrations. (A second printing is in the works.) To access the full story, click here. 2. Rebranding NASA For a New Space Age Since the 2011 shuttering of the space shuttle program, NASA has been more aggressively revamping its image as both deep-space pioneer and partner to a burgeoning commercial space industry. Integral to that process is a more strategic use of social media, astronaut outreach, external research and STEM support, pop culture tie-ins, and media production to better educate and more interactively engage the public and its imagination. "Since the retirement of space shuttle, you’re beginning to see the needle move—and not just for Mars, but for our Earth science missions and the International Space Station (ISS)," says Bob Jacobs, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for communications. "It’s a more strategic turning up of the volume on a particular activity. A lot of industries are copying what we're doing in terms of public engagement." To access the full story, click here. Page 1 of 4