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A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
One of Sunlight’s resident creative geniuses (yes, there are many of them) have taken all the Defense Appropriations Earmarks and made them available for viewing within Google Earth. (You can only view this using Google Earth which you can download from this page.) The regular Google Maps version is available here.
And as they say: a picture really is worth a 1,000 words. One of our policy wonks loved the flight simulator that allows you to fly over earmark locations. It allows you to fly your choice of two aircraft anywhere around the globe, with custom layers visible from the aircraft. The simulator is hidden within the latest version of the program, and takes some getting used to controlling, but is certainly an entertaining way to experience the Earth’s actual geography-and to educate yourself politically at the same time.
[...] Much of Ellen’s talk focuses on the tools Sunlight and partners have built. She shows a visualization of earmarks, using IBM’s Many Eyes tools, which makes it extremely clear that Alaska (especially under Senator Ted Stevens) gets vastly more in earmarks per capita than any other state. She shows the beautiful map of defense appropriation earmarks mappen on Google Earth. [...]
10:42 am on Sep 21, 2009[...] Much of Ellen’s talk focuses on the tools Sunlight and partners have built. She shows a visualization of earmarks, using IBM’s Many Eyes tools, which makes it extremely clear that Alaska (especially under Senator Ted Stevens) gets vastly more in earmarks per capita than any other state. She shows the beautiful map of defense appropriation earmarks mappen on Google Earth. [...]
3:08 pm on Sep 21, 2009