Cory Doctorow at 10:16 PM March 11, 2010

The Olympics are coming to London, so our civil liberties are going out the window: because nothing epitomises the spirit of global competition and cooperation like corporate bullying and unfettered truncheon-waving.

Police will have powers to enter private homes and seize posters, and will be able to stop people carrying non-sponsor items to sporting events.

"I think there will be lots of people doing things completely innocently who are going to be caught by this, and some people will be prosecuted, while others will be so angry about it that they will start complaining about civil liberties issues," Chadwick said.

"I think what it will potentially do is to prompt a debate about the commercial nature of the Games. Do big sponsors have too much influence over the Games?"

Eyes turn to "value for money" London 2012 (Thanks, Bobby!)

(Image: More Riot Police a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Kashklick's photostream)

This Christmas tree in London is made out of recycled bicycle wheels, donated by a non-profit that ships bike parts to Africa to help with health care transportation in rural areas. A neat idea executed by a cool architecture firm, even though I don't think it really looks like a Christmas tree.

[Architects Journal via Inhabitat]

"These shadows all point towards the West side of Westminster Bridge, the Houses of Parliament side.."

By Michael Conroy | 30 October 2009

The BT Tower has been crowned with Europe's biggest LED screen, as part of the build-up to the 2012 Olympics. Floors 36 and 37 are now wrapped in a 59-metre-long screen built from more than half a million individual LEDs spread over an area of 280 square metres.

The screen is so luminous it can be seen from space at full brightness, the organisers say, and the words it displays will be legible throughout the city's West End.

The architects behind the project, Imagination, used a lightweight design that houses the LEDs in hundreds of rods spaced about 10cm apart. Had they used a solid screen construction, the weight would have affected the balance of the building, which wouldn't have been a great start to the countdown...

The "1000 Days" campaign kicks off tomorrow night at 8.45pm, when the screen will be switched on with much pomp and pyrotechnics. The tower will then count down each day to the Olympics, and broadcast various inspirational messages intended to excite the public in the run-up to the Games.

Wired.co.uk has also been assured to be on the look out for "something quite special" unveiling involving plenty of colour and movement, obviously intended to show of the vibrant new screen.

But we know what you're thinking: can I send it a tweet? Not yet, but the BT Tower's new clothes are permanent, and the management team want to rally London around the iconic landmark. So in their own words: watch this space.

Construction of the screen has involved:

 – 2,700 separate trips in the lift to transport materials to the top of the tower 
 – Designing the scaffolding by computer and erecting more than seven miles of scaffolding components
 – Installing nearly 2.5 miles of power, lighting and electrical cable
 – 11,000 scaffold components
 – Making nearly 1,500 wind checks, as no installation work could take place in winds of more than 15 knots
 – 114 construction workers and engineers
 – A total of 30,600 man hours to complete the work
 – 11 weeks of construction

This extraordinary map, dating from 1675, details The Road From LONDON to the LANDS END Comencing at the Standard in Cornhill and Extending to Senan in Cornwall. It was made by IOHN OGILBY Esq[ui]r[e] his Ma[jes]ties Cosmographer and covers 308 miles and 3 furlongs (almost 500 km).

The life of John Ogilby (1600-1676) can be qualified without exaggeration as rather eventful. He freed his father from debtors’ prison by buying a winning lottery ticket, founded a dance school in London and later Dublin’s Theatre Royal, got shipwrecked on his return from Ireland, produced a very successful English verse transaltion of Virgil, lost all his property in the Great Fire of London (1666), and towards the end of his life managed to produce the Britannia Atlas (1675), considered to be the first road atlas of Britain.

The atlas set the standard for using 1760 yards for the mile, and a scale of one inch to the mile. It contained a large number of strip road maps like these, which proved popular in planning journeys throughout the United Kingdom.

The first strip on the left-hand side from this map takes in much of contemporary London, showing (bottom to top, i.e. east to west) part of the City of London (containing Cornhill), Southwark, Westminster, Hide Park, Kensington, Hamersmith, Turnham Green and Smallheere Green. The next strips are labelled A through E (at the bottom) and B through F (at the top), showing the orientation and order in which they should be viewed.

The strips take in places such as Hounslow, Stanes, Egham, Windsor Park, Bagshot Park, Basingstoke, Wotton, Whitchurch and Andover. The rivers and hills encountered are noted, as are the forks in the road, and the directions in which these lead. Andover, the last town on this map, is in Hampshire, and is still a long way away from Land’s End, the end point of this road map; indicating that this page is still a few scrolls short of being a complete map.

Some of the notes on the map are remarkable for their spelling of place-names; 17th-century English insisted on spelling bridg without the final -e; and Paddington was known as Pudington, for example.

Many thanks to Paul Kerrigan for sending in this link to Priddy’s Hard, a website about the eponymous area near Gosport in Hampshire. The link shows a number of maps, including this one.

Posted by Cory Doctorow, September 10, 2009 3:26 AM | permalink

I'm speaking at the odd and cool-sounding Longplayer "Long Conversation" event this Saturday in London. The "Long Conversation" is a twelve-hour continuous on-stage conversation in which the participants rotate on and off the stage every 36 minutes. One of the organisers is a friend and he waxed so rhapsodic about previous events that I jumped at the chance. Tix are £15 (£12 concessions) and you can get a third off that by using the promo code 144 here.

10:00-10:36 Jeanette Winterson with Susie Orbach
10:36-11:12 Susie Orbach with Daniel Glaser
11:12-11:48 Daniel Glaser with Sophie Fiennes
11:48-12:24 Sophie Fiennes with Mark Miodownik
12:24-13:00 Mark Miodownik with Cory Doctorow
13:00-13:36 Cory Doctorow with Ruth Padel
13:36-14:12 Ruth Padel with Lewis Wolpert
14:12-14:48 Lewis Wolpert with Charles Arsene-Henry
14:48-15:24 Charles Arsene-Henry with Mark Lythgoe
15:24-16:00 Mark Lythgoe with Bonnie Greer
16:00-16:36 Bonnie Greer with Marcus du Sautoy
16:36-17:12 Marcus du Sautoy with Robert Peston
17:12-17:48 Robert Peston with Steven Rose
17:48-18:24 Steven Rose with Lisa Jardine
18:24-19:00 Lisa Jardine with Andrew Kotting
19:00-19:36 Andrew Kotting with David Toop
19:36-20:12 David Toop with Mark Haddon
20:12-20:48 Mark Haddon with Rachel Armstrong
20:48-21:24 Rachel Armstrong with Vincent Walsh
21:24-22:00 Vincent Walsh with Jeanette Winterson

Longplayer