Dying People Can Probably Hear You, Mapmakers Catch Copycats with Paper Towns, and How Woodpeckers Shut Down a NASA Launch
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2020
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about how mapmakers catch copycats with paper towns and trap streets; why people on their deathbed can probably hear their loved ones pay their last respects; and that time some woodpeckers shut down NASA’s plan to launch the space shuttle Discovery.
Paper Towns and Trap Streets Are How Mapmakers Catch Copycats by Reuben Westmaas
- Goblu and Beatosu, Ohio. (2017). Weird Universe. http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/goblu_and_beatosu_ohio
- Jacobs, F. (2014, February 12). Agloe: How a Completely Made Up New York Town Became Real. Big Think; Big Think. https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/643-agloe-the-paper-town-stronger-than-fiction
- NESTER’S MAP & GUIDE CORP | 796 F.Supp. 729 (1992) | upp72911403 | Leagle.com. (1992, June 30). Leagle. https://www.leagle.com/decision/19921525796fsupp72911403
Dying loved ones can probably hear you give your last respects by Grant Currin
- UBC research shows hearing persists at end of life. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-07/uobc-urs070720.php
- Blundon, E. G., Gallagher, R. E., & Ward, L. M. (2020). Electrophysiological evidence of preserved hearing at the end of life. Scientific Reports, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-67234-9
That Time Some Woodpeckers Shut Down A NASA Space Shuttle Launch by Joanie Faletto
- Lovesick Woodpeckers Poke Hole in a Shuttle’s Schedule. (1995, June 2). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/03/us/lovesick-woodpeckers-poke-hole-in-a-shuttle-s-schedule.html
- NASA - STS-70. (2010). Nasa.gov. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-70.html
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from |
| 0:04.9 | Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Goff. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about how |
| 0:09.3 | map makers catch copycats. Why people on their deathbed can probably hear their loved ones pay their last respects. |
| 0:16.9 | And that time some woodpeckers shut down a NASA space shuttle launch. |
| 0:21.2 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:23.0 | If you published a Road Atlas or a city map or a globe, |
| 0:27.0 | how would you protect your work from copyright infringement? |
| 0:31.0 | I mean, after all, you can't copyright the layout of a place. |
| 0:34.5 | So to catch copycats mapmakers have to get creative. So get ready to learn |
| 0:40.3 | about the weird world of paper towns and trap streets. |
| 0:44.7 | Imagine you're on a cross-country road trip following your old-fashioned paper map. |
| 0:50.3 | You're crossing Ohio and the map says the town of Gob Blue is coming up. |
| 0:55.0 | Great, you'll stop there for lunch. But when you get there, there's nothing but an empty cornfield. |
| 1:01.0 | Surprise, you've just wandered into a paper town. empty cornfield. Surprise! |
| 1:03.0 | You've just wandered into a paper town, a place that exists on a map and nowhere else. |
| 1:10.0 | Like other made up paper towns and trapped streets, Goblu was put on your map on purpose to trap would be copycats. |
| 1:18.0 | If a mapmaker suspects another has simply copied their hard work instead of doing the cartography for themselves, |
| 1:26.0 | they can confirm this by finding the fake location on the copycats map. |
| 1:30.0 | Of course this practice is disappearing now in the era of satellite map. Of course this practice is disappearing now in the era of satellite maps, and under federal |
| 1:36.6 | law these fictional entries aren't even protected by standard copyrights anyway. That doesn't mean that cartographers have to leave themselves open to infringement |
| 1:46.4 | though. Style, presentation, selection, and order can all be used to argue against a copycat. Most of the time, paper towns and |
| 1:56.5 | trap streets end up going completely unnoticed, but not all of the time. The best story about a paper town has to be the tale of Aglo, New York. |
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