Floating Sheep in Comic Form

Have you ever wondered what it is like to take a classes at one of home institutions of Floating Sheep? In this case, the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky, a place where the land flows with milk, honey and cutting-edge insight with giant herds of critical GIS researchers roaming the tundra and bellowing out challenges?

OK, perhaps not. 

But it is a place where we have stock-piled Floating Sheep stickers and tattoos for the coming apocalypse. And sometimes these artifacts emerge and are reused and parodied by the denizens of the department.

Ergo [1], the following cartoon [2] has appeared in Kentucky, the work of the talented Emily Kaufman, Ph.D. student. And while the Floating Sheep collective would love to have come up with the "Computer is not a banana" as a metaphoric/allegoric/crazed bon mot -- if for no reason beyond its mysterious incomprehensibility -- we cannot take credit. This is the idea of Jeremy Crampton, who is actually the professorial figure featured in the cartoon.

And no, we don't under why a "computer is not a banana" [3] either.

----------

[1] What a great word, love to use that word. 

[2] Technically a mixed media collage of paper, ink and tattoo.

[3] We are in cautiously in agreement with this statement although we think the idea of a banana-based computer is great idea.

Exploring Google Maps to Find Sesame Street

Children's educational television shows make everyone a bit nostalgic, regardless of when one grew up or which particular show was their favorite (I'll always be a bit partial to Ringo Starr and George Carlin as the conductor on Shining Time Station). But with the characters of these shows becoming more fully integrated with the brands they represent, a seemingly endless number of opportunities are available to promote one show over another.

New School v. Old School, Dora v. Oscar

Using the traditional Floatingsheep method of comparing Google Maps references to a number of keywords in order to highlight where one keyword is prevalent over many others, we've mapped references to Sesame Street classic Oscar the Grouch and 21st century bilingual girl-wonder, Dora the Explorer.

The homogeneity of references can only mean one thing: because of her connection to a younger, presumably more hip and technologically adept fan base, Dora has cornered the virtual market of Google Maps. Alternatively, we could chalk this up to the lingering ambiguity of where exactly Sesame Street is.

Regardless of this, Oscar is likely in a trash can somewhere complaining about the biases of our method and how maps don't really represent reality.