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Deaths from Measles since 2000 in US: 4 Deaths from Measles Vaccine (MMR): 457 People disabled from MMR Vaccine: 1,726 Hospitalizations from MMR vaccine: 6,902 Adverse reactions from MMR vaccine: 92,844 They are sooo safe and effective that there is even a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund... https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-c... "Total compensation paid over the life of the program is approximately $3.9 billion." https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/def... Measles is a mild infection that resolve by itself. Google Fact (on the right) - Extremely rare - 188 US cases in 2015 - Short-term: resolves within days to weeks https://g.co/kgs/Wipyhp

Netbooks were around MANY years before the OLPC

Well then they weren't called "netbooks":
Google Trends "One Laptop Per Child" vs "Netbook"

and cost about $600 instead of the full price of a Laptop

That is more than 3x the cost of the eventual OLPC. That's 3x fewer kids with laptops.

divided between Ultrabooks or Macbook Airs;

The higher-end ones you were referring to, yes. But the sub-$300 things people were calling "netbooks" are probably closest to Chromebooks today. An Air is pretty darned high-end. Netbooks mostly ran on an Atom and were pretty disappointing even by the standards of the day.

Different gay bro here but I got a thank you letter from President Putin for sending him my Hot 100 Topless Men in the Forest compilation video.

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back https://g.co/kgs/wGDwmx

You don't have to pump the water up hill to replenish the ground water. Here's a google maps link: http://g.co/maps/8nehd to an impound area on the Santa Clara River in Southern California. They have a diversion dam on the river which allows the water to flow to the side and into the pond(s) when there's enough flow, and otherwise flow down river.

Wrong.

They are not building any new plants, and definitely not in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. They will be making some changes to improve the output of the gas-fired power plant in Chiba, located here.

Press release here: http://www.tepco.co.jp/cc/press/12010603-j.html

TEPCO has stated several times they will not be building any new thermal power plants.

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201203010064

... saying that's the same plant that's threatening to strike. Which is not surprising, considering it's the only plant they have in Brazil. I'm wondering if the GGP is misinformed or just providing an information disservice.

Considering they have several different plants in Jundiaí alone, that's hard to buy. http://g.co/maps/vsd7d

I can't believe I had to scroll down this far before someone pointed this out. "Apple to set up an employee cafeteria" is some kind of news item?

And what's worse is they already HAVE one...I've eaten there (2003), and it's called Cafe Macs:

http://www.maclife.com/article/feature/apple%E2%80%99s_corporate_food_court_o%E2%80%99_plenty_reviewed

http://g.co/maps/aqgpy

And yes, it's full of silly hippie food. Macrobiotic this and vegan that, although I will say they make awesome burritos (spinach tortilla).

Another off topic link from Daniel Phillips 834 2nd st, Suite 6 , Santa Monica, CA 90403.. Failures include Tux2 and Tux3.

Another off topic link from Daniel Phillips 834 2nd st, Suite 6 , Santa Monica, CA 90403.. Failures include Tux2 and Tux3.

If you're not thinking at all, and just in panic mode, it's actually pretty hard to think to do anything.

Consider the actual scenario, as it transpired:
-- Wife, daughter, and brother in law in car with you;
-- Unfamiliar vehicle given to you as a loaner this morning;
-- Traveling up to 120 mph along a highway with other people on it - would have had to weave to avoid colliding with someone from behind, almost certainly;
-- Vehicle that crashed was reported a week or so previously by another customer it had been loaned to for the exact "stuck accelerator" problem that presumably caused the crash;
-- Approaching this intersection - SR 125 at Mission Gorge Road - on SR 125, a T intersection, where SR125 *ends*.

Now consider the stuff we don't know:
-- Actual operating condition of the brakes on the vehicle - were they just shy of needing maintenance?
-- How long were they moving at this high rate of speed before the passenger called the police? We know it was about 1 minute from the time he called into 911 to the time when they crashed, but we don't know how long before that - could have only been 2, 3 minutes from start to finish, maybe longer, but they were traveling from their home in Chula Vista to a soccer practice in Santee - a distance of 15-20 miles, 10 miles of which would have probably been on SR125 - so figure, 7-10 mins, max, from the time they got on SR 125 to the time they crashed.

So, yeah - panic: wife, brother in law, daughter all screaming, shouting, offering "helpful advice" while you're trying to figure out what to do. You also have to weave your car in and out of a fair bit of traffic at that speed; Did he pump the brakes, and end up burning something out? Possibly. Did the braking system actually fail? That's also possible - if the electronics went nuts, it's entirely possible that the braking system controls weren't responding properly. On the actual 911 call, just at the end, you can hear a man's voice say something about "no brakes, no brakes, better pray..."

It's very easy to be a backseat driver after the fact, and opine about how "stupid" he was, and how we're much more qualified to handle these situations, and how we would have easily mastered the vehicle and brought it to a safe stop, but the fact remains this: he was a CHP officer, and it's likely that he has WAY more training in high speed driving and driving emergencies than anybody else here, and something still went horribly, horribly wrong.

If this safety system will make it less likely for things to go horribly horribly wrong like that, then anybody arguing against them is an idiot. It's a couple lines of code in the control module of your vehicle, it's not some invasive magical killswitch that the police will be able to trigger, and it's not going to dramatically increase the cost of vehicles, because this system has already been implemented in the entire fleet of numerous manufacturers - Toyota and Chrysler, at least, perhaps others.

The road in question looks kinda scary to go at redline speeds. That's not much of a guard rail to crash into, and chances are you're going to go flying off the bridge if you hit anything at all.

http://g.co/maps/zz6dq

Still impotent.

I probably won't get hit by a car. Most of the route I cycle has a dedicated bike-'road', separated from the cars by a curb and two feet of grass. Half of it has trees as additional reminders for stubborn drivers. The rest is a dedicated bikelane. Lines, markings, red asphalt and nice fines for drivers who ignore the markings (120 or 220 euro ($157 or $288) depending on the situation). See http://g.co/maps/cq3ab

Should I irritate you further with stories about EURO NCAP 5-star rated cars (where pedestrian/cyclist safety is a significant factor) and Dutch healthcare?

(I've been hit by cars five times. Bruises and bent bikeparts is the worst, sofar.)

Really? I mean, this is what a 150 mile drive around the Chicago metro area looks like:

http://g.co/maps/hsdus

That's a long, long way from "around town on a busy Saturday". Hell, it's less than 140 miles from Washington DC to Philadelphia!!

What kind of errands are you running??

That's great for this spot in Nevada.
That segment is straight for 52000 feet.

One question remains - 100LL or regular?
$8/gallon at 15mpg will keep me grounded.

There are little soldiers in front of 10 Downing St.

Found a monsters near La Plata, MD and Scottsburg, VA. You can't see them if you're zoomed in more than 7 times.

Found Nessie!

I once used the satellite view of Google Maps to look for old train tracks that have been torn up and gone for decades. It's actually pretty interesting. If you go out and visit spots where the tracks used to be, you can't see anything out of the ordinary. But a satellite shot clearly shows the "scars" of where the tracks used to be. Where they cut through forests, the trees are a little shorter. The soil in farm fields is colored differently. Roads bend to intersect the track at a right angle, things like that.

Here's a good example in Washtenaw county. You can see the "ghost tracks" going southwest/northeast. If you follow them northeast, you'll see that a new subdivision was built on an area of land that they used to cut through. Curiously, the developers built no houses where the tracks were. Instead, they added footpaths, gave some houses larger backyards, and left "gaps" where houses could have been built. (I'd love to know why this was done. Any developers in the audience?)

You can follow the tracks southwest as well, but eventually you get to a region where the images were taken with a different satellite at a different time of year and the loss of contrast makes the tracks impossible to follow any further.

Sorry, but no, it's in Cumbria, in the North of England. http://g.co/maps/4f64r

And I lost one mod point for you...

Apple is based in North Austin (see satellite map of the campus). It's currently 4 buildings and they have room to add more building right in that area. They currently employ around 3500 people in their Austin corporate office (at least from the press releases I saw). If you poke around Apple's jobs website you'll find around 64 open positions in the Austin office, mainly around support and sales. Their only engineering type roles have to do working with their suppliers in Austin (Samsung, Intel, AMD, FreeScale, and IBM all have offices down here).

I'm little sad they have no real engineering/development in Austin, but they seem to like keeping all of their people working on the same product in the same offices. Spreading an engineering force globally can cause communication issues, so they seem to avoid it.

I won't speak of the "audible" part, since that's just a small matter of programming.

Turn by turn is... complicated. Of course, you can upload OSM maps on your Garmin right now and get turn by turn instructions. However, accuracy is a factor.

The amount of information needed to drive through a city is absolutely astounding, as is the frequency with which it changes. For example, a street near my house is closed mornings and evenings to vehicle traffic, except weekends and holidays and June through August. That data has to be in there to accurately route. "No left turn, 4-6 PM Monday through Friday." "No northbound traffic except bicycles." "Carpools only 7 AM to 10 AM"--God help us.

Not to mention just plain errors in the data. Near my house, an overpass was accidentally connected to the freeway. My Garmin with OSM data wanted to route me off the freeway directly onto the overpass. (I fixed the error.)

Realignments don't happen that often in cities any more in the US, but they happen on country roads and interstates *all the time*. I didn't realize until I started contributing to OSM exactly how much construction was always happening.

Highway 36 west of Red Bluff, CA, was recently realigned. Google even has it wrong for now: http://g.co/maps/mhdkm . And check this out: Google wants me to drive on a hiking trail: http://g.co/maps/jpxr8 I'm not saying they suck--Google's map quality is *exceptional*, and yet it errs. But I'd say that for turn-by-turn, it has OSM currently beat.

I guess what I'm saying is... uh, contribute to OSM. :-)

I won't speak of the "audible" part, since that's just a small matter of programming.

Turn by turn is... complicated. Of course, you can upload OSM maps on your Garmin right now and get turn by turn instructions. However, accuracy is a factor.

The amount of information needed to drive through a city is absolutely astounding, as is the frequency with which it changes. For example, a street near my house is closed mornings and evenings to vehicle traffic, except weekends and holidays and June through August. That data has to be in there to accurately route. "No left turn, 4-6 PM Monday through Friday." "No northbound traffic except bicycles." "Carpools only 7 AM to 10 AM"--God help us.

Not to mention just plain errors in the data. Near my house, an overpass was accidentally connected to the freeway. My Garmin with OSM data wanted to route me off the freeway directly onto the overpass. (I fixed the error.)

Realignments don't happen that often in cities any more in the US, but they happen on country roads and interstates *all the time*. I didn't realize until I started contributing to OSM exactly how much construction was always happening.

Highway 36 west of Red Bluff, CA, was recently realigned. Google even has it wrong for now: http://g.co/maps/mhdkm . And check this out: Google wants me to drive on a hiking trail: http://g.co/maps/jpxr8 I'm not saying they suck--Google's map quality is *exceptional*, and yet it errs. But I'd say that for turn-by-turn, it has OSM currently beat.

I guess what I'm saying is... uh, contribute to OSM. :-)

Google is up-to-date, but in some cases it's completely wrong. They've recently changed from buying in map data from one source to amalgamating it from many many sources. This provides a headache for google as they can't manually fix things that are wrong as the fixes will be overwritten by the automated amalgamation in a week's time or so.

Take for example Normansland. There is no place in the New Forest called Normansland. There is one up the road called Nomansland (without the 'r') but for some reason Google has this mythical 'Normansland' in its dataset (in a different place from Nomansland!) and can't easily get rid of it. Their mapping data will get better as the work on it, but in the last year or so it has actually gone downhill.

Since it's in a rural area, I bet if the word got out, the meth heads would be all over it to steal the copper. It would end up looking like one of those old abandoned military sites in Russia.

Rural? It's in the middle (well, western side) of the Chicago burbs! Within a mile or so of the ring it's farmland, but beyond that you're in a very heavily populated area. This is not on the outskirts of Pontiac, IL or something.

http://g.co/maps/kw2x9

Where I live, the local bus company's web site is terrible. It's difficult to use, forces you to fill in forms over and over again when you make changes, can't figure out where you are or where you want to go half the time and frequently has issues figuring out transfers at all. Worst of all, the bus company never seems to have current route information posted at the bus stops.

Since Google started supporting transit directions in Stavanger, Norway, my life has been so much easier. I especially love the Android (Gingerbread) integration. I have shortcuts on my home screen that will show me the best route and next three busses from wherever I am to my home, work and down town. It's amazing.

If you regularly use public transit, it's worth your time to see if Google supports your city.

Now the only thing missing is real time route information. I can't wait until that feature comes to town. Sadly the bus drivers are rarely on time and make a sport of speeding away when they're early and you're sprinting for the bus.

Tidal forces would cause the moon to squash and stretch, if it rotated, like Earth's oceans. But the moon is gravity locked to facing the Earth.

There are line formations on Earth, I'm curious about this formation in the North Sea?

Google Ocean maps

There's a solution to this used in FL and GA a lot: right turn lanes have a yield lane, that merges into the road they are turning.

Here, for example - this is a fairly major intersection that has that technique for the direction of travel that normally backs up, and so helps allow the other direction to continue unimpeded while this is happening.

[...] those countries where roundabouts are common. Oh, wait, that would be NOWHERE. Even in the EU where everyone sings the praises of Roundabouts they are RARE.

Though I agree that roundabout-ifying the US is not feasible, your last statement is plainly WRONG: off the top of my counting, I see at least 12 in http://g.co/maps/cnqxz and http://g.co/maps/hd9jk .

[...] those countries where roundabouts are common. Oh, wait, that would be NOWHERE. Even in the EU where everyone sings the praises of Roundabouts they are RARE.

Though I agree that roundabout-ifying the US is not feasible, your last statement is plainly WRONG: off the top of my counting, I see at least 12 in http://g.co/maps/cnqxz and http://g.co/maps/hd9jk .

Right, but you're looking at real estate, meaning a 10x10' easement on the sidewalk near an office building, a 20x20' easement at the edge of a neighborhood (next to the well pump) and other tiny buildings. You might be able to stick a hotdog stand in there or a neighborhood convenience store, but it would have no windows, and is set back from the road by 20-30 feet, on the far side of a park.
 
These spaces are largely utility space, like a mechanical floor in a skyscraper. That said, there are a couple of larger switching buildings in each city, for example this monster which sits about 15 stories tall and is surrounded by single and double story homes. We call it the zombie apocalypse building because there are no windows on the first floor (or any of the other sides) and the back side has a deep wide loading ramp that sinks in to the earth like a moat. About four miles down the road there is a slightly more sane building, which looks more like a traditional warehouse or datacenter, and will probably be converted in to one at some point (many datacenters in Dallas are repurposed and upgraded railway warehouses along I-35). This amounts to a couple of big buildings in major cities, but I would argue that most of the 250 million square feet comes in chunks 400 sq feet at a time or smaller, and includes legal rights to telcom closets in office buildings, etc.

Right, but you're looking at real estate, meaning a 10x10' easement on the sidewalk near an office building, a 20x20' easement at the edge of a neighborhood (next to the well pump) and other tiny buildings. You might be able to stick a hotdog stand in there or a neighborhood convenience store, but it would have no windows, and is set back from the road by 20-30 feet, on the far side of a park.
 
These spaces are largely utility space, like a mechanical floor in a skyscraper. That said, there are a couple of larger switching buildings in each city, for example this monster which sits about 15 stories tall and is surrounded by single and double story homes. We call it the zombie apocalypse building because there are no windows on the first floor (or any of the other sides) and the back side has a deep wide loading ramp that sinks in to the earth like a moat. About four miles down the road there is a slightly more sane building, which looks more like a traditional warehouse or datacenter, and will probably be converted in to one at some point (many datacenters in Dallas are repurposed and upgraded railway warehouses along I-35). This amounts to a couple of big buildings in major cities, but I would argue that most of the 250 million square feet comes in chunks 400 sq feet at a time or smaller, and includes legal rights to telcom closets in office buildings, etc.

Nowadays is it reasonable to expect viewing from Google Maps (and streetview etc)? :).
http://g.co/maps/zqf5u

Does anyone else here think its totally f'd that this is just NOW being found? This has been easily visible on Google maps for how long? If this was anywhere near my neighborhood, or the places I find interesting (Dallas, TX is regrettably not on either list), I would have found it and realized something horrible was going on even before getting out my handy dandy UAV to go scoop out the area.

Nowadays is it reasonable to expect viewing from Google Maps (and streetview etc)? :).
http://g.co/maps/zqf5u

If you follow the creek back a little ways towards the packing plant, just south of the power line there's a round something in the field near the trees where the creek turns dark, here. It's pretty large (as wide as the truck that left the tire tracks around it)... I wonder what it could be? I looked around at the other fields near there but didn't see anything like that.

A better link: http://g.co/maps/8vdr9

No, you can't tell its blood, but you can see a color difference upstream vs downstream even in Google Maps.
The creek is generally green upstream, and dark ruddy brown below the plant.

If you zoom in closer on Google Earth you can see this color shift very well.: 32.749052 -96.789131
Also the historical imagery on Google Earth does not show this if you step back to 2009, when water levels were much higher
or 2008 when they were similarly low.

Why not doit on top of mount everest then?

http://g.co/maps/ugkwm as you can see in this link it is almost at the equator level and would be able to have a 360 look of the universe, and i bet it is a nice place to have a telescope. and im gessing that it would not be that hard to run some fiber optics or even a wireless link could be made, it could be operated remotly from some confy office.

Why not doit on top of mount everest then?

http://g.co/maps/ugkwm as you can see in this link it is almost at the ecuators level at would be able to have a 360 look of the universe, and i bet it is a nice place to have a telescope. and im gessing that it would not be that hard to run some fiber optics or even a wireless link could be made, it could be operated remotly from some confy office.

Why would venting heat to the atmosphere be unproblematic but venting it to seawater be potentially problematic ?

RennesÃy isn't some deep-and-narrow inlet, infact it's hardly in a fjord at all, but more akin to in open ocean. Have a look at the map: http://g.co/maps/ucfvs

Heating the ocean itself by dumping waste heat, would take *tremendous* amounts of power, many orders of magnitude more energy than any data-center could possibly use.

Not if Uncle China has anything to say about that...

Israel is in somewhat special position, because about 1/5 of its total population is USSR expats. As a result, it never really was "hostile" to Russia after USSR collapse, or at least it tried to avoid conflict.

But in this particular case, condemning the elections would be hostile towards Russian government, not Russian people. And those 1/5 of Israel - many of them are people who immigrated from USSR because of persecutions, or their children - they know the difference very well.

And these people, unlike those in the West get their information about Russia from russian-language sources. These have been quite a bit more detailed and quite a bit less enthusiastic of claiming fraud even when they were ones that are fully independent of government. I'm still somewhat surprised at sheer force of anti-russian propaganda that was unleashed in the last couple of days in the Western media after seeing several videos on euronews where commentary was "arrest of protesters in the middle of a large demonstration" and video was of some young guy screaming his lungs out at group of people on the street looking at him like he is nuts, then police arresting him and carrying him into a police car.

I'm Russian. Let me quickly sum it up for you.

Fraud in the elections was very real. There's ample first-hand evidence on YouTube, with videos recorded by observers of both sneaky and blatant fraud. Featuring pre-stuffed ballots, a video of a guy quietly marking unused ballots, photos of protocols with numbers that don't match what was later entered in the final reports, etc. There are also several attempts of statistical analysis, pointing out significant irregularities. The estimate is roughly 10-15% of the vote for the government party being falsified. That would likely still put them in the first place, but just barely beating the commies, and they'd have to form a coalition in the parliament. Right now, they have over half of the seats, retaining their majority.

The Western media, on the other hand, seems to be focusing more on the aftermath, especially the "violent protests". Now it's true that there was a (non-sanctioned) demonstration, and a bunch of people - including some leaders of the opposition movement - were arrested as a consequence, for the usual charges - blocking right of way etc. However, it is nowhere near a riot or anything like that. Fox News was already called out as a bastardly liars for pasting a video feed from Athens with burning cars etc and claiming that it's the protesters in Moscow. That's all bullshit. It also hurts those protestors, because they are seen as some violent rioters, and any government crackdown would then be seen as justified by many. In practice, organizers have been trying hard to keep the protests peaceful so far, so as not to give any excuses. It's hard to do so because of very diverse forces that came up together for them - there's all kinds of people there, from die-hard Stalinists to liberal democrats to libertarians to nationalists.

Now, tomorrow, December 10, there will be a first organized and officially sanctioned demonstration in Moscow. If there will be a massive crackdown, that'll be the place. The location - designated by government officials - is somewhat suspicious in that it's very easy to close off all exits. However, unless and until it actually happens, it's pointless to speculate. We'll see.

you never repurposed anything? Perhaps the area once was a bomb range (cold war era perhaps) and they have repurposed these vast tracts of government owned land into satellite calibration areas. Hell, look at this:
http://g.co/maps/39mhb
That is near where i live. On google earth it looks like an air base mockup. from the ground, you can't even see the thing. That *was* an air base about 50 years ago. Now its a few foundations and a crumbling runway. Things look a lot different from above.

No, they don't match any other places. They're just for calibration. US has similar ones in Arizona.

And Texas. (Although that one was a NASA photogrammetry calibration target, I think..)

Yeah, you just follow the roads and find all kinds of weird stuff: http://g.co/maps/xwk8j

Here in Utah, where the government seems to own most of the state, we have our own share of odd structures. Like these on the Dugway Proving Grounds:

http://g.co/maps/9uz4u
http://g.co/maps/yyyfk
http://g.co/maps/zs7c3
http://g.co/maps/vh7mf
http://g.co/maps/q2zg5

There are a gazillion odd things on the landscape of Earth. It seems most of them are either built by scientists, the military, or both.

My personal guess for the China structures is that it is something really boring. Like a geological study using satellites. Some of the structures do seem to be military/bombing related. However, I have to wonder if the squiggly line structures are related to a satellite based geological study. If you look close, it rather seems like some of the lines have been "moved" or are folded on itself by some natural process. Doesn't that seem like a lot of disruption in the soil for being less than a decade old? If I were a geologist, that might be just the kind of area I might want to research. Doubly so if I was trying to protect the many important archaeological artifacts found in that area of China. I might even try some anti-erosion studies, etc. Even more meaningful would be understanding how important those archaeological sites are to the economy. If they wash away, will tourists still pay to see a small mound of dirt?

Yeah, I know it isn't as exciting as space aliens... which I would much prefer to be true. ;-)

Here in Utah, where the government seems to own most of the state, we have our own share of odd structures. Like these on the Dugway Proving Grounds:

http://g.co/maps/9uz4u
http://g.co/maps/yyyfk
http://g.co/maps/zs7c3
http://g.co/maps/vh7mf
http://g.co/maps/q2zg5

There are a gazillion odd things on the landscape of Earth. It seems most of them are either built by scientists, the military, or both.

My personal guess for the China structures is that it is something really boring. Like a geological study using satellites. Some of the structures do seem to be military/bombing related. However, I have to wonder if the squiggly line structures are related to a satellite based geological study. If you look close, it rather seems like some of the lines have been "moved" or are folded on itself by some natural process. Doesn't that seem like a lot of disruption in the soil for being less than a decade old? If I were a geologist, that might be just the kind of area I might want to research. Doubly so if I was trying to protect the many important archaeological artifacts found in that area of China. I might even try some anti-erosion studies, etc. Even more meaningful would be understanding how important those archaeological sites are to the economy. If they wash away, will tourists still pay to see a small mound of dirt?

Yeah, I know it isn't as exciting as space aliens... which I would much prefer to be true. ;-)

Here in Utah, where the government seems to own most of the state, we have our own share of odd structures. Like these on the Dugway Proving Grounds:

http://g.co/maps/9uz4u
http://g.co/maps/yyyfk
http://g.co/maps/zs7c3
http://g.co/maps/vh7mf
http://g.co/maps/q2zg5

There are a gazillion odd things on the landscape of Earth. It seems most of them are either built by scientists, the military, or both.

My personal guess for the China structures is that it is something really boring. Like a geological study using satellites. Some of the structures do seem to be military/bombing related. However, I have to wonder if the squiggly line structures are related to a satellite based geological study. If you look close, it rather seems like some of the lines have been "moved" or are folded on itself by some natural process. Doesn't that seem like a lot of disruption in the soil for being less than a decade old? If I were a geologist, that might be just the kind of area I might want to research. Doubly so if I was trying to protect the many important archaeological artifacts found in that area of China. I might even try some anti-erosion studies, etc. Even more meaningful would be understanding how important those archaeological sites are to the economy. If they wash away, will tourists still pay to see a small mound of dirt?

Yeah, I know it isn't as exciting as space aliens... which I would much prefer to be true. ;-)

Here in Utah, where the government seems to own most of the state, we have our own share of odd structures. Like these on the Dugway Proving Grounds:

http://g.co/maps/9uz4u
http://g.co/maps/yyyfk
http://g.co/maps/zs7c3
http://g.co/maps/vh7mf
http://g.co/maps/q2zg5

There are a gazillion odd things on the landscape of Earth. It seems most of them are either built by scientists, the military, or both.

My personal guess for the China structures is that it is something really boring. Like a geological study using satellites. Some of the structures do seem to be military/bombing related. However, I have to wonder if the squiggly line structures are related to a satellite based geological study. If you look close, it rather seems like some of the lines have been "moved" or are folded on itself by some natural process. Doesn't that seem like a lot of disruption in the soil for being less than a decade old? If I were a geologist, that might be just the kind of area I might want to research. Doubly so if I was trying to protect the many important archaeological artifacts found in that area of China. I might even try some anti-erosion studies, etc. Even more meaningful would be understanding how important those archaeological sites are to the economy. If they wash away, will tourists still pay to see a small mound of dirt?

Yeah, I know it isn't as exciting as space aliens... which I would much prefer to be true. ;-)

Here in Utah, where the government seems to own most of the state, we have our own share of odd structures. Like these on the Dugway Proving Grounds:

http://g.co/maps/9uz4u
http://g.co/maps/yyyfk
http://g.co/maps/zs7c3
http://g.co/maps/vh7mf
http://g.co/maps/q2zg5

There are a gazillion odd things on the landscape of Earth. It seems most of them are either built by scientists, the military, or both.

My personal guess for the China structures is that it is something really boring. Like a geological study using satellites. Some of the structures do seem to be military/bombing related. However, I have to wonder if the squiggly line structures are related to a satellite based geological study. If you look close, it rather seems like some of the lines have been "moved" or are folded on itself by some natural process. Doesn't that seem like a lot of disruption in the soil for being less than a decade old? If I were a geologist, that might be just the kind of area I might want to research. Doubly so if I was trying to protect the many important archaeological artifacts found in that area of China. I might even try some anti-erosion studies, etc. Even more meaningful would be understanding how important those archaeological sites are to the economy. If they wash away, will tourists still pay to see a small mound of dirt?

Yeah, I know it isn't as exciting as space aliens... which I would much prefer to be true. ;-)

Calibrating an orbital imaging system is quite possible; the material looks VERY reflective, which is exactly what you want to test your camera.

No it isn't. Camera test patterns generally look something like a collage of barcodes on steroids. The straight lines let you test for distortion, while which lines you can see (and which you can't) lets you test resolution, and the size (length) of the lines lets you verify magnification/zoom. They're actually pretty well thought out.
 
Here's a very basic one out in the wilds of Edwards AFB: http://g.co/maps/4qf5d.
 
The other thing you want for calibration is what is known as 'ground truth' I.E. a well known real place on the ground that you can compare satellite images to.

Some folks on hackernews have suggested it could be a massive salt or mineral collection operation. Not sure myself, but here is the comparison shots.

One in Israel

California