h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sally Ride's 64th. Features multiple animations.

http://www.google.com/doodles/sally-rides-64th-birthday

Today's doodle is an amusing animation celebrating the 800th anniversary of King John putting his seal on the Magna Carta. Its reach is more limited than I expected - UK, Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Greece, Ukraine, Iceland. Scaninavia gets Edvard Grieg's birthday, which is fair enough, but I would have expected North America to get the Magna Carta, given its supposed impact on global democracy.

https://www.google.com/doodles/800th-anniversary-of-the-magna-carta

Today's doodle is an interactive celebration of the 114th birthday of Eiji Tsuburaya. He was a pioneer of tokusatsu - live action monster films - and co-creator of Godzilla. The doodle's reach is worldwide.

https://www.google.com/doodles/eiji-tsuburayas-114th-birthday

This one was fun. It takes several tries before you make a proper Kaiju film. My first try had buildings falling apart, a dangling Ultraman, and half dressed monsters sadly wandering through the set.

Here's the link again without that pesky "s" in Ripley skins.

http://www.google.com/doodles/eiji-tsuburayas-114th-birthday

New Horizons Pluto flyby.

http://g.co/doodle/ftkaq3

For some reason google.es is my default google. Today it shows a doodle commemorating 101 years of traffic lights.

It has quite a large coverage

http://www.google.com/doodles/101st-anniversary-of-the-first-electric-traffic-signal-system

I'm reminded of Heinlein's thoughts on traffic lights in _Job: A Comedy of Justice_. The protagonist is from an alternate universe, like our own but with a more primitive technology, about like that of mid to our late 19th century. No electronics, air flight by dirigible. This character is randomly bounced between various alternate universes and finds himself in one more like ours.


>>>>>
But the superior technology of this world was evident, in many more things than television. Consider 'traffic lights'. No doubt you have seen cities so choked with traffic that it is almost impossible to cross major streets other than through intervention by police officers. Also' no doubt you have sometimes been annoyed when a policeman charged with controlling traffic has stopped the flow in your direction to accommodate some very important person from city hall, or such.

Can you imagine a situation in which traffic could be controlled in greater volume with no police officers whatever at hand - just an impersonal colored light?

Believe me, that is exactly what they had in Nogales.

Here is how it works:

At every busy intersection you place a minimum of twelve lights, four groups of three, a group facing each of the cardinal directions and so screened that each group can be seen only from its direction. Each group has one red light, one green light, one amber light. These lights are served by electrical power and each shines brightly enough to be seen at a distance of a mile, more or less, even in bright sunlight. These are not arc lights; these are very powerful Edison lamps - this is important because these lights must be turned on and off every few moments and must function without fail hours on end, even days on end, twenty-four hours a day.

These lights are placed up high on telegraph poles, or suspended over intersections, so that they may be seen by teamsters or drivers or cyclists from a distance. When the green lights shine, let us say, north and south, the red lights shine east and west - traffic may flow north and south, while east and west traffic is required to stand and wait exactly as if a police officer had blown his whistle and held up his hands, motioning traffic to move north and south while restraining traffic from moving east and west.

Is that clear? The lights replace the policeman's hand signals.

The amber lights replace the policeman's whistle; they warn of an imminent change in the situation.

But what is the advantage? - since someone, presumably a policeman, must switch the lights on and off, as needed. Simply this: The switching is done automatically from a distance (even miles!) at a central switchboard.

There are many other marvels about this system, such as electrical counting devices to decide how long each light burns for best handling of the traffic, special lights for controlling left turns or to accommodate people on foot... but the truly great marvel is this: People obey these lights.

Think about it. With no policemen anywhere around people obey these blind and dumb bits of machinery as. if they were policemen.

Are people here so sheeplike and peaceful that they can be controlled this easily? No. I wondered about it and found some statistics in the library. This world has a higher rate of violent crime than does the world in which I was born. Caused by these strange lights? I don't think so. I think that the people here, although disposed to violence against each other, accept obeying traffic lights as a logical thing to do. Perhaps.

As may be, it is passing strange.
<<<<<

- Robert Heinlein: _Job: A Comedy of Justice_

The Goodle Doodle today is celebrating the Mundaneum co-founder Paul Otlet's 147th Birthday.

Hang Loose, Brah.


http://www.google.com/doodles/duke-kahanamokus-125th-birthday

My favorite one so far. Here's to the Duke

I'm surprised that doodle wasn't shown in Australia.

Today's doodle celebrates the 70th anniversary of La Tomatina, a tomato-throwing 'festival' in Valencia, Spain. Unfortunately, the 'range' map wasn't available when I checked just now.

http://www.google.com/doodles/la-tomatina-70th-anniversary

It's available now. It's a curious spread. Canada, Mexico and most of Western South America; S. Korea, Thailand, India and Kazakhstan; various Eastern European nations, Denmark, the UK and Portugal. But oddly enough, not Spain.

Here's a big one. It's not just *a* doodle, it's *the* doodle.

http://g.co/doodle/xsc6b5

Here's more info.

http://www.wired.com/2015/09/google-new-logo/

~ More behind Google's redesign ~ ~
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3050613/googles-new-logo-is-its-biggest-update-in-16-years?ncid=newsltushpmg00000003

~ ~ A nice little read ~ ~
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/why-you-hate-googles-new-logo?intcid=mod-most-popular

It was a nice little piece, but quite honestly I'm not bothered about the change of font. I thought it was just to hint at the new Alphabet identity, as it reminds you of children's first reading books and My first dictionary. etc.

http://www.google.com/doodles/evidence-of-water-found-on-mars

Following yesterday's NASA announcement is a cute animated doodle.

So you all missed the 17th birthday of Google then..

Oddly enough its reach was nearly global, but the US was one of those few countries it didn't reach. I suspect it was preempted by the week of US football doodles they were running this week.