Season 6 Episode 9: From Ancient Tattoos to Pet Talk and the Revolution of GIS: A Journey of Discovery and Joy

Prepare to be tattooed with knowledge as we trace the lines of ancient artistry on the skin of Otzi the Iceman, whose 5,200-year-old tattoos might just share a lineage with the buzzing machines in your local tattoo parlor. Ever caught yourself in that high-pitched cooing when talking to your pets or a baby? It's not just you—it turns out there's a science to our soppy speech, and we're unpacking the adorable why's in this episode.

Mary Reiter, a wizard of Geographic Information Systems, charts her course from a childhood awash with globes and atlases to becoming a maestro of maps and spatial data. While your phone's map app casually leads you to the nearest coffee shop, the GIS technology behind it is revolutionizing our world in ways you've probably never imagined. Mary helps us navigate this terrain, sharing how satellite imagery and data management are more than just waypoints on a map—they are tools that shape our understanding of the world.

Finally, get ready for a tail-wagging conclusion as we share chuckles over pet antics and the unexpected friendships that blossom between our four-legged family members. And if you've ever wondered who first thought to computerize the world of mapping, Mary drops a super fact about the Canadian pioneer of GIS. This episode is not only a journey through time and technology but a tribute to the curiosity that guides us, the laughter that binds us, and the pets that bring joy to our steps along the way.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zukowski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode nine of season six.

Speaker 1: 0:39

I had to take more than a week off from the podcast because I got a nasty bug, usually the day that I do the recordings, and I felt crummy all Easter weekend and really up until about two days ago. This podcast is even coming out a day late because I was so far behind on a bunch of other projects, so thanks for bearing with me as I got better and got caught up On the show. This week in Science News we're going to be looking at tattoo technology, but not current tattoo technology, which is interesting Ancient tattoo technology. And in Pet Science we are going to be looking at how humans change the pitch of their voice when they're talking to both pets and babies. Isn't that cool. Our guest in Ask an Expert is Mary Reiter, who's going to be talking to us about geography and maps, a really cool part of science that uses satellite data and good old navigation techniques.

Speaker 1: 1:39

Okay, two bad jokes to start the show. All about maps. What did the map say to the compass? You always point me in the right direction. What did the map say to the compass when it felt lonely? You're my one, true north. Okay, on with the show.

Speaker 1: 1:57

Because there's no time like science time this week in science news, let's talk a little bit about tattoos now. Why did this come up? Well, we just finished putting together a really fun bundle for beaker's new songs and chris and I wrote a fake magazine called rolling bone. Anyways, beaker has this fake band. That's our dog, our go retriever. We have real music on itunes. One of the cute little things people will get who pre-order the magazine is a press-on tattoo, and I always loved press-on tattoos. I still love press-on tattoos as an adult, but I don't have a single tattoo on my body, and neither does Chris, and Adam has not made any mention of wanting a tattoo. I have no problem with people who want to get tattoos, sometimes even students, as soon as they turn 16. At our school, that's how old you have to be to get a tattoo. In Alberta they get tattoos. That's one of the things they look forward to, and there are folks in our family who have lots and lots of tattoos.

Speaker 1: 3:04

I'm fascinated by the tattoo technology and it seems to be getting better than it was before and also tattoo technology in removing tattoos that maybe you got when you were 16, that now you're 30 you don't want anymore. Anyways, this story comes to us from the mummified body found in the Alps in 1991, named Otzi, and this body was very well preserved and it was actually covered in tattoos. Otzi had 61 tattoos. Now, they weren't any amazing designs like birds or the barbed wire tattoo that was popular 20 years ago, but he has black lines that crisscross his wrists and his legs. His lower back and his chest is 5,200 years old, which, to the estimation of science, is probably the oldest body that has evidence of having tattoos. And what makes this really interesting is that what technology did they use back then to tattoo?

Speaker 1: 4:21

Anthropologists and archaeologists have long studied early tattoo technology. There is a prevailing idea that charcoal ash is rubbed into the skin right after it's cut, like you make an incision with a sharp stone because these people didn't have any metal tools. So the body is cut with a very sharp stone and then ash is rubbed into the incision. And you do that enough times. It creates the ash pigment. The dark color gets under the skin and in the new scar tissue that's formed. However, a new study challenges this idea. It suggests that otzi was tattooed using a handheld pointed tool with pigment on its tip, punching closely to spaced holes in the skin. This is not unlike current tattoo technology where you have a design and stencil, you clean the area and then a special inking needle goes up and down with ink, pierces the skin with this needle over and over and over again, deposited and deposited, and it deposits ink up and down as the needle goes in and out of the skin.

Speaker 1: 5:41

This hand poke tattoo technique has been reported in cultures all over the world, including Otzi's home region of Central Europe where his body was found. They actually got a bunch of tattooists who use old school techniques, old school tattooing techniques called hand poking. Now there's various different ways this is done. You tap a handle attached to a bone point or comb with a wood implement. Therefore, that pigment goes into the skin. You can also slice the skin with a blade before rubbing pigment in. And then there's a third technique where a needle is used to pull a pigment-infused thread through the skin's outer layer. So those three techniques are the old-school tattooing techniques. What the researchers then did was compared images of the tattoo artists who had healed from these traditional methods and they compared microscopic images of them to the Iceman tattoos, images of them to the Iceman tattoos. So three different old school techniques from different artists and different people who got these old school tattoos who have been healed. And they found that Otzi's body markings are similar to the hand poking tattoo technique hand poking tattoo technique and they actually found a sharpened bone owl in Otzi's toolkit that his body was found with. So this sharpened bone owl may be a tattooing implement, which is really cool. Archaeologists are always trying to make sense of the past and they use anthropologists to help with the culture. We may never know how Otzi got his tattoos, but there's good evidence that how he did get his tattoos is very similar to what traditional tattooists still use today. That's science news for this week.

Speaker 1: 7:40

This week in Pet Science, let's talk about how humans change the pitch of their voice when they speak to animals, but also babies. I've spoken before about this. This is just another study which actually delves into slightly different methodology. I love it. So it's pretty conclusive that when humans talk to, we raise our pitch Women definitely more so than men. My sister-in-law, erin, who's married to my brother Cam, when we had baby Callan many years ago, erin had the sing-songy voice that she would use with Callan and it would make Callan go bananas. Kellen loved that voice. I catch myself sometimes raising my voice like the pitch of my voice when I'm talking to like puppies, and I don't know if I do it with babies. But it also, of course, has been documented widely and like without question that humans talk to infants with a higher pitch.

Speaker 1: 8:43

So here's where this study is really different. Okay, so there's PTS, so there's PDS, which is pet-directed speech, and IDS, infant-directed speech. And how they parsed out this study. That was different was they took only women. They took women who had a dog, women who had an infant and women who had an infant and a dog. Okay, so there's three different groups Women with a baby, women with a pet, women with a baby and a pet. So the acoustic aspects of infant-directed speech or pet-directed speech, have a friendliness affliction. You may also have different facial expressions, you may gesture, you may have a different intonation, but instead of saying hi puppy, you would say hi puppy. Or instead of saying hello baby, can you imagine saying hello there, baby, you'd say hi baby. Right, you change how your pitch works, you change your semantics of how you speak. You may quote unquote dumb down the words a bit for the baby or for the dog.

Speaker 1: 9:56

Now, this study was published from the Institute for Brain Behavior and Development in Australia. Everybody in the study was Australian, the women's average age was 33, and they all spoke English as their primary language. To both the babies and the dogs. There were home visits with the participants where they were given instructions and information sheets. The participants, of course, had to record themselves speaking to their dog or their infant many times.

Speaker 1: 10:27

Now here's where things get really interesting. Women with only a dog showed a very similar emotional affliction in their voice to women with an infant only. However, women with a pet and a baby, they spoke to the pet with a lower quote unquote baby talk than they did to the baby. And when they compared the overall pitch difference of PDS and IDS, women with a dog only and women with a baby only. The women with the baby only had a quote. Quote unquote more high pitched baby talk. So comparing apples to apples, women with a dog only. Women with a baby only. Both had baby talk. Comparing apples to oranges when there's a baby and a dog in the house, you lose quite a bit of the baby talk to the dog and that is then moved to the baby. Are humans substituting a baby for their pet when they have a pet only Could be Interesting.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Limitations of the study was the dog ranged in age from young to senior. It would be really interesting if there was a puppy in the house and how that would change your speech, because I don't know about you. I can't help but talk to puppies in a sing-song, happy voice. Let us know what you think. Do you remember how you talk to your baby babies? Or if you have a baby right now, do you talk to them in a sing-songy voice? Do you talk to your dogs in a sing-songy voice? That that's Pet Science for this week.

Speaker 1: 12:05

Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the Science Podcast free, number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the Beaker stuffy and now the Ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger, the science cat, has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three, if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen too. Okay, on with the show.

Speaker 1: 12:55

Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have geographer Mary LaMagna, writer, with me today. Mary, how are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm great. Where are you calling into the show from? Where are you in the world?

Speaker 2: 13:13

I am calling from Omaha, Nebraska in the United States.

Speaker 1: 13:16

Okay, lived there your whole life or moved around a bit.

Speaker 2: 13:20

I moved around a bit. My parents' jobs had us kind of bouncing around the states growing up, but Omaha is where we ended up.

Speaker 1: 13:27

Okay, I introduced you as a geographer. What's your training to be a geographer? What's going on there?

Speaker 2: 13:36

Well, so I have a little bit of a I would say unique training system. I did get a bachelor's degree. It was in communication. I found GIS a little bit later in life. So basically, once I found GIS, I have a post-bachelor's certificate in GIS. And then I went ahead and got a master's degree in GIS and then, because GIS is tied to the tech industry here in America, I have a couple of computer tech industry certifications. I have a security plus certification, which focuses on computer security, and then our industry. We also have a professional certification here in the United States and that's the GISP or the GIS professional.

Speaker 1: 14:27

Wow, okay, so it's a bit hey, you're not just like somebody who really likes maps. You have some serious training going on there. I love it. But that's my second question, like what drew you to geography? What drew you to this line of work?

Speaker 2: 14:46

you to geography? What drew you to this line of work? So it was definitely kind of a lucky thing. I taught dance for a while and one of my fellow dance teachers was involved in GIS and she needed some data entry help with her job and I was looking for some more employment and so I started in data entry just kind of data organizing, creating essentially a database of all this geographic data and I was just like, wow, this is super cool. So I started learning more about GIS, I started working with students that they had on staff with some of their projects and I just really enjoyed it because I could combine the tech skills that I had with my creative side in like making maps, which I do enjoy. I do enjoy maps as well and there's just such a variety of different tasks that you can do with just this wealth of geographic information.

Speaker 1: 15:49

So, mary, when you were a little Mary, you weren't like, you didn't have like maps spread all over the kitchen table and you were like pondering expeditions to long, far off places. You kind of came into it later in life, or were you that little explorer kid.

Speaker 2: 16:00

There was a little bit of that.

Speaker 2: 16:02

Due to my dad's job, he was often around the world, and so they my parents got me a globe actually, oh, okay, when I was in first grade, more so that I could kind of just see where in the world he was and I proudly took that globe to show and tell Like my, my, my name is still actually written on it where my mom, you know, printed my name so I could take it into show and tell. And then when I was older I remember just looking at kind of maps of the world going I really hope I get to explore someday. So I definitely had some of that inside me. It just didn't click for a very long time that you can turn that into a career.

Speaker 1: 16:42

Did you ever watch the show? Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Yes, I love that show. Okay, I love that show too. I love those kids shows that had a bit of an educational type spin. I don't see those anymore. They need to bring back shows like that.

Speaker 2: 16:59

They do, and I do know so, like for when in the World is Carmen Sandiego? They also had a computer game version of it and the computer game was so difficult it was hard.

Speaker 1: 17:11

You had to know your geography, you had to know your lots of stuff yes, and so that was.

Speaker 1: 17:18

I can tell you, I never won the game, I never found carmen san diego, but I enjoyed trying we had a globe growing up, and why my brother and I got fairly good with geography is my dad found a pool table from a arcade that was going out of business and he got us a pool table. Normally I don't think we he would never have been able to afford the thing, but he got it for a great deal and we would. We didn't play each other for money, but we would spin the globe and stick our finger down and we would play for that country. So we do this for a half an hour every day. You get to know where all the other countries are in the world pretty quick.

Speaker 2: 18:00

Oh yeah, that's fun.

Speaker 1: 18:02

We always hope we would land on someplace that we thought was more valuable, like the United States, and we rarely. We usually wind up in, you know not to disparage any other country, but we always hope we thought the United States was the most valuable to play for. So my next question, mary, is you mentioned GIS. Could you explain a little bit like what that is, what that acronym stands for?

Speaker 2: 18:26

Yeah, so it stands for Geographic Information System, and it's basically a system that does four different things with data. So it creates data, it manages data and the two most important things is it maps the data, so all the data has a location element, and then it allows you to analyze that data based on where it is in the world.

Speaker 1: 18:56

Okay, Now, so that's very broad. My next question is obviously we need GIS, but what are some of the main applications the average person would use it for?

Speaker 2: 19:10

So there's a couple different ones, and probably everybody is most familiar with that little mapping application on your phone.

Speaker 1: 19:19

Google Maps. Thank you. Yes, I don't know what I'd do without that.

Speaker 2: 19:24

Or Apple Maps, if people are so under that persuasion. But basically, you know it is. It has all this data, it's got your base layers. You know you can either have street maps or you can have satellite imagery. It has features that are. They're mapped. It's got your roads. It's got your place names different. You know restaurants, hotels, stuff like that. And then you can tell it hey, I would like to go from point A to point B, and it does the analysis there for you. In fact, it'll probably give you, you know, a choice of three different routes. You know well, this one's the fastest, this one will not have any toll roads. You know this one is the most fuel efficient, and then you can choose your own adventure from there.

Speaker 1: 20:15

Okay, Specifically, what do you work with GIS?

Speaker 2: 20:22

So I am definitely more on the tech side and I basically essentially we have a little help desk, so it's called the GIS Service Center, so we help other people do the actual GIS work. So I do a lot of data management. So we have managed close to over 70 terabytes of geographic data and that is imagery, that is elevation data, that's your standard stuff like your streets, your cities, kind of your. We call it vector data, Basically anything that we can get our hands on that we think will help support what our customers do. We manage that data and we organize it so that people can find it.

Speaker 1: 21:14

I also do a lot of that's very useful it is. It is Data's not useful if you can't find it.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Right, yes, and probably the other most important thing too, is like we document, we document the data. So how was this data created? What? What you know the kind of with a lot of things you can create very like detailed, specific data. You know you can get go out in the field with a survey crew and get like a centimeter grade it's called like rtk receiver, you know, so that you'd be able to find like a penny, you know, in the middle of a field and like mary, is this coming from satellites?

Speaker 1: 21:55

are you talking data from satellites, remote sensing?

Speaker 2: 21:59

some of it is yes, we have that too. Oh my, yes, and I'm not. I don't know all the satellites, but we do get, because all the different satellites have different resolutions too. So some satellites might collect data at a 30 meter resolution, some of it might be a 90 meter, and that resolution matters because it's how much you can see, and so different types of analysis are done at each of the different resolutions. Sorry to jump in there.

Speaker 1: 22:31

I was just curious about where the data is coming from.

Speaker 2: 22:34

Yeah, so we definitely have satellite data Anytime you're doing anything with GPS or getting your real-time location that is being triangulated off of the different satellites and with GPS receivers. There's all different types. And with GPS receivers, you know there's all different types. There's the stuff on your phone which you're going to get somewhere between 30 and 90 feet of accuracy because it can only connect to certain satellites. You know, all the way up to survey grade equipment which can connect to more satellites, and then it also has access to a position correction stream that is also coming from those satellites.

Speaker 1: 23:18

Has the data gotten? Is there just more and more every year? But is it exponential? I guess that's what my question is.

Speaker 2: 23:26

It is exponential and it makes it very challenging because not only do we have satellite data, we have aerial imagery. So you can go up in a plane and attach a camera to a plane and you can fly imagery. You can also fly LIDAR, which is where they take lasers and they bounce it off the surface of the earth and then they collect those returns and you can create elevation products.

Speaker 1: 23:56

Oh, cool, like how mapping the elevation of mountains and depressions and things like that.

Speaker 2: 24:02

And so, like you, still be able to only do those from an actual aircraft. And then recently, now you can have that same technology and have it attached to a uas, so like an unmanned aerial system or, I guess, a drone, as some people I guess.

Speaker 1: 24:21

The more they're, more common terminology, and so you can fly like a consumer drone, or are you talking like a more tech, more high-tech drone? A little bit more high-tech drone.

Speaker 2: 24:30

A little bit more high-tech drone. I don't consumer could probably buy it, but they're probably not going to want to spend the kind of money.

Speaker 1: 24:37

I was just thinking. I don't know if I'd want to spend the money to attach it to the drone I use to take footage of Bunsen and Beaker.

Speaker 2: 24:43

So Correct, not that you couldn't do it, but there's definitely a price, a price point, and so there's a lot of places that you know I just was watching something on television you know where they were doing some you know archaeological work where they couldn't actually excavate, and so it wasn't that big of an area and so they called in the drone people and they had two different types of aircraft.

Speaker 2: 25:11

They had a fixed wing and then they had the rotor like a helicopter and they had, you know, the lidar equipment on it and they flew this thing and then you, when you got the data back, you could tell you know the depressions in the earth, so they were able to make out this cemetery which you, you know. In this particular show. The questions were like well, how big is this cemetery? You know, there was a belief that it was larger than what you could actually see from like your standard aerial imagery, and thanks to the LIDAR, they could see the depressions. They also did some ground penetrating radar there too, but they essentially got fantastic map of what is more than likely the actual limits of the cemetery critically important if you're going to be building homes around that right right, right, the last thing.

Speaker 1: 26:05

The last thing you want to do is disrupt that. And just for the you know the respect thing, but also the curses.

Speaker 2: 26:12

You know nobody wants right right, and it was just amazing that you know I I have to laugh because I mean, for they probably spent a large chunk of money getting this data, but they were able to do it. You know, they had this, essentially the site map of the cemetery area, without even excavating anything. You know, there was nobody digging in dirt. They were able to get it all from the air, which is pretty impressive.

Speaker 4: 26:39

Amazing.

Speaker 2: 26:40

Yeah. So you know there's that types of data. You know you have people too that are still in terms of, like, historic mapping. You know there's people that are just like, well, what was, for example, in my line of work? You know the shoreline of the Missouri River, what was it like in 1940? Well, we have maps and we can digitize those maps, bring them into our software and tell the software, hey, this is where it is in the world, and then you can go along with your mouse and essentially draw features that you want. So in this case, you know the bank line at the Missouri River in 1940.

Speaker 1: 27:17

And then that's useful for like erosion studies or whatever right Correct.

Speaker 2: 27:21

Yeah, that's actually one of the projects that we're helping people out with is they're going to be doing some shoreline erosion studies and so they want to see where the where that shoreline was over, you know, various different decades has with all of that data?

Speaker 1: 27:35

like our, my wife and I were just watching the office the other day and the episode I'm thinking of is michael scott drives his car into the lake because the gps tells him to turn at a certain point. I feel like that happened occasionally a decade ago and I haven't heard of GPS making catastrophic decision errors like that. Is that from all of this extra data, or do we just not hear about?

Speaker 2: 28:06

that Well, like any system the data is, you're only going to get out of it. You know the quality of the data going into it and nothing's going to be perfect. You know we could you can collect just terabytes and terabytes of data and there's still going to be mistakes in there. Maybe it was a couple years ago now, you know, I heard where you know like somebody did. They drove, like they followed the turn by turn directions into the middle of a field and the road just stopped that could happen and that could happen in alberta, like rural alberta, canada there's roads that just go to nowhere.

Speaker 1: 28:45

I've been on one of those roads before and like what happened? Why does it stop?

Speaker 2: 28:49

right, you know and you know I will say with you know the extreme amount of data in. You know some of these mapping systems. You don't have a human there to verify. You know quality check, oh, you know that the road isn't leading out into the middle of a field. You know and it's. You know the computer saw a road there. Well, obviously it must lead somewhere. So I mean it is really important. And you know it's a lot easier when you have small projects to.

Speaker 2: 29:19

You know quality control, quality assure that you have your data. You know anytime that we do. You know we have data coming in from work, from a collection. You know that's part of the process is that to make it as error-free as possible. But when you're talking on a global scale, you know such as that, you know like google or apple, you know, are maintaining in their databases. It's that's. It's a very challenging thing to do. So I kind of the lesson learned there is don't just blindly follow the turn-by-turn directions. You know maybe look at your route, see maybe where it's taking you. Preview those directions before you actually get started.

Speaker 1: 30:02

So my last question before we move on, mary, is a big picture one as somebody who's entrenched in the GIS field what's coming in the future? Do you see anything exciting coming in the future, or are there issues in the future that you see looming that maybe the average person wouldn't know about? I'm just curious about the future. You know both good and bad. Either good or bad or both.

Speaker 2: 30:28

Well, there's definitely both. Gis has come a long way, you know from the 60s, where you know you could only crunch so much data you now have. So, while the data is growing exponentially, we also have better technological capabilities for handling large amounts of data and kind of. I would say. The good side of AI artificial intelligence is that we can train it to help us manage these just absurd large amounts of data points, especially when it comes into kind of the I would say, the it thing in industry now are these like these wise data streams that you can get you know from, basically you know anywhere, and it's a lot to sort through. You know AI can help us sort through that much faster than somebody can just sitting at their computer.

Speaker 1: 31:28

Until AI goes rogue and tells everybody to drive into a lake.

Speaker 2: 31:32

Right, I'm just saying then you do have kind of the other no.

Speaker 1: 31:35

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. That'd be the fastest way. That would be the. If I was an AI rogue AI I wouldn't be going after a country's nukes. I'd just screw with Apple Maps and make everybody drive into lakes, right? Because people just blindly follow what it says. Oh yeah, sorry, mary, no that's yes, you know.

Speaker 2: 31:56

But then again you're like with AI, you do have kind of the general. It's kind of a general.

Speaker 2: 32:00

I don't want to say leeryness, but just you know it's a new technology, we still got to figure out what it's good for, what it's not good for and kind of just not give it the run of the place. I will say like it was. So. Our major software vendor has an Instagram account and they posted an image of an elevation map that an AI created and it wasn't half bad. I was just like, oh, this thing's getting pretty smart. Now, of course, the next picture was the same elevation map, the same data created by a cartographer, somebody who's trained in making maps, and it was much, much better, but the capabilities are getting there.

Speaker 1: 32:44

Yeah, right now with the what is it called? Dall-e? No, 50% of the time it's amazing, and the other 50% of the time it's amazing and the other 50 of the time it's nightmare. Fuel, like it is just horrifying, right, and I'd imagine it's the same thing with a map like the average person be like, oh, that's not too bad, and then a cartographer looks at it and that is a gong show. What are you doing? Go home, ai, you know.

Speaker 2: 33:08

Right, yeah, but probably the other big thing that's kind of in the industry is the move to 3D.

Speaker 1: 33:15

Oh, okay, yeah.

Speaker 2: 33:16

And so there is a very I would say most GISs have had 3D capabilities for a while it's not necessarily a new capability, but we're finally having the data resolution, the computing power on most laptops. Definitely, if you access a machine in the cloud, it's got kind of those. Next big push is just to. I mean, one of the fundamental flaws with mapping is the Earth is 3D.

Speaker 4: 33:58

You know, we are.

Speaker 2: 33:58

Yeah, you know we're going to have distortions. You're going to have, you know, tiny errors and there's a whole field of you know map projections about. You know like you give up one distortion so that you can preserve you know something else. But with 3D you don't have to take any of that into consideration.

Speaker 1: 34:30

But with 3D, you don't have to take any of that into consideration. Is that on the same lines of the classic flat map of the world? Like distorts Africa terribly like? Africa is enormous and it never, ever looks as big as it should look. Yes, Is that okay? All right, Gotcha.

Speaker 2: 34:48

Yes, and I believe that the Mercator projection and that was done, goodness, I think in the 1600s it was a Flemish guy with the last name of Mercator Dang. Those Flemish I don't know. Well, it was kind of revolutionary because at that point you have to understand, even people weren't used to seeing a globe.

Speaker 1: 35:12

Oh, that's true. It'd be like, hey, there's these other places. And people are like what are you talking about? I've never left my village, right?

Speaker 2: 35:19

okay, I got you and so it was revolutionary at the time. But you know, as we get, you know further along, you know, into our modern age, you know it still use. Some of those projections causes us more problems than it does solutions sometimes.

Speaker 1: 35:36

Well, I'm here for the 3D. That's cool, I can't wait. Yeah, well, thanks for talking to us a little bit. Start that again. Thanks for talking to us a little bit about GIS. That's amazing, it's educational and it's not something that we've ever covered on the Science Podcast. I love that. We have a couple standard questions we ask our guests for their, you know their stories or their facts about. The first one is a pet story. Do you have a pet story you could share with us from your life?

Speaker 2: 36:04

I do, and so currently, right now, I have a cat, misty, okay. And she is a six-year-old tortoise shell kitty cat and then I share my dog Bear with my mom and he is 20 pounds of fluff.

Speaker 1: 36:21

Oh, so he's a little bear. He's a little bear, he's a little bear.

Speaker 2: 36:24

He's a baby bear. Yeah, he's like a bear cub, but so, and this story takes place shortly after I adopted Misty, when she was a little over a year, from our local humane society and brought her home and, you know, took those gradual steps into introducing her, you know, introducing her to her room. And then, you know, gradually, like the rest of the house, you know, and to bear, who was so excited because we thought he, we had brought him home a playmate and Misty was not about that at all.

Speaker 1: 37:00

That was like Bunsen and ginger. Bunsen wanted to be ginger's friends so bad, and now they're just so indifferent to each other.

Speaker 2: 37:08

Yeah. And so so shortly after Misty had kind of just started running about, you know, doing the runabout of the house, I started Bear has these chews and he normally gets one a day and I kind of noticed these extra chews around the house. I was just like no, I swear I, you know he's only had one today. You know, I like I don't know how these got here. You know, I was super confused. I'm just like am I giving him chews in my sleep? I just don't understand. And so, shortly after this started, I was in our laundry room, which kind of connects off the kitchen, and I hear like the unmistakable sound of a cat getting on the kitchen counter.

Speaker 1: 37:53

Yep, I know that sound and a crinkle of a bag.

Speaker 2: 37:57

I know that and I peek my head around the corner and there's Misty. Her paw is in the chew bag because I must not have fully sealed the sealed and it took her a few times but like she picked that chew up, she got it out of the bag and she dropped it on the floor and Bear had come running because he knows the sound of his chew bag. He picked up that chew and he ran it to the other room and then he came back and then this entire thing happens again. She's just sticking her little paw in there and dropping these chews and Bear's just oh my gosh, this cat's just sticking her little paw in there and dropping these shoes. And Bear's just oh my gosh, this cat's just giving me shoes. This is amazing.

Speaker 2: 38:42

And so I laughed really hard. But then I went in and I took Misty off the counter and I sealed the shoe bag. I moved Bear's because we have a basket of you know Bear's extra treats and chews and stuff like that on the counter and that got moved. So there were no more shenanigans after that. But I know Bear greatly appreciated this new cat dropping him multiple chews a day.

Speaker 1: 39:06

I love that. You know Beaker and Ginger for as much, as sometimes they pick at each other. They are quite the team. They are up to no good some days where they like Beaker I don't know if they have some like interspecies communication for Ginger to go knock stuff off counters so Beaker can enjoy it, but I think, like the communication gets screwed up because I had some potatoes on the counter and Ginger was knocking them all off. Maybe it was fun because they were rolling.

Speaker 1: 39:36

Beaker wasn't eating them. She's like I'm not going to eat a stupid potato. You dumb cat. That's not what I wanted you to knock off. So sometimes I think what she's supposed to knock off gets lost in translation. Right, I need to turn that into a text from Bunsen joke. Actually, I think there's some humor there. Yeah, definitely what a fun combo you have, though. Thanks for sharing, mary. Oh, you're welcome. The other standard question we ask our guests to share a super fact. It's something that you know that when you tell people blows their mind a bit. Do you have a super fact for us?

Speaker 2: 40:10

I do. I don't know if it will blow everybody's mind, but I picked it, I would say, in honor of the fact that you're canadian, so hopefully it might blow your mind. Oh yay, I would say so. The first computerized gis was actually created by a canadian go canada um in canada. Yeah, so in 1963 the canadian government actually asked roger toml, who was a Canadian geographer, to create an inventory of all of its natural resources. Boy yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:43

That's like all of Canada.

Speaker 2: 40:45

Right.

Speaker 1: 40:46

Yes, that's what we have. We've got snow, we've got polar bears and we've got all the natural resources.

Speaker 2: 40:54

Right and he was able to do it. He created this massive computer system which stored and processed the natural resource data from all of the provinces, and it was actually the beginning of Canada's National Land Use Management Program, and he actually called it a geographic information system. So he is the reason why we use that term GIS Good job, buddy.

Speaker 1: 41:23

That's a cool fact. I didn't know that. You know it would have been way harder like probably 20 years later, when Tim Hortons came to be, because that's also one of our natural resources that would have very complicated this man's work.

Speaker 2: 41:38

Probably I was going to say the one time I've been to Canada. My goal was to find a Tim Hortons.

Speaker 1: 41:43

Oh yeah, you just throw a rock, you'll hit one Right. That's a cool fact. Thanks, mary, you're welcome. Well, we're at the end of our chat here, mary. Thank you for being a guest today. This was super fun and educational. Gis is again, like I mentioned, is not something we've ever talked about on the Science Podcast, but there's so much SciTech involved, so thank you for taking some time to chat with us.

Speaker 2: 42:07

Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 42:09

Yeah, just a kind of quick question. Maybe not yourself personally, but are there any you know, websites or places people could connect further with either yourself or like stuff about GIS?

Speaker 2: 42:22

their website. I also have a StoryMet presentation that I did on GIS for a local Girl Scout troop that I think just has great resources on the history of GIS and what it is, and then if you're on Instagram, it's called S-R-I-G-R-A-M and some of it is industry specific, but they post some just amazing images of maps and incredible things that people are doing around the globe with geographic data. So I would suggest checking them out.

Speaker 1: 43:08

Nice. Okay, We'll make sure as much of that is hyperlinked in the show notes everybody.

Speaker 2: 43:13

Yes, thank you, you too.

Speaker 4: 43:14

Okay, take care. Okay, it is time for story time with me, adam. If you don't know what story time is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. Dad, do you have a story?

Speaker 1: 43:27

It's been holidays for us. The last week, the first half of my holidays, I was not well. I got a really bad cold and was basically just a sloth slothing around the house trying not to get everybody sick. I think I got Annalise sick or something, but Adam and Chris dodged the bug. But it has been nice to slow things down and just hang out with the dogs. Beaker is a couch cuddly dog. Sometimes Bunsen actually hops up on the couch too. So see some interesting behaviors when you're home with your pets all the time, rather than you see them in the morning and then in the evening when you're gone from work.

Speaker 1: 44:09

One thing I will mention is that we've had, it's been warming up. Obviously we're heading into spring, or whatever counts for spring in Alberta, canada, and the snow is rapidly disappearing. Even though it snowed today all day, I don't think any of it stuck around. The snow is disappearing and it's funny because Bunsen is finding little patches of snow on the walk to I don't know. Be a snowplow guy, he pushes his face into the snow. He was rolling on a patch of snow the other time we went out on a walk. So I think Bunsen knows that winter is almost over or it's in the last days, and he's just trying to milk it for what it's worth. That's my story. I have a little story.

Speaker 4: 44:54

It involves a snowball. So we were on the walk with Annalise, mom, dad and Ginger, and Annalise and I were having a snowball fight. This is like a little story. I have another story to tell, but this is just news. That happened. We were having a snowball fight and I was throwing snowballs at annalise and she was throwing snowballs at me and the dogs were excited. And the dogs were very excited and we were throwing snowballs at the dogs and they were chasing after the snowballs and if you roll the snowball along the ground, beaker will chase after it. But annalise and I were throwing snowballs at each other and then I mom was recording a video and I thought she saw me wind up to throw the snowball at her and I threw the snowball and it hit mom in the face. I didn't mean for it to hit her in the face, but it hit mom square in the face and it hit her. I accidentally hit her really hard with the snowball and I felt terrible and mom was taking a video of the whole thing. You can see me wind up to throw the snowball and then mom turn away the instant that the snowball was ready to get thrown. And then you can hear at the end of it, or you can hear oh, she was hit by the snowball. Anyway, that's my little story, that's my little tangent story.

Speaker 4: 46:32

My other story has to do with the cats at the farm. So Annalise is sick right now and she's in bed all day. And during the day, while she's sick, all four of the cats will come into her room and sleep on her bed because she's the sick one, and then all of them realize that she's sick and give her all the attention. But all four of the cats are so useless. There was a mouse in her room, like a week ago, and none of the cats caught the mouse. The one thing that caught the mouse was the mouse trap. But we put all four of the cats in her room and closed the door and waited two hours and they were at the door scratching to get out. They didn't even try to look for the mouse. But yeah, annalise is sick and the cats really like her, but they also don't do their job as cats, which is catching mice. Mom, do you have a story?

Speaker 3: 47:27

I sure do. I just want to echo the fun stories that happened this week with Adam and playing with the dogs and a snowball and hitting me in the face. Yes, that happened and I'm okay. There's no, no harm, no foul. I just wasn't expecting it and it was okay. And he apologized Things happen. He thought he was going to aim for my body, but it didn't aim for my body. It definitely hit me square in the jaw.

Speaker 3: 47:57

So, having said that, there's more things that happened this week. Like yesterday, we were on a walk with the dogs and, lo and behold, we were looking at Norbert's den and the area that we think that Norbert goes into, and what happened was we're like, hey, we see a little bit of activity, what's going on? And then Beaker ran back and she stole a hunk of wood out from the entrance to the den and we were like, oh no, and Beaker was running with it, like she was so excited, just like Bunsen is when he has a moose leg. It was by Felicia and she was running with this hunk of wood. And then today we went and lo and behold, norbert, our beaver, has dammed it up. He's done the whole get mud from the Creek and patched it up. I think it's called speckle when you patch up a hole in your wall. That's what Norbert did, and that was just a funny story that happened this week and that's my story.

Speaker 4: 49:09

I've been taking pictures of the animals while they've been eating their treats, and I've been taking pictures of Ginger. But, yeah, that's the end of story time. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast episode and thank you for sticking along to my section. Bye, bye.

Speaker 1: 49:23

That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the Science Podcast. If you love our show, give us a good rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and share it with people you think would love the content. We'd also like to thank Mary Ryder, who is our guest, and the top tier of the Paw Pack. Those are the folks that support us at the highest level. If you want to join the Paw Pack, check out our show notes. It's the way you can keep the Science Podcast free.

Speaker 3: 49:50

Chris, let's hear the names of the top tier free, chris, let's hear the names of the top tier Bianca Hyde, mary Ryder, tracy Domingue, susan Wagner, andrew Lin, helen Chin, tracy Halberg, amy C, jennifer Smathers, laura Stephenson, holly Birch, brenda Clark, anne Uchida, peggy McKeel, terry Adam, debbie Anderson, sandy Brimer, tracy Leinbaugh, marianne McNally, fun Lisa, shelley Smith, julie Smith, diane Allen, brianne Haas, linda Sherry, carol McDonald.

Speaker 1: 50:40

Catherine Jordan, courtney Proven, donna Craig Wendy, diane Mason and Luke Liz Button, kathy Zerker and Ben Rathart For science, empathy and cuteness.