Author: Brendan Barry

  • Taking You All to School

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    Brendan Barry
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    Like the title said, it’s about time I took you all to school…by which I mean university scorecards from the US Department of Education. I used my alma mater, the University of the Arts, to show the design here. Basically you have several sections key to understanding a university from the student body to the…

  • Supermoon Lunar Eclipse

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    Last night we experienced a total lunar eclipse here in Chicago. Unfortunately, significant cloud cover meant that much of the event went unseen. That was unfortunate, because eclipses are fantastic. To explain it we have this piece from the BBC. And for those were either unable to see it or did not know about it,…

  • Car Model Names to Avoid

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    In the wake of Volkswagen, this piece from xkcd seemed appropriate this Friday. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

  • Your State’s Power Sources

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    By now you should all know that I am a sucker for small multiples. They are a great way of separating out noise and letting each object be seen for its own. You should also know that I am a sucker for things industrial, e.g. nuclear power. So when you put the two together like…

  • Boston Bruins New Breakout Play

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    Brendan Barry
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    If you guys have not yet figured out, I am a baseball guy. But that is pretty much my only sport. And so maybe you can help explain to me just what is going on in today’s piece from the Boston Globe. I think it is attempting to explain hockey formations for the Boston Bruins.…

  • China by the Numbers

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    With Xi Jinping visiting the United States the BBC published an article looking at China’s changes over the years. In general, I don’t like the article—why are they using pigs to look at pork consumption? My general dislike aside, they do have a map that plots urban centres with more than one million people and…

  • Spicing It Up (Or Not If You Like Caraway)

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    Brendan Barry
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    Here is a post for all you cooks and bakers out there: spices. Over the weekend I came upon a piece FiveThirtyEight ran earlier this year about American spice consumption. They use spice availability as a proxy for consumption, because no such data exists—and unfortunately the standard for reporting changed in 2012 so data is…

  • The Second Republican Debate

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    Brendan Barry
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    11 candidates. 9 authors. (That would be the sub-title if my blog had sub-titles.) I do not have cable and so watching the debate live was not an option. Instead, I rely upon post-debate coverage to understand who said what and to whom. Usually that means an article with some video clips. But this piece…

  • The Crane Crash in Mecca

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    Brendan Barry
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    Sometimes when you are reading something, what you really need is context. Personally, I prefer visual context over textual, but not everybody is so thankfully we can do both. Last week a crane collapsed during inclement weather in Mecca and fell upon the Grand Mosque. I knoew that it was a large crane, but it…

  • The EU’s Migrant Problem

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    Last week we looked at a map produced by the Washington Post, which detailed the routes chosen by migrants and refugees desiring to reach the European Union. This week, I want to compare that to one from the BBC—there are others, even from the BBC, but we will examine them later—that details the differences in…