Author: Brendan Barry

  • Understanding Genealogy

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    Brendan Barry
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    I came upon this piece a little while ago and realised that it in some ways paralleled my own interest in genealogy. Basically the story comes down to realising that you probably only know a mere fraction of the stories behind all the people who led up to you. To put in another context: “you’re…

  • Military Hardware

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    Brendan Barry
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    Earlier this week we looked at Ukraine’s loss of Debaltseve. Today we look at a piece from the Economist that compares the military hardware of the United States, Russia, and China. These are the mere datapoints on quantity, not quality. But it still illustrates fairly well why we should not fight a land war in…

  • Wars Are Bad, But Not as Bad as They Used To Be

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    Brendan Barry
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    War is bad for the population business—arguably good for business business. A year ago, the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies released a .pdf that looked at peace and conflict and their respective drivers. The designers clumsily pieced everything together so that the sum is less than the constituent parts. But, if you isolate each piece…

  • Ukraine Retreats from Debaltseve

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    Brendan Barry
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    This is a short piece—it is only really an inline map—but it illustrates fairly well why Ukraine’s loss of Debaltseve in eastern Ukraine last week is kind of a big deal. Basically, the now mostly abandoned city is a transport hub linking the two quasi capitals of the Novorossiya. Credit for the piece goes to…

  • The American Shopping Mall

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    Brendan Barry
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    This past weekend Al-Shabab, the Al Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia, threatened shopping malls in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This threat carries a certain amount of weight given the deadly attack Al-Shabab launched against the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya a few years ago. So what to look at today?…

  • Screw It

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    Brendan Barry
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    We looked at some pretty disturbing things this week, from the whole anti-vaccination thing to lynchings. So today, screw it. Let’s look at screws. Thanks to xkcd we have an illustrated guide to the different type of screw heads. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

  • Lynchings

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    Brendan Barry
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    Let’s follow up yesterday’s good news story about measles with lynchings. The New York Times mapped and charted historical lynchings from 1877 to 1950 across 12 states in the South. Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.

  • The Measles Outbreak

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    Brendan Barry
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    People, science is your friend. Vaccinations are not only for the benefit of yourself, but for others. Anyway, let us take a look at the measles outbreak through some graphics produced by the New York Times. It started in Disneyland. Because we had eliminated the disease about 15 years ago. Science, people. Credit for the…

  • Presidents Day Popularity Contests

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    Brendan Barry
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    Yesterday was Presidents Day and I had the day off. So today’s post is a bit late, but it still works. Pew Research Centre pulled together data they had on presidential popularity from Eisenhower to Obama. The data point was job approval. Credit for the piece goes to the graphics department of the Pew Research…

  • Squaring Up London

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    Brendan Barry
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    Choropleths are not always a good idea. For example, look at election maps. Highly populated but geographically small cities appear as mere drops of ink on paper or pixels on a screen. Meanwhile, vast deserts appear gigantic empires. Nothing new there. But even within cities, these issues exist. London is one such city and one…