Author: Brendan Barry

  • Senate Facebook

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    Brendan Barry
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    Partisanship in Washington has only grown worse over time. So how better to track that than through Facebook-like network analysis diagrams? If you look at senators who voted with other senators at least 50% of the time and at least 75% of the time, and compare those numbers to numbers over a decade ago, you…

  • Secret Life of the Cat

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    Brendan Barry
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    It’s Friday. So what else could you want but cat videos?! On the internet?! But seriously, that’s what I have for you today. But with a twist. The BBC and the Royal Veterinary College collaborated to document a day in the life of cats by attaching collars with micro-cameras and GPS trackers to several felines…

  • Hong Kong and Hongkonger Identity

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    Brendan Barry
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    Hong Kong—and to a similar extent Macau—is part of China, but at times not so much. Because of the long history of British control through their colony, the people of Hong Kong, Hongkongers, are accustomed to a more liberal, democratic, and perhaps Western lifestyle than those of mainland China. Since the British handover, a local…

  • Corporate Taxes

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    Brendan Barry
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    Corporate taxes are always a fun discussion point. Who pays too much? Too little? Not at all? In May, the New York Times published an interactive piece examining US companies and their effective tax rates from 2007 through 2012. At its core, the piece is a bubble chart along one axis that plots the tax…

  • Office Space(s)

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    Brendan Barry
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    Today’s piece comes to me from my colleague Eileen. The Harvard Business Review published a report commissioned by Steelcase that looked at how different cultures prefer different office layouts, based upon different attitudes and traits exhibited by the people of different countries. That lead to three different types of spatial layouts. But what is really…

  • Leaving on a Jet Aeroplane

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    Brendan Barry
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    I am travelling abroad for two weeks. While I have a number of posts lined up, I doubt that I will be able to respond to anybody or post current and/or topical pieces. But at least you will have something. So to kick things off, this piece from the New York Times makes good use…

  • Extraditing Snowden

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    Brendan Barry
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    Edward Snowden is still on the run; he is still in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport without a passport to enter Russia. But if ever succeeds in extricating himself from his current predicament, Snowden presumably will seek to land in a country without an extradition treaty with the United States. So in this…

  • Federal Reserve Actions

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    Brendan Barry
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    Line charts can be a great way of looking at the impact of event over a metric over a set period of time. But what happens when you want to look at multiple metrics over that same period of time? In this example from the New York Times, we have a series of line charts…

  • Alcohol-related Traffic Fatalities

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    Brendan Barry
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    Earlier this year the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended changes in the current blood alcohol limits to reduce youth drunk driving. The NTSB wants the limit dropped/increased from 0.08 to 0.05. Fun side note, technically, the NTSB needs to have the states enact this on their own accord because such limits are not federal…

  • Canadian Fur

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    Brendan Barry
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    The National Post published this fascinating infographic on the Canadian fur industry. Historically speaking, that industry is one of the most important to Canada being one of the primary reasons for Canada’s colonisation by France and later the United Kingdom (to a lesser extent). The graphic provides illustrations of the pelts to scale along with…