Author: Brendan Barry

  • China’s Secret Nuclear Missile Tunnel System

    I do not often get the chance to post illustrative works. But, the Washington Post reported on the work of Georgetown students that shows how China has tunneled thousands of miles of, well, tunnels to create a secret labyrinth for their nuclear weapons programme. The result is that instead of the few dozen warheads that…

  • Food Consumption

    Via Fareed Zakaria, an interactive piece by Food Service Warehouse that looks at the leading nations of food consumption in calories—and what people spend for their food. The map is not entirely useful, although it does at least hint at the geographic locations of the largest consumers (the West) and the smallest consumers (the Rest…

  • The BRICs a Decade Later

    The BRICs are ten years old. Well, not really. But the concept of Brazil, Russia, India, and China becoming some of the world’s largest economies is. Well, not even that necessarily. But the coining of the term BRIC is a decade old. So the BBC has a small interactive piece showing why the BRICs matter.…

  • The New York City Marathon

    Something I’ve been meaning to put up for a little while, the New York Times’ coverage of that city’s marathon and changes in the socioeconomic composition of the neighbourhoods through which the course winds. The piece includes a narrated motion graphic explaining the changes along a map of the course, while a series of charts…

  • Curiosity

    In just a few days, NASA’s next Martian rover, Curiosity, will lift off for a 2012 date with the Martian surface. The Washington Post has a two-part motion graphic piece to look at the rover’s landing and scientific components. Credit for the piece goes to Alberto Cuadra, Sohail Al-Jamea, and Andrew Pergram.

  • What’s a Dollar Worth These Days?

    from XKCD, in 2011 dollars (adjusted for inflation using Consumer Price Index):

  • Maps of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

    The Democratic Republic of the Congo is preparing for elections at the end of the month. For decades since independence from Belgium, the country has been beset by insurrection and civil war. Eastern portions of the country are all lawless and beyond the control of the government in the capital Kinshasa. Yet, DR Congo, which…

  • The European Debt Crisis. Again.

    Nearly a month ago, the New York Times released an interactive piece along with a printed infographic about the European debt crisis in an attempt to explain just what is going on; I wrote about it here. Now, the BBC has an interactive graphic showing how different countries relate to each other. The width of…

  • Much Improved Mapping of American Migration

    Forbes released Jon Bruner’s latest map of migration in the United States. It uses IRS figures to show inbound and outbound movement from counties across the United States. The work itself is an improvement from his map from last year, which was a bit more difficult to read. Beneath is the new version, and at…

  • Income Segregation in the Philadelphia Metro Area

    In an area very close to me…quite literally…the New York Times published an article about increasing segregation between the rich and the poor via the areas where they live. The study by Stanford University found that the Philadelphia metropolitan area saw the “sharpest rise” in segregation since the 1970s—the study used census data available through…