Author: Brendan Barry

  • Delco vs Chesco

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    Brendan Barry
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    One of the things in the pop culture these days is an HBO show called Mare of Easttown. For those that haven’t heard of it, probably my more international audience, it’s a crime drama set in the near suburbs of Philadelphia, a placed called Delaware County that locals simply call Delco. Last Saturday, the show…

  • Baseball’s Injury Problem

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week, Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic wrote an article examining the recent spate of injuries in Major League Baseball. For those interested in the sport, the article is well worth the read. For the unfamiliar, baseball played only about 1/3 of the number of games as usual last year due to Covid-19. This year,…

  • 2020 Census Apportionment

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    Brendan Barry
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    Every ten years the United States conducts a census of the entire population living within the United States. My genealogy self uses the federal census as the backbone of my research. But that’s not what it’s really there for. No, it exists to count the people to apportion representation at the federal level (among other…

  • The May Jobs Report

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last Friday, the government released the labour statistics from April and they showed a weaker rebound in employment than many had forecasted. When I opened the door Saturday morning, I got to see the numbers above the fold on the front page of the New York Times. What I enjoyed about this layout, was that…

  • Covid Update: 9 May

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week I wrote about how, for new cases, we had seen a few consecutive days of increasing cases. Were we witnessing an aberration, a one-off “well, that was weird”? Or was this the beginning of a trend towards increasing new cases? A week later and we have our answer. Just a one-off. If we…

  • Allergies in the Time of Covid

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    Brendan Barry
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    If all goes according to plan, I should be receiving my second dose of Pfizer later this afternoon. Then it’s two more weeks until I’m fully vaccinated and ready to rejoin the world. But what kind of world will be rejoining? The allergy plagued one looking at the calendar. And that’s why this post from…

  • Off the Axis

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    Brendan Barry
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    Two Fridays ago, I opened the door and found my copy of the New York Times with a nice graphic above the fold. This followed the announcement from the White House of aggressive targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions In general, I love seeing charts and graphics above the fold. As an added bonus, this…

  • Can We Pop Our Political Bubbles?

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    Brendan Barry
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    It’s no secret that Americans—and likely at least Western communities more broadly—live in bubbles, one of which being our political bubbles. And so I want to thank one of my mates for sending me the link to this opinion piece about political bubbles from the New York Times. The piece is fairly short, but begins…

  • Covid-19: A Global Update

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    Brendan Barry
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    I’ve been trying to limit the amount of Covid-19 visualisations I’ve been covering. But on Sunday this image landed at my front door, above the fold on page 1 of the New York Times. And it dovetails nicely with our story about the pandemic’s impact on Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois. For most…

  • Covid Update: 2 May

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    Brendan Barry
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    I didn’t write a post last Monday, but this Monday I am. A few things may have changed in the Covid situation. The most important is that we may have finally seen the peak of this current wave’s surge of new cases. For the last few weeks we’ve seen cases rising in the five states.…