Author: Brendan Barry

  • Building the Wall

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    Brendan Barry
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    Or at least a portion that was already funded back in March. If it was, in fact, a wall. This morning it appears as if President Trump will not scupper the funding agreement. It includes far less than the $5.7 billion he demanded, but do not forget back in March, Congress appropriated funds to construct…

  • A Macedonia by any Other Name

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    Brendan Barry
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    As someone who loves geography and maps, I have plenty of printed atlases and map books. One year, as a gift, my family gave me an early 20th century atlas. That one in particular is remarkable because of how much the world changed between 1921 and 2019—what was French West Africa is now several independent…

  • Walnut Pancakes in Space

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    Brendan Barry
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    One of the really neat things about space exploration has been the New Horizons probe that raced past Pluto, giving us the image of the now famous heart shape on the dwarf planet. But as it raced past a Kuiper Belt object named Ultima Thule on New Year’s, we received some tantalising first images of…

  • Regionalisms for a Drink

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    Brendan Barry
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    We made it to the end of the week, everybody. And so now we get a look an xkcd take on one of my favourite little pieces: regionalisms. We all use terms that are specific to the areas where we live or grew up. For example, here in Philadelphia we call a cured meat, cheese,…

  • Where is the North Pole?

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    Brendan Barry
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    We have two North Poles. The most commonly known is the geographic north pole that sits at the top of the world. We also have the magnetic north pole, which is where your compass points when you are lost in the woods. But, the magnetic north pole is not static and in fact moves. (In…

  • Trump’s Executive Time

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    Brendan Barry
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    Tonight President Trump will give his State of the Union address, the annual speech about the president’s goals and agenda. Today I have a work meeting about management practices. So when I read this piece yesterday by Axios on Trump’s schedule (from a leak of November and December dates), I figured what better piece to…

  • A Not so Dry January

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    Brendan Barry
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    January has ended, and with it for, apparently, a very few Britons, Dry January. The Economist looked at alcohol consumption, using a proxy of beer sales, and compared that against the number of times people searched for “Dry January” on Google. What I really like about this chart is that it does not try to…

  • The Business Cycle and Golf

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    Brendan Barry
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    Yesterday I started working on the next quarter of Economic Insights, the quarterly publication I work on as a creative director at the Philadelphia Fed. For the first issue of 2019 we will be working on an article that talks a great deal about the business cycle, the expansions and contractions that define an economy. So…

  • Arctic Chill

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    Brendan Barry
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    The Arctic air mass that has frozen the Midwest continues to spread and so today will be a tad chilly in Philadelphia. Yesterday, however, the Guardian had a piece that used data from NASA to show how the air masses over the Northern Hemisphere have been disturbed by unusually warm air. One theory to how this…

  • Cold, Dangerous Cold

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    Brendan Barry
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    It’s cold out in Chicago. And not just the usual winter cold, but record-setting cold. And when the temperature gets that low, when you mix in a little bit of wind, it can become dangerous very quickly. In an article about the weather conditions in the Midwest, the BBC included this graphic at the end.…