Author: Brendan Barry

  • New Plans for Old Subways

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    Brendan Barry
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    The New Yorkers among my readers know about the whole planned shutdown of the L train for repairs owing to Hurricane Sandy (tangentially mentioned in the graphic I commented upon yesterday). For those of you who don’t know, basically the salt water from the storm seriously damaged the tunnels and a whole lot of work…

  • PECO Outages Five Years Ago

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    Brendan Barry
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    Christmas time is a time when people receive gifts. Well this year was no different and I received a few. One, however, was in a box stuffed with old newspaper pages. And it turns out one of said pages had a graphic on it. So let us spend today looking at this little blast from…

  • Feathered Raptors

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    Brendan Barry
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    Well we made it to Friday. Admittedly, for many of us it was a short week.  But we can end it all the same with this piece from xkcd. It asks the question, are feathered dinosaurs scary? Back when they made the first Jurassic Park, we didn’t know how prevalent feathers were and so the dinosaurs…

  • Anak Krakatau

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    Brendan Barry
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    During my winter holiday to London the volcano Anak Krakatau erupted, sending enormous amounts of material sliding into the ocean. The displaced water had to go somewhere and travelled as a tsunami that devastated the Indonesian coastline. Of course Anak Krakatau is one of several remnants of the much larger volcano of Krakatoa that erupted several…

  • Treasury of Atreus

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    Brendan Barry
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    Oh, hello. Apologies for the break from posting, however, after the Thanksgiving holidays I fell ill. Consequently I spent the entirety of December either sick or on holiday. Neither of which is conducive to posting. But I have largely recovered and so we begin a new year with a new post. This piece comes from…

  • Ratings the Foods

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    Brendan Barry
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    For my American audience, Happy Thanksgiving. Coffeespoons will be on holiday for the remainder of the week. But don’t worry, we’ll be back. For my non-American audience, we basically celebrate a tale of the Pilgrims feasting with Native Americans after a successful harvest. Today’s graphic is really just a series of tables. I think I…

  • More on California’s Dry Heat

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    Brendan Barry
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    Yesterday we looked at the wildfire conditions in California. Today, we look at the Economist’s take, which brings an additional focus on the devastation of the fires themselves. However, it adds a more global perspective and looks at the worldwide decline in forest fires and both where and why that is the case. The screenshot…

  • Dry Heat Is Only Part of California’s Problem

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    Brendan Barry
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    Wildfires continue to burn across in California. One, the Camp Fire in northern California near Chico, has already claimed 77 lives. But why has this fire been so deadly? FiveThirtyEight explained some of the causes in an article that features a number of charts and graphics. The screenshot below features a scatter plot looking at…

  • Amazon’s Selection for HQ2

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    Brendan Barry
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    Well this week Amazon finally chose not just one city for its HQ2, but two—New York and Washington. Of course Philadelphia had been angling for the site. Alas, it was not to be. So let’s work with that for this Friday post. Credit for this one is mine.

  • Pulling Gene-ies Out of Bottles

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    Brendan Barry
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    I don’t always get to share more illustrative diagrams that explain things, but that’s what we have today from the Economist. It illustrated the concept of a gene drive by which a gene modified in one chromosome then modifies the remaining chromosome to insert itself there. Consequently it stands an almost 100% chance of being…