Author: Brendan Barry

  • The Timeline of the Voyager Mission

    There are a bunch of things to look at this week, but what am I most excited about? Voyager. No, not Star Trek. (Did you know that the Vger entity from the first Star Trek film was a replica of the Voyager probes?) I am of course talking about the Voyager mission to the outer…

  • With a Side of Iodine Please

    We made it to Friday, everyone. And not just any Friday, but for the Americans reading this, a three-day weekend. (You Brits had a bank holiday last week, so whatever.) While Harvey has been in the news a lot, did you miss that North Korea shot a missile over Japan? Well it did. So this…

  • Plotting Cries for Help

    So I thought I would be done with Harvey coverage, but this morning I saw this map from the New York Times that plotted out requests for aid throughout the storm. You can really see the storm’s movement through the impacts upon the people. It’s especially true later in the timeline as the storm moved…

  • Rising Tides, Rising Disasters?

    One more day of Harvey-related content. At least I hope. (Who knows? Maybe someone will design a fantastic retrospective graphic?) Today, however, we look at a piece from the Economist about the rising number of weather-related disasters, but thankfully falling numbers of deaths. The piece has all the full suite of graphics: choropleths, line charts,…

  • Harvey’s Rainfall Part Two

    Let’s consider today a follow-up to yesterday’s piece. (No, I do not believe I have ever done a follow-up piece, but why not start now all these years later.) Yesterday we looked at the Post, Journal, and Times for their coverage of the fallen rain amounts in southeast Texas. But at the time, we only…

  • Harvey’s Rainfall Totals

    Hurricane Harvey landed north of Corpus Christi, Texas late Friday night. By Monday morning, Houston has been flooded as nearly two feet of water have fallen upon the city, built on and around wetlands long ago paved over with concrete. Naturally the news has covered this story in depth all weekend. Even leading up to…

  • The Solar Eclipse Was Off the Charts Cool

    Did you really think we were done with eclipse coverage? (Actually we still will not be, there were some other neat eclipse coverage pieces I want to look at.) But today is Friday and so we look to lighter (and I find humourous) coverage, this week from xkcd. My only quibble would be that the…

  • Alaskan (im)Permafrost

    I woke up this morning and before breakfast I opened the door to bring in today’s edition of the New York Times. I enjoy reading the paper, or at least a few articles, over breakfast (and more often than not preparing a post for here at Coffeespoons.me). Some of the best days are when I…

  • The Solar Eclipse as Seen from Philly

    As my last two posts pointed out, yesterday was the Solar Eclipse. It certainly garnered media attention as a news helicopter hovered over my building during the height of the eclipse. Very peaceful indeed. But, knowing that my smartphone would not be able to take the best photos of the eclipse, even with a solar filter,…

  • Solar Eclipse Day

    Today is Solar Eclipse Day. Thankfully Vox has put together a great interactive piece to help you plan your day. This is for my viewing area in Philadelphia. We only max out at 75% of the sun, but that is still pretty fantastic. Credit for the piece goes to Casey Miller, Ryan Mark, and Brian…