As many longtime readers know, I lived in Chicago for eight years. I probably had Chicago-style pizza fewer than eight times in my life. I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and for the last nine years I have lived in central Philadelphia, where pizza is very much a different thing. And in my life I have visited New York probably more times than I can count and obviously pizza is a culture of its own there.
The other day, xkcd posted about the various different regional styles of pizza.
Now I will not venture to throw my two cents in here on which pizza is the best. Rather, each has their own qualities that make them good fits for specific types of occasions.
What I will say is the mouseover state makes mention of Altoona-style pizza. As I am someone who visits the Altoona regional annually—and will be again next spring—I have indeed heard of the style. But, no, I have never tried it. Nor does it sound particularly appealing.
However, I had also heard of a Primanti Brothers sandwich of Pittsburgh fame, which includes French fries inside the actual sandwich. A few years ago when I visited Pittsburgh for the first time I did give one a go. But, and perhaps because I am not a fan of French fries, I found the sandwich disappointing.
So maybe some year I will give the Altoona-style pizza a similar go.
But right now, a slice of pizza, any other kind of pizza, sounds pretty good right about now.
A good friend of mine sent me this graphic earlier this week. The World Wars fascinate me—to be fair, most history does, and yes, that even includes the obligatory guy thinking of the Roman Empire—and I can see on my bookshelf as I type this post up my books on naval warships from World War I and a history of the Great War itself. But the graphic comes from the Onion and satirises the Great War with a few choice bits relevant over 100 years later.
World War I is the what happens when you leave the default settings on and fail to make changes to your account after you set it up. Because someone declared war on someone else, another someone had to declare war on that person, and that person had to be declared war upon by another person, and so on and so forth until millions were dead.
Credit for the piece goes to the Onion’s graphics staff.
When I was a wee lad, I entered the school science fair and made models of different types of bridges. Suspension, cantilever, &c. I saw this a little while back and bookmarked it. As I am trying to get back into the swing of publishing here on Coffee Spoons, it’s time to bring back the less than serious Friday posts. So it’s xkcd with a small multiple of bridge types.
After all the years of writing and publishing here on Coffeespoons, content centred on the sinking of RMS Titanic remains the most popular. And it was in the early hours of 15 April 1912 when she slipped beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. 700 people survived. 1500 people did not. Titanic’s sinking was the worst peacetime maritime disaster at the time and today, 113 years later, it remains likely in the top-five.
Each year I attempt to read something about the sinking. This year I’ve opted to re-read the first-hand account of Jack Thayer, a Philadelphian who survived the sinking. His father was an executive for the Pennsylvania Railroad and could afford first-class accommodations aboard Titanic.
I highly encourage you to read Thayer’s account of the sinking. First, it’s a short read in this era of short attention spans. But secondly, it provides the rare vantage point of a survivor who entered the water. With the temperature of the North Atlantic below freezing, almost without exception, everyone who entered the water died and so almost every passenger account is from someone who evacuated in a lifeboat.
In the aftermath of the sinking, Thayer managed to cling to a lifeboat and was eventually saved. When Thayer arrived in New York, a young art teacher named Lewis Skidmore worked with Thayer to illustrate what Thayer saw of Titanic on her final night.
Controversially, Thayer’s description included Titanic splitting in two. At the time, survivors intensely debated this point. Some claimed she went down intact and others, like Thayer, insisted she split in two. It was not until 1985 when she was discovered by Robert Ballard that the world learned Titanic did indeed split in two that fateful night, proving Thayer correct.
Unfortunately that was 40 years after Thayer’s death. He struggled with depression in the years that followed the sinking as other tragedies befell the man, including losing two of his own sons—one during World War II. He committed suicide at the age of 50 in 1945.
Skidmore’s graphics—black and white illustrations—arguably do as fine a job today as any complex 3D modelling could. They offer further proof that complex graphics need not necessarily communicate more clearly than sizzle and flash.
Last week I looked at baseball’s new torpedo bats in a humourous light. But I did want to take a more serious look, because bat evolution has been part of the tale of baseball since its beginning. Back in the day bats featured long lengths and heavier weights. These days, bats are in the mid-30 inch length and mid-30 ounce weight. Current regulations limit bats to 42 inches in length and a maximum diameter of 2.61 inches. 1 (There is some other stuff in there that is not terribly relevant to the torpedo bat.) And that’s it. Nothing about where the widest part of the bat need be nor the overall shape—merely a round, solid piece of wood.
The solid piece of wood is connected to corked bats. At my age I remember seeing the ESPN clips of Sammy Sosa’s corked bat in 2003 and the story of Albert Belle’s bat, stolen from the umpire’s room.
The torpedo bat, however, is not corked, instead it uses increased mass at the bat’s sweet spot, where it generates the greatest exit velocities when the batter hits the pitch. This graphic from ESPN shows how this works.
How a torpedo bat differs from the normal bat
Overall I like the graphic. The use of contrasting red and blue does a good job highlighting, particularly at the end where the normal bat continues with its edges running parallel as a regular cylinder. The torpedo bat changes into a cone with its top sliced off then rounded. I might have exaggerated the vertical dimensions of the bat illustration, but it still works.
Additionally, as I understand the design, it maximises the diameter of the bat to the aforementioned 2.61 inches. I have heard—but not confirmed—most bats do not reach the full diameter. If that is true, perhaps an illustration where the red lines fell below the maximum diameter of the torpedo bat could do a better job differentiating between the two shapes.
I prefer the above illustration to that produced by the Athletic/New York Times, which attempts a similar distinction.
New York Times version of the graphic.
I think ESPN’s overlay better shows the difference and that the Athletic’s wood pattern distracts from the graphic overall. Whereas ESPN uses the solid red vs. blue hatching to distinguish between the two shapes.
Of course that begets the question, why doesn’t every batter use the torpedo bat?
Suffice it to say, some players are better at hitting the ball consistently at the same spot on the bat. If a hitter can repeatedly make contact at a specific spot along the length of the bat, it makes sense to concentrate the mass of the bat at that spot for better hard contact. If, however, a hitter spreads his contact out along the length of the barrel, he probably wants a more evenly distributed mass to help create a better spread of good contact.
Regardless, as I wrote on Friday, the torpedo does not look like a torpedo. If anything, the normal baseball bat looks more like a torpedo than a torpedo bat.
Credit for the ESPN piece goes to ESPN’s graphics department.
Credit for the Athletic’s piece goes to Drew Jordan.
Baseball is back and so bring forth the controversies. One of the ones from last week? The torpedo bat. To be clear, the torpedo bat has been around for a few years—it’s not new. However, on Opening Weekend, the Yankees beat up on Milwaukee Brewers’ pitching. But a Yankees announcer specifically pointed out the design and the hype and the controversy was on.
But since this is a Friday, we’re going to look at a semi-humourous take from Davy Andrews of Fangraphs, a statistically-inclined baseball site. He uses illustrations to focus on the shape of the torpedo bat, which to my mind instantly did not look anything like a torpedo. (Read the full article for a funny aside about the shape’s resemblance—or lack thereof—to a torpedo.)
To be fair, I did not immediately think either old timey bomb or pregnant whale, but rather a bowling pin.
Earlier this week, a Portuguese-flagged cargo container ship collided with an American-flagged tanker just off the Humber estuary in Yorkshire, England. The American-flagged ship, the Stena Immaculate, carries aviation fuel for the US Air Force. The Solong, the Portuguese-flagged tanker, carries alcohol, which is far better than the toxic chemicals initially feared.
We still know very little about the circumstances of the collision other than the Solong, travelling at 16 knots, slammed into the port side of the Stena Immaculate, which was anchored offshore.
I decided to write a little post because I enjoyed this graphic from the BBC, which details why the Stena Immaculate has not yet sunk—and at the time of my writing is not believed to be in danger of—despite the large hold amidships.
The graphic uses a simple line illustration of a bulk carrier in both 3/4 and a frontal view. The first shows how vessels like the Stena Immaculate separate their cargo into distinct holds, often watertight, so that, should a collision occur, the damage will not flood the entire ship or affect the load of the cargo. For the latter, sloshing liquids, as one example, can alter the centre of gravity and negatively impact ship stability.
The second line drawing illustrates the value of a double-hulled vessel wherein the outer hull shields the inner hull from puncture and prevents massive flooding of interior spaces.
Of course on 11 March, we are a little over a month away from the anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic. (In)famously in that case the critical issue was the same idea of watertight compartments. She had enough of them, but crucially they did not rise to the top of the ship as they would have necessarily impacted the luxury of first and second class accommodations. Titanic also did not have a double hull—her bottom was, but this did not run up the ship’s sides to the level where the iceberg impacted the ship.
Overall, I really like this graphic. It needs no elaborate and detailed illustration. Nor does it need sophisticated animations. All it uses is simple line illustrations.
Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.
Well, I’ve had to update this since I first wrote, but had not yet published, this article. Because this morning police captured Danelo Cavalcante, the murderer on the lam after escaping from Chester County Prison, with details to follow later today.
This story fascinates me because it understandably made headlines in Philadelphia, from which the prison is only perhaps 30–40 miles, but the national and even international coverage astonished me. Maybe not the initial article, but the days-long coverage certainly seemed excessive when we had much larger problems or notable events occurring throughout the world.
That brings me to this quick comparison of these two maps. The first is from the local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer. It is a screenshot in two parts, the first the actual map and the second the accompanying timeline.
The Inquirer mapThe timeline from the Inquirer
Then we have the BBC and their map of the story:
The BBC version
Both maps use light greys and neutral colours to ground the reader’s experience, his or her welcome to the world of southeastern Pennsylvania. The Inquirer uses a beige and a white focus for Chester County and the BBC omits county distinctions and uses white for rural and grey for built-up areas around Philadelphia.
Both maps use red numbers in their timeline sections to sequence the events, though the Inquirer’s is more extensive in its details and links the red events to red map markers.
The Inquirer leans heavily on local roads and highways with lines of varying width in white with thin outlines. Whereas the BBC marks only significant roads as thin blue lines.
The Inquirer’s map adds a lot of geographical context, especially for an audience fastidiously following the situation. And the following makes sense given all the local closures and anxiety—though I’m of the opinion a significant bit of those closures and anxiety were unwarranted. But for a reader in London, Toronto, or Melbourne, does anyone really need to see Boot Road? Strasburg Road? Even Route 30? Or the Route 30 Bypass (at Route 100, hi, Mum)? Not really, and so the omission of many of the local roads makes sense.
I would keep the roads relevant to the story of the search or the capture, for example Routes 23 and 1, and places relevant, for example Longwood Gardens and South Coventry. Here the BBC perhaps goes too far in omitting any place labels aside from Philadelphia, which is itself borderline out of place.
What I like about the BBC’s map, however, is the use of the white vs. grey to denote rural vs. built-up areas, a contextual element the Inquirer lacks. Over the last two weeks I have heard from city folks here in Philadelphia, why can’t the cops capture Cavalcante in Chester County? Well, if you’ve ever driven around the area where he initially roamed, it’s an area replete with wooded hills and creeks and lots of not-so-dense rich people homes. We don’t yet know where he was finally captured, but in Phoenixville he was spotted on camera because it’s an actual borough (I’m pretty certain it’s incorporated) with a walkable downtown. It’s dense with people. And not surprisingly the number of spottings increased as he moved into a denser area.
The Inquirer’s map, however, doesn’t really capture that. It’s just some lines moving around a map with some labels. The BBC’s map, though imperfect because the giant red box obscures a lot of the initial search area, at least shows us how Cavalcante evaded capture in a white thus rural, less-dense area before being seen in a grey thus built-up dense area.
All-in-all, both are good enough. But I wish somebody had managed to combine both into one. Less road map than the Inquirer’s, but more context and grounding than the BBC.
Credit for the Inquirer piece goes to John Duchneskie.
Credit for the BBC piece goes to the BBC graphics department.
