Category: My Work

  • The Swedish Submarine Hunt

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    Brendan Barry
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    Today you are going to get two posts. The first is this, which is a break from the week’s theme. But news stories happen. The second will be back to regular programming at the regular time. Basically, the Swedish government is reporting that a foreign submarine is operating within its waters and the available evidence…

  • The Air Defence Systems of Eastern Ukraine

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week, separatists in eastern Ukraine shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 with what appears to have been an SA-11 Gadfly missile. Separatists had previously claimed to have had this system in operation and days earlier shot down a high-altitude Ukrainian military aircraft—though not necessarily with the SA-11. How much more powerful is the SA-11…

  • Defence Spending

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    Brendan Barry
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    As troops and tanks and rumble around the Ukrainian–Russian border, I was left to wonder just how NATO has been doing with defence spending. So I took defence spending as a share of total GDP. In general, NATO countries have been spending less since the end of the Cold War. The Baltic states are a…

  • Don’t Do This At Home…

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    Brendan Barry
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    In fact, don’t do this ever. Today’s bad chart comes from the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities. I saw it and could only shake my head and wonder why. Something more like this much more easily communicates the story. Credit for the original piece goes to the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities.

  • Answering Some More Questions About Ukraine

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    Brendan Barry
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    So Ukraine is even more of a mess and in less than a week’s time, the Crimean people will vote in a referendum on whether they want to remain a part of Ukraine or rejoin Russia. This graphic of mine is an attempt to answer some questions—though hardly all I wanted—about Ukraine, Crimea, and about…

  • Economically Isolating Russia

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    Brendan Barry
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    The West hesitates to use military force to push Russian troops out of Crimea. Likely with good reason as any such campaign would be neither cheap nor bloodless in addition to running the risk of spreading beyond the borders of Ukraine. So that leaves diplomatic and economic isolation. Diplomatic isolation is already underway—the G8 conference…

  • Ukraine

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    Brendan Barry
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    A lot of things happened in Ukraine this past weekend. Unfortunately, I was not able to quite capture all of the events and the background I wanted. So, until I do, this quick graphic will have to suffice. In short, Ukraine is a big European country, one of the largest prizes remaining in the struggle…

  • Average Ticket Prices in 2013

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    Brendan Barry
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    So yeah, the Super Bowl thing. Apparently tickets are expensive? Earlier, Bloomberg Businessweek took a look at average prices for the most expensive events of 2013. The only sentence supporting the graphic was that the most expensive event was not the Super Bowl. Okay, so what was? I think this graphic actually makes it more…

  • The Conservative Party of America

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    Brendan Barry
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    We enter our second week of the government shutdown. Of course, blame for the shutdown falls largely upon a small number of conservative Republican members of the House, bolstered by Senator Cruz (R-TX) and his allies in the Senate. But we already know that there are a number of moderate Republicans who want to pass…

  • Whip Counts to Authorise Force in Syria

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    Brendan Barry
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    I was catching up on some news tonight and I came upon an unhelpful graphic that was supposed to be helping me understand the whip count (who is voting yes or no) for authorising the use of force in Syria. Below is the original graphic from Think Progress. I struggled, however, to directly compare the…