Category: Uncategorized

  • The Bottom of the Ocean (and the World)

    There have been a lot of interesting maps of late that map out continents and planets, but today is one for the sea—the bottom of which we know less about than the surface of the Moon. According to a story covered by the BBC, the US State Department backed an exploration of the Mariana Trench,…

  • Returning to Fukushima. Someday.

    Earlier this year, the earthquake and tsunami that damaged Japan also brought about failures in a nuclear plant at Fukushima. As we near the end of the year, the New York Times reports on how it might take many years for those who had to—or chose to—move away to return to a safe Fukushima.

  • Technology Today

    Technology changes and changes rapidly. The United States led the way with cabled phone networks. Now, countries in Africa are skipping landlines and moving straight to mobile phones. The New York Times has an piece on the changes in technology and accompanies that piece with small multiples of choropleth maps that showcase different technologies and…

  • We Want to (Quell a) Riot (with Military Grade Hardware)

    The New York Times had a piece in the Sunday paper asking whether American police have gone military, especially in the wake of the images of the police response to Occupy Oakland and Occupy Wall Street with police/troops deployed in tactical body armour, armoured vehicles, &c. The Times piece was accompanied by an Op-Art piece…

  • Campaign Ad Spends

    I don’t know about you, but to me, it’s beginning to look a lot like campaign season. At least from what I read on the internet. Because, according to this interactive piece by the Washington Post, there has been little local campaign spending on ads in the Chicago television market. By clicking on the left,…

  • China’s Secret Nuclear Missile Tunnel System

    I do not often get the chance to post illustrative works. But, the Washington Post reported on the work of Georgetown students that shows how China has tunneled thousands of miles of, well, tunnels to create a secret labyrinth for their nuclear weapons programme. The result is that instead of the few dozen warheads that…

  • Food Consumption

    Via Fareed Zakaria, an interactive piece by Food Service Warehouse that looks at the leading nations of food consumption in calories—and what people spend for their food. The map is not entirely useful, although it does at least hint at the geographic locations of the largest consumers (the West) and the smallest consumers (the Rest…

  • The BRICs a Decade Later

    The BRICs are ten years old. Well, not really. But the concept of Brazil, Russia, India, and China becoming some of the world’s largest economies is. Well, not even that necessarily. But the coining of the term BRIC is a decade old. So the BBC has a small interactive piece showing why the BRICs matter.…

  • The New York City Marathon

    Something I’ve been meaning to put up for a little while, the New York Times’ coverage of that city’s marathon and changes in the socioeconomic composition of the neighbourhoods through which the course winds. The piece includes a narrated motion graphic explaining the changes along a map of the course, while a series of charts…

  • Curiosity

    In just a few days, NASA’s next Martian rover, Curiosity, will lift off for a 2012 date with the Martian surface. The Washington Post has a two-part motion graphic piece to look at the rover’s landing and scientific components. Credit for the piece goes to Alberto Cuadra, Sohail Al-Jamea, and Andrew Pergram.