Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: Putting Tatooine to Shame
While the title sounds science-fiction-y, it is true. Star Wars has a famous scenece where a landscape is shown with a binary star system in the sky. But we now know of a quintuple-star system that has two separate sets of binary stars. This BBC article takes a look at how the system is structured. […]
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Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Read on…: Cruel and Unusual PunishmentIt’s Friday, everybody, so let’s lighten the mood with cruel and unusual punishment. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds. No, today we look at a simple two-axis plot or matrix used by Jon Stewart to classify means of death and whether or not they would unconstitutional based on the cruel and unusual […]
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High Strikeout Games
Read on…: High Strikeout GamesBaseball has changed in the last twenty years or so. (And I’m old enough to recognise it.) Gone are the days of the high strikeout/high pitch count starts from the likes of Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, and Kerry Wood. In are high strikeout/low pitch count games… What does that mean? You can read […]
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Night Tube
Read on…: Night TubeTransport for London (TfL), the organisation that runs the London Underground or Tube, has announced a nighttime service called Night Tube. It is not for the entire system, but only a few specific lines. That means that TfL needed a new map. And that means that everyone will want to create their own version of […]
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ISIS Throughout the World
Read on…: ISIS Throughout the WorldISIS is still a threat to the Middle East, evidenced by the US announcing yesterday that it is intensifying strikes against the quasi-state in both Syria and Iraq. But just where has ISIS spread? And are its attacks spreading? This New York Times piece looks at just those two questions. The first through an obvious […]
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The Spellecy’s Wisconsin Land Grant
Read on…: The Spellecy’s Wisconsin Land GrantI have returned from my trip up north to Minnesota and Wisconsin. Unfortunately, from the research side it was not the most successful of trips. I did find some records, but none that answered any of the big questions I had. If anything, I now have far more questions. Most of the information I learned […]
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What It Means to be Black in the US…Census
Read on…: What It Means to be Black in the US…CensusAs I said yesterday, I’m up in northern Wisconsin. But sometime later today I should be starting a long drive back to Chicago. So let me continue with one more piece of genealogy- and information-related content that is especially relevant given recent events. Vox posted an article a couple of days ago that looked at […]
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Researching the Family History in Ashland, Wisconsin
Read on…: Researching the Family History in Ashland, WisconsinI’m presently off in the northern reaches of Wisconsin, Ashland in particular, researching part of my family’s history. To aid me in understanding just how this frontier-following family moved over one century, I put together a crude map and a timeline to give me context (and jog my memory) while searching through files in the […]