Coffee Spoons – Page 126 – Examining How We Measure Our Lives

Foul Balls at Fenway

Happy Friday, everyone. Foul balls are the souvenirs of fortune at baseball games. (Home runs as well I suppose.) You can’t buy them, you can only hope to be one of the lucky few who catch one. So the Boston Globe ran an article with an integrated interactive piece that told the story of a select few foul balls caught by fans at ten games at Fenway. But from the data visualisation side, they plotted where each foul ball landed. But, the real gem is that they then had a few small multiples showing where various Boston hitters tended to deposit their fouls.

Ten games' worth of foul balls — Ten games’ worth of foul balls

Credit for the piece goes to Stan Grossfeld, Rachel G. Bowers, and Luke Knox.

Battle of Mons Graupius

I just finished reading Tacitus’ account of his father-in-law Agricola. Agricola is the Roman—more likely from a family of Romanised Gauls—general who conquered Great Britain for Rome. His crowning victory was the Battle of Mons Graupius. It should all be taken with a grain of salt, because there are no other corroborating sources—to my knowledge. For one thing, nobody knows for sure where this battle occurred—if it did—other than somewhere in what is now Scotland. So, I decided to attempt to illustrate the battle as I couldn’t find a satisfactory one on the internets. Again, with the knowledge that Tacitus’ account is not the most thorough.

Context for the Baltimore Riots

Baltimore is going crazy, if you haven’t heard. So the LA Times put together a set of maps putting the riots in context. They look at the racial makeups of the neighbourhoods with the violence along with median income and education.

The racial makeup of the neighbourhoods witnessing riots

Credit for the piece goes to Jon Schleuss, Kyle Kim, and the LA Times graphics department.

America’s Long History with Flip-flopping

Today the Supreme Court takes up gay marriage. Again. This is, you know, after they decided two years ago that the federal government has to recognise gay marriages when performed in states where it is legal. Anyway, last week, Bloomberg Business looked at the United States preference for changing its mind through a nice series of charts.

How interracial marriage changed in the US

They took six key issues, including interracial marriage shown above, and looked at how the position shifted over time. They identified the basic trend as being early adopter states followed by rapid acceptance to a critical mass, at which time the federal government stepped in, e.g. via the Supreme Court.

Credit for the piece goes to Alex Tribou and Keith Collins.

Nepal’s Earthquake

If you missed it this weekend, Nepal suffered both loss of life and significant damage from an earthquake Saturday morning. The Washington Post quickly had a graphic up that explored the story.

Where and how severely the quake was felt

Credit for the piece goes to Bonnie Berkowitz, Darla Cameron, Samuel Granados, Richard Johnson, Laris Karklis, and Gene Thorp.

The Internet in the Middle East and Arab World

Keeping with the unplanned theme of this week, i.e. things going on in the Middle East and Arab world, let’s take a look at another piece of work from Spiegel. Unfortunately, this one is not so much in English. The graphics, yes, the supporting context, no.

There are seven of them, this looks at what the designers termed Halal Internet. It looks delicious.

And while this looks delicious, it’s white chocolate, unfortunately. But change that bit, and I would be okay eating it.

Check out the article for the rest.

Credit for the piece goes to Klaas Glenewinkel and Jess Smee.

Organising and Structuring ISIS

Yesterday we looked at the Russian sale of advanced surface-to-air missiles to Iran. Let’s stay in the Middle East and look at one of the forces that Iran—among many others, the US included—is fighting: ISIS, or Islamic State. We all know it from its ruthless, zealous, brutal application of Islamic law to the territories it controls. But is the organisation itself really that “religious”?

Der Spiegel obtained documents in late 2014 that had been in the possession of Hajj Bakr, who had quietly outlined much of the structure of ISIS and how the group would function. The article is a thrilling read, if you are into these kinds of things, and depicts an ISIS different than what many would possibly suspect.

So why are we talking about it here? Because organisations require diagrams or flow charts of responsibilities. The folder of files that Spiegel obtained included just such things, and below is an example included in the article.

Credit for the originals go to Hajj Bakr.

S-300 Surface-to-Air Missiles for Iran

Russia has agreed to complete its years-old sale of advanced S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Iran. What does this mean? Well, it does not make Iran’s airspace invulnerable, but it will be a significant upgrade with the potential to deter Israel from launching an air raid against Iranian nuclear sites. In a nice, illustrated piece the Washington Post explains what the S-300 system is.

Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post graphics department.

Parking in LA

Today’s piece comes via a colleague with the original article appearing in Wired. The article looks at new parking signs that the city of Los Angeles has proposed. The reason? Parking on streets with multiple signs for parking sometimes make no sense. These signs aim to simplify the communication of those parking regulations.

Credit for the piece goes to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, which was inspired by Nikki Sylianteng.

Who Are the Red Sox?

As Massachusetts and Maine celebrate Patriots’ Day, the Boston Red Sox are set to play their earliest game of the year with an 11.00 start time. (Yes, there is also a marathon today.) So after two weeks or twelve games, the question people want answered is what Red Sox do we get this year? FiveThirtyEight looked at what they called roller-coaster seasons of late, primarily using a box plot graphic to show just how much whiplash Boston fans have endured of late.

So who are the Red Sox this year? The cellar dwellers of 2012 and 2014? Or world champions like in 2013? Who knows?

Credit for the piece goes to Neil Paine.