Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: How the Globe’s Writers Voted
Yesterday we looked at a piece by the Boston Globe that mapped out all of David Ortiz’s home runs. We did that because he has just been voted into baseball’s Hall of Fame. But to be voted in means there must be votes and a few weeks after the deadline, the Globe posted an article […]
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558 Dingers
Read on…: 558 DingersYesterday baseball writers elected David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox, better known as Big Papi, to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I was trying to work on a thing for yesterday, but ran out of time. While I will attempt to return to that later, for now I want to share a simple interactive […]
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Finding Home with a Homemade Map
Read on…: Finding Home with a Homemade MapWe’re going to start this week out with some good news and for that we turn to China. 30 years ago, child traffickers kidnapped four-year old Li Jingwei from his family and sold him to another family over 1,000 miles away. A BBC article from earlier this month covered Li Jingwei’s reunion with his family. […]
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Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
Read on…: Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.Any science fiction fan—and likely many who are not—can identify the character who utters those words in that order: Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek’s captain of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-D. Ask your Amazon Alexa for it. Or your Google Home. Thanks to the work of xkcd, we now know that Jean-Luc—may I call him Jean-Luc?—had a […]
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Even Older Family Trees
Read on…: Even Older Family TreesYesterday we looked at a graphic about an old family tree, revealed by ancient DNA. But at the end of the day it is a family tree of descent for a human male. But mankind itself fits within a kind of family tree, the circle family tree of life. The tree of life continues to […]
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Old Family Trees
Read on…: Old Family TreesAnother quick little post from a little while back, around Christmas news broke about the oldest family tree yet discovered. Researchers used DNA recovered from a 5700-year old tomb in the UK to piece together the relationships between the people interred within the tomb. Graphic wise, we’re not talking about anything crazy or inventive here—it’s […]
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Sunshield
Read on…: SunshieldHappy Friday, everyone. At the beginning of the week, we looked at the launch and deployment of the new James Webb telescope. If you recall, one of the key elements of the satellite’s design is its sunshield. As the name says, it shields the satellite from the sun, thus keeping the equipment super cold, which […]
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Showing All 50
Read on…: Showing All 50Those who know me know one of my pet peeves are when maps of the United States do not display Alaska and Hawaii. I even noted yesterday that those two states were so late of additions to the United States and it made sense as to why they were not included. So when I was […]
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Fire in Fairmount
Read on…: Fire in FairmountPhiladelphia made the national and international news last week, although for once not because we’re all being shot to death. This time because a fire in a rowhome killed 12 people, including nine children. The Philadelphia Inquirer quickly posted a short article explaining what occurred that morning. But the early indication, based upon the confession […]