The question with Apple computers is when to upgrade the operating system? Apple releases updates every few years. But, I might have to wait and skip the next one, Mountain Lion. After all, Apple is taking a step backward. xkcd explains:
Visualising Panda Mating
Animals need to reproduce. Well, except perhaps some of our own species…and so today’s infographic from the Washington Post looks at the birds and the bees. Or rather the pandas and the pandas. Or is that the pandas on pandas? Regardless, the reader can see that panda mating is not easy.
Credit for the piece goes to Cristina Rivero.
How an E-mail is Sent. (And No, I Don’t Mean by Pressing Send.)
Google is a big company. What do big companies do from time to time? Market themselves. And so this is a screenshot from a fun interactive infographic piece that has supplementals from text to photos to videos as Google explains how an e-mail is sent. All the while Google touts its green energy initiatives and energy efficiencies. It’s a game changing win-win paradigm-shifting grand slam of a piece. (Sorry, that just felt like an appropriate place to use CorporateSpeak.)
Congratulations, College Grads. Now Pay Up.
It’s that time of year when young men and women step outside into the big, real world and realise just how much money they owe to various creditors. Yay. The problem, however, has continued to get worse for students. This interactive infographic by the New York Times explains just how so by comparing student debt to costs.
While the bubble chart is also available in map form—though I don’t find that particularly useful myself—the more interesting added layer of complexity comes from the data displayed when the user selects a specific university.
Credit for the piece goes to Jeremy White, Andrew Martin, Andrew W. Lehren, and Archie Tse.
School Segregation in New York
This weekend the New York Times looked at segregation in New York City schools by mapping the least (and most) diverse and offering quick comparisons to other large cities. (Is it really a surprise that the country’s largest cities also would need the largest demographic shifts to create diverse education environments?) Probably the best thing, seemingly as always, in the piece is the annotations that provide stories and context and explain the outliers that are all otherwise visualised in the infographic.
Credit for the piece goes to Ford Fessenden.
Canada Invades the Land of the Mole People
Subways. Home of the mole people. And in the United States an unwanted recipient of government money to build things. Along with being generally unwanted. By those who do not live in cities. Probably because of said mole people. Or something.
But in Canada, they like subways. At least enough that Toronto is building an extension to a university and from there to a suburb. But the invasion of the mole people homeland is a complex process that, fortunately, the National Post explains in an illustrative infographic, a cropping of which is below.
Credit for the piece goes to Mike Faille and Peter Kuitenbrouwer.
The Election in the Burbs
One area of particular contention for the American presidential candidates this year will be in the suburbs of major urban areas. This was where Romney in particular was able to defeat his Republican rivals, but is also home to large number of potential Obama supporters. Given his likely support in cities, Romney will need to well in the suburbs this time around.
The Washington Post looks at how suburban counties voted over the past two elections.
Credit for the piece goes to Ted Mellnik, Laura Stanton, and Karen Yourish.
The Cities of Champions
From Slate comes an interactive map of which cities have won what championships across the big four sports (baseball, basketball, football, and hockey). It plots the championships over time and allows the user to see just how dominant certain cities have been in certain sports.
Credit for the piece goes to Chris Kirk.
Mariano Rivera
Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees is(was?) one of the best closers in baseball history. I’ll give him that. So when a freakish accident brought to an end his season—and possibly his career—the New York Times of course had an(other) infographic about his historic numbers.
But I’m a Red Sox fan. And this whole sequence of events will always be my memory of Rivera.
Playing Politics
The election campaign for the presidency has begun in earnest. The President launched his official campaign over the weekend and Mitt Romney’s nomination is all but official. So what to do over the next six months? Lots of television adverts—thankfully I’m thinking of cutting my cable—and random events that shape public opinion. And, thanks to the New York Times, you can now play politics by dragging states into either the Obama camp or the Romney camp or you can read through the Times’ take on different scenarios.
Personally, I am going for the politically fascinating split electoral college route. Bonus points if you know what happens in this scenario—no cheating. And extra bonus points to the Times for splitting up the electoral votes of both Maine and Nebraska, look up what Obama did in 2008 to see how this can happen.