Examining How We Measure Our Lives

Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation

  • At least a little beyond. Like the orbital height beyond. For those unaware, if the weather holds, later this evening East Coast time, NASA will launch the Artemis II mission from Cape Canaveral with the intention of sending a crew of four astronauts—three Americans, one Canadian—to the Moon. The last man on the Moon was in December 1972—more than half…

    Read on…: To the Moon, and Beyond!

  • March is International Women’s Month. This year it is also the month within which the baseball season starts. The Sox played in Cincinnati and I have lots of new things to cover and I am sure I will bring some of them up here on Coffeespoons. (Looking at NESN’s new scorebug in particular.) One thing that can change for a…

    Read on…: Binders Full of Ballplayers

  • So if you’ve a date in Tehran, she’ll be waiting, in, well, Tehran. Happy Friday, all. On Monday I critiqued a graphic from Bloomberg about airstrikes in the Middle East. As we head into the weekend, I opted to pull one of my (many) atlases off the bookshelf, because I just wanted to see how the region had changed. In…

    Read on…: Iran, Not Persia

  • Happy Opening Day, everyone. Baseball is back. The Red Sox are back. Last year, I only posted my predictions on social media because they don’t include charts or graphs really. (But I did revisit them at year’s end.) These are mostly just tables. But, why not? Last year, shortly after Opening Day, I wrote about Kristian Campbell perhaps…maybe…finally…being the steady…

    Read on…: Opening Day

  • I was reading an article in my local rag, the Philadelphia Inquirer, when I came upon an article about the healthcare industry’s outsized role in the region’s job growth. The article led off with a staff illustration of medical-looking types on a graphic swirl background—nothing inherently wrong with that. The Inquirer would know best what sort of images best grab…

    Read on…: The Arrow Is Pointing Sideways

  • As I ate breakfast this morning, I read through the Morning Briefing I receive from Bloomberg. These days, it provides a good update of what happened in Iran and the Middle East. Every once in a while I will flag one of their graphics to share here, but never decide to ultimately do it because in that space they are…

    Read on…: Gooood Morning, Bomb Iran?

  • Happy Friday, all. In looking at my calendar the other day, I saw that in three weeks I will be in Appalachia for Orthodox Easter. That means driving through Pennsylvania’s Ridge and Valley region and then sleeping in the mountains. But wherefore the mountains? Thankfully, xkcd posted a map explaining why all the natural features. Turns out where I will…

    Read on…: Reticulating Splines

  • Earlier this week I read an Associated Press (AP) article about Poland’s economic growth since the end of Communism in the former Soviet-bloc state. Generally speaking, things are good in Eastern Europe, though a revanchist Russia to Poland’s east rekindles memories of an earlier era and the disaster after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The article included a few charts showing the…

    Read on…: The Axis in Poland

  • Last October Ancestry.com updated their ethnic origins breakdowns. Longtime readers will know these are not the most useful tools for helping one in their genealogical research. But, if they garner interest in one’s family history and motivate people to explore their own pasts, more power to them. I only encourage those people to dig a little deeper beneath the surface…

    Read on…: Still Irish

  • Literally. Whatever “it” is they’re selling. Happy (?) Friday, everyone. Today’s light-hearted post comes from This Is Indexed. I watch very little television, nor would I consider myself an avid streamer of content. Recently, however, I did have occasion to watch some without the benefit of ad blockers and I forgot how much I despise adverts. Admittedly, that is a…

    Read on…: Don’t Buy It