Tag: Boston Globe

  • David Ortiz Has 500 Home Runs

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    Brendan Barry
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    This past weekend, David Ortiz hit his 500th home run, a significant milestone in Major League Baseball attained only by a handful of players. This piece from the Boston Herald commemorates the feat—with too many photographs and embellishment for my liking—by putting his season totals on a timeline while putting Ortiz at the bottom of…

  • Pedro Martinez Was Amazing

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    Brendan Barry
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    So the Red Sox in 2015 are godawful, terrible, bloody bad baseball. But, go back 11 years and they were amazing, fantastic, great and awesome baseball. 2004 was, of course, the year the curse was broken and that was in no small part due to the pitching efforts of Pedro Martinez, who would head down…

  • Better Barbecue

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    Brendan Barry
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    I’m off to Kansas City this evening for Memorial Day Weekend. There, I fully intend to at least try some legitimate Kansas City barbecue. But how does this relate to a blog on information design and data visualisation? Well, some folks at Harvard endeavoured to design a better smoker for barbecue. Thanks, science. Credit for…

  • Periodic Table of Non-elements

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    Brendan Barry
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    Science is great. But science is also a process and scientific progress goes boink. Some of the mis-steps in chemistry have been erroneous elements. Thankfully the Boston Globe built a small periodic table of non-elements with short anecdotes about the selected few. Credit for the piece goes to Mary Virginia Orna and Marco Fontani.

  • An Increase in Sexually Transmitted Infections in Boston

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    Brendan Barry
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    Your humble author has returned to Chicago from several days spent in Boston—among other places. So what better way to follow up on yesterday’s post about prostitution than a small piece from the Boston Globe about the increase in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Boston. The cause? Hook-up apps. Because, technology and young people. Credit for…

  • Loaning Art

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    Brendan Barry
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    Two weekends ago I visited the Magritte exhibit currently showing here in Chicago. While I would love to share photographs of some of my favourite works, I cannot. The museum staff was clear that part of the rules for exhibiting loaned work was the prohibition of photography. So that prompted me to wonder how often…

  • Comparing Urban Statistics

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    Brendan Barry
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    Sometimes when you are considering moving, you want to look at some broad statistics on the area in which you want to move. In Boston, the Boston Globe has put together a neat little application that does just that. Type in two settlements in the metro area and then get a quick comparison of the…

  • Boston’s 2013 Season

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    Brendan Barry
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    If you’re not a Boston Red Sox fan, what’s wrong with you? Well, okay, so long as you’re not a Yankees fan, you’re not that bad. Anyway, the Boston Globe looked at the 2013 Red Sox season. Game by game, inning by inning. And because Boston is now advancing to the American League Championship Series,…

  • Boston’s Rising Tide

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    Brendan Barry
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    Sometimes maps just do not carry the visual weight of the potential impact of climate change, specifically rising tides. Swathes of blue over city maps from high altitude are intellectual exercises. Who works where? Where do I live? But when you can begin to see familiar buildings and sites swallowed up by a modest rise…

  • Ye Olde Boston Mayoral Candidate Map

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    Brendan Barry
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    A map? Again? I know. But trust me, this one is interesting. For those of you who do not know, Boston’s Thomas Menino is not running for reelection this year. By the time he leaves office, he will have been the mayor of Boston for over twenty years and so this year is the first…