Tag: critique

  • Trumping (Most) All on Twitter

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Initially I wanted today’s piece to be coverage of the apparent coup d’état in Zimbabwe over night. But while I have found some coverage of the event, I have not yet seen a single graphic trying to explain what happened. Maybe if I have time… In the meantime, we have the Economist with a short…

  • Phillip’s Curves are Flatlining

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    I’ve worked on a few scatter plots of late and so this piece from the Economist grabbed my attention. It examines the correlation between unemployment rates and inflation rates. Broadly speaking, the theory has been that low unemployment rates lead to high inflation rates. But the United States has had low unemployment rates now for…

  • An Ailing Graphic on the Healthcare Labour Force

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    I know I have said it before, but I like the increasing number of graphics-led articles published by Politico. Many policy and politics stories are driven—or should be driven—by data. But, myself included, we cannot hit it out of the park at every plate appearance. And that is what we have from Politico today, actually…

  • The Economic Impact of Hurricanes

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Yesterday Hurricane Ophelia hit Ireland and the United Kingdom. Yes, the two islands get hit with ferocious storms from time to time, but rarely do they enjoy the hurricanes like we do on the eastern seaboards of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Earlier this hurricane season the US had to deal with Harvey, Irma, and…

  • How Bad is the Rohingya Crisis?

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Pretty bad. Less than a week after posting about the satellite views showing entire villages razed to the ground, we have a piece from the Economist looking at refugee outflows. And they are worse than the outflow of refugees during the Rwandan genocide back in 1994. To be clear, they are not saying that nearly…

  • Irma’s Impending Arrival

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Your author is on holiday today and is actually writing today’s post on a Thursday night train to Boston. But by the time he returns late Sunday night—a Monday morning post is not guaranteed—Hurricane Irma will have likely made landfall somewhere along the Florida coast. Thursday the Guardian published a nice article looking at the…

  • Rising Tides, Rising Disasters?

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    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    One more day of Harvey-related content. At least I hope. (Who knows? Maybe someone will design a fantastic retrospective graphic?) Today, however, we look at a piece from the Economist about the rising number of weather-related disasters, but thankfully falling numbers of deaths. The piece has all the full suite of graphics: choropleths, line charts,…

  • Harvey’s Rainfall Part Two

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Let’s consider today a follow-up to yesterday’s piece. (No, I do not believe I have ever done a follow-up piece, but why not start now all these years later.) Yesterday we looked at the Post, Journal, and Times for their coverage of the fallen rain amounts in southeast Texas. But at the time, we only…

  • Harvey’s Rainfall Totals

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Hurricane Harvey landed north of Corpus Christi, Texas late Friday night. By Monday morning, Houston has been flooded as nearly two feet of water have fallen upon the city, built on and around wetlands long ago paved over with concrete. Naturally the news has covered this story in depth all weekend. Even leading up to…

  • Alaskan (im)Permafrost

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    I woke up this morning and before breakfast I opened the door to bring in today’s edition of the New York Times. I enjoy reading the paper, or at least a few articles, over breakfast (and more often than not preparing a post for here at Coffeespoons.me). Some of the best days are when I…