I apologise for the lack of posts over the last two weeks, but I was on holiday. Naturally, I have returned just in time for some snowstorms in the Midwest. But today’s piece comes from WGN and it explains how the type of winter precipitation that falls depends not solely on ground temperatures. Rather, temperature profiles in the upper atmosphere can make all the difference between rain, sleet, and snow.
Credit for the piece goes to Steve Kahn and Jennifer Kohnke.
Baseball’s Winter Meetings often provide fans with lots of trade news and free agent signings. As a Red Sox fan, one of the unfortunate signings was the Cubs picking up Jon Lester. For my friends back in Philly, Jimmy Rollins is headed to Los Angeles. But then for Boston, at the time of writing it appears a deal may be imminent for Arizona’s Wade Miley in exchange for Allen Webster and Rubby de la Rosa.
The reason I mention all those names is that they reminded me of a series of graphics from last month that looked at the longest transaction trees for each team. Put simply, how far back can one guy being traded for another guy being signed as compensation for another guy leaving get you back in history. The following graphic tracks a different Red Sox trade, of Anthony Ranaudo and Brandon Workman in 2014 back to the signing of Ken Ryan in 1986.
But what reminded me more specifically was the note that followed the above graphic that had Allen Webster as the longest trade-only tree for Boston. That starts because of the Hanley Ramirez signing in 2000—who returned to Boston only a few weeks in a free agent signing. Similarly, Jimmy Rollins was the longest transaction tree for the Phillies since his signing back in 1996. But that will now change once the players in exchange for Rollins are made clear.
Credit for the piece goes to Ben Lindbergh.
Naturally we have talked a lot about Rosetta and Philae the last few weeks. While Philae has exhausted its battery supply, Rosetta continues to orbit Comet 67P as that satellite’s own satellite. But what about Earth? What about our satellites? Thankfully the folks over at Quartz mapped that out for us in this great graphic. It portrays all the known functioning satellites in Earth’s orbit, their range, and launch weight.
You can switch which variable colour encodes, e.g. country or age. And then by clicking on a satellite you can see its orbit height—this can also be animated. And for a neat little bit, the grey circle with the dotted line represents the International Space Station. The dot its launch weight, the dotted line its current weight. The one I have selected is the X-37B unmanned space plane operated by the US Air Force.
Credit for the piece goes to David Yanofsky and Tim Fernholz.
Today is Friday, so let’s take it a bit easy. You have heard of Philae and the comet landing. But we also know now that it bounced upon landing. But could you do any better? The BBC produced this game to let you try to do just that.
Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.
In a few hours—not long after this blog post is published—we should know whether or not the washing-maching sized probe Philae has successfully landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The operation is very complicated, this is a moving and spinning comet with a boulder-strewn surface dotted with ice spires. And as of a few hours the lander was having problems with the gas thrusters designed to slow the lander to a hover above the comet surface. Space is hard. So to explain what is happening and the scale of the things involved, we have an illustration from the Washington Post.
Credit for the piece goes to Bonnie Berkowitz, Patterson Clark, and Richard Johnson.
To continue with this week’s theme of Ebola, we are looking at another Washington Post article. Online the Post presents it as an interactive, guided explanation of how Ebola basically kills people. Spoiler, it is not pretty. But what I do really like about this online presentation is how the Post has a downloadable .pdf version of the piece available.
Credit for the piece goes to Patterson Clark, Darla Cameron, and Sohail Al-Jamea.
Yesterday we looked at the New York Times’s reporting of some basic facts about Ebola. Today to continue along the refutation of scaremongering path, we have an article from the Washington Post. I understand that people are afraid of Ebola, because if you catch it, you have a good chance you are going to die. The current strain for the outbreak in West Africa is about 50%. But, you are far more likely to catch less-deadly disease. Like the flu.
Credit for the piece goes to Bonnie Berkowitz and Lazaro Gamio.
Today you are going to get two posts. The first is this, which is a break from the week’s theme. But news stories happen. The second will be back to regular programming at the regular time. Basically, the Swedish government is reporting that a foreign submarine is operating within its waters and the available evidence points to Russia. I have seen some ridiculous claims that one of Russia’s largest submarines is in trouble there. But I highly doubt that. And here is why.
I really enjoy reading articles where graphics accompany the text and not just for the want of graphics. While the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is tragic, the data allows for some nice visualisation pieces. Additionally, one could say that the United States is victim to quite a bit of scaremongering as a result of a few isolated cases of Ebola in Dallas, Texas. Spoiler, an Ebola outbreak is not really a threat to the United States or Western Europe. Perhaps to relieve some of said scaremongering, the New York Times has a nice article titled Ebola Facts that outlines just that, the facts about Ebola. And guess what? The article is accompany by a number of useful inline graphics.
Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times’ graphics department.
Ebola is still a thing. And it is still getting worse. Or rather, with deaths and/or infections in both Europe and the United States, we are finally paying a bit more attention to it. We have no cure for Ebola, but we still need to treat people for symptoms, but most importantly we need to isolate those infected from the broader population. How and where is this done? Thankfully, the BBC put together an interactive graphic illustrating a typical treatment centre. Each main section is a clickable link that explains the functions and key points to the different areas.
The article goes on to explain in more detail what is going on and does so with photos and also a map of treatment centres in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.
