Tag: geography

  • Indo-European Language Origin

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    Brendan Barry
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    Polonius once asked Hamlet what he was reading. Hamlet replied “Words.” I still love that scene. But, it turns out that we now have an even better idea of where our words came from. It turns out that it is more likely that our shared Indo-European languages originated not in the steppes of Russia but…

  • World Bank—Mobile Phones

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    Brendan Barry
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    A little while ago the World Bank, generally a rich-country club that doles out loans to the developing world, published an infographic looking at mobile phones and their presence in the developing world. The piece supplemented a report and is rather large. It actually exists as two separate images. The cropping below focuses just on…

  • Drought Footprint

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    Brendan Barry
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    A lot of people’s minds may be on the Olympics that open up today in London. However, a very important story that was covered a little while ago deserves a post. The United States has been suffering from a severe drought across much of the country. Droughts are nothing new, though climate change is likely…

  • Frack You, Gas Hole.

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    Brendan Barry
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    And not in the polite Galactica way, but more in the let’s drill you, rocks, and split you open. I could go in further detail about the injection of fracking fluids, but let’s leave the double entendre alone and talk about Marcellus Shale. It’s a layer of rocks in the dirt that contain natural gas.…

  • God Save the Queen

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    For the Queen’s Jubilee I had been looking for a good infographic or two about how the United Kingdom had changed over the length of her reign, at least thus far. Alas, I found not a great deal of substantial work. This is an infographic from the Guardian that looks at quite a few single…

  • The Education Gap

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week, the New York Times looked at the growing education gap amongst this country’s largest metropolitan areas. The infographic, click the image below to go to the full version, is perhaps a bit more layered, nuanced, and complex than it looks at first. In about forty years, the number of adults with college degrees…

  • New York Times Lies About Science

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    Brendan Barry
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    In a rare infographic misstep, the New York Times published an incorrect diagram detailing the centre of the Earth. Clearly, anyone who knows anything about science knows that it is not a solid core of iron at the centre of the Earth, but dinosaurs. And I see no dinosaurs in this diagram. Credit for the…

  • Canada Invades the Land of the Mole People

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    Brendan Barry
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    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…

  • Nope, It’s Just Clouds in the Shapes of Birds and Planes.

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Supporting an article about how the clouds are the last great hope for the climate change skeptics, the New York Times published an interesting infographic that looks at cloud cover and insolation, the amount of solar energy that irradiates the planet. The main feature is an animation of a year’s worth of cloud cover. The…

  • Exporting the Sun

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    Brendan Barry
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    Plans are afoot to harness the power of the sun in the deserts across northern Africa. The electricity generated in Morocco is planned to turn on light switches in Madrid and throughout the rest of Europe. The Guardian created a map to show how the solar facilities could be connected to each other and to…