During my time at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas, I came upon this illustrated map of 1930s Las Vegas and its environs. It shows the audience all of the various entertainments and attractions in the area, from the hubbub of Las Vegas to the natural scenery of the Grand Canyon. The gaming industry had yet to really take hold, as you can see from the lack of the Strip. It’s not a particularly data-heavy map, so it sort of fits for the Friday section of the blog.
Things to do in Vegas
Credit for the piece goes to an unknown artist—I cannot read the name in the map.
When I was in high school in 2002, it was big news when one of the three Larsen ice shelves in Antarctica, Larsen B, collapsed. And then when I was at university, the band British Sea Power wrote a song titled “Oh Larsen B” that I have always enjoyed.
Now Larsen B was not the first Larsen ice shelf to collapse. That dubious honour belongs to Larsen A, which collapsed in 1995. But, Larsen B will not be the last as the third, Larsen C, is now on the verge of collapse. This graphic from Adrian Luckman, reproduced by the BBC, illustrates how the rift calving the shelf has seen accelerated growth recently.
The rift’s growth has accelerated lately
I believe the colours could have been designed a bit better to show more of the acceleration. The purple fades too far into the background and the yellow stands out too much. I would be curious if the data existed to create a chart showing the acceleration.
The inclusion of the map of Wales works well for showing the scale, especially for British audiences. In other words, an iceberg 1/4 the size of Wales will be released into the Southern Ocean. For those not well versed in British geography, that means an iceberg larger than the size of Delaware. That’s a big iceberg.
A few weeks back a fire raged through a communal, creative warehouse in Oakland. The fire claimed the lives of over thirty people. But why? We have the New York Times behind this piece which attempts to explain just what happened that night through a nice mixture of diagrammatic illustrations and photography.
This is one reason why we try to clearly signal fire exits
Credit for the piece goes to Ford Fessenden and Anjali Singhvi.
On the lighter side of things we have today’s post on income inequality. Always a lighter subject, no? Thanks to Jonathan Fairman for the link.
Herwig Scherabon designed the Atlas of Gentrification as a project at the Glasgow School of Art and it was picked up by Creative Review. It displays income as height and so creates a new cityscape of skyscrapers for the wealthy and leaves lower income residents looking straight up. His work covered the US cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The image below is of Chicago. I probably was living in a cluster of mid-rise buildings despite living in a five-story building.
So this is the last Friday before the election next Tuesday. Normally I reserve Fridays for less serious topics. And often xkcd does a great job covering that for me. But because of the election, I want today’s to be a bit more serious. Thankfully, we still have xkcd for that.
Recent temperature history
The screenshot above gets to the point. But the whole piece is worth a scroll-through and so it goes at the end. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
In case you missed it, two weeks ago President Duterte of the Philippines had some interesting things to say regarding the relationship between the Philippines and the United States. “America has lost” and “separation from the U.S.” were among the two big lines he spoke to a Chinese audience. But the Philippines are an important part of President Obama’s pivot to Asia strategy as we have been spending money and time improving defence ties. Naturally issues like the the pivot underpin Trump’s claims about poor judgment when it comes to the Obama/Clinton foreign policy.
The pivot’s improving defence ties come at a time of region-wide increases in defence spending. Thankfully Bloomberg put together an article with some nice graphics earlier this year. As someone who has always had an interest in naval things if not military things, see my numerous posts on that here, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the article and digesting the graphics. The one below compares the strengths of the Chinese fleets to those American fleets permanently assigned to the Pacific Ocean region.
The Chinese Navy vs (part of) the US Navy
Of course the question becomes, beyond making our military stronger, just what would Trump do to counter or affect the arms race in the Asia Pacific region?
Credit for the piece goes to the Bloomberg graphics department.
Congratulations, you made it to Friday. So let’s try to put that in perspective. And by that, I mean things like mines and Death Stars. Thanks to my good friend Jonathan Fairman for sharing with me this post on Core77 that uses the power of Kevin Wisbith’s Photoshop skills to compare the sizes of things. And yes, that obviously includes mines and Death Stars. But having lived in Chicago for a number of years, you get the mine photo. Because yeah, that thing must be deep.
The Sears Tower inside the Mir Mine
Credit for the original work goes to Kevin Wisbith.
Yesterday scientists announced the discovery of a likely rocky planet within the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, Sol’s (the Sun’s) nearest star. The New York Times covered the discovery with a piece full of nice explanatory graphics.
Now if we can only get onto the whole matter–anti-matter warp engine thing we could go explore the place.
Looking at the orbit of our newest neighbour
Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.
