Tag: illustration

  • Let There be Planets

    Earlier this week xkcd looked at the planets near Earth (within 60 light years) within their respective star system’s habitable zone. Turns out there are quite a few. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

  • 50 Years of the Doctor

    Doctor Who? Exactly. This weekend, Saturday in fact, is the 50th anniversary of British sci-fi show Doctor Who. That is not to say it has been airing for 50 years. In the 1990s and early 2000s the show was off the air, living on only in audio broadcasts and novelisations. But in 2005, the show…

  • The Tallest of the Tall (in Los Angeles)

    I have always had an interest in architecture. And so this piece from the Los Angeles Times is just because I like to indulge myself every so often, a look at the five tallest buildings in Los Angeles. Credit for the piece goes to Scott J. Wilson, Matt Moody, and Anthony Pesce.

  • Explaining Why Some People Are Losing Their Health Insurance Plans

    I have received a few questions in the non-blog world about why certain people have been receiving notices in the post that they are about to lose their insurance plans. The short answer for many of those people is that they likely bought individual, private plans and those plans fall short of the new minimum…

  • LAX Shootings

    I didn’t see a lot of informative graphics regarding the shooting at LAX. But, here are two pieces. The first is from the Los Angeles TImes. Terminal 3 is rendered in three dimensions. Different buttons add views of the remainder of the airport. The Washington Post opted for a flat, two-dimension drawing in one graphic…

  • Three Hops From Norway

    The thing with the NSA spy scandal is not that it collects data on Americans. But it collects data on the Americans that the Americans that the Americans know. Three degrees of separation can actually be quite a few people whose privacy is violated in the name of security. The Guardian has an excellent piece…

  • Fixing Fukushima

    Two and a half years ago an earthquake and then tsunami devastated Japan. But it was the tsunami that crippled the Fukushima nuclear power station and created the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Unfortunately things are still not working properly and the plant is still leaking radioactive particles into the local environment. This interactive…

  • Two-stroke Engines

    Infographics of the science-y, illustration-y kind have always been my favourite. They show you how the world works. Now, it has been a long time since I have used a leaf blower or lawn mower, but I always took for granted how they worked. But this fantastic graphic from the Washington Post makes sure that…

  • Name Dropping Brands

    Happy Friday, everybody. Today’s post is a graphic from Vanity Fair that looks at the rapper Jay Z. (And for all those wondering, no, I have never intentionally listened to any of his music.) Specifically, this kind-of-stacked-bar-but-more-icon chart indicates how many times he name drops specific luxury brands in his albums. You can also file…

  • Deconstructing the International Space Station

    Gravity was released recently. You know, that film about a station in space that gets hit by something and drama ensues. The Washington Post has this fantastic infographic that illustrates how the station was built over the past 15 years. Scroll down the page and watch the station deconstruct itself into its initial Russian power…