illustration – Page 33 – Coffee Spoons

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 that shows you as in you yourself—if you grant access to your Facebook profile—how many people could be investigated because you know them.

Well, I hate to tell you, Norway. But apparently, with me you are far from safe. Or at least a Norway-sized chunk of the American population. More seriously, this is a great piece that personalises an abstract sort of concept. Not just through the use of your own personal data, but by using (potentially) familiar items to contextualise scale. How many people is 190? Almost two Concordes worth. How many is 4,779,123 people? More than the population of Norway. You know, a country. Well done, Guardian.

Credit for the piece goes to the Guardian’s US Interactive Team.

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 guide from the Guardian illustrates just what Tepco, the power company responsible for the plant, is trying to do to prevent further radiation from leaking into the ocean.

Credit for the piece goes to Paddy Allen and the Graphic News.

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 I know how they work. In animated .gif form. For an infographic. It’s really nice and worth a look.

Credit for the piece goes to Patterson Clark.

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.

Jay Z Brand Mentions

You can also file this under the graphics to which I cannot relate. Although maybe, just maybe, I once had a pair of Nike trainers. So at least Jay Z and I have that in common.

Credit for the piece goes to Philip Rhie.

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 module. Fantastic.

Credit for the piece goes to Alberto Cuadra and Katie Park.

Funding the Improbable

This interactive map from the Washington Post is one part of a long-form piece that looks at NASA and the improbable tasks facing the agency. Specifically the piece looks at how NASA wants to get to Mars, but how difficult that is and how an also difficult asteroid mission is as a backup plan.

Really fantastic is about all I can say.

Credit for the piece goes to Joel Achenbach, Alberto Cuadra, Kennedy Elliott, Rebecca Rolfe, and Ricky Carioti.

How Cruise Missiles Would Strike Syria

While we are waiting for Russian help to destroy Syrian stockpiles of chemical weapons, we know that the Pentagon is still ready to strike (most likely with cruise missiles) various targets of the Syrian regime. This graphic from the Wall Street Journal explores some of the options. The interesting bit is the range of Syria’s anti-ship missiles. Because for those of you who do not recall the Israel–Lebanon war of 2006, Hezbollah (known to be aiding the Syrian regime) surprised some by scoring a hit on an Israeli warship with a less-advanced missile than in the Syrian arsenal.

This is only one of several different graphics from that page. Different graphics look at elements of the conflict, including the refugees, timeline of the regime’s actions, &c.

Credit for the piece goes to the Wall Street Journal graphics department.

Hunger Strikes

Guantanamo Bay and the US military prison there almost always spark a debate. For some months now, prisoners have been staging a hunger strike. Increasingly, however, the strike is garnering attention not for itself, but for the US military’s treatment of the prisoners in force feeding them. The National Post looked at just how this is being done in this infographic. Pay particular attention to the illustration of the tube, which is drawn to actual size.

Force feeding Guantanamo's striking prisoners — Force feeding Guantanamo’s striking prisoners

Credit for the piece goes to Andrew Barr, Mike Faille, and Richard Johnson.

Voyager 1 Has Left the Solar System

Last week NASA announced that last year, Voyager 1 left the Solar System about 25 August 2012. A lot of the graphics that were published to support that story chronicled the distance travelled by that probe. However, this excellent graphic by the Los Angeles Times instead looks at how NASA determined through the data returned that Voyager had left the Solar System.

The piece does a really good job of setting up the story in illustrating the instrument packaged used to collect the data. Moving down the piece, it shows locations and the different environments and then how those environments differ in electron density. Lastly it looks at how NASA interpolated the date from the data collected. A really solid piece.

Credit for the piece goes to Monte Morin, Doug Stevens, and Anthony Pesce.

#GetBeard

Normally this would be a Friday post. But, for those of you fellow Red Sox fans who happen to live near enough to Fenway to go catch a game, Wednesday night is Dollar Beard Night. This graphic by the Red Sox details the different types of beards worn by Red Sox players this year. It’s like the bunch of idiots of 2004.

Wednesday night if you show up to Fenway with a beard, you can get a $1 ticket for Dollar Beard Night. Hence why posting this Friday would do you fellow Red Sox fans no good.

Credit for the piece goes to the Red Sox.