Tag: information design

  • Rule, Britannia

    The United Kingdom. England. Britain. All pretty much mean the same thing, right? No. But, if you do not believe me, might I recommend going to Glasgow or Edinburgh and calling a local an Englishman. It may very well be a quick education. Colin Grey attempts to untangle the constitutional and jurisdictional mess in both…

  • Radiation…Tastes Like Metallic Tang

    It is a mad, mad world out there these days and I suppose this is the point at which we all begin to run around shouting that the sky is falling. Despite all the madness in Libya, the constitutional referendum  in Egypt, the protests in Syria, the election in Haiti, and the president’s overseas trip…

  • …to the Shores of Tripoli…

    Two hundred years later, and the US Navy is again in action off the shore of Tripoli. Except instead of calling it the Barbary Coast, we now typically see the name the Maghreb. Things will surely be fluid and changing far faster than I can hope to detail in graphics, let alone follow casually. However,…

  • A (Multiethnic) Apple Falls Not Far From The Tree

    One of my interests is genealogy/family history. While everyone is certainly more than the sum of their parts, that sum of parts is the history that led to your existence. And I find that notion fascinating. When looking around the New York Times, I came across this interactive piece about complicated family histories. I am…

  • You Say You Want a Revolution…

    If you have been living under a rock—or perhaps I should say isolated at an oasis deep in the Sahara—you may not have heard that these are some interesting times in northern Africa and the Middle East. Popular protests begat revolutions that have now toppled two governments, Tunisia and Egypt, and quite possibly a third…

  • Having Your (Presidential Birthday) Cake and Eating It Too

    Presidents’ Day originally celebrated the birthday of George Washington, the first president of the United States. (Though, one could get crazy and say it was actually Samuel Huntington, but I fear I would digress.) Now technically the holiday still does celebrate Washington as the official name of the federal holiday is Washington’s Birthday, but by…

  • If Money Grew on Trees…

    I would have become an arborist…alas, I am a mere designer in a world where trees shed leaves, not cash. The government, on the other hand, now that sheds a lot of cash. President Obama released his budget proposal for 2012, proposal because the responsibility actually falls to the House of Representatives to pass spending…

  • South Sudan

    For those who may not be aware, part of Africa’s largest country is holding a referendum on whether it should remain a part of Sudan or secede and become an independent state, Southern Sudan—though one wonders if they would not come up with a different name. About 2005 a peace agreement all-but-ended a decades-long civil…

  • Growing Pains

    This piece comes from my coworker, Ben, who found the graphic in Scientific American. Broadly speaking the piece is looking at the obese and the overweight in the United States, comparing the numbers of both children and adults in 1980 to 2008. These numbers are supplemented by the risk of death posed to both men…

  • If Kites Could Fly to the Future, What Would They Find?

    If only Benjamin could see this… These are photographs from a small series published by CNET that focuses on a power grid control room. As one can imagine, managing the flow of electrical energy across somewhere the size of New England could be a bit…complicated. And so one can see from some kind of network…