It is finally Friday. And if you are in one of those areas where it is forecast to rain this weekend, you may find yourself watching a film. If you do, then xkcd has a post that will help you identify the movie by its background scenery.
Personally, my favourite is the reference to the Grand Banks in Hunt for Red October.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Today’s post falls somewhere between just for fun and science reality. Remember moon bases? Newt Gingrich’s ridiculed comment about a habitable moon base by 2020? Well, one problem with colonies on other planets—or even interstellar transport for that matter—is radiation. The moon has no magnetosphere and no atmosphere. So it can be bombarded by both radiation and meteorites.
But, now we have lava tubes. Well, in theory at least. Scientists have run the numbers and found that if lava tubes exist on Mars, they would be structurally sound to support colonies within lava tubes. And that brings us to the raison d’etre of today’s post: the diagram used to explain that science.
I present you all with your hypothetical moon base: New Philadelphia.
Credit for the piece goes to David Blair.
You can rightly file this one under what the fuck, which is how I found it on WTF Visualizations. The piece appears to be some sort of comprehensive guide to minerals, nutrients, and in which foods you can find them. But, as the critique title declares, this is more like Rainbowship Enterprise. How this is supposed to be remotely useful, I cannot even begin to fathom. But, hey, the title references Star Trek, so that’s a redeeming characteristic, right? Oh wait, that was in the criticism…
Credit for the original piece goes to Nuique and datadial.
We began the week with an infographic about Star Trek on account of Leonard Nimoy’s death. We end the week with an xkcd graphic about stories of the past and future and its mentions of Star Trek. Not just for Nimoy, but now also of Harve Bennett, who was a producer instrumental in the production of the movies that solidified Star Trek as a cultural phenomenon.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
I came upon this piece a little while ago and realised that it in some ways paralleled my own interest in genealogy. Basically the story comes down to realising that you probably only know a mere fraction of the stories behind all the people who led up to you. To put in another context: “you’re the product of 127 romances, just in the last 200 years alone”. Anyway, the article is a nice read and explains the math with illustrations.
Credit for the piece goes to Tim Urban.
We looked at some pretty disturbing things this week, from the whole anti-vaccination thing to lynchings. So today, screw it. Let’s look at screws. Thanks to xkcd we have an illustrated guide to the different type of screw heads.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
I’m a worrier. Thankfully xkcd has me covered.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
When I was much younger I invented a game where you essentially managed the development of civilisations. xkcd pretty much explains why the idea appealed to me. Minus all the power, obviously. Because that house is by far the best place for a deep water port for the import/export of valuable commodities. This, however, is missing all the tanks and battleships.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
For those of you in the Northeast, you already know you are dealing with a little bit of snow. Thankfully the BBC put the amount received in Boston in context…of dogs.
Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.
The Christmas holidays are known for many things. One of them is the office holiday party. Today’s post looks at a flow chart put together by the company for which I work, Euromonitor International. As it was put together by the design team, you might very well think that I had something to do with it. But I couldn’t possibly comment.
Credit for the piece goes to the Euromonitor design team.
