Have you ever wondered how big the United States is? MAPfrappe allows you to compare different geographies in Google Maps.
My employer has an office in Chicago and an office in Santiago, Chile. How big is Chile? North-to-south it is quite large. But east to west, the distance is like that of driving from Chicago to Detroit.
Via BuzzFeed.
In a truly disturbing article, the New York Times detailed recent research by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to identify all the camps established by Germany in World War II, be them extermination camps, labour camps, ghettos, &c. At one point in the article, one of the principals behind the USHMM work stated he expected to find as many as 7,000 such camps across Europe. They have currently identified 42,500.
Two maps accompany the article. The first details the reach of ghettos for Eastern European Jews.
This second map plots the locations of the primary and secondary SS concentration camps.
Credit for the pieces go to the New York Times.
As the conclave in Rome is almost ready to begin, likely sometime next week, cardinals are gathering in Rome to discuss the affairs of the Catholic Church and then elect a new pope from within their ranks. Many outsiders talk about the time for a pope from outside of Europe, that the papacy has been an office for Europeans—namely Italians—for too long.
However, the preponderance of Catholics outside of Europe is, in the 2000-year history of the Church, a relatively recent phenomenon. Explosive growth in Latin America, Africa, and Asia combined with a decline in European Catholics means that it is only in the last few decades that Europeans have fallen from being nearly 2/3 of the global Catholic Church.
As my infographic attempts to explain, despite this demographic shift, the early Catholic Church chose popes from the distant corners of its territory before it contracted. That historical consolidation in Europe—Italy in particular—has led, however, to a disproportionate weight of cardinal electors, i.e. the cardinals who elect the pope, in favour of Italy and Europe. And as the cardinals typically choose from among their own, it is far more likely that the next pope will come from Europe if not Italy.
Click the image to see the full-sized graphic.
This weekend I researched meteorological data for a graphic that I will post tomorrow. But in doing that research I came across a series of weather infographics from WGN that are better than the average. The one below details the snowstorm due to impact the Chicago area and how it will form (along with the storm that brought a few inches of snow last week).
Credit for the piece goes to Jennifer Kohnke and Faye Shanti.
If you do not live on the East Coast, you may be unaware that there was some minor snowfall in New England over this past weekend. The Weather Channel went ahead and named the storm Nemo. (I’m going to lay off the suspect and fishy jokes.) I wanted to revisit the storm because of two graphics that both mapped snowfall totals.
The first is from the New York Times. As one would expect, a quality graphic with clear colour ranges to show the impact across the wider New England area, western New York and New Jersey.
But from the local radio station WNYC came an interesting map of users’ observations. Because it’s a local radio station, the difference between the two versions is that the breadth of data is not as far-reaching as the Times’ data from the National Weather Service.
However, this sort of user-created data allows for more nuanced, locally-specific data visualisations.
Of course, this creates issues with the accuracy of the data. And in the case of this map, whether the amount given was a snapshot of the snowfall at the time the snow was falling or the final tally.
Credit for the pieces go to the New York Times, and to Steven Melendez, Louise Ma and John Keefe for the WNYC piece.
So that fishy little storm the Weather Channel called Nemo—you may have heard of it—put a little snow across New England. Last week the New York Times published an interactive infographic that looked at when and where the snow would be falling, from New Jersey to New York to Maine.
The times are cut into six-hour blocks and show in the upper left where the snow would be falling by rate per six-hours. To the right of the map is a series of bar charts that show the snowfall pattern in more or less of a wave. Beneath all of it are a comparison of when, over the last several decades, the largest snowstorms hit Boston and New York (and how much snow each city received). A comparison of the map before to the end of the storm, except for parts of Maine.
Credit for the piece goes to Tom Giratikanon, Matthew Ericson, Xaquin G.V., Archie Tse, and Jeremy White.
For the first time in centuries, a sitting pope is to resign. Typically most popes have served until their death. The question for many will now be who will be the next pope. Will it be a cardinal from Latin America? From Africa?
I looked at the origins of the all the popes since Peter. (Although the earliest few centuries are sketchy at best with not a whole lot of data.) As it turns out, there have already been probably three popes from Africa. Granted, they all lived during the Roman Empire, but still…that has to count for something…right?…No?…okay. Fine. Well in that case, you have plenty of Italians, in particular Romans to serve. (At least historically speaking.)
Once when I worked at the Jersey shore as a kid a woman purchased her books and then asked me the location of the nearest ATM. I replied “Wawa”. She looked at me as if what I said was gobbledy-gook. She asked again. I replied “Wawa” again but with probably a look of confusion upon my face. It turned out she was from California and she thought I was mentally ill. I did not understand how anyone did not or could not know about the awesomeness of Wawa.
But for all of my upbringing in the Philadelphia suburbs/South Jersey loyalty to Wawa, I must confess to an unfortunate divide in Pennsylvania between we civilised folks near Philly and, well, the rest of the state. We in the Philadelphia metropolitan area are loyal to Wawa. The rest of the state swears allegiance to Sheetz. But how stark is this geographic loyalty? The New York Times mapped store locations with Wawa in blue and Sheetz in red to accompany an article about the “tribal loyalties” to the two chains.
For those more curious about this author’s loyalties, the author of the article, Trip Gabriel, included photos by Mark Makela of one of my local Wawas (the one near Malvern at 202 and 29 for my hometown readers) as the main image for the article along with photos of interiors in West Chester. And of course the Wawas where I grew up:
John Brennan’s confirmation for heading up the CIA begins today. He’s been pretty instrumental in strengthening the United States’ counter-terrorism programme, especially the use of drones to eliminate terrorists.
For those drones, the Washington Post mapped out the known bases in Africa and the Middle East from which we operate our drones.
Detroit’s population has fallen drastically while its economy has been all but eviscerated with the near-collapse of the American automotive industry. But it was not always that way. The National Post looks at Detroit over the years, starting in 1950. It’s the mapping and charting out of the decline and fall of what was once a great city.
Credit for the piece goes to Kristopher Morrison and Richard Johnson.
