Among my legions of books are a few from my grandfather’s days when he was a student. After going through some photos yesterday, I realised that I had taken photos of his elementary school algebra text book. Among the first chapters was an entire section on graphing and chart types. I hope to go through these in more detail in some later posts, but here’s one for the stereotypes.
The Iraq War is over. And now it is time to reflect on what we have gained and what we have lost. This map by the Guardian details the number of soldiers killed in action in Iraq. (Other options include total wounded, killed by non-hostile, &c.)
Unfortunately, I call it a ‘no kidding’ type of map. The data, accessible via the Guardian here, corresponds nicely with a list of states by total population. Of the top ten countries in KIA, only Virginia is not among the top ten in population; it is 12th. The country thus not in the top ten in KIA, but in population is North Carolina. It’s rank in terms of KIA? 11th.
The data is interesting and worth depicting if we are to reflect. But, perhaps a more suitable visualisation could have been chosen.
On a personal note, these Google Maps overlays are annoying when, in the cases of, e.g., Wisconsin and Massachusetts, the shapes are incorrect. Perhaps coastlines are not as easy as states with ‘straight lines’ for boders, but we would do well to try and make irregular coasts at least somewhat correct.
The New York Times had a piece in the Sunday paper asking whether American police have gone military, especially in the wake of the images of the police response to Occupy Oakland and Occupy Wall Street with police/troops deployed in tactical body armour, armoured vehicles, &c. The Times piece was accompanied by an Op-Art piece that took three key protests and illustrated the type of police officer responding to the unrest.
Credit for the illustration goes to Chi Birmingham. The title of this post comes from a British publication about the Brixton riot of 1981 where an individual was asked about why he was rioting was quoted as saying “We want to riot, not to work.”
I do not often get the chance to post illustrative works. But, the Washington Post reported on the work of Georgetown students that shows how China has tunneled thousands of miles of, well, tunnels to create a secret labyrinth for their nuclear weapons programme. The result is that instead of the few dozen warheads that China is thought to have, they could have many more times that. They included this graphic, cropping below, with the article.
Today is Veterans Day. Originally it was called Armistice Day. At 11.00 on 11/11 in 1917, fighting ceased between the Allies and Germany. World War I was effectively over.
Since World War I, in the United States, we have gone on to have World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, the Second Gulf War and many smaller conflicts in between. The holiday now represents all veterans, but, it started to commemorate that first horrible war in the West’s history: the Great War of 1914–1918.
This graphic, from a post at a bookstore owned by John Ptak, originally comes from a larger illustration (beneath) in the Illustrated London News of Royal Navy losses at the conclusion of World War II. For comparison’s sake the original illustrator, G.H. Davis, included this drawing of the Royal Navy’s losses in the Great War of 1914–1918. That war, in naval terms, is perhaps best known for one of the few true battles between battleships on a large scale: the Battle of Jutland.
