Tag: politics

  • Falling Costs of Medicare

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Medicare is one of those things that everybody has feared in terms of its impact on our long-term debt and deficit. The New York Times looks at the falling projections over time through a nice, animated line chart. The accompanying article places the cause for these to two factors. First, technical reductions that mean behaviour…

  • Importing Russian Gas

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today’s post is a graphic from the New York Times that looks at Russia’s hold on energy across Europe. I’m not terribly keen on this particular graphic for a few reasons. First, the design needs to incorporate the actual datapoint so the reader can compare across countries. Comparing the height of each black bar to…

  • Scotland Votes

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    By the time this post goes live, Scotland will have already been voting on independence for several hours. At the time of writing this post, it appears more a toss-up than anything else. And so today we highlight a piece that is a little bit different than what I might normally cover. Here we have…

  • Terror Attacks Throughout the World

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Last week many American observed 11 September in remembrance of the terror attacks that brought down the Twin Towers, a section of the Pentagon, and four airliners in total. So this week we are going to see some fantastic work from Periscopic that highlights several other terror groups operating in the world across the last…

  • DC Mayoral Elections

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    In November, among the many ballots will be that of the DC mayor. The Washington Post has a piece showing the power bases of the two main candidates. It also allows you to play with the vote allotment of the three key groups to show how you can build a 50% + 1 vote tally.…

  • The Liberal to Conservative Spectrum of American Cities

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Yesterday we looked at the growth of inland cities. Today, we follow up with a piece from the Economist that examines the political leanings of America’s larger cities. As one might imagine, the larger cities generally trend liberal. But the most conservative American cities are actually not very conservative. They are better described as centre-right.…

  • Am I Your Type, Politically Speaking of Course?

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Maybe? But thanks to Pew Research, you can see if we align politically. Today’s post comes via Pete, a coworker of mine, and it is basically a survey that works by asking you 23 political questions on topics from big/small government, immigration, climate change, gay rights, defence spending, &c. They crunch some numbers and spit…

  • Where the Rebels are in Eastern Ukraine

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today’s piece is far from ground-breaking or even complex. Friday, the Wall Street Journal published this map to supplement an article about the unilateral ceasefire declared by President Poroshenko in Ukraine. The map highlights the areas effectively controlled by the rebels, the most important the unsecured border. Of course this is just a map as…

  • How ISIS Got This Far

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    The Washington Post is also helping us understand the spread of ISIS. This time a bit more interactively than we have seen from the Times. This is a step-by-step (ish) explanation. Though, I quibble with the decision to link cities by dotted lines. That can create the illusion that ISIS fighters moved directly from city…

  • Blight, not Panic, in Detroit

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    A little old, but this graphic from the New York Times explores urban blight in Detroit. The interesting feature about the map is the blue, highlighted section. The designers used Google Streetview to show an actual blighted street. Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.