Tag: politics

  • The Perception vs Reality of Islam in Europe

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Last week’s terror attacks in Paris highlight the tension in Europe between secular Europe and those believing in Islamist values. The Economist looked at some of the available data and noted the gap between Europe’s perception of Islam and its reality. A quick figure called out for France, French respondents thought 31% of the French…

  • After the Curtain Dropped

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Last week we covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the lasting impact in former East Germany vs. former West Germany. This week we look at a piece from Bloomberg Businessweek that looks more broadly at Eastern Europe. The piece scrolls with the charts updating based upon the available text. And within that text…

  • The UK’s Two-party System Continues to Decline

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    If you missed it, last week the United Kingdom held a few by-elections. For we Americans, those are like special elections for seats in the Senate or the House that are not part of the regular Congressional elections. Anyway, the big news was that the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)—think Tea Party wanting out of…

  • The State of Gay Marriage in the States

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    I have been fairly out of the loop of the news the last few weeks, but I did at least catch one of the headlines: gay marriage in the States is more legal than ever. Between Supreme Court stays and Appeals Court rulings, gay marriage is now legal in more than 50% of the country—at…

  • 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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    by

    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.…