Tag: politics

  • Sochi and the Caucasus

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    The Olympics opened in Sochi this past weekend. Many of us may well be familiar with photographs of urinals without piping, or unfinished hotel rooms, or many other infrastructure problems, but there is a bigger issue facing Sochi. It exists on what the New York Times terms the edge of a war zone. Their overall…

  • Wealth and Education

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    Brendan Barry
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    Today’s post looks at education across a set of 65 countries from a standardised test backed by the OECD, basically a group of wealthy countries. The test results found that some poor countries have surprisingly good education systems whereas some of the world’s wealthiest countries—here’s looking at you, United States—perform poorly. The Huffington Post created…

  • Views on Gay Marriage Around the World

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    If you have been living under a rock, Sochi, Russia is hosting the winter Olympics this year. A year in which the Russian government passed legislation banning not same-sex relationships but advocacy for said relationships. Several countries, including the United States, take issue with the legislation. But this graphic from the National Journal hints that…

  • Traffic Jam on the George Washington

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    A lot of people have been talking about Bridgegate, a scandal in New Jersey wherein the governor’s office allegedly abused its power to negatively impact the residents of Fort Lee, New Jersey. What actually happened for a few days this past fall? The Washington Post uses aerial photography and illustration to diagram the normal traffic…

  • Brand New Year, Same Old Politics

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today’s piece comes from this past weekend. The New York Times looked at how states fell on various politically sensitive issues, e.g. abortion and same-sex marriage, depending upon the political control of the executive and legislative functions of each state. In other words, which states have passed legislation to regulate abortion or same-sex marriage? States…

  • North Jersey Traffic

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    For those of you unaware of the shenanigans going on in New Jersey, this won’t make any sense. But for those that are, it sucks to be a commuter in North Jersey as this comic map illustrates. Credit for the piece goes to Ruben Bolling.

  • Tracking You While You Text

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today’s post comes from the Washington Post, which looks at further revelations about the NSA surveillance programme. Specifically, the Post details how the NSA tracks Americans by what is called co-traveler analytics. The piece does a really nice job of explaining how the tracking works through illustrative examples. Credit for the piece goes to the…

  • The Next Cold War?

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    The New York Times has a nice piece about the Arctic, which is increasingly fought over by the nations north of the Arctic Circle. Maps like these are always opportunities I enjoy to see the world in an infographic that is not a standard projection, e.g. Mercator or Robinson. The slight change in fill or…

  • Old Healthcare Policy Renewal

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Let’s start this week off with cartograms. Sometimes I like the idea, sometimes not so much. Here is a case where I really do not care for the New York Times’ visualisation of the data. Probably because the two cartograms, a before and after of health policy renewals, do not really allow for a great…

  • Explaining Why Some People Are Losing Their Health Insurance Plans

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    I have received a few questions in the non-blog world about why certain people have been receiving notices in the post that they are about to lose their insurance plans. The short answer for many of those people is that they likely bought individual, private plans and those plans fall short of the new minimum…