Tag: politics

  • The Crisis in Syria

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    The crisis in Syria now resembles more of a civil war. The UN General Assembly has condemned the conflict and passed a resolution calling for Bashar al-Assad to step aside along with a host of other steps to resolve the conflict. However, nothing can happen until the Security Council agrees on a measure, which is…

  • The 2013 Budget Proposal Visualisation Comparison

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Yesterday’s post was about the administration’s 2013 budget proposal as visualised by the New York Times. This morning we have a brief comparison to the visualisation of the Washington Post. The main visualisation shows spending by department compared against revenue, the difference between being the grey box of deficit. Of note is that this piece…

  • 2013 Budget Proposal

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Normally, I look forward to the release of the president’s budget proposed budget—fully understanding that it will never pass as proposed. We get to see lots of visualisations trying to show that we really do spend quite a lot on defence. And an awful lot on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And a little bit…

  • Adding Guided Context to Maps

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Maps are cool. They show the geographic distribution of data. And that is fantastic if there is a story in said distribution. But even if there is a story, sometimes given both the scale of the map and the amount of data encoded in the map, how could you possibly expect to find the story?…

  • Comparing the (Display of) Results in Colorado

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Mitt Romney lost badly last night. No way around that. But as I watched the results come in through various sources, I noticed two interesting design decisions that made me think; one from the Guardian (the British perspective), and the other from the New York Times. Using only Colorado as an example, here is the…

  • Cities Split Apart

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    I like maps. Ever since I was kid. This post is less of an interesting graphic, chart, or what have you, but instead to point you to an interesting opinion piece in the New York Times. Frank Jacobs of Strange Maps wrote the piece, which is about cities split apart by political boundaries.

  • Florida Primary

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    The Republican primaries…they’re still going on…on the long inevitable road to Romney’s coronation. Next up is Florida, always an interesting state to watch. There are a lot of people there with a whole host of interesting demographic slices. Perhaps one of the most interesting ones, at least to the media, is the Hispanic vote. Other…

  • The Family Tree of Kim Jong Il

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Kim Jong Il is dead. And nobody really knows what is going to happen in North Korea. But, what we do have, is the interactive family tree of Kim Jong Il, courtesy of the BBC. Select individuals are clickable and have short biographical sketches. Unfortunately, the tree has been simplified for clarity and it does…

  • The Rise of Newt

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    The Iowa caucuses are quickly approaching. And that means for many candidates a scramble to gain as many supporters as possible and then convert their poll ratings into votes. For the Republicans, this has been a truly topsy-turvy cycle with the distant refrain of “anyone but Mitt” echoing in the background. So, here we are…

  • The Finances of Social Security

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Simple graphs can tell great stories with little annotations. This graphic by the New York Times illustrates that point well with a stacked line chart set behind a line on the same scale. The two should match, or at least the red should be beneath the greys. When they don’t, you have a story and…