Tag: science

  • Undersea Mining

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today’s piece isn’t strictly about data visualisation. Instead it’s a nice article from the BBC that explores the nascent industry of undersea mining. What caught my interest was the story of Soviet submarine K-129, which sank mysteriously in the middle of the Pacific. But that isn’t even half the story, so if you are interested…

  • The 2017–18 Flu Season

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Last week I covered the Pennsylvania congressional district map changes quite a bit. Consequently I was not able to share a few good pieces of work. Let’s hope nothing goes terribly wrong this week and maybe we can catch up. From last Friday we have this nice piece from FiveThirtyEight looking at the spread of influenza…

  • Onwards and Upwards

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Yesterday SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy rocket on its maiden voyage, and then recaptured several, though not all, of its reusable rockets. The Falcon Heavy represents the most powerful rocket available to mankind today, though NASA’s Saturn V of the Apollo programme era was considerably more powerful. That was all the stuff you could read…

  • All Your Base Are Belong to Internets

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Over the weekend news broke that since November, plans for military bases around the world were available to anyone and everyone on the internets. How? Why? Well, it turns out that soldiers using wearable tech to track their rides or cycling routes had forgotten to disable that feature whilst on military installations. And so when…

  • Earthquake Early Warning

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Last month, two massive earthquakes devastated Mexico. Now, if you were like me, you were captivated by the photos and videos of the quakes striking and tearing down buildings and infrastructure. But, think about it for a second, how did people know to take out their mobiles and record the tremors for posterity’s sake? Well,…

  • How Big Was Irma?

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Like many Americans I followed the story of Hurricane Irma over the weekend. One of my favourite pieces of reporting was this article from the Washington Post. It did a really nice job of visually comparing Irma to some recent and more historic storms, such as 1992’s Hurricane Andrew. It can be difficult to truly…

  • The Timeline of the Voyager Mission

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    There are a bunch of things to look at this week, but what am I most excited about? Voyager. No, not Star Trek. (Did you know that the Vger entity from the first Star Trek film was a replica of the Voyager probes?) I am of course talking about the Voyager mission to the outer…

  • Plotting Cries for Help

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    So I thought I would be done with Harvey coverage, but this morning I saw this map from the New York Times that plotted out requests for aid throughout the storm. You can really see the storm’s movement through the impacts upon the people. It’s especially true later in the timeline as the storm moved…

  • Harvey’s Rainfall Part Two

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Let’s consider today a follow-up to yesterday’s piece. (No, I do not believe I have ever done a follow-up piece, but why not start now all these years later.) Yesterday we looked at the Post, Journal, and Times for their coverage of the fallen rain amounts in southeast Texas. But at the time, we only…

  • The Solar Eclipse as Seen from Philly

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    As my last two posts pointed out, yesterday was the Solar Eclipse. It certainly garnered media attention as a news helicopter hovered over my building during the height of the eclipse. Very peaceful indeed. But, knowing that my smartphone would not be able to take the best photos of the eclipse, even with a solar filter,…