Tag: technology

  • Oil.

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Oil, sweet oil. How we depend upon you for modern civilisation. BP published a report on world energy that Craig Bloodworth visualised using Tableau. The piece has three tabs; one is for production, another consumption, and a third for reserves. (The screenshot above is for production.) But when I look at each view I wonder whether…

  • Frack You, Gas Hole.

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    Brendan Barry
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    And not in the polite Galactica way, but more in the let’s drill you, rocks, and split you open. I could go in further detail about the injection of fracking fluids, but let’s leave the double entendre alone and talk about Marcellus Shale. It’s a layer of rocks in the dirt that contain natural gas.…

  • A Nine-story Log Cabin

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    Brendan Barry
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    It’s like a log cabin. But taller. A lot taller. The New York Times reports with an infographic on a nine-story block of flats (apartment building for us Americans) in London called the Graphite Apartments that was built almost entirely of timber. Credit for the piece goes to Mika Gröndahl.

  • How to Salvage a Ship

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    Brendan Barry
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    You might recall that back in January an Italian cruise ship sank after striking submerged rocks. In case you were wondering, the ship is still there. But the plan is to refloat the ship and then tow it to a harbour on the Italian mainland and scrap the ship. The Guardian put together a nice…

  • How an E-mail is Sent. (And No, I Don’t Mean by Pressing Send.)

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Google is a big company. What do big companies do from time to time? Market themselves. And so this is a screenshot from a fun interactive infographic piece that has supplementals from text to photos to videos as Google explains how an e-mail is sent. All the while Google touts its green energy initiatives and…

  • Canada Invades the Land of the Mole People

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Subways. Home of the mole people. And in the United States an unwanted recipient of government money to build things. Along with being generally unwanted. By those who do not live in cities. Probably because of said mole people. Or something. But in Canada, they like subways. At least enough that Toronto is building an…

  • Analysing the Urban Environment

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    Brendan Barry
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    Via the Guardian comes an interactive piece from researchers at MIT and the Technical University of Lisbon that allows users to examine urban environments to compare population, energy use, and building material intensity for a select set of 42 different cities. The screenshots below are of neighbourhoods in Philadelphia. Once the user has chosen an…

  • North Korean Missile Technology (Or Lack Thereof)

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    North Korea wanted to launch a missile, but failed miserably in doing it. Richard Johnson at the National Post created an infographic, prior to the missile’s launch, that looked at what the North Koreans wanted to do.

  • Today is a Happy Happy Joy Joy Story

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    For the past two posts I focused on the sinking of the RMS Titanic, an historical event that has always been of some interest to me, but is not always the most uplifting of subjects. When in high-school, I once had an English teacher who took to heart our complaints that our literature selection was…

  • Comparing Surgeries

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    We have an obesity problem in the United States. And in some cases, obesity leads to diabetes. A study was commissioned to discover whether surgery is more effective than the usual prescription of drugs, diet, and exercise. It turns out that surgery may very well be more effective. The New York Times produced an infographic…