2010 August - Chart Porn

Animated timeline of BOE’s fan projections. I think they should have included some “shadow” of the earlier projections to illustrate just how far off they were. A longer time frame would have been nice to show whether they were as inaccurate during non-recession periods.

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Fire!

In: Environment/weather Interactive Maps Science

11 Aug 2010

Recent blog posts on Russia’s summer of fire (Wired; Jotman) led me to the University of Maryland’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) which provides online or Google Earth Based maps of fires from all over the world based on satellite data.

Fires in Russia and the USA in the past 24 hours:

FIRMs online map of the past 7 days:

Also, apparently the fires are emitting dangerous amount of CO2 and may be radioactive:

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Google’s Widening Reach (1998-2010)

In: Interactive Internet/tech Source: WSJ

11 Aug 2010

Interactive timeline of information collected by Google and how it is being used.

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Personal Finance Advice on Napkins

In: Finance Source: NYT US Economy

10 Aug 2010

Napkins are not where you would expect to find good financial advice, but when they come from the New York Times they are worth reading (and each is linked to a related blog post).

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Foursquare Visualization

In: Culture Interactive Internet/tech Maps

10 Aug 2010

I haven’t gotten the Foursquare bug yet, but some of you may be interested in this map-based visualization of you and your friends. (The authors’ blog).

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Bacon!

In: Food

10 Aug 2010

Who doesn’t love bacon?

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How Not to Take Ugly Portraits

In: Culture Humor Science

10 Aug 2010

OkCupid is at it again. This time comparing user attractiveness to photo EXIF data. Findings? Panasonics will make you look better than Canons or Nikons. Iphone users have more sex. Using a flash adds 7 years to your appearance. Lower f-stops make you prettier. Taking pictures during the “golden hour” is not a myth. Have I mentioned that I love that blog?!?

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History of Communication

In: Culture History Internet/tech

10 Aug 2010

This infographic is intriguing because the most interesting part: the graph of call costs is hidden behind the jumble of labels – I didn’t even notice it until Ben Edmonds pointed it out. For the heck of it, I’ve also linked to other communication timelines.

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Church Attendance and Liars

In: Culture Source: Economist

9 Aug 2010

A simple chart showing the percentage of europeans that never attend religious services. FYI, similar polls put the USA at 40%. But apparently, most people lie about this when asked.

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2010 Social Networking Map

In: Internet/tech Maps

9 Aug 2010

An update of xkcd’s 2007 map, this one by Flowtown. It’s interesting to see what they consider to be “social networking” (besides facebook and twitter).

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Death Fees

In: Culture

9 Aug 2010

Seems appropriate for a monday morning: A look at the costs associated with funerals. For the record, please roll my corpse into a hole in the woods and spend the money celebrating being alive.

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The Breakfast Index

In: Food Global Economy Source: Economist

5 Aug 2010

Commodity prices are on the rise again. The Economist picked a pretty recent base year for this graph of wheat, orange juice, and coffee prices – a longer trend would have shown the big ups and downs of the past few years.