And you are here why?

Brandon Martin-Anderson does the heavy lifting, mapping every single person counted in the 2010 census . Thats 308,450,225 dots (technical term - "a lot of dots").  The image above is just that - an image.  Go to the source to see the actual - interactive - visualization . From the source What's all this? This is a map of every person counted by the 2010 US Census. The map has 308,450,225 dots - one for each person. Why? I wanted an image of human settlement patterns unmediated by proxies like city boundaries, arterial roads, state lines, &c. Also, it was an interesting challenge. Who is responsible for this? The US Census, mostly. I made the map. I'm   Brandon Martin-Anderson. Kieran Huggins   came to the rescue with spare server capacity and technical advice after this got Boing Boing'd. How? I wrote a Python script to generate points from US Census block-level counts, and then generated the tiles with Processing. Here's   more deta...

Jerome Cukier does the heavy lifting so that you don't have to .  On to details... As Jerome puts it I have created this map of every homicide in the USA using firearms for the latest year where detailed information was available. Every, that is from all the agencies that report homicides to the FBI, which is not an obligation – this is why the map lacks Florida data. In the interactive version you can see how murders happen through the year and explore them according to several criteria that were available in the database. While large shooting sprees receive media attention, unfortunately there are thousands of cases each year in just about every community. Note that the above is just an image - go here for the actual - interactive - visualization . Incidentally, the visualization is a pretty horrific companion piece to this chart from the WP showing gun-related murders in the developed world.  We are - sadly and horrifically - No. 1 by a wide margin. Yay for th...

You remember The Gorilla Effect , right?  To remind you ( from LiveScience ) The so-called "invisible gorilla" test had volunteers watching a video where two groups of people — some dressed in white, some in black — are passing basketballs around. The volunteers were asked to count the passes among players dressed in white while ignoring the passes of those in black. (To watch the video for yourself, click here .) The point being that what you see may not necessarily be what actually happened - something the the New Jersey supreme court took into consideration when they made it much easier for defendants to challenge "eye-witness testimony" last August .  From the New York Times The State Supreme Court’s ruling was seen as significant because it was based in part on an exhaustive study of the scientific research on eyewitness identification, led by a special master , a retired judge, who held hearings and led a review of the literature on the issue...

Hoo boy - just when you thought you'd seen everything, along comes Daily Caller 's latest idiocy - Cigarette reviews . And not just any old review - reviews done with flair, style, and a remarkable degree of odiousness. So well done in fact that if it wasn't for the fact that this is almost Onion worthy.  Except that it is the Daily Caller - Tucker Carlson 's latest chumpy endeavor and is entirely serious. Patrick Howley's review of the Marlboro Red is truly the Mariah Carey of reviews - starting on a high note, and just going up from there. Before cigarettes were sold to men for the purpose of sexual solicitation, they were allowed to revel in their polarizing maleness, their seductiveness muted and irrelevant, their purpose utilitarian. Hoo boy.  Seriously? " sexual solicitation "? What on earth is Howley smoking? Apparently something a bit different from a Marlboro Red, I suspect.. Densely concentrated at its tip, the Marlboro requires a ...

John Holbo brings madness to the mortal plane with A Truly Awful Christmas - A Visitation of Sog-Nug Hotep 'twas the Night before Christmas when all through the house What a Creature came stirring, all legs, wings, and mouths! Ancient runes had been scratched on the chimney with fear, In hopes that Sog-Nug-Hotep would not come here!    Surely mortal mind was not meant to behold the tentacl'd horror, that pustul'd visage, on this fair eve!

'nuff said

Two charts from Tumblr showing video games by genre and platform. Brilliant... (Click to embiggen. A lot...)

Daniel brings the pain to "Canadians" at Crooked Timber .  It answers that crucial question - Do you believe in "Canada"? quite thoroughly, but lovingly. Mind you, I've lived up there, and I have to admit that the belief runs strong in those environs (it must be the cold).  Over time, all sorts of supporting myths and rationalizations grew up to support the “Canadian” faith. Apparently they fought a war against America in 1812, although not one with any noticeable or measurable political consequences. They don’t have a football team because they play “hockey on ice” (really!), a sport at which they are world champions (naturally, because it is a fictitious sport). They have all the nice characteristics of America, but have a healthcare system rather suspiciously similar to the British one, and so forth, and so on. As anyone can see, this isn’t a country – it’s far too perfect to be convincing. It’s a fantasy roleplaying character invented by a kid who...

Rob Loukotka watched every Coyote/Road-Runner episode (43 of them, in case you are wondering) and has put together this marvelous poster of every one of the 126 featured items from ACME corp. From the site   Tornado seeds! Giant magnets! Dynamite! Rocket powered roller skates! Anvils! Giant Rubber Bands! I spent over 100 hours illustrating, designing, and researching this one poster Check it out!

This has got to be the most comprehensive bird-related family tree - ever .  It links nearly 10,000 species of birds, and walks the tee back to the dinosaurs (creationists, please ignore...). From a releated release  Researchers, from the University of Sheffield, Yale University, University of Tasmania and Simon Fraser University, say the creation of new species has speeded-up over the last 50 million years. Surprisingly, species formation is not faster in the species rich tropics, but was found to be faster in the Western Hemisphere compared to the Eastern Hemisphere as well as on islands. As well as being the first time scientists have created a family tree for birds, it is hoped the research could help prioritise conservation efforts in a bid to save the most diverse species from extinction. Dr Gavin Thomas, of the University of Sheffield’s Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, said: "We have built the first ever family tree showing the evolutionary relationsh...

Today's bit of idiocy by St. George takes the cake, what with it not just containing the usual bad logic, ridiculous statements and obtuse language, but going quasi-Godwin in the process . According to Saint George, The (evil?) Obama's drive to federalize voter registration is part of his master plan to make voting compulsory Holder's comment " We should rethink this whole notion that voting only occurs on Tuesday " is " loopy " because, wait for it, in most states people vote before Tuesday. (Yeah. I don't get it either. But it makes sense to St. George) Takes a statement from the Heritage foundation (Fair! Balanced!) that voter registration rolls are in poor shape with more registered voters than actual people as gospel, and proceeds to use it as evidence that justifies the long waits in line to vote (strangely, only in tossup states. Hmmmmm), while blaming it on the Federal Govt. (I wonder if St. George has ever been to a - state run - D...

hat-tip ChartPorn

Seriously. According to a BMJ study by the NHS and Newcastle University that compared recipes from books by Jamie Oliver, Lorraine Pascale, Nigella Lawson, and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall against supermarket "ready to eat" meals.  The results? No recipe or ready meal fully complied with the WHO recommendations. The ready meals were more likely to comply with the recommended proportions of energy derived from carbohydrate (18%   v   6%, P=0.01) and sugars (83% v 81%, P=0.05) and fibre density (56%   v   14% P<0.01). The recipes were more likely to comply with the recommended sodium density (36%   v   4%, P<0.01), although salt used for seasoning was not assessed. The distributions of traffic light colours under the FSA’s food labelling recommendations differed: the modal traffic light was red for the recipes (47%) and green for ready meals (42%). Overall, the recipes contained significantly more energy (2530 kJ   v   2067 kJ), pro...

Lisa Pollack explains Internatinal Transfer Pricing (with particular reference to the ongoing saga of Starbucks in the U.K. ) via that famed mouthpiece - Mr. Potato Head. Oh, you do know about whats going on with Starbucks in the U.K., right?  For those who haven't been following the sordid saga, the (extremely) short version is that despite having been in business in the U.K. for 14 years, and making around £400 million/year, they've paid a grand total of £8.6M. Over 14 years .  They get away with it because they do fun stuff like royalties paid to Starbucks Netherlands, coffee purchased from Starbucks Switzerland, and no doubt " Because International Finance ". This is actually a bit more than forum shopping - its basically moving finance widgets around the global chessboard which can be done for good or for evil - and thats what is called Transfer Pricing .  And this is where Mister Potato Head comes in.  I've excerpted the article below - go read the...

Yanina Ronconi at La Nacion brilliantly visualizes Lionel Messi's 88 (thus far) goals this season. Powered by Tableau For the irretrievably news challenged, Messi beat Muller's record of 85 goals in a year - set in 1972 - on Dec 9th.  In case you didn't know this, the above might be slightly less interesting...