And you are here why?

The Guardian has a pretty nifty take on how busy Airports are .  It turns out that the numbers change based on whether you are looking at Aircrafts, Cargo, or People. Check it out (and who knew that Charlotte moves more people than Beijing?)

this is pretty much what I imagine it to be

via Fast Company , we have these visualizations of Chicago , Istanbul , London , New York , San Francisco , and Tokyo , through Foursquare.  As a Foursquare spokesman put it, they "took a year of check-ins and condensed them to show what each city looks like on an average day."  Its really pretty fascinating - they've used color codes to show the time of the day, and you can see people coming in from the burbs in the morning, and leaving at night, neighborhoods, where people hang out, etc.. Check it out below Chicago New York London San Francisco Tokyo Istanbul

By now, you've probably heard the awesomeness that emanated from the mouthal orifice of Barilla CEO Guido Barilla "I would never do (a commercial) with a homosexual family, not for lack of respect but because we don't agree with them. Ours is a classic family where the woman plays a fundamental role," [... If gays]"like our pasta and our advertising, they'll eat our pasta, if they don't like it then they will not eat it and they will eat another brand," And yes, for sure, I have taken him up on this, and am no longer eating Barilla - I mean, he pretty much came out and said that right? Of course, the singularly cool bit isn't this idiocy, its Bertolli's response, which, to summarize, is this  on their Facebook page The choice is obvious - Bertolli all the way! Update: There is apparently an (not a)pology along the lines of " Your honor, what he meant  to say was  "simply that the woman plays a central role in a family....

via Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake, this may very well be the beginning of the end...

In the wake of the Golden Dawn arrests in Greece , The Guardian (of course) has a great visualization showing the rise of Neo-Naziism in Greece. Take a look below, or better yet, go check out the original.

Dirk Loechel pulls together what seems to be the canonical comparison of starship sizes , from a whole bunch of universes (Star Wars, Babylon 5, Star Trek, EVE, and a bunch more) Go check it out - this is but a pale and small version of the whole thing...

hat-tip Adam Rutkowski

That is all

WuMo brings the pain...

In honor of TLAPD , we have this visualization of all pirate attacks since 1978. I'll let hrbrmstr  explain it Avast me hearRties! (ok, enough of the pirate speak in a blog post) It wouldn’t be TLAPD without out some modest code & idea pilfering from Mark Bulling & Simon Raper . While those mateys did a fine job hoisting up some R code (your really didn’t think I’d stop with the pirate speak, did you?) for their example, I took it one step furrrrther to build an animation of cumulative, yearly IRL pirate attacks from 1978 to the present. I found it a bit interesting to see how the hotspots shifted over time. Click on the graphic for the largeR version  or I’ll make ye walk the plank!! .

Which apparently sez. everything you need to know... (full video below...) hat-tip io9

Brought to you by Scott R. Kurtz

In one spectacular animated gif by Jacob O'Neal ( click here for the original ...)

Particularly fascinating - note how Portugal and Switzerland pretty much just don't change... (video below, screenshot above)

Sometimes we just need to put our cynicism aside, and let the world touch us. This commercial did it to me... hat-tip Rodney Libramonte

This  is the movie you have been waiting for!!!

At Ray's and Stark Bar in Los Angeles there is a Water Menu. Yes. Seriously. A WATER MENU . It is 25 pages of Gilded Age insanity, and includes such awesomeness as the 9OH2O   which is available in limited editions of 10,000 individually numbered diamond-like glass bottles. Every bottle is hand finished, triple-sealed, and expertly examined by white-gloved quality specialists. Only the absolutely perfect survive this supreme best-of-the-best challenge thus becoming certified with the precious Beverly Hills 9OH2O signature label. Yes. Come the apocalypse, I surely know who will be amongst the first in line... Ray's and Stark Bar Water Menu

You remember Chance McClain , right? Who did the prequel to Dr. Horrible ? Well, he's back with a (slightly) revamped Les Miserables with Light Sabers. Yup, you heard that right - Light Sabers! Check out the awesomeness (or go directly to the meat if you can't wait )

Brian Cronin at The Line It Is Drawn  has a couple of " What If " questions and the associated answers (in art form). They are all good, but some are classic What if Charlie Brown was the Green Lantern? What if Captain Mal Reynolds ran the Enterprise? What if Robin was just Batman's imaginary friend all the time? Go check the rest out - they're great!

Lego Thriller by Annette Jung from Talking Animals on Vimeo . Seriously, some people have way too much time on their hands...

Mark Lorch, at the Guardian , redoes the periodic table of elements as a tube map .  As he puts it Each line on my map contains elements that share a characteristic. Sometimes these correspond directly to regions of the periodic table, so the alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, transition metals, post-transition metals, metalloids and non-metals, halogens, noble gases, actinoids and lanthanoids are all there (see the jargon buster below).  As well as these there are characteristics that aren't immediately apparent from periodic tables, for example liquids (at room temperature and slightly above) have their own line, and there are lines for gases and elements with no stable isotopes (ie they are radioactive).  I also threw in a smattering of history: elements that are manmade get a line of their own, as do those that were first made in a lab before being discovered in nature. The result is a disaster - you can't really tell  anything from this.  Compa...

via imgur

Hoisted from Mike Pohjola's blog , the real reason Microsoft bought Nokia's phone business Dear MR NOKIA! My name is STEPHEN ELOP. I am the son of the former PRESIDENT of MICROSOFT, Mr. BILL GATES III. I am contacting you because a mutual FRIEND suggested you as a person who is trustworthy and reliable. As you probably know, MICROSOFT’s plans for world domination have recently been foiled by the evil APPLE corporation and their IPHONE invasion of the market. However, we still have the very valuable MS WINDOWS OPERATING SYSTEM in our possession. Unfortunately, we cannot get it out on a SMARTPHONE. This is why I am writing to YOU. The OPERATING SYSTEM is worth one hundred billion dollars ($100.000.000.000 USD). However, since it is tied to DESKTOP COMPUTERS, we cannot access any of that money. With your help we could transfer the OPERATING SYSTEM on a SMARTPHONE, and then we could share that money in the ration 50% to me, 40% to you and 10% for any expenses. ...

From The Guardian - an analysis of crime statistics, showing the number of times a house, building, bridge, or other structure collapsed (in 2012) , and the resulting injuries/deaths. As they put it The result was a staggering indictment of India's architectural safety standards - 2,651 dead and 850 injured from the collapse of 2,737 structures. We've produced an interactive map of the results at state level so you can explore the trends yourself The below is a screengrab - go to the site for the original interactive version