Super sweet Tumblr of the Sunlight Foundation
Growing Education Divide in Cities
College graduates are more unevenly distributed in the top 100 metropolitan areas now than they were four decades ago. More adults have bachelor’s degrees, but the difference between the most and least educated metro areas is double what it was in 1970.
Independent State of Azawad: Africa’s Newest Country?
On March 22nd 2012, Mali’s coup d’état came as a shock to many Western observers, but given the state of Tuareg affairs in the Sahel region, the Arab Spring and additional economic factors made Mali poised for its current conflict. Separatists in the northeastern part of the country played the revolutionary spirit of the regional atmosphere to their strength, using the opportunity to declare an independent Tuareg-led state. An unprepared Malian national army sent to suppress the rebellion was left frustrated by a perceived lack of central support, leading a military junta to impose a subsequent coup d’état of the country’s leadership in the country’s capital Bamako. The once-peaceful capital has since been embroiled in political and (intermittent) inter-military battles.
Theatreland map (1915), by MacDonald Gill
via guardian.co.uk
Income inequality, as seen from outer space. More trees = wealthier neighborhood.
Featured here: Chicago, Boston, Oakland
3D GIS iPad App: 3D-GIS in the Cloud
The 3D-GIS in the Cloud App for iPad and Smartphones allows city data to be navigated in 3D. Mixing augmented reality and 3D visualizations the App extends the reach of GIS beyond the office and allows organizations to make collaborative and accurate business decisions in both field and office environments.
John Nelson of IDV Solutions put 56 years worth of tornadoes on a map. John plotted each tornado’s path and used brightness for its F-scale (level of intensity). He also added secondary charts for deaths and injuries and frequency by F-scale.
How the WMATA Rush+ Maps Are Printed
Many thanks to Matt Johnson for telling me about this amazing photoset on Flickr that details the process involved in printing the new Rush+ station maps for Washington, DC’s Metro system. Click through to see the whole set!
Even as an experienced graphic designer, I was amazed to see that the maps are screen printed - each colour on the map is printed one after the other, each using a separate screen with its own spot colour ink. With a map as complex as this, that means that there are a whopping twelve different colours to print! These being: river blue, park green, National Mall green, Blue Line, Orange Line, Yellow Line, Green Line, Red Line, Silver Line, District/County border grey, Beltway grey, and finally, black.
I would have thought with the advances in digital printing and stochastic (micro) screening, that these could be produced digitally in one step instead of twelve, but maybe these are special long-lasting UV inks that will withstand many years of use without fading - an important consideration for station maps! In any case, these photos are a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a process that many people may not even think about.
EDIT: A tweet from a Metro representative confirms that there are THIRTEEN colours used in the printing: 4 greys (Silver Line, Beltway grey, county border grey, and icon grey), 3 greens (parks, Mall, Green Line), 2 Blues (river, Blue Line), Black, Red, Yellow and Orange.
OH MY GOD! I <3 <3 <3 this more than that time I met Bieber.
crime map
The Atlas of the United States Printed for the Use of the Blind, published in 1837 before Braille was widely used, used embossed printing of lines, words, and symbols to be finger-readable.
wnyc:
Census figures suggest tens of thousands people FLY to work each week. Check out Transportation Nation’s interactive map of the top routes to the biggest “super commuter” cities.
superpac donor locations in the lower 48, sized by amount donated (max is $5 million). not all donors are shown owing to some geocoding errors.
Want to see how severely we humans are scouring the oceans for fish? Check out this striking map from the World Wildlife Fund’s 2012 “Living Planet Report.” The red areas are the most intensively fished (and, in many cases, overfished) parts of the ocean — and they’ve expanded dramatically since 1950:
Is Congress getting dumber, or just more plainspoken?
Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did just seven years ago, with the most conservative members of Congress speaking on average at the lowest grade level, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional Record using Capitol Words.
Of course, what some might interpret as a dumbing down of Congress, others will see as more effective communications. And lawmakers of both parties still speak over the heads of the average American, who reads at between at 8th and 9th grade level.
Today’s Congress collectively speaks at a 10.6 grade level, down from 11.5 in 2005.
