via [ Washington Post ] Dana Priest and William Arkin

via [ Frontline ]

Thomas Information Graphics

“2053″ - This is the number of nuclear explosions conducted in various parts of the globe.

Thomas Information Graphics

via [ The Atlantic ] By Richard Florida

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via [ Mail Online ] By PETER BARBER, Head of Map Collections at the British Library

1) BE ON GUARD! 1921	2) HENRICUS MARTELLUS WORLD MAP, c1490	3) CHINESE GLOBE, 1623
4) WALDSEEMULLER WORLD MAP, 1507	5) GOOGLE EARTH, c2005	6) DESCRIPTIVE MAP OF LONDON POVERTY, 1889
7) 'RED LINE' MAP OF NORTH AMERICA, 1782-3	8) LONDON TUBE MAP, 1933	9) PETERS PROJECTION WORLD MAP, 1974
10) EVESHAM WORLD MAP, c1400

Thomas Information Graphics

via [ Radical Cartography ]

Thomas Information Graphics

via [ TalkingPointsMemo ]

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via [ visualizingEconomics ]

Thomas Economics, Information Graphics

via [ FlowingData ]

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UNDER THE PLUME OF PERMITTING

Thomas Environment, Information Graphics, Ways of Seeing

via [ Information is Beautiful ]

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There are other East Chicagoans locating East Chicago through map making.

More work.

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This is one way I wrap my mind around Tax season - and a way of seeing. Two days ago, April 13, one of the largest solar prominences in years erupted from the sun. The expanding cloud could deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field around today, Tax Day, April 15th.

Thomas Energy, The Space I Occupy

Thomas Information Graphics, What I am Looking at

The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) has begun to map out housing costs by factoring in transportation. We are not far from indexing other costs associated the overhead that comes with choosing a community in the purchase of a home (property or sales tax, produce, local services, health care, education, industrial externalities - pollution, etc). It is only a matter of time that a rating system based on such indexes becomes widely adopted.

This doesn’t bode well for regions that continue developing along the last centuries model of outer suburban development. At some time a comprehensive index will be developed to help home buyers make informed decision. And once this occurs it will be much easier to make regional comparisons. Perhaps regional leaders ought to ready their communities for this new playing field on which to compete.

According to the H+T Affordability Index Lake and Porter counties in Indiana (where I call home) don’t measure-up so well.

In the lefthand map above, the yellow areas show where housing is less than 30 percent of average income and the blue areas show where it’s more than 30 percent. On the righthand side, the yellow areas show where housing costs plus transportation costs are less than 45 percent and the blue areas show where that combined measure is more than 45 percent. It’s an indirect comparison, but as you can see, a lot of places look cheap when you just look at housing (on the left), and that picture changes when you factor in transportation.

To make matters worse if you factor in the additional costs of living in Lake County, it simply doesn’t make sense for a home buyer to burden themselves with such overwhelming costs.

Additionally, how would Lake County measure-up if we also factored in costs associated with industrial pollution?

• Lake county’s air-shed ranks 9th of 3140 counties as the most polluted.
• Lake Counties waterways are also some of the most polluted in the country.

What if this index was combined into an Energy Performance Scorecard (EPS) for home buyers to make a more accurate assessment of the value of a potential purchase? Shouldn’t all costs associated with the purchase of a home be made available to the buyer as part of disclosure.

Thomas Case Studies, Economics, Energy, Environment, Information Graphics

via [ ESPN ] Even though I’m on the road I still need to keep in touch with reality - The NCAA Men Basketball Tournament Brackets.

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via [ Radical Cartography ] Graphic by Bill Rankin 2006

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via [ Jetson Green ]

In the Pacific Northwest, momentum is building for the Energy Performance Score, which was conceived by the folks at the Earth Advantage Institute.  The non-profit company, you may recall, published a list of green building trendsfor 2010 and one trend was energy labeling on homes and office buildings.

Thomas Information Graphics

via [ Information Aesthetics ]

After Google acquired Trendalyzer from the Gapminder foundation several years ago, a simple Chart API and more powerful Data Visualization API appeared that allowed for the generation of powerful, interactive information dashboards. More recently, Google added visualization graphs to search results. Other valuable visualization jewels in the now impressive Google treasure collection include: Google Insights for Search, Google Trends,Google Wonder Wheel, Google Flu Trends and Google Zeitgeist.

Read more at: Google Blog

A refresher on Gapminder

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via [ Andrew Sullivan ]

Why are we discussing Food Taxes and Federal Subsidies for Food Production? Because

the federal government already has a tax policy affecting what we eat, and it dramatically distorts the price of our food … and the size of our waists.

Thomas Information Graphics

via [ Cool Infographics ] from the [ NewScientist ] The Writing on the Cave Wall By Kate Ravilious

This article addresses the geography of the earliest forms of Human mark making. I’ve recently posted several similar issues on Human Geography.

• Correlation Between Genetic and Geographic Structure in Europe
• Understanding Climate’s Influence on Human Evolution

Thomas Information Graphics