With the recent shutdown of Egypt’s internet and cell phone service, people have started to break out some older technology to keep the flow of information going. Fax machines, dial-up modems and ham radios are all back in vogue now that the communications blackade is up and running. (It kind of makes me regret throwing out my U.S. Robotics 56K modem over the holidays.)

Interestingly, a contractual loophole that prevents the Egyptian government from accessing decrypted messages and data sent from BlackBerrys has allowed these device to remain functional during the blackout. Apparently, in negotiations with Research in Motion (RIM), the Egyptian government failed to gain access to encrypted data sent via BlackBerry servers. Unfortunately for hopeful revolutionaries in the rest of the Islamic world, the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia all demanded — and received — such access.

Daylight Saving Time (DST) officially ends tomorrow and everyone in my little corner of the world will set their clocks back and get a well-deserved extra hour of sleep. We all know that this odd modern ritual is suppose to save energy (or candle wax or some such thing) but just how does it work?

First of all let’s look at what happens to the Earth’s day over the course of a year. Because the Earth rotates on its axis at a slight tilt, there are times where the North Pole leans toward the Sun (this is summer in the Northern Hemisphere) and there are times where the North Pole tilts away from the Sun (this is the Northern winter). A city or town located in the Northern Hemisphere experiences longer days during the summer because of the additional exposure it gets as it rotates in this position. The reverse is true for places in the Southern Hemisphere.

When you plot out the the sunrise and sunset times for different areas of the U.S., you can see that the daylight pattern varies depending on your latitude. Honolulu, one of the southern-most Amercan cities, has relatively static sunrise and sunset times while Milwaukee, located about halfway between the equator and the North Pole, shows more signficant changes in in the length of the day over the course of the year. In fact, during the summer months, this northern city gets nearly three more hours of daylight than the island paradise.

Things get a little weirder as you go farther north. The relative orientation of the Sun to the surface of the Earth starts to have a greater impact on the amount of daylight each area receives. Anchorage, which is located at about 60 degrees latitude, has six-hour days in the winter and almost 20-hour days in mid-summer. Barrow, located north of the Arctic Circle, starts to experience full darkness during the winter and 24-hours of daylight in the summer months.

Human civilization imposes a rigid structure on this natural daily cycle by setting up concepts like the work day, meal times, play dates and TV schedules. Of course, this structure only works if everyone’s schedule is the same so we’ve also developed things like alarm clocks, wrist watches and other timekeeping devices to keep us in synch. In some areas of the world (like Hawaii), the alignment of natural and societal cycles is fairly good. In other places it imposes some problems.

For example, a typical Milwaukean who wakes up at 6:00 AM and goes to bed at 10:00 PM misses out on almost two hours of daylight during the summer mornings. However, if they adjusted their schedule to wake up at dawn during the month of June, they would be waking up 3-4 hours before the sun rises in December. By shifting the schedule by an hour during the summer months, Daylight Saving Time helps even out the daylight period in relation to the natural cycle.

The energy savings kicks in when you plot the additional amount of day time that some experiences during the summer. Presumably, this extra time is spent with candles unlit.

These charts also explain why Hawaii doesn’t use Daylight Savings time (it does’t experience enough variation in daylight to warrant the shift) and why some very northern locations may actually experience two sunsets in a single day (the time zone doesn’t quite line up with the natural cycle of the Sun).

One of the ways in which people deal with information overload is to use a filter to screen out unwanted information and eliminate the amount of time spent on non-essential topics. Filters can take many forms but one of the most common is simply the “trusted source” — a person or an organization that has passed some internal test for trustworthiness. Everyone takes advantage of these personal filters because they provide shortcuts for many of our day-to-day activities.

Sore throat? Ask your sister the nurse. Problem with your PC?  Call up your buddy the software engineer. Car on the fritz? Invite your gearhead uncle over for a beer and friendly consultation.

People simply do not have the time to become an expert on every single subject and they also don’t have the time to vet every single source. They need a way to cut through all the BS and get information that allows them to take action. They find someone they trust who seems to know what they’re talking about and — boom — they’ve got their filter.

The problem with any filter is that there is always an element of bias involved. Your uncle may be great with cars but maybe he’s also a Ford guy who can’t stand GM and thinks BMWs are over-priced toys. No matter how well-meaning he may be, his opinions will color his advice — which could lead you to a different decision than if you were an expert auto mechanic and doing the research yourself.

This is the main complaint that people on the right side of the political spectrum have with mainstream media. They feel that the types of events that are presented and the way these events are covered reflect the liberal bias of the reporters and commentators telling the stories. The standards of journalism are supposed to prevent this kind of bias by requiring journalists to double-check claims, verify the reliability of sources and issue corrections if necessary. By casting doubt on the ability of the mainstream media to follow its own code of ethics, the right has reduced the number of people who feel comfortable using these news outlets as trusted sources of information. This has opened up the doors for a whole new slate of  alternative news filters. Of course, these organizations and their sources have their own biases and — in the case of bloggers — are not even required to follow standard journalistic practices of impartiality.

A prime example of the issue of source bias was on display during the controversy surrounding Shirley Sherrod and the speech she made to the NAACP that led to her firing from the USDA. Blogger Andrew Breitbart released an edited video clip of the speech that appeared to implicate Ms. Sherrod as a racist. After a firestorm of criticism, she lost her job … and then some bright bulb actually watched the whole video. Sherrod was exonerated and the White House, FOX news, Bill O’Reilly and others who had relied on Mr. Breitbart as their filter were forced to apologize.

Mr. Breitbart himself has not issued an apology and, as a political activist, is probably not required to do so. In an interesting turn, right-wing commentator Ann Coulter places the blame squarely on Mr. Breitbart’s own trusted filter:

“I think Breitbart ought to reveal his source, because he was set up. This was a fraud. The person who sent the edited tape has to know what the full speech said, and whomever sent only that segment to Andrew Breitbart is the one who should apologize to Shirley Sherrod.”

Certainly someone along the chain of information exchanges made the crucial edit that altered the tenor of her speech. Who is ultimately responsible, then, for errors that creep into these kinds of stories? Unfortunately, with the erosion of trust in the journalistic profession and the explosion of non-traditional news sources, the consumers of the information are themselves responsible. In a sense, we are all journalists now.

This blog is intended to serve as a platform for learning about information graphics and showcasing some of my work. So where are the pictures, you say? Actually, it has proven to be more difficult than I thought it would to get started so I’ve decided to go for something simple to get the ball rolling. The first official image:

David Brooks of the NYT said it succinctly in a recent article on the BP mess:

“If there is one thing we’ve learned, it is that humans are not great at measuring and responding to risk when placed in situations too complicated to understand.”

Amen, brother!