What Does the Average Biker Dude Look Like?
CNN published the mugshots of all of the biker gang members who were arrested after the recent shootout in a Waco, TX restaurant. There were a total of 171 pictures, all in the same standard pose and most in the same standard orange jumpsuit: Seeing all of these pictures got …
A Force Node Diagram of the U.S. Interstate System
There’s nothing too complicated about this post. I’ve been interested in creating an illustration of the U.S. Interstate system for awhile but my initial concept of a “subway-style” diagram of the network had already been done. After some recent experimentation with the D3 Javascript library, I decided that it might …
At Least I’ve Got Brownies
It’s a snow day today and the kids are home from school. To celebrate, Grandma made a nice batch of brownies. The chart below shows the distribution of brownies by family member. Leeroy is our dog, named for the internet meme.
Family Pool Trends
With the start of a rather warm, dry summer here in Wisconsin, we’ve decided to take the plunge (literally) and purchase a new above ground pool. We seem to outgrow these things every few years and I’ve become intrigued with the idea that we just keep buying larger and large …
You Are What You Watch
Experian-Simmons released some survey data in December that looked at the relative popularity of major television shows for three different political groups: liberal Democrats; conservative Republicans; and middle-of-the-road voters. Each show was given an index based on the concentration of specific voters and this information was used to create lists of …
Much Ado About Coughin’
Whether you know it as whooping cough or the 100 days’ cough, pertussis — a bacterial infection that causes severe coughing fits — is no fun. According to Wikipedia, it affects nearly 50 million people annually and causes almost 300,000 deaths worldwide. Although most of these deaths occur in developing nations, …
Geographic References in Local Business Names
This little exercise came about after I read an article on the old Northwest Territory in the U.S., which basically consisted of all the land west of Pennsylvania, northwest of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River. As the country expanded westward, this geographic area gradually became known as the “Midwest” (or the East …