Gawker - Some ‘hard’ data

What is it about charts and graphs that get us hot around the collar?

In his introduction to The Best American Infographics 2016, NPR correspondent and former Radiolab host Robert Krulwich confessed, “The best work in this field grabs those eyes, keeps them glued, and the grip is sensual.... Sometimes the images are just so gorgeous you want to linger and explore and caress them.” Everywhere we turn, data visualizations are flirting with us. Health and fitness tracking tools purvey data on sleep, nutrition, heart rate, and stepping frequency with colorful line and bar graphs. Banking apps and credit card bills are replete with pie charts showing spending habits. Sports broadcasts are punctuated by flashy animations of ball paths and spray charts showing made and missed three-pointers.

Journalistic outlets have joined the orgy. Marquee publications from FiveThirtyEight to The New York Times seduce readers on a daily basis with elaborate infographics that promise quantitative revelations. In an article for Vox, its founder Ezra Klein remarked, “The best visualizations help you see things you never thought the data would tell you.... Some of them genuinely changed the way I think about the world.” In his foreword to The Best American Infographics 2014, Pulitzer Prize winner Gareth Cook extolled the animal pleasures of data visualization. “The best infographics are so satisfying,” he mused. “When the pattern emerges and we see the point, we experience the same primal thrill as a hunter who sees an animal track in a line of broken grass.” Election coverage hinges on infographic explicator Steve Kornacki, a “chart-throb” and “map daddy” who was named one of People’s 2020 Sexiest Men Alive. Interactive line plots and stream graphs showing economic health, approval ratings, and drug deaths draw us in with their curves. We wait with bated breath as election needles quiver and build toward climax. Continue reading

I find her credible, but that part's hard to believe

The Nasty Woman Hive have a new non-denominational Unitarian god, and she’s a 25-year-old former aide to Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows named Cassidy Hutchinson. She came to Liz Cheney’s chambers with some bombshells in her surprise testimony on Tuesday, including that Trump tried to steer his armored vehicle to the Capitol as the Jan. 6 insurrection unfolded.

Most importantly, she said that Trump was so angry in the aftermath of Attorney General Bill Barr telling the Associated Press that there was no evidence of voter fraud that the president whipped the tablecloth off of the dining table and threw his lunch around the room, getting ketchup everywhere.

Hutchinson stated under oath that she got a towel and tried to clean “to help the valet out.”

Hmm. Continue reading

She's kinda fun!

Welcome to I Was Wrong About, a series of reconsiderations and mea culpas.

Every so often I’m hit by a feeling — a tickle in the back of my mind, like I’m forgetting something important, but I look down and clearly still have my keys, my phone, my wallet. And then I suddenly remember again: I am a citizen of a Commonwealth country, and that means I ultimately answer to Queen Elizabeth. I am haunted by this knowledge.

I am unclear what Canada’s relationship to the British monarchy consists of, beyond symbolism and a history colonization. Our bond is vague, probably on purpose. When I was a kid, I asked my parents what God looked like, and they told us that nobody knows what God’s image is, only that he is everywhere. The only person who was everywhere — on currency, in my school, in my history books— was the Queen, so naturally I assumed she was God, and I would imagine a coin when I prayed. Continue reading

It’s not a real study

Since the founding of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania — Donald J. Trump’s alma mater — in 1881, millions of way too young and way too stupid people have been not only allowed, but encouraged to study “business.” What is business? Well, business is a catch-all label for commerce and trade, a practice that consists of finance (math), marketing (English), case studies (social science and/or history), and networking (partying). It is not a real study, not rooted in social care and compassion, nor historical lushness; it is a set of training wheels on the bicycle of “having a job,” and it shouldn’t exist anymore.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, business is far and away the most popular major, making up about 20 percent of undergraduates. (Meanwhile, 16 percent of Americans say they have invested in failing cryptocurrency — coincidence? Probably not.) Continue reading

John Carpenter's cult hit is always worth watching

1982 was a great year for science-fiction movies: Tron, E.T., Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Blade Runner, and The Thing were all released in the same summer. While the merits of some were recognized immediately, The Thing’s reputation seems to have transformed the most, in the way cult-hits tend to: negatively received at the time, now considered a classic, complete with re-screenings, novelizations and comics, a theme park (okay, this one may be an outlier), and a prequel/reboot. Forty years on, John Carpenter’s achievement lies not only with the viscerally grotesque nature of the film’s practical effects and timeless premise, but his use of thematic subtext that only enriches the narrative.

The Thing begins in the cold desert of Antarctica, where the inhabitants of the U.S. National Science Institute, Station 4, are killing time. The crew’s helicopter pilot, MacReady (Kurt Russell), plays chess against a computer. Two of the station’s doctors, Copper and Blair (Richard Dysart and Wilford Brimley, respectively), play table tennis in the rec room while the rest of the crew lounges. All the while, an alien in the guise of a husky runs through the snow, pursued by a Norwegian helicopter. The central conceit, and The Thing’s main draw as a piece of science fiction/horror, is the ability of the titular alien to shape-shift. It “assimilates,” taking the DNA of its host and replicating it. The discord and distrust that this seeds among the crew drives the film to its explosive conclusion. And while The Thing, as a creature and as a film, works as a metaphorical stand-in for many things, like paranoia and fear, or an abstracted illustration of Cold War tension, one of its more potent interpretations is as a litmus for racism. Continue reading