[Editor’s note: Kudos to Sean Carter and the New York Times graphics team. Most of these types of visualizations are done using Twitter’s API, unique for Facebook? My only wish is for the timeline to have a play button.]
Republished from the New York Times.
Millions of people around the world have been actively supporting – or complaining about – their favorite teams and players. Below, players are sized according to the number of mentions on Facebook during each day of the World Cup.
[Editor’s note: I’ve had a couple weeks with this gorgeously illustrated book. The text if readable and informative, but best of all the authors reproduce the example artwork in the flow of their text allowing easy cross-examination (even if it means digging out your magnifying glass). Buy via Powells (they only have 3 left in stock!).]
Republished from Princeton Architectural Press.
What does history look like? How do you draw time?
From the most ancient images to the contemporary, the line has served as the central figure in the representation of time. The linear metaphor is ubiquitous in everyday visual representations of time—in almanacs, calendars, charts, and graphs of all sorts. Even our everyday speech is filled with talk of time having a “before” and an “after” or being “long” and “short.” The timeline is such a familiar part of our mental furniture that it is sometimes hard to remember that we invented it in the first place. And yet, in its modern form, the timeline is not even 250 years old. The story of what came before has never been fully told, until now.
Cartographies of Time is the first comprehensive history of graphic representations of time in Europe and the United States from 1450 to the present. Authors Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton have crafted a lively history featuring fanciful characters and unexpected twists and turns. From medieval manuscripts to websites, Cartographies of Time features a wide variety of timelines that in their own unique ways—curving, crossing, branching—defy conventional thinking about the form. A fifty-four-foot-long timeline from 1753 is mounted on a scroll and encased in a protective box. Another timeline uses the different parts of the human body to show the genealogies of Jesus Christ and the rulers of Saxony. Ladders created by missionaries in eighteenth-century Oregon illustrate Bible stories in a vertical format to convert Native Americans. Also included is the April 1912 Marconi North Atlantic Communication chart, which tracked ships, including the Titanic, at points in time rather than by their geographic location, alongside little-known works by famous figures, including a historical chronology by the mapmaker Gerardus Mercator and a chronological board game patented by Mark Twain. Presented in a lavishly illustrated edition, Cartographies of Time is a revelation to anyone interested in the role visual forms have played in our evolving conception of history.
Daniel Rosenberg is associate professor of history at the University of Oregon. He has published widely on history, theory, and art, and his work appears frequently in Cabinet magazine, where he is editor-at-large. With Susan Harding, he is editor of Histories of the Future.
Anthony Grafton is the Henry Putnam University Professor at Princeton University. He is the author of numerous books on European history and also writes on a wide variety of topics for the New Republic, American Scholar, the New York Review of Books, and the New Yorker.
[Editor’s note: Like him or not, Michael Jackson had 30 years of sustained hits, comparing well statistically with other pop music legends as this interactive from the New York Times shows.]
Republished from the New York Times. June 25, 2009.
A timeline of how Michael Jackson’s songs performed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
(Screenshot below) Interact with the original at New York Times . . .
Matthew Bloch, Shan Carter, Jonathan Corum, Amanda Cox and Matthew Ericson/The New York Times
[Editor’s note: The Times produced a fantastic interactive time-based tag-cloud-on-a-map showing twitter chatter across the US keyed to major events in the Super Bowl game between the Steelers and Cardinals. Several thematic channels are available. Kudos to Matthew Bloch and Shan Carter. Thanks Laris!]
Republished from The New York Times.
Orig pub date: Feb. 2, 2009.
As the Steelers and Cardinals battled on the field, Twitter users across the nation pecked out a steady stream of “tweets.” The map shows the location and frequency of commonly used words in Super Bowl related messages.
Interact with the original Flash version at New York Times . . .
[Editor’s note: Fabulous charting of notable past presidents and their age entering office, age at death, and time in office. Includes Teddy Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton, Buchanan, Harrison, Reagan, and potential Obama and McCain. Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal. View full resolution version.]
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Labels Change as Americans Live Longer, But Age Still Plays a Role in Election
By JUNE KRONHOLZ
August 26, 2008; Page A15
In 1996, Bob Dole, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, battled criticism that, at 73 years old, he was too old to be president. Now 85, Mr. Dole is working “pretty much every day” at a Washington law firm, says the firm’s spokesman.
Age is certain to be an issue in this election, too. Republican Sen. John McCain, who turns 72 this week, would be the oldest man elected president should he win. Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, at 47, would be the fourth-youngest.
But in a country that is rapidly aging while staying healthy longer, what does old age mean, and how much should it matter?
The average U.S. life expectancy is now age 78, up 30 years since 1900 and up 10 years since 1950, according to the Census Bureau. Geriatricians now talk of those younger than 80 as the “young old,” and of those younger than 65 as the “near old.
U.S. businesses still seem wary of older people. The Corporate Library, a business-research firm, says that seven of the largest 500 public companies, including News Corp. — owner of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal — have chief executives who are 72 or older. Some corporate recruiters warn about the memories, energy levels and technological savvy of older executives.
By that standard, businessman Warren Buffet, one-quarter of U.S. senators and four Supreme Court justices are over the over-72 hill.
In corporate America, “there’s a code word — how much ‘runway’ does a guy have” left in his career, said Hal Reiter, chairman of Herbert Mines Associates, which recruits executives for the retail industry. An executive in his 60s probably has five to seven years left on his runway, Mr. Reiter said.
Some who study aging say such fears are misplaced. A 45-year-old and a 75-year-old “absolutely” have the same mental capacity, and energy is a function of health rather than aging, said Neil Resnick, chief of geriatric medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.
“Aging has such a small impact on how we function that it is of minimal importance” compared with experience, personality and the advisers a president or chief executive surrounds himself with, Dr. Resnick added.
Geriatricians say most people begin losing organ function — which means they start aging — somewhere between 18 and 30. After that, the heart, kidneys and other organs lose about 1% of their function each year. The world record for a 75-year-old marathon runner is about 50% longer than the world record for a runner who is 50 years younger.
But organs have from four to six times more capacity than most people need. That excess capacity is why we can run marathons or endure other extraordinary mental or physical challenges.
Brain function declines at the same rate as other organs, and especially affects how fast older people can retrieve information — the explanation for that maddening “senior moment.”
Our genes influence how much and how fast we decline: They account for about 30% of longevity and perhaps half of age-related changes in the brain, said John Rowe, a physician and former Aetna Inc. chairman who now heads a MacArthur Foundation research program on aging.
But life experience and accumulated wisdom can help offset normal brain decline and compensate for slowed retrieval time. “The great benefit of aging is ‘been there, done that and learned from it,’ ” said David Reuben, head of geriatric medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. Mathematicians do their best work in their 20s; orchestra conductors and diplomats peak in their 60s or 70s, he added.
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[Editor’s note: Glorified timeline with head shots and key issues and economic conditions facing the past three democratic presidents near the beginning of their terms, and the conditions Sen. Obama would face if elected. Republished from the Wall Street Journal. View full size graphic.]
Stocks and Housing Falter as Democrats’ Convention Opens
By BOB DAVIS and T.W. FARNAM
August 26, 2008; Page A1
Democrats convened in Denver on Monday with the economy’s woes muscling to the top of political concerns, as reflected in further drops in stocks and housing prices.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 241.81 points, or 2.1%, to 11386.25, amid continuing worry over the economic and credit problems. Inventories of unsold homes rose to a record, while prices continued to slip, threatening to delay the housing market’s recovery.
Sen. Barack Obama, whom the party will nominate for president this week, addressed one of the key issues, the parlous state of the government-sponsored buyers of mortgages. “I don’t think we can allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to collapse,” he said at a town-hall meeting in Davenport, Iowa, adding that their shareholders “shouldn’t be protected.”
Against this backdrop, Sen. Obama is proposing to use the government to remake economic policies in a way that hasn’t been seen in Washington in decades.
The last two Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, were hamstrung by rising deficits, feuds with Democrats in Congress and antigovernment sentiment in Washington. Sen. Obama’s advisers argue that he would be largely free from those constraints, easing the way for him to put in place big government programs, tax increases on the wealthy and trade restraints.
An Obama victory would be nearly certain to usher in a larger Democratic majority, which could give his proposals smoother sailing through Congress. If the economy is faltering if and when he takes office — as most economists and policy experts predict it will be — Mr. Obama would push for a stimulus plan with a price tag of $115 billion, his aides say. The plan would include $1,000 rebates for moderate-income and middle-class families, aid to state and local governments and heavy spending on roads, ports and levees and other infrastructure to create jobs.
Sen. Obama, in campaign appearances and discussions with staff, has said that he would start his term in office with three big economic priorities, apart from a possible stimulus plan. One would be a government health-care plan to cover millions without insurance. Another would be a system of tradable pollution permits to reduce emissions and bankroll alternative-energy projects. He’d also push the first increases in income-tax rates since 1993 and in capital-gains taxes since 1986.
In total, his top priorities would cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and some of them might require a stiff increase in regulation.
Rice University presidential historian Douglas Brinkley compares Sen. Obama’s approach on economic issues to the last Democrat to occupy the White House before Mr. Carter: Lyndon Johnson. But, he says, “it would be a Great Society with a small ‘g’ and a small ‘s'” because Sen. Obama isn’t planning anything as sweeping as the creation of Medicare, Medicaid and antipoverty agencies.
No matter what he plans, he might confront circumstances that divert him from his agenda, whether foreign threats from Iraq, Iran or Russia or a recession. Any such contingencies could consume his attention and divert many billions of dollars he would rather use otherwise.
Still, many presidents have pushed through their priorities despite major setbacks. President George W. Bush drove through two rounds of tax cuts while pursuing an unanticipated global war on terror. Ronald Reagan won tax cuts and deregulation despite years of Soviet challenges.
I had the pleasure of re-meeting John Grunwell this weekend and browsing his artwork at DC’s Artomatic, which closes today. His business card features this painting titled Jean Sequins. Which puts me in mind of time sequences (example) that punctuate the timeline with tinted bars indicating activity in that time-slice. The artwork was inspired by a friend of John’s who had described his work with gene sequencing.Â
