notes.husk.org

via spum, stml, anti-mega

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 19:39:54 +0000

toffeemilkshake: US election results - Electoral college...

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:35:00 +0000

US election results - Electoral college cartogram (by toffeemilkshake)

My stab at an electoral college block cartogram from 2008.

I think we nailed the geographical likeness pretty well (aware obviously that the states are even more skewed in terms of vote distribution in 2012).

This was hidden behind a tiny radio button(!?) so very few people ever saw it.

toffeemilkshake also made some interesting comments on the previous non-geographic electoral college diagram I posted, as well as a US-style “swingometer”.

Neither the BBC nor the Guardian have a special Olympics logo...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 07:59:22 +0100

Neither the BBC nor the Guardian have a special Olympics logo (using their usual typefaces, namely Gill and Guardian Egyptian, instead) but the BBC does have this rather odd compressed London for their footer, in some places anyway.

BBC Television Centre floor plan, as sold on this t-shirt by Red...

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 23:16:00 +0100

BBC Television Centre floor plan, as sold on this t-shirt by Red Bubble. Lovely.

toffeemilkshake: On the subject of shipping containers: Here’s...

Sat, 05 May 2012 18:58:19 +0100

toffeemilkshake:

On the subject of shipping containers: Here’s a papercraft BBC News branded shipping container! (pdf link) It was made by a fan of this project our team was involved with a few years back.

Quite probably the best response to anything we’ve produced.

Eight years of BBC handbook covers, from 1961 to 1969. Some are...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 02:48:52 +0100

Eight years of BBC handbook covers, from 1961 to 1969. Some are from Between Channel’s three posts on the handbooks, but where his graphics were a little smaller, I headed off to Deptford Dralons and LoopZilla on Flickr.

The BBC Handbook was produced annually (with a short break) for nearly sixty years. As the British Online Archives site puts it,

Sir Ian Jacob, a former Director General of the BBC provides us with a useful statement of the handbooks’ aims:

“To provide a clear and reliable guide to the workings of the BBC, to survey the year’s work in British broadcasting, and to bring together as much information about the BBC as can be assembled within the covers of a small book.” (BBC Handbook, 1955)

Most of the handbooks follow the same template – a review of the BBC’s year, information on notable programmes, and other basic factual material including names of senior staff and governors, engineering developments, audience trends, the accounts, and a copy of the BBC’s charter.

There’s something particularly charming about the covers in this decade of change, with the Light, Home, and Third radio programmes still appearing on one early cover before television steps completely into the limelight by 1969.

To see all the 1960s covers, try Auntie’s Nuggets.

"Blue Peter is running a new competition and we want YOU to get involved. We need your help to come..."

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:43:56 +0100

“Blue Peter is running a new competition and we want YOU to get involved.
We need your help to come up with the name for an exciting new gadget that has been designed by the boffins at the BBC and the University of Southampton! The gadget is a remote control plane with a camera attached, which will be used to film large events from the sky. It may even be used to film parts of the Olympic Torch Relay this summer.”

- Remote-controlled Plane Design Competition. iamdanw:

Yeah, That’s Blue Peter getting kids involved in designing a drone.

For those lacking the rich British cultural heritage, here’s Wikipedia’s page on the venerable BBC show.

“Picture of the decade - Dalek hiding ready to attack the...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 19:52:06 +0000

“Picture of the decade - Dalek hiding ready to attack the Queen on visit to BBC studios.” (via, via)

Photograph: Getty Images (photographer uncredited).

The Sizes of Cities

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:50:00 +0000

What’s the largest city in the world? This seemingly simple question is actually rather complicated to answer. In my post Concentric Londons, I noted how you can define the city in various ways (and I still missed a few), while my complaints about the interesting but flawed visualisation showing “how much room would you need for the world’s population if the city were as dense as…” noted that the cities picked were defined very differently.

It turns out that the BBC’s excellent More or Less tackled the issue in a special edition, which (thankfully) is also available as a BBC News Magazine article (for those of us who prefer reading words to hearing them). After noting some of the problems I’ve covered - is a city the same as the government region defining it, or is it a contiguous urban area, or perhaps a zone of influence? - they settle on Tokyo/Yokohama, at 30 million plus, as the most reasonable answer to the question.

Curiously, it turns out that there is no official UN (or other reliable worldwide) definition of a city. Where Paris excludes its periphery, London extends nearly to the M25; where New York excludes Jersey City, Greater London expanded in the 1960s to swallow chunks of Essex. That’s not even to consider cities such as Cairo, Nairobi, or Rio de Janeiro, where informal building means a density and sprawl that’s a laissez-faire economist’s dream.

However, that wasn’t the end of the show. The final section covered China’s cities, which, if you believe the numbers, are growing like nothing on earth. However, the numbers may not be that trustworthy. Official statistics, as noted by guest Professor Kam Wing Chan, conflate cities with provinces, which can be largely rural, inflating estimates by as much as a factor of five:

The largest city in China is actually Shanghai. It is commonly thought to have a population of 20 million, but Professor Chan thinks 16 million is a better estimate.

He says everyone just loves to think China’s cities are bigger than they actually are. He has even had to correct fellow experts at a world conference on global megacities of the future.

One thing’s for certain: you can’t take the numbers at face value.

BBC News: a satellite image of the Costa Concordia off the coast...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:15:00 +0000

BBC News: a satellite image of the Costa Concordia off the coast of Italy. (Thanks, Chris. Also available on Flickr; thanks, Dan.)