In 2002 the first Hellfire missile was shot from a U.S.-operated Predator drone at suspected terrorists in Yemen. Since then an estimated 480 more unmanned airstrikes have been carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense. Thanks to Josh Begley’s labor of love and reports from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, we had the first comprehensive data set on every lethal U.S. drone strike in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. So now that we’ve got a mile-long spreadsheet, what do we do with it?
We’d been eyeing these beautiful “honeycomb” maps for awhile, and because the Bureau notes it’s often difficult to pinpoint the exact latitude and longitude of the strikes, we thought binning them into hexagons would be better way to visualize the data than a heat map or proportional circle map. Kevin Schaul’s lovely Binify made this much easier, but our first Python endeavor was still a bit of pain. No matter, try to remain calm: Businessweek is binning.
All three countries:
Just Pakistan:
Once we’d decided on the right density of hexagons, we went to work on designing the map. There were LOTS of iterations with shapes, sizes and colors thanks to Lisa Rost, our intern extraordinaire, a.k.a The Teutonic Machine:
Hexagonal maps are tricky and work best when you have a bunch of data points spread over a large area. Our data, however, was pretty concentrated in one remote chunk of Pakistan. We maybe should’ve kept the empty hexagon bins in the final design so our data points didn’t just become floating polygons, but we still think this was a better option than giant blobs piled on top of each other. We’re pretty happy with the way things turned out both in print and in our interactive version.
Mr. T be getting them kissing from Nancy
(via confessionsofamichaelstipe)
NEW COVER
My Favorite Magazine & Bob Newman
Gotto read; a fun project & very helpful!
The champion magazine blog MagCulture is making a magazine – and they want your help.
“It’s going to be a fast, one-off publication with the working title ‘My Favorite Magazine’, and all profits going to support Bob Newman, a great art director, true magaholic and the man behind Newmanology. You can read more about Bob’s situation here. The magazine will be published as a print-on-demand project through MagCloud.
Read all about specs here on MagCulture and participate!
As you may have noticed, Newmanology hasn’t been tumbling much of late. Robert Newman, our friend and colleague, and this blog’s creator, has been hospitalized since March 19th. After several days in critical condition and two weeks in a coma, he is now recovering…You can find out more—and help him out!—at www.DonationTo.com/FriendsOfBobNewman. You can also keep up at the “Friends of Bob Newman” page on Facebook. (www.facebook.com/FriendsOfRobertNewman) Thanks!
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The Pop-Up City
via nymag.com
(this needs to be zoomable)
(Source: ben-smith-123)
i-D (UK)
ben - where does this tshirt come from? i want one..
(Source: ben-smith-123)
Best put down ever. EVER
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Barbara Kruger ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Barbara Kruger Responds to Supreme’s Lawsuit: ‘A Ridiculous Clusterf**k of Totally Uncool Jokers’
What Do you Call 176,000 Lawyers lying at the bottom of the ocean?
Type by Christian Schwartz
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