Beefscapes

And now, we present four regional zooms of the burger territory maps, similar to the originals except that they represent the two most influential franchises at each point on the beefscape.  As before, the underlying metric is our fanciful, inverse-squared, earth-penetrating burger force, as broadcast by the 36,000-plus U.S. restaurant locations of the eight largest chopped-sirloin-slingin’ chains. We intend these mapsRead More Beefscapes

The Emerald Loaf

On St. Patrick’s Day, the Von Worley clan traditionally dines on reuben sandwiches and boiled potatoes, and this year, word came down from on high that all of it should be green through-and-through.  Oh, for the love of Blarney! So, to prep for tomorrow’s meal, out came the dusty bread maker, in went the two-pound rye recipe and aRead More The Emerald Loaf

Name Change

Them young’uns have different names than they used to!  Stateside, a century ago, you couldn’t spit without hitting a John, William, or Mary.  My grade school literally brimmed with Jasons and Jennifers.  But nowadays, at the playground, more than anything else, you’ll hear Ethan, Jacob, Emma, and Isabella. Which is fine by me – I like the new names.  However, I wonder: did each bygone moniker selflessly pass theRead More Name Change

Four On Nine

As penance for my recently-inadequate college basketball fandom, I must submit an offering!  That’s what last night’s flaming apparition said, at least, and who am I to reject such a terrifyingly-unambiguous request from the Gods of Hoops? So, this morning, I hastily dug through the season’s NCAA Division I men’s basketball statistics, determined the nine tourney teams thatRead More Four On Nine

America In Chains

Inspired by Logorama – the incredible Oscar-winning animated short – we decided to go big, plunged into AggData’s geolocated business database, identified 330 retail chain corporations, extracted the latitudes and longitudes of each of their U.S. stores, and mapped them, one per dot: America In Chains That’s 500,000 individual retail establishments in all: thirty to each public library, fifteenRead More America In Chains

Attention To Detail

Mickey and Shamu hog most of the attention, but the discerning Bay Area six-year-old has another reason to travel to southern California: the sleeper theme park known as Legoland!  So, to it, my family unit went on a sunny spring morning a few days ago… The following night, children and grown-ups alike dreamt of Miniland: the exquisiteRead More Attention To Detail

Barrel O’ Links: April 2010

Eight April showers-worth of linky goodness: Close encounters of the octopus kind (YouTube) Watermarks beware: Photoshop CS5’s new “content-aware fill” (JNack) Planes or volcano: what’s emitting more carbon dioxide? (IIB) A virus that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen (SciAm) Scanwiches: two slices of bread and everything in between (Scanwiches) A mighty illusion: This is not a spiral (Make)Read More Barrel O’ Links: April 2010