the cman blog » Infoporn

Visualizing the Power Grid

Connor — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:00:10 +0000

Reason Number 169,012 why the Internet is TEH AWESOME is shared visualizations. One very clever person can put together a neat graphic that explains a very complex subject in that one-picture-worth-a-thousand-words way and share it with everyone.

Implementing new power technologies like wind and solar that are not tied to always on generation facilitie will require substantial upgrades to our power infrastructure. NPR has this awesome infographic on the grid structure, power sources and more.

ETYTYK About the Newspaper Industry is Wrong II

Connor — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:12:54 +0000

Infoporn on the death of news on paper. Via Mint.com

Check out the revenue sources in the bottom right. The key question becomes how do you design a business where the current 7% of revenues that comes from online sources becomes 80% of revenues? Clearly that amount needs to grow through higher ad rates, online syndication fees, subscriptions to specialty content, etc. But let’s imagine a world where say, the New York Times has to support its entire operations on say twice what it now makes in online revenue.

I don’t think that future is very pleasant for people like me who really depend on the NYT to be a newspaper of record or to the many employees of the Times. There are other revenue sources of course. Micropayments have been a notional one for years. Credit card companies resist this but there are technical means around their objections.

Budget help from Mint.com

Clean Water

Connor — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:53:20 +0000

The New York Times is running a multi-part series, called Toxic Waters regarding the increasingly poor quality of drinking water across the US. This, despite the Clean Water Act. One of the key points in the series is that despite many thousands of documented violations of state and federal clean water regulations every year, there is hardly ever any enforcement in the way of fines. There is also the problem of enforcement itself, with very few resources available for states and the federal government to actually do inspections.

As part of this long series, the NYT has compiled data on more than 200,000 facilities that have permits to discharge pollutants and collected responses from states regarding compliance. Information about facilities contained in this database comes from two sources: the Environmental Protection Agency and the California State Water Resources Control Board. The database does not contain information submitted by the states.

A search of Clinton area permit holders is here. The list shows the City of Clinton, Ailliant Energy’s Kapp coal station, ADM, and the various petrochemical plants along Hwy 30. Although there are violatons noted on many of the facilites (most dating from 2004) very few of these facilites have been inspected since the 1980′s or early 1990′s.

The Right and Fox News

Connor — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:23:57 +0000

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post below is a chart showing Fox News viewership alongside GOP approval (as measured by CBS/NYT polling).

Per Gawker’s post:

But while cable news is niche, politics is mass. The chart above shows GOP party approval in as reported by New York Times/CBS in national polls going back to 2006 and Fox News’ total primetime audience, in millions, over the same time period. Fox News can and does thrive with a primetime audience of 2.5 million, many of which are the aforementioned zealots. The Republican Party needs more than that to function electorally. And the aforementioned angry zealotry that’s in vogue on Fox News is distasteful to the independent voters that the GOP needs to court.

History Of American Economy Growth

Connor — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:39:08 +0000

From The Economist, a very well done and easily understood graphic on the history of the American economy and the fundamental instability of our consumer-oriented growth from the 1980′s to 2007.

Rebalancing The Economy