Monday, October 12, 2015

Stacked Area Chart In Javascript

A stacked area chart of transatlantic slave trace made with c3.js and the transatlantic slave trade database

The graph shows the counts for each region the slaves were disembarked by year. The html and javascript for this graph is on a gist here

The data used can be gotten from the slavevoyages.org website with the filters beloew

An actual graph you can play with is here and in the result tab below

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Danny Boyle films

Danny Boyle films revolve around a group of friends who find X. And how X affects their relationship.

Where for each film X is

Shallow Grave Bag of Money
Trainspotting Bag of heroin
The Beach A map
Millions Bag of money
Sunshine A spaceship
28 Days Later... An outpost
Slumdog Millionaire A gameshow

I can't haven't seen so do not know what X is in A Life Less Ordinary, 127 Hours, Steve Jobs or Trance

Friday, October 09, 2015

The Man in the White Suit

The man in the white suit is about a scientist who invents clothes that never wear out and never need washing. It is from 1951 and deals Alec Guinness finds himself hated by all. Both the capital owning class who realise they will have no clothes to sell anymore. And the poor labourers who won't have work making cloth, clothes or washing them.

All these 1950s cloth making jobs have left Britain in the decades since. Hans Rosling pointed out that the washing machine in common use since then is one of the best invention ever for freeing us from drudgery.

Worry about how computers will get rid of all the jobs are common now. Race against the machine is one good book on the topic. But the washer women in The Man in the White Suit are not in Britain anymore. Though much of the clothes making has just moved country without making the people doing it much richer.

We now in Europe live the terrifying world imagined in the Man in the White Suit. Where you can clothe yourself in pennies for very little. Wash your clothes for little effort of money. And it is not that bad. Technological progress is not bad. As Stephen Hawking points out it is not the technology but who the benefits go to

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

Tuesday, October 06, 2015

Golf Courses Versus Book Shops

"Between 1990 and 2010, the number of 18-hole golf courses in Ireland exploded from 213 to 352."

Searching Golden Pages gives

300 results for Booksellers

397 results for Golf Course

It looks to me that there are more golf courses than book shops in Ireland.

Friday, October 02, 2015

Pouring one out for your Ancient Greek Homies

Hecuba mother of Hector and Paris in the Iliad pours one out for her homies

Stay, till I bring the cup with Bacchus crown'd,

In Jove's high name, to sprinkle on the ground,

And pay due vows to all the gods around

Pouring some of your alcoholic beverage on the ground is an ancient and common across many cultures. It is a practice called Libation.

The other word for today is Adoxography "fine writing on a trivial or base subject". The best adoxography books ive read recently are Red: The history of red hair, Paper an elegy and The Phone Book.