I have just finished reading Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka's debut novel, The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, and to be blunt, the business of writing this review is interfering with what I really want to do. Which is watch cricket. I feel free to confess this because the narrator of this novel would be quite forgiving of my weakness. W.G. Karunasena, apart from being a spent sportswriter and a semi-tragic drunk, is also a cricket fanatic: He is dying but is still determined to find and write about the Tamil cricketer who was his country's greatest and yet most obscure sportsman. When asked by his wife why he loves sport more than her, Karunasena responds that she is talking nonsense, but he confides to the ... Continue reading →

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Following up on my post about partisanship in the 111th US Senate, I wanted to look at how alliances have shifted over the history of Congress. Use the buttons below or the left and right arrow keys to move back and forward through Congresses, and you’ll see parties and legislators move across the political spectrum. This is the same DW-Nominate data from Voteview. In this chart, the X axis is the First Dimension score, and “can be interpreted in most periods as government intervention in the economy or liberal-conservative in the modern era.” The Second Dimension, on the Y axis here, “picks up the conflict between North and South on Slavery before the Civil War and from the late 1930s through the mid-1970s, civil rights ... Continue reading →

Our friends over at Pitchfork have directed us to handiework of YouTube user QuintonSung who has lovingly interpreted Kid A and OK Computer into the closing credits for an NES Final Fantasy title. Video Track listing:0:00 - Airbag4:36 - Paranoid Android10:49 - Subterranean Homesick Alien15:10 - Exit Music (for a Film)19:46 - Let Down24:28 - Karma Police28:50 - Fitter Happier (Yes, this was a joke).30:49 - Electioneering34:42 - Climbing up the Walls38:40 - No Surprises42:33 - Lucky46:56 - The Tourist Video 0:00 - Everything in its Right Place4:15 - Kid A8:44 - The National Anthem14:20 - How to Disappear Completely20:06 - Treefingers23:27 - Optimistic28:06 - In Limbo31:10 - Idioteque36:25 - Morning Bell41:18 - Motion Picture Soundtrack 9:00 Tuesday, May 22 2012 By Jamin Warren Continue reading →

A Silicon Valley executive spent countless hours constructing an elaborate plan to cheat local Target stores out of collectors Lego blocks, prosecutors say. Thomas Langenbach, a vice president at the software company SAP Labs in Palo Alto, crafted fake bar codes and pasted them over the real thing on Lego packages in Target stores, Santa Clara County prosecutors said. The fakes gave Langenbach a steep discount, prosecutors said. After purchasing the Legos, Langenbach allegedly sold them for a profit on eBay. At least some of the Legos were valuable collectors items featuring “Star Wars” characters, prosecutors said. Hundreds of unopened Lego boxes were found in Langenbach’s San Carlos home, authorities said. Prosecutors said the thefts were puzzling, because the scam was extremely labor-intensive and not ... Continue reading →

Matt Stiles Data journalist at @NPR. @TexasTribune alum. Created @TribData. Fan of @IRE_NICAR and @aaja. Love 牛肉麵. Proud INTJ. Continue reading →

NPR has hired Brian Boyer, head of the Chicago Tribune’s news apps team, to lead a new, similar team of data grinders and designers focused full-time on interactive storytelling. That makes NPR the latest major outlet — like The New York Times and The Boston Globe — to devote newsroom resources to news apps. “Apps,” in this context, means interactive, data-driven visualizations of the news on any platform. The network was already creating these — Poisoned Places, The Fracking Boom — but with resources scattered across departments. The new team is seven people, including Boyer, Matt Stiles, who has done database reporting for NPR’s StateImpact project, three staff designers, and two yet-to-be-filled positions. (They’re hiring, which means more great Brian Boyer job postings.) It hardly ... Continue reading →