The Supreme Court Is More Polarized Than Ever
Decrying polarization is the everyone's favorite game in Washington, but in the case of the Supreme Court, it's statistically measurable.
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Did you know that Salekhard, Russia—a tundra-locked industrial town in the country's extreme north—is fast becoming the center of the economic universe? At least according to one very technical measure provided by McKinsey & Company.
Decrying polarization is the everyone's favorite game in Washington, but in the case of the Supreme Court, it's statistically measurable.
Wikipedia and its gigabytes of data, when analyzed properly, can give you a pretty comprehensive visual overview of the history of world since 1800.
We're not exactly crying over the $4.7 billion in net worth Mark Zuckerberg lost over 11 days, but here's one way to measure it: he's no longer one of the 40 richest human beings on the planet, as ranked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
A running narrative -- sometime prominent, other times latent -- in the 2012 election is Romney's Mormonism, and whether it might scare away many a good evangelical Republican from the voting booth.
Here's a little lesson on austerity measures. The unemployment rate -- the economic indicator President Obama's most maligned for -- might be a lot lower had the president been allowed to keep government payrolls up like he wanted to.
The Guardian, in the latest salvo in its British invasion, has published the best and perhaps most colorful aggregation of the state-by-state fight for gay rights in the U.S.
Well, this isn't particularly surprising, but at least we have it confirmed in the form of a shiny map. The American South, culinary birthplace of buttermilk biscuits, chicken fried steak, and putting gravy on everything, is also the unhealthy part of our nation, according to one measure in a study published yesterday.
Playing off of James Cameron's recent underwater adventure today is webcomic xkcd, which offers its nerdy followers a to-scale look at the oceans' depths.
For a springtime art project, a pair of Google employees mapped the realtime wind patterns of the United States -- and in doing so, try to drive home the point it's about time the U.S. got serious about wind power.
One big component of the well-documented anxiety young people experience today is student loan debt, but if a recent report from the Federal Reserve is to believed, they're also a major burden on older Americans.
Using the treasure trove of readership data that are Bitly links, Forbes' Jon Bruner has created an interactive map of the news preferences of online readers that mediaphiles like us are sure to scour over.
With some 57 million views in four days, "KONY 2012" is a full-fledged mega-meme. But the odds were stacked against it going viral.
If you're like us, you saw your Twitter feed blow up on Sunday night with tweets about dresses, acceptance speeches, and French swears as the Oscars were broadcast on ABC.
Of all economic indicators, this is the one that best illustrates to little kids just how "great" the Great Recession was.
Today in questions you didn't ask but are damn well getting the answers to, a Public Policy Polling survey ranked the 50 U.S. states by popularity among voters nationwide. And while Hawaii placing No. 1 in this little popularity contest wasn't a shock, that the Golden State ranked last was.
How much would you pay to spend time with Samuel L. Jackson? Jeremy Lin? Snoop Dogg? Karl Rove? These don't have to be hypothetical questions. You actually can pay to meet them and other marquee names. For charity, of course.
Given that both are young, religious athletes who've both risen quickly and unexpectedly to prominence in their respective sports, Tim Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin are inevitably being compared to one another by the media. So now that Linsanity is everywhere it's time to ask: Who was the bigger meme?
If you're not a sports person, but you want to make some money off this weekend's Super Bowl, why not bet on whether or not Kelly Clarkson will bare her stomach while singing the National Anthem.
One way to tell that the world (or at least this country) is warming is to take a look at the map the USDA puts on the back of seed packets, which shows that winter temperatures have risen pretty much everywhere in the U.S.
From approximately 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. last night, President Obama delivered the State of the Union address to Congress and a national television audience. Even for a SOTU, it seemed a bit long -- but how long was it historically?
In a bit of Democratic comeuppance for dinging Mitt Romney for how little he pays in taxes, Wonkblog published this chart of presidential candidates' tax rates. And wouldn't you know, John Kerry had a (slightly) lower tax rate than Romney does.
If Twitter had shut down yesterday too, it'd be impossible to tell what kind of impact Wikipedia's anti-SOPA protest would have had on the tweeting masses.
"Fixies (fixed gear bikes) are considered to be a strong indicator of hipsterness," argues Rohin Dhar at the Priceonomics Blog.
According to U.S. Department of Agriculture, meat consumption's predicted to go down 12.2 percent between 2007 and 2012, so we have something to ask our "red-blooded" compatriots: How has our once meat-loving nation become so un-American?
According to a new data published by Disqus, Internet commenting is at its best when people hide behind fake names, not when they use their real names or no name at all.
We already knew a lot of people still watch Netflix streaming, but the latest Nielsen research finds that they watch it a lot more than other, freer sites.
New Yorkers, next time you moan about how long your commute is (i.e., when your leave work today), don't make your complaints aimlessly. Aim them straight at the subway lines that could've taken you home faster if only they'd been built!
A good indication that, despite complaints on Twitter, we got the smartphones we wanted for Christmas? Just check out all the apps we downloaded to celebrate the birth of Jesus this year.
Of all the famous people who died this year -- a titan of the tech industry, a leader of a massive terrorist organization, a quixotic dictator, a troubled but talented young singer -- the person who sent the most people searching for information on Google was ... Jackass's Ryan Dunn.
To figure out how the financial crisis college graduates' career choices, Catherine Rampell of The New York Times' Economix blog decided to look at how many young grads are vying to getting into 1 percent through Wall Street.
A newly release chart from Nielsen shows the most common reasons we friend -- and more importantly, unfriend -- people on Facebook.
Last week for the first time ever we learned that Google Chrome is beating Firefox in total number of users, a decline we see graphed out in today's Chart of the Day.
Read It Later, a popular web app that allows users to save articles they find online for later perusal, mined their data to determine which writers for The New York Times are the most sought-after by readers.
If you haven't booked your Thanksgiving flights yet (you better get on that), then our Chart of the Day just may be able to help you choose which airline is most likely to get you home on time for turkey.
With the latest cinematic installment on the Twilight saga in theaters, literary social network Goodreads pulls together its own data from the U.S. to figure out which states love young-adult vampire series the most.
You no longer have to wonder what gadget to get the tikes on your holiday gift list this year: the far-and-away most popular electronics product the kids are clamoring for in 2011 is the iPad.
On a chart designed by self-described "multidisciplinary artist" Bård Edlund, the time of day when the most people will be awake to read your pithy tweet (at least on the East Coast) is at 9 a.m.
Fewer kids today are losing their virginity during their teenage years than they were just a decade ago, according to the latest report on teenagers' sexual activity from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
After a CBS editor accidentally let it slip that GOP candidates doing better in the race would, naturally, be given more of a chance to speak during televised debates, we've charted candidate speaking time against their airtime in Saturday's CBS/National Journal debate.
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