When a narrator, describing other candidates, says, “Political insiders and career politicians,” a woman’s face appears onscreen and she says, “What? Are you shitting me?” (The word “shitting” is bleeped out, as are all the other curse words in the add.) Then, a man comes on and asks, “Are you fucking kidding me?” He’s followed by another man who simply says, “What the fuck?”

We’re excited that James is getting good publicity and that he is getting recognized for his innovative campaign. Take a look at his website: http://jamesperry2010.com.

You know what makes me mad? Lousy design.

Take the Atlantic’s latest missive on how it’s unfair to incarcerate like half of the population of the City of New Orleans. Important issue, no doubt, and maybe it’s just me, but hiring a new graphic designer might make a bit more sympathetic to the cause. Without cheating, see if you can make sense of this map. Don’t throw stones if you live in a glass house and all that, but screw it, I need to rant once in awhile.

• Spatial data should almost always be normalized by population. As the article points out, this makes the info for the Ninth Ward look janky. So fix it. Not that hard.
• If you don’t have anything to say, don’t say it, even if you get to use a neat looking graphic. Look at the little person icon in each block. Now count how many blocks have more than one. Not helpful. Like pie charts. Or bar charts with two data points.
• You can’t read the legend. Or a good portion of the data labels. Again, easy to fix.
• The other images on the site are low-res. Actually, I’m kind of impressed – normally people upload images that are way too big. But really, don’t flaunt if if you just don’t got it.
• The callout on the right doesn’t help anyone understand the map’s spatial context. How many people out there know that Central City is shaped kind of like a slice of pizza? How many people care? Show of hands?

Seriously, though, it’s kind of an interesting article. Read it. Oh, and thanks to Dug for finding this for me.

Thanks to some contacts we made while working in the Big Easy in 2006, we now have a chance to do something about it. We’re proud to support James Perry’s exploratory run for mayor of New Orleans in 2010, and are helping build his new web page.

If you’d like to get involved, please donate to the campaign or volunteer.

In any case, the pdf version of our article is here.

I recently came across an interesting article in New Orleans’ Times-Picayune newspaper about the possibility of an urban rennaissance on the now-derelict Tulane Avenue corridor.

Well, maybe it’s not so interesting to most people, but it just so happens that Brendan and I spent a good chunk of our time working in the surrounding neighborhood in 2006, and I have to say I’m a little skeptical.  The article sort of skims over the issue, but we’re talking some serious blight that I, for one, would have to learn to ignore before considering an over-priced condo.  To wit:

The Economy Motor Lodge: well, it actually burned down a few years ago, but check out the reviews of this place.  Seriously entertaining, if it weren’t so scary.

Orleans Parish Prison: by some accounts, the largest urban jail in the entire United States.  Right outside one of those nice new plate glass windows if yours.  For real.

I guess if San Francisco’s Tenderloin can be re-dubbed “Little Saigon” anything is possible.  But still . . .