Spiderweb and Snail Trails

[gnimmel]

Heigh-ho, more photographs. I fear these ones are a little geeky (not in a 'wow, awesome, whizzo-cool' geek sort of way; I'm thinking of the sort of geek who traps you in the corner at a party and says 'I think you'll find...' a lot). Offered without much in the way of apology or explanation.

Comments

[emperor]

Mmm, freight is very networksy, which pleases the work-bit of my brain. Counting cows is easier, though, as the government does all the work for me already.

[gnimmel]

There's actually quite a lot of data on where freight goes out there (especially in the US) - the main problem is modelling which method it uses to go places (e.g. the amount of air freight from a city can depend quite strongly on exactly what sort of industries are in that city, whereas passenger numbers are typically more dependent on numbers which are more easily obtainable and well-defined). Plus freight switches modes at the drop of a hat, whereas passengers seem not to like being told "your flight to Edinburgh is very delayed, so you're going on a bus instead".

[caulkhead]

And if air freight is anything like sea freight, there's plenty of data out there, but trying to find out which bits of the data are accurate is a whole other story. Not to mention ports trying to fiddle the figures so they can get more funding for their pet projects (there was a scandal about this in Korea last year).

Um. I think I just turned into the geek in the corner. Sorry.

[gnimmel]

No, I think writing about freight is entirely appropriate for this post :)

The data we have for air freight is generally reasonably accurate, mainly because it's from the US and Europe and I've not looked into the rest of the world as much. Getting country, city and passenger data for the rest of the world was, um, interesting, though. Don't like several million of your country's inhabitants? Simple exclude them from the census! GDP too low in comparison with other countries? Alter the official exchange rates until you look like a rich country! Nyess.

[keirf]

That's an excellent name for a veterinary music band - "Counting Cows"