I came across a great site today called Flip Flop Fly Ball. The site’s author Craig Robinson essentially takes run of the mill baseball statistics and information and turns them into graphic works of art. For example, the chart below displays the direction that the batters face within each of the MLB stadiums (click to see the full sized image).

There is a great visual of the price variance of MLB tickets (with the Yankees leading the way), the types of MLB stadiums, and my personal favorite, the monetary value of MLB’s stolen bases if they were actually stolen.

Here is an interesting exhibit from the Smithsonian that profiles the unique Headcuts from the Wall St. Journal and how they are created. Surprisingly, even in today’s digital world, these images are hand drawn by artists commissioned by the WSJ. What would be really cool would be an online application where you could submit an image of yourself, and it would be rendered in the same manner as the WSJ headshots.

Over the past couple of weeks, on the commute home I have been putting aside my iPod at 6:30PM in favor of my mini-portable radio so I can listen to the NPR radio program Marketplace. When we were living in Boston, I’d always listen to it on the frequent weekend trips down to the NYC area and grew to become a great fan of the program.

And yesterday, a piece on the program just re-inforced why its just such a great program. The story led in talking about how toymaker Hasbro had a bad quarter, highlighting one cause being the influx of “non plastic” products into the market. The story then shifted to how people are willing to spend more on products made of metals and woods since such materials give the product extra cashé. They then profiled Motorola who is manufacturing a platinum phone, highlighting its hefty price, and ironically noting that you could buy a “metallic” ringtone for all of $1.50. And the “metallic” ringtone? None other than “Enter Sandman” by Metallica. They sampled the ringtone, and then faded into the actual song by Metallica! It was just a fantastic transition.

Now I am hardly a fan of Metallica (However “Enter Sandman” is one song of theirs that I actually do like), however my point is that Marketplace has always had a fun, irreverant, “toungue in cheek” perspective to its business reporting which makes the show so unique. And only Marketplace would be able to get away with fading out from a story into “Enter Sandman” by Metallica.

I drove a Cooper Mini Car this weekend. What an awsome ride!!! I remember when I lived in England I was at Durham Cathedral in northern England and saw two dwarfs leave an old style Mini car. And my great uncle used to have a Mini car. They are great in city environments in that they can park in spots most cars can not use. I like it!