Ever since seeing the Facebook friendship map and later, the map of scientific collaboration, I've been looking for an excuse to play with great circles. So I thought, why not come back to Aaron Koblin's classic Flight Patterns? But instead of just looking at all flights (above), I broke it down by airline to see where each one flies.

I grabbed the most recent flight data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, aggregated by airline, and counted arriving and departing flights between airport pairs. What follows are non-stop domestic flights by major air carriers during February 2011.

Brighter lines represent more arriving and departing flights between the two endpoints, and blue lines are the flights with heaviest traffic. Coloring is relative to within the airline as opposed to overall flight count.

On a quick glance you can spot where the hubs of each carrier are and flights most often flown. We start off with Southwest Airlines, which flies across the country. There's a focus obviously in the southwest.

Delta Air Lines flies just about everywhere, too, but also includes flights to Alaska and Hawaii. Their largest hub is in Atlanta, which explains the focus at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

United Airlines, on the other hand, has hubs more north and on the west coast including O'Hare International in Chicago and San Francisco International Airport. It appears they also have flights to all major Hawaiian islands.

Lots of American Airlines traffic in an out of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and JFK.

Continental Airlines looks similar to American Airlines, except Continental's headquarters are in Houston, Texas.

Pretty obvious where JetBlue goes. Despite some delays the past couple of times I've flown with them, they're still my favorite. One time Bill Murray was on the flight. If it's good enough for him, it must be good enough for me.

Mesa is a smaller airline that also operates United Express and US Airways Express.

US Airways' largest hub is at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport.

The Alaska Airlines connections look really interesting, streaming out of the the northwest. Most flights go through Seattle-Tacoma International, but there are also flights to and from Portland International. Oh, and of course to and from Alaska.

Atlantic Southeast lives up to its name.

As does Frontier Airlines.

Hawaiian Airlines looks exactly like you'd expect. They exclusively fly to Raleigh, North Carolina. Ah, I kid. I don't know where they fly.

See how these were made and how to apply this to your own data in this step-by-step tutorial.

After seeing this article and graphic on the rising cost of food in The New York Times week in review, I was curious about how prices for other stuff has changed in the past year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides this data monthly via Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Why they have to provide it in an equal-spaced text file over a plain CSV or a spreadsheet still confuses me, but at least they publish the data regularly, which is more than I can say for other government departments. I originally wanted to see how obesity rates have changed over the past year, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hasn't updated obesity trend data since 2009.

In any case, price changes alone are still interesting. Relative to overall inflation (2.7 percent), transportation prices increased the most by far, at plus 9.8 percent. The cost of gasoline alone went up 27.5 percent.

Education also took a hit, going up 4.0 percent. Meanwhile, the cost of apparel and technology went down this past year by 0.6 and 1.4 percent, respectively. Having a baby? Now might be good time to buy some onesies.

Early retirement. That's what most people want, unless you're lucky enough to love working. When you have the luxury of retiring early though, why not take advantage? According to OECD estimates for life expectancy and retirement ages, in countries like Mexico, it is common for men to work up to the last year of their lives. On the other hand, women in Austria spend an average of 26 years in retirement.

In the United States the average years in retirement is 10 years for men and 16 years for women (mostly because men typically die earlier)—among the least in the world.

When will you be retiring?

Happy Friday, everyone. If you'll allow me, I'd like to take a moment to talk about something serious.

In a move I believe is best for everyone (but mostly me), I am switching gears to only cover facets of pop culture and toilet humor. I will also be switching focus to online education. It's come to my attention that this is a lucrative area, and leveraging my authority on information and data graphics, I believe I can become a rich man and retire by age thirty, quite possibly making four figures even sooner.

Yes, there are other types of data in the world, perhaps more serious, interesting, and worth knowing, but the Web is not for serious or sad things. The Web is a place of free-flowing ideas (therefore this site's name) that revolve around things that matter to today's youth such as Justin Bieber and his new haircut. Case in point: the nearing shut down of Data.gov.

Most of you are probably not even reading this since there are several pictures of the teen dream above. Plus there are quite a few words here. Lengthy.

The above graphic is my first step towards my goal. With data courtesy of ReadWriteWeb, you can see the top ten videos with the most dislikes on YouTube. Some videos, like Friday from Rebecca Black, are hated by many, while other videos simply have a ton of views, and there's no way to please everyone.

This brings up another point. I know that many of you will be displeased with my choice like when I quit data altogether, but again, I do believe this is for the best. When you have a dream, you have to go for it, or you'll end up wondering "what if...?" and that is no way to live, my friend.

And so one chapter ends and a new one begins in the book of Nathan. Today, April 1, will forever be known (to me) as the day I changed my life. I hope you'll join me in this journey, but if not, please still tell your friends to visit FlowingData for all their online education needs. Thanks.

(This might look a little different for men and women.)

Long before any relationship begins, Valentine's Day is just another Hallmark holiday to take your money, but then that special someone starts to come into the picture, and Valentine's Day transforms into opportunity. He or she could be the one. Then he or she does become the one.

According to 2009 numbers reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, DC, Louisiana, Alabama, Maryland, and MIssissippi had the highest rates of firearms murders. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Vermont, Idaho, New Hampshire, Iowa, and North Dakota had the lowest. Time to move into a bed and breakfast.

Update: Made some small changes to the copy, so that everyone and their mom isn't confused.

Happy Thanksgiving! Eat lots and lots and lots. Rest. Then eat more.

One pound for them. Nine pounds for you. Happy Halloween. Watch out for flaming bags of dog poo on your doorstep.

The third installment of Pixar's Toy Story is making a killing at the box office (rightfully so, because it's Pixar-tastic), but not all trilogies have the same luck. They can't all be Lord of the Rings epics (all over 90% fresh), unfortunately.

Here's a look at true trilogies listed on Wikipedia that had sufficient data on review aggregation site, Rotten Tomatoes. TV specials and straight to video stuff was not counted.

If my wife, the physician, has taught me anything, it's that everything that has to do with the human body has a medical term or classification for it - and I mean everything. The other day she came home and asked, "Have you ever heard of the Bristol Stool Chart?" I hadn't, so she described. It's classifications for dootie. I thought it was a joke, but there's a Wikipedia entry for it. Ergo, it must be true.