The Piano

This morning I happened across this poignant animated short - The Piano - created by Aidan Gibbons, with music by Yann Tiersen. Just listen for a few minutes...

Two Charts of Upward Momentum

Picked up these 2 interesting charts from Ed Steer's (Casey Research) daily update some days ago. It seems that although the middle class is steadily losing ground, that the wealthy continue to have plenty of disposable income.

Note the same up trends in Food Stamp Participation (above) and the rising value of Tiffany stock due to rising sales (below) although unfortunately the stamps are much steeper.

Drawing on the US Emergency Oil Reserve

In the past few days, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has come into the news again.  An announcement that oil might be released from this stockpile, was enough to drop the price of oil and gasoline significantly.  This diagram below, courtesy of Reuters, provides a quick overview of the storage situation.

This reserve has only been accessed twice previously - both in emergency circumstances that are not evident this time (other than the President's low polling numbers).  In both of those cases, only a small percentage of the oil approved for use was actually needed.

As an interesting aside, recently on a cruise I befriended 2 very experienced oil-field engineers.  They did not have the above view of the reserve quality, but rather stated quite clearly that the solid (unleakable) underground salt caverns were a myth and that most of the oil stored in these sites will never be available for use.  

I have not seen any further evidence to support this, however, it is food for thought...

U.S. Crime Rates Falling or Rising?

INTUITIVE theories are often easier to believe in than to prove. For instance: conventional wisdom says that the crime rate should rise during a recession. When people are out of work and out of money, the thinking goes, they turn to crime. But the evidence backing this theory is at best equivocal.

Excerpt from The Economist

There seem to be some links between crime and economic conditions, but they are neither as direct nor clear as one might assume. Crime rose during the Roaring Twenties then fell in the Depression. 

America’s economy expanded and crime rates rose in the 1960s. Rates fell throughout the 1990s, when America’s economy was healthy, but they kept falling during the recession in the early 2000s. Read full story here.

However, other studies I have read indicate that people who watch a lot of television, especially crime drama, believe that crime rates are much higher than in reality.  It seems that exposing the mind to an over-emphasis of anything sways critical thinking toward that interpretation of life.

The Hourglass of Human Population

Earth will soon be home to seven billion humans. If you find that hard to fathom, try grasping how many have ever walked the planet. That’s what American demographer Carl Haub wanted to find out when, in 1975, he heard someone say that 75 percent of the people who’d ever been born were alive at that time. Dubious, he set out to disprove it, taking two main things into account:

(1) the assumed dawn of humanity and

(2) average populations at different periods of time. 

Using 50,000 B.C. as his starting point, Haub applied crude birthrates—the number of annual births per thousand people—to each population set, then added them. 

His estimate? In 1975, 103 billion people had lived, but only 4 percent of them were alive at that time. 

Applied to 2011, says Haub, those numbers are 108 billion, and 6.4 percent.  

—Extract from a National Geographic item by Catherine Zuckerman.

Commuting on cheap gas

American media continues to complain and whine about high fuel prices. Looking at the chart below shows just how cheap gasoline is in the United States.  I've been paying over $8 a gallon here in Central Europe for the past decade.   Of course, money can be saved by people living closer to their employment and venturing out into public transportation.

 

The fact is that American percentage of income spent on fuel has increased in the past year, but it is likely that this will be an ongoing phenomena.

Graphs excerpted from The Economist linked here.

Putting Your Name on the Map

There’s nothing quite like seeing a familiar name on a street sign that brings a smile to your face or perhaps puts you at ease in a new place. Stephen Van Worley has created an interactive mapping site that shows you everywhere your name appears on a street, town, park, river and more.

Data Pointed is the home of artist and scientist Stephen Von Worley's data visualization research; a journal of interesting information imagery and news from around the world; and a place where you can spend a few minutes, have a laugh or two, and discover something new. He accesses Google Earth and OpenStreetMap. 

Note the map below for the name KELLY.

Access the link here to search for your name.

Features:

Worldwide Coverage: Yes, Virginia, this time, we really did search every corner of the earth for your name.

More Names: 3,000+ 10,000+ first names, sourced from the US SSA, UK ONS, and Wikipedia. We even tossed in a few pet names, so that you can grab Tigger or Fido and share some quality anthropogeographical time.

All Features: We included every matching feature from OpenStreetMap, of any type. Most are streets, but there’s also castles, caves, and other intriguing things. At first, we planned on filtering out restaurants and retail, but after extensive philosophical debate, they made the cut. For some, like San Francisco Bay area Zacharys and Barneys, this policy works out. On the flip side, to anyone named Chase or Denny, apologies in advance.

Is Your Security Worth the Trade-off?

Bruce Schneier addresses the rationale behind personal attempts to create individual security. Are you really secure? Or do you just believe you are? How do you trade off the likelihood of protection from danger versus the cost trade-off?

Another excellent presentation from TED...

The Stark Power and Beauty of Volcanic Eruption

Sometimes you just have to sit back and appreciate the primal force of Mother Nature in action.  These are a selection of wire service photos of the recent eruption in the Chilean Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic chain, about 575 miles south of the capital, Santiago.

The link to the Daily Mail article is here.

Why the Recession Continues

There has been a lot of speculation in the American press why after months of quantitative easing (money creation by the Fed from nothing)that the economy has not picked up. In fact, it takes two elements for this to work:

One is the amount of money in circulation. As you see by the graph below, this has exploded in the last year.

But, the other elements is what is called money velocity - the rate at which people spend and turnover the money in their possession. Just like goods sitting on the shelf in a store, real money is made by how often the products turn-over. Just sitting there does no good - it is dead value. As you will see from the graph below, the money velocity has dropped to an extremely low rate as people hold onto cash and savings because of uncertainty. Likewise, very little borrowing is going on that would also increase potential for velocity.

Thus the two elements cancel each other out and the recession continues. The question is whether the Fed will keep pushing on this string and re-open the values with round #3?

A correlation between well-being and wealth

FOR more than 70 years, economists have been fixated with measuring economic output. Their chosen measure, gross domestic product, has limitations—it takes no account of natural-resource depletion and excludes unpaid services such as volunteering. 

On May 24th the OECD launched its alternative measure of well-being which includes 20 different indicators across 11 sectors in its 34 member countries, from life satisfaction to air pollution. It has produced an interactive tool (link here) which allows users to change the weight of each sector according to their own view of its importance.

The chart below (courtesy of The Economist) shows the results of its headline Better Life index (which is equally weighted) plotted against GDP per person at purchasing-power parity (which adjusts GDP for differences in the cost of living across countries). 

Money may not buy you happiness. But it can buy a strong correlation with a fancy new index that aims to put a number on contentment.

World's Population Pyramid is Changing Shape.

The world's population pyramid is changing shape. Another great presentation by The Economist.

THE world’s population will reach 7 billion by the end of October, according to the latest projections from the United Nations. For the first time the UN has attempted to look as far ahead as 2100, using various assumptions about how fertility and mortality rates might change over the years.

The average of these estimates suggests that the global population will cross 10 billion by 2085. By 2100, 22.3% of people will be aged 65 or over, up from just 7.6% in 2010. 

The bulk of population growth is expected to come from the developing world. Africa’s population will rise from 1 billion in 2010 to 3.6 billion in 2100. In 1950, 32% of the world’s people lived in today’s rich countries. By 2100, only 13% will.

Are You Caught in a Filter Bubble?

Eli Pariser discusses a growing issue in his TED lecture. What important information are you no longer getting because of your invisible filter bubble?

Glorious Manhattan

Recently the New Yorker published an online video of Josh Owens. He spent the first month and a half of spring staying at eleven different Manhattan hotels, shooting from their windows and roofs for around twelve hours every day, weather permitting. 

The interval between frames as Owens shot them was anywhere from five seconds to a full minute, and they are sometimes accelerated over 700 times.

Mindrelic - Manhattan in motion from Mindrelic on Vimeo.