Why Not Be An Idea Expert?

The Population Circle

Global Birth / Death Map

This interactive simulation, posted recently by Atlantic Magazine, gives an eerily omniscient vantage of real-time birth and deaths on the world as it fills.

Just think, in 1950, there were 2.5 billion humans. Today there are just over 7 billion. In another 30 years, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections, there will be more than 9 billion.  

Brad Lyon, who developed the map, has a doctoral degree in mathematics and does software development. He wanted to make those numbers visual. Last year he and designer Bill Snebold made a hugely popular interactive simulation map of births and deaths in the U.S. alone—the population of which is on pace to increase 44 percent by 2050. 

With this version, Lyon now takes on the world.  Below is just a snapshot - click this link to go to the interactive map.

"The visualizations here, while pulling together some numbers," Lyon said, "are still qualitative because we of course don't know what the pattern is really like. However, we do know where the numbers end up, so they must get there somehow."

The True Size of Africa

This interesting graphic of Africa compared to the rest of the world hardly needs any commentary.   It is larger than USA, China, India, and all of Europe combined.  The link is here and is in the public domain.

October in the Railroad Earth --Kerouac

From the album "Poetry for the Beat Generation" from "The Jack Kerouac Collection" on a rainy day start to Autumn...

 

Jobs of the Future??

Balloon Race in Reno

A fantastic time-lapse video (link) of the dawn take-off of the 2013 Great Reno Balloon Race...

Thinking About Stress

Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal in a recent TED talk urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others. 

How Do People Die

What kills people around the world - and how does it vary from place to place? As part of the international research into the global burden of disease, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation have created these visualisations which allow you to explore the data. Click this link from the Guardian and explore how our world is shaped by mortality.

Household Debt Variations

In the years leading up to the financial crisis, household debt soared in most rich countries. There were a couple of notable exceptions: Germany and Japan, neither of which experienced a housing boom that caused debt to accumulate. 

The ratio of debt to disposable income rose by an average of 30 percentage points, to 130%, in OECD countries between pre-boom 2000 and pre-crisis 2007. Since then debt levels have fallen in America, Britain and Germany, but they have continued to rise in countries such as France, Italy and the Netherlands, where property prices are still declining. In 2012 household debt in the Netherlands was a whopping 285% of disposable income.

A fantastic visual and music experience.  Illustrates the connection between Stravinsky's composition processes (at this stage of his development) and cubist art/ideas. As the flow of instruments proceeds across the screen, it really provides a sense of the complexities of orchestration.

Navigating concepts of the internet

It has become apparent to me that just as a basic knowledge of how an automobile internal combustion engine and power train work, or how electricity flow from the power plant to my wall outlet, it is becoming more and more useful to understand information flows on the internet.  This is especially true is you have have family members deeply involved in enterprises that rely primarily on website portals.  Lemi Orhan Ergin has created an excellent overview presentation worth a few minutes to click through. It defines concepts and aligns the terminology in an easily understandable way.

 

Fundamentals of Web for Non-Developers from Lemi Orhan Ergin

Music from garbage

Landfill Harmonic reveals a mind-boggling, inventive effort to change that - musical instruments made from trash. In the barrios of Paraguay, a humble garbage picker uses his ingenuity to craft instruments out of recycled materials - and a youth orchestra is born. Music arises and children find new dreams. 

 

Based on research and the inspiration of Donella Meadows and her "State of the Village Report" published in the early 1990s.  Today, the 100 People Foundation carries on working with students to better understand the complex issues facing our planet and the resources we share. By framing the global population as 100 people, our media makes education more engaging and effective, and improves students' abilities to remember and relate to what they learn.

Currently, they are traveling the globe to meet and create portraits of the 100 people representing all 7 billion of us sharing the planet. Their vision is to create documentary films, photography, and educational tools that facilitate face-to-face introductions among the people of the world in ways that cultivate respect, create dialogue, and inspire global citizenship.

If the World were 100 PEOPLE:

50 would be female
50 would be male

26 would be children
There would be 74 adults,
8 of whom would be 65 and older

There would be:
60 Asians
15 Africans
14 people from the Americas
11 Europeans

33 Christians
22 Muslims
14 Hindus
7 Buddhists
12 people who practice other religions
12 people who would not be aligned with a religion

12 would speak Chinese
5 would speak Spanish
5 would speak English
3 would speak Arabic
3 would speak Hindi
3 would speak Bengali
3 would speak Portuguese
2 would speak Russian
2 would speak Japanese
62 would speak other languages

83 would be able to read and write; 17 would not

7 would have a college degree
22 would own or share a computer

77 people would have a place to shelter them
from the wind and the rain, but 23 would not

1 would be dying of starvation
15 would be undernourished
21 would be overweight

87 would have access to safe drinking water
13 people would have no clean, safe water to drink

Sources: 2012 - Fritz Erickson, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Ferris State University (Formerly Dean of Professional and Graduate Studies, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay) and John A. Vonk, University of Northern Colorado, 2006; Returning Peace Corps Volunteers of Madison Wisconsin, Unheard Voices: Celebrating Cultures from the Developing World, 1992; Donella H. Meadows, The Global Citizen, May 31, 1990.

Below is a short video by Allysson Lucca portraying the stats.

What some American teens are afraid of...

A teacher at Humboldt State asked 45 college juniors to list the five biggest  dangers in their lives, then turned their responses into a Wordle, which (I just found out) is a "cloud" giving greater prominence to things mentioned most often.  Check it out:

You can check out Wordle free at this link and create your own images.

For instance, the graphic below is of this blog:

The Ten Big Killers in USA

Generally I am neutral on the gun control discussion... but the stats are educational...