Strange Maps
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Innovation
Driven by the Innovation Insanity initiative, Trendwatching.com has a list up of 67 new innovations that could change your world.
The ideas on the list are amazing and inspiring, and range from bamboo bicycles to windows that collect solar energy, vending machines that sell fragrances (in Paris, of course), keepsake stamps of babies' feet and hands, and a project to transform Rio's favelas by giving them a new, colourful lick of paint.
White
The Big Picture has a sobering gallery of pictures by Reuters photographer Finbarr O'Reilly. It's a look at a squatter camp populated by white South Africans – and while it's no different to any Kentucky trailer park, and no less depressing than any other squatter camp, it does at least get you thinking.
In my case, thinking about how lucky I am to have a job.
Reality Check
Here's an interesting story from the Boston Globe archives. Opening pars:
"When people think of knowledge, they generally think of two sorts of facts: facts that don’t change, like the height of Mount Everest or the capital of the United States, and facts that fluctuate constantly, like the temperature or the stock market close.
But in between there is a third kind: facts that change slowly. These are facts which we tend to view as fixed, but which shift over the course of a lifetime. "
The story goes on to explain that what you think is true might have once been true, but might not be true any more... and it warns of the dangers of not keeping up with those slow changes that creep up on you and alter your reality.
"When people think of knowledge, they generally think of two sorts of facts: facts that don’t change, like the height of Mount Everest or the capital of the United States, and facts that fluctuate constantly, like the temperature or the stock market close.
But in between there is a third kind: facts that change slowly. These are facts which we tend to view as fixed, but which shift over the course of a lifetime. "
The story goes on to explain that what you think is true might have once been true, but might not be true any more... and it warns of the dangers of not keeping up with those slow changes that creep up on you and alter your reality.
Brazil vs Serbia
Genius soccer writers Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanksi have derived a formula to work out who will win and lose at this year's World Cup.
GD(ij) = 0.137 log (pop(i)/pop(j)) + 0.145 log (y(i)/y(j)) + 0.739 log (exp(i)/exp(j)) (+ 0.657 home advantage for games involving Bafana Bafana)
The good news is, South Africa will reach the second round. The bad news is, when they get there they'll lose to South Korea. The weird news is, Serbia will reach the Final.
Number One
As the world ticks into flag-waving World Cup patriotic fervour, the number crunchers at Information Is Beautiful present a happy (in some case) look at all the things the various nations of the world are the best in the world at.
Like Australia: the world Number One in car theft.
Or Peru: top of the charts when it comes to butterflies.
Like Australia: the world Number One in car theft.
Or Peru: top of the charts when it comes to butterflies.
Still In Play
"Every morning at 8am, four men with toolboxes set off for work, potter about a bit, and toddle off home again... It could be any workplace anywhere, but this time their boss knows all about their antics. In fact, it's his idea. It is a cunning ruse, the embodiment of Valencia's modus operandi over the last year: pretend everything's OK, perfectly norm"
So starts Sid Lowe's amusing, amazing tale of how La Liga club Valencia went from being €547-million in debt, and on the brink of going out of business for good, to now qualifying for the Champions League. It's the kind of story they'd never tell in a book on How To Run A Business... but y'know what? Maybe they should.
So starts Sid Lowe's amusing, amazing tale of how La Liga club Valencia went from being €547-million in debt, and on the brink of going out of business for good, to now qualifying for the Champions League. It's the kind of story they'd never tell in a book on How To Run A Business... but y'know what? Maybe they should.
Zooropa
StrangeMaps helped me find my way to this interesting map, compiled by those noted comic jokesters at The Economist: it's a map of Europe, redrawn and rejigged to make it more socially, economically and culturally (if not geographically) accurate. The story explains their (often spot-on) reasoning.
11
It's probably fair to call Motherhood, the utterly rubbish new film starring Uma Thurman, a box office bomb. On its opening weekend in the UK, only 11 – that's eleven – bought tickets to watch the film.
Why did fewer than 12 people bother to go watch this turkey? Could be any number of reasons... but the horribly misjudged marketing campaign is probably a good place to start.
The Great Party State
The crazy peeps at StrangeMaps have discovered a hilarious map, which charts the ratio of – wait for it – bars to grocery stores in cities across America. If you need to buy milk and bread, head to Georgia. If you need a drink, head to... Wisconsin?
In/Out
The Washington Post has an interesting infographic explaining the US federal budget. You gotta love the picture of $2.57-trillion coming in and $3.83-trillion going out. Even as someone who can't balance his own wallet, I can see there's a problem here...
Credit
Here, in case you've ever wondered, is a story explaining what the 16 digits on your credit card really stand for. (Apparently it has nothing to do with the Number of the Beast. I'm still not so sure about that...)
Global
Somewhere between Jared Diamond and Jacopo della Quercia lies Dan Carlin. In his latest Hardcore History podcast (Show 32 - Globalization Unto Death), he looks at how a handful of nations on the western periphery of the Eurasian landmass managed to take over and – for a while – totally control the world.
Any podcast that gets me thinking about race, history, economics and an old Animaniacs song has got to be worth listening to.
Any podcast that gets me thinking about race, history, economics and an old Animaniacs song has got to be worth listening to.
Cash
There's an interesting graphic up at GOOD, charting the distribution of wealth among America's religious groups. It's interesting to see how many poor Jehovah's Witnesses and traditionally black Christians there are, compared to the richer percentages of Hindus and Jews. It's also interesting how evenly spread the Latter-Day Saints, mainline Christians and Orthodox faithful are.
Have to wonder what Saint Francis would say about all this though...
Hummer Down
To paraphrase an old horror movie poster: Who will survive... and what will be left of them? More bad news from the auto industry as General Motors (or rather, Motors Liquidation Company, following GM's recent bankruptcy) officially announces that it's had to shut down its Hummer brand after it failed to sell it off to a Chinese company.
That's right, fans: the Hummer hums no more.
The Grateful Dead School Of Management
Think "Grateful Dead", and you'll probably think tye-died trousers, spaced-out tunes and die-hard Deadheads. But shrewd business analysts are now seeing Jerry Garcia's crazy crew in a totally different light – and in this fascinating piece at The Atlantic, they explain what modern businesses can take away from their visionary plans.
Free samples? Customers reward systems? Social networking? The Dead were doing it all years ago.
Free samples? Customers reward systems? Social networking? The Dead were doing it all years ago.
Tickets, Please!
In all the fuss and fury about the slow pace of 2010 FIFA World Cup©TM ticket sales, it's worth taking a look at the crazy maths of box office figures. Take the movie Avatar for instance: with worldwide ticket sales of $2-billion (and counting), it's now comfortably the highest-grossing movie in the history of movies. But there's a difference between its gross and its unit sales.
Sure, Avatar's made a bundle of money. But when you look at the number of actual movie tickets sold, Avatar is way down the list – not even in the all-time Top 20.
But who cares, right? After all, the bottom line is the bottom line.
Sure, Avatar's made a bundle of money. But when you look at the number of actual movie tickets sold, Avatar is way down the list – not even in the all-time Top 20.
But who cares, right? After all, the bottom line is the bottom line.
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