Mind-blowing visulization of population data

I’ve been watching TED Talks and Hulu while treadmilling (wireless video inside the house seems more reliable now that we’re on Comcast’s super-fast Internet service) and randomly chose this talk from the Top 10 list by doctor and researcher Hans Rosling. Bottom line? It’s must see TV.

If you are a fan of data visualizations, population trends, government policy, comparisons between countries, or just even mildly curious about changes to our world in the last 30-40 years, prepare to be blown away by this video.

The TEDTalks site blurb has it right: 

You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world.”

After you’ve watched the video and are hungry for more, visit Gapminder.org, Dr. Rosling’s nonprofit venture to help people create visualizations like the ones you saw in the video.

Bad Bank

If you haven’t listened to This American Life’s coverage of the banking meltdown appropriately called Bad Bank, run, don’t walk to your nearest iTunes or Web browser and give it a listen. In less than an hour, you’ll understand how we got into this situation and what the main possible treatments are — and why the government has yet to decisively chose one over the over.

Like that? I thought you would.

If you liked that show, listen to This American Life’s two other great episodes about the financial crisis:

• A Giant Pool of Money
• Another Frightening Show About the Economy

If you liked all three of those, subscribe to NPR’s Planet Money audio podcast. And if you just can’t get enough of this stuff and want more advanced reading, try the Baseline Scenario blog.

I firmly believe that financial literacy — or illiteracy, as the case may be — has a role to play in this all-too-frightening debacle.

A teaser: here is a graph mentioned in Bad Bank. In this century, there have been only two years when US personal household debt has exceed the GDP. Yup, you guessed it: 1929 and 2007.

Recession chocolate

We’ve been doing our part to help bailout ailing companies. In particular, we’ve been buying gifts for ourselves from all the frou-frou mail order places we’d heard of but never actually bought from. I imagine these poor retailers had a desperate holiday season — at least, if their 70-80% off promotions were any indication.

So far this recession, we’ve enjoyed recession popcorn from the Popcorn Factory, a recession gift basket with fancy pears and chocolate-covered cherries and such from Harry & David, recession sausage & cheese from Hickory Farms. Up this week, Fedora’s favorite: recession Godiva chocolate. We also got recession pants at Target, but that’s another story.

Our conclusion: at 70-80% off, these gift food places are tolerably priced. We don’t know how they sell things at full price or even mild discounts.

We’re still working our way through the bounty, so come on by if you want to sample some.