Less than Lord of the Rings

Asked by Google to estimate the size of the world's publicly available economic statistics, Rosling came up with an estimate of 1.5 terabytes-- less than one episode of Lord of the Rings.
"...Democracy is taking a new phase in modern times..."
-- Hans Rosling at the OECD World Forum in Istanbul

Some of what Rosling is jarring for me. What does he mean that the Philippines has the same economic status as the U.S. in 1971? He had just been talking about infant mortality. Whatever, his basic thesis that web 2.0 level technology, including the long tail, allow a revolution in human understanding of what is happening on the planet is sound.

Rosling points out that the gamers have the technology to present statistics in a meaningful manner. His son produced an amazing site on world income distribution. Check it out. If you think this is esoteric stuff, google "world income distribution". His son has not one day of computer science education. His son: "Education too often hampers learning."[ Full disclosure: I can't claim such fine credentials, but I did drop out of CS at Berkeley after two years, sort of, -- plus I skipped the entire calculus sequence and dove into statistics w/o guidance from Jerzy Neyman.]

"I can walkup to the door of the New York Stock Exchange on tax financed sidewalks..."





Thanks to Unveiling the Beauty of Statistics:: Jesse Robbins @ O'Reilly radar

Building and City Transformations

An amazing view of relationships between shapes, buildings, design ideas and their transformations.


Pascal Mueller, along with collaboratoters Peter Wonka, Simon Haegler, Andreas Ulmer and Luc Van Gool, is responsible.

Checkout their Procedural Pompeii Reconstruction

Current TV :: Viewer Created Content

Current TV's web site has a section on producer training. Cool.

• Production Tips
• Storytelling :: help from Ira Glass, Xeni Jardin, Sarah Vowell, Orville Schell, Robert Redford and more
• Journalism :: help from Sean Penn
• Broadband
• Gear Selection
• Shooting
• Editing

Its not enough to have an interesting life.
You have to have interesting things to say.
--Sarah Vowell

My advice? Start with Sean Penn. Its Penn's focus is more on people who want to break a story on pesticides in Mexico than people who want to produce next generation kayaking videos, but he captures the zeitgeist. I stumbled into this after seeing the Ira Glass's presentation on story telling. Anyone who needs to communicate can benefit from this material on storytelling. Don't miss Sarah Vowell (see above) who nails the importance of editing, not the technique, but the value, the need for obsession.

Dive Deeper
Links are provided to a number of resources I did not even know I was looking for.