Debtris

January 27, 2011 10:44 AM

Debtris. From Information is Beautiful.
posted by Cool Papa Bell (21 comments total)

How does one "save the Amazon"? Information is beautiful, but citations are divine.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:54 AM on January 27, 2011

Citations don't matter to John Boehner or Paul Ryan.
posted by blucevalo at 11:03 AM on January 27, 2011

That...music.

It's like listening to an old favourite, sung the tune of its b-side, possibly in Armenian, with the pitch shifted just a smidge in the wrong direction. So close, yet so far.
posted by Jilder at 11:04 AM on January 27, 2011

My inner data nerd is happy now. He, my inner data nerd also thinks the execution could've been higher grade, but my inner data nerd mostly gets off on conceptual data visualization. Execution is for graphic artists. My inner data nerd is going back to sleep now.
posted by Skygazer at 11:10 AM on January 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

I thought this was going to be some kind of economic based Russian puzzle game. So disappointing.
posted by Fizz at 11:17 AM on January 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, how would $12B "save the rainforests"? Is that where some charity buys them all and then tells all the people around them to GTFO? That's both simple and realistic.
posted by GuyZero at 11:17 AM on January 27, 2011

I think an image with rollovers and links would have been more useful. Otherwise this is just a set of 20 unsourced numbers with fake tetris music.
posted by demiurge at 11:18 AM on January 27, 2011

thank to this, this is all I hear when I hear the Tetris theme. Which is kind of appropriate here.
posted by The Whelk at 11:24 AM on January 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

Grah. I have a major bone to pick with Information is Beautiful. They just throw down crap in a nice-looking fashion without regard to whether it makes sense or not. More like Information is Inscrutable, amirite?
posted by zsazsa at 11:27 AM on January 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Agreed. They're great graphic designers, but don't seem to have much of an understanding of statistics or anything related. I've mostly stopped visiting because I often feel less informed after looking at one of their diagrams - often there's no information about whether money amounts are inflation-adjusted, where exactly the numbers originate, and so on, or assumptions are just wrong. As Einstein said, 'make things as simple as possible...but no simpler.'
posted by anigbrowl at 12:01 PM on January 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

...fake tetris music.

Honestly, as one who OD'ed on the stuff, I was thankful for that, as the actual Tetris music makes me crazy now.
posted by Skygazer at 12:07 PM on January 27, 2011

Complete information is obviously less beautiful.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:22 PM on January 27, 2011

That was pretty uneventful.
posted by cashman at 12:32 PM on January 27, 2011

I don't think the exact numbers are relevant. Inflation adjusted or whatever. It's the magnitude that's the point, and what it says about our, and especially America's, priorities. That seems about right.
posted by Philosopher's Beard at 12:39 PM on January 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

If you scroll down, there's a link to a spreadsheet of data.
posted by memebake at 12:57 PM on January 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

The UK version is pretty good: £54 billion yearly spend on alcohol, tobacco and drugs, £46 billion yearly defence budget. I didn't know that.
posted by memebake at 1:03 PM on January 27, 2011

GuyZero: Yeah, how would $12B "save the rainforests"? Is that where some charity buys them all and then tells all the people around them to GTFO? That's both simple and realistic.

[citation provided].
posted by memebake at 1:11 PM on January 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Is that where some charity buys them all and then tells all the people around them to GTFO?

Landmines are cheap these days.
posted by Space Coyote at 1:11 PM on January 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

memebake: If you scroll down, there's a link to a spreadsheet of data.

Listed simply enough as: Data: http://bit.ly/debtris (longlink). Somehow, I skimmed over that bit.ly link, thanks for pointing it out. I was expecting an in-page list of citations, including the 2008 MSNBC article on the cost of Brazilian efforts to save the Amazon:

Norway will give Brazil $1 billion by 2015 to preserve the Amazon rain forest, as long as Latin America's largest nation reduces deforestation, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday.

The promised donation is the first to a new Amazon preservation fund Brazilian officials hope will raise $21 billion to protect nature reserves, to persuade loggers and farmers to stop destroying trees and to finance scientific and technological projects.

Sorry for the early snark. The video is a nice bit of crafty design. And good luck to Brazil on persuading loggers and farmers to stop logging and farming. More interesting information on the Amazon at the Imazon website (that's not a typo, Imazon is the name of the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment).
posted by filthy light thief at 1:26 PM on January 27, 2011

For a billion dollars I want a hell of a lot more than "persuading".
posted by GuyZero at 1:29 PM on January 27, 2011

Do we need to elect another republican president so the news will quit talking about the debt?
posted by Orb2069 at 9:22 PM on January 27, 2011