Beautiful data of the world

Professor Hans Rosling from Sweden presents a new software that allows to give public data back to the public, making graphs of world statistics easy and fun to do with countries as colourful bubbles moving in time:



www.gapminder.org

Did you know that the gap between "developing" and "developed" countries has long disappeared?
Watch for example his TED video from 2007 "The seemingly impossible is possible" and you will learn something new while being superbly entertained.

www.gapminder.org/video/lectures/

Food, agriculture, energy and health

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Article by Michael Pollan in the New York Times from October:
"Farmer in Chief"
Letter addressed to the US President-Elect analysing the problems with our food and agriculture system, its links to energy dependency and climate change as well as to the public health crisis, full of suggestions for change to better policies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html


Article by José Lutzenberger from 1998 addressing similar issues:
"The absurdity of modern agriculture"
Contains a very clear analysis of why our food production system is absurd with examples from Brazil and elsewhere.
English: www.fgaia.org.br/texts/e-biotech.html
Portuguese: www.fgaia.org.br/texts/biotec.html
German (slightly different version):
www.fgaia.org.br/texts/d-absurditat.html

(And plenty more texts by Lutzenberger:
www.fgaia.org.br/texts/index.html)