Had to reblog from our beingvisual Tumblr:
There’s beauty and meaning in all sorts of things. But who would’ve thought I’d be posting an image of a chart graphing a periodic table of SEO ranking factors. Signs, signs, everywhere there are signs…
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
A Shift in Global Hunger Across the Developing World
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
The Economist recently posted today’s daily chart and it’s a mixed bag. I’d love to see this index mashed up with other indices on war, corruption, desertification, pollution, population growth, and I’m sure you could name many more. Any of our readers have the skill set to make this happen?
“Since 1990, two-thirds of developing countries have reduced their populations’ hunger levels. But twenty-nine countries still suffer from ‘alarming’ levels of hunger.”
(source: The Economist)
“Spiritual But Not Religious”
Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer
“I think in a way that kind of cliche ‘spiritual but not religious,’ which apparently is a thing more and more people say to describe themselves, is in a way an attempt to reconcile in some cases with science. In other words…if I say I believe in this highly anthropomorphic God, if I’m religious and too old-fashioned in a sense, or buy into specific claims of revelation, that might not sit well with the modern scientific intelligence.”
—Robert Wright, author of The Evolution of God (February 2, 2010)
(graphic: Pew Research Center)
New research from the Pew Forum on Public Life reveals that a sizable slice of the Millenial population (people born after 1981) does not affiliate with a particular religious denomination or faith. We’re aware that people of all ages are defining themselves under the expansive umbrella of “spiritual but not religious.” We see this, in part, through the weekly listener emails that flow into our inbox.
Our contact form includes a question: “What faith tradition, if any, do you belong to?” Here are examples of some recent responses we’ve received:
- mindfulness
- none now
- I defy labels ;)
- Christian, Baptist… though I refer to myself as a “recovering evangelical” currently not affiliated
- atheist, with emerging theory of spirituality
- the teachings of Christ, the Buddha, and my dog, not necessarily in that order
As you can see, it’s quite a spread. In his recent public conversation with Krista, Robert Wright provided some helpful insights about how this “spiritual but not religious” trend might relate to a concern with what he calls “modern scientific intelligence.”
If you consider yourself “spiritual but not religious,” can you help us understand what this term actually means to you? Does science have something to do with it? Is it primarily a youthful Millennial trend, as the Pew Forum report suggests? Are there other terms that you would add to the list above to describe yourself on this “spiritual but not religious” continuum?
Mapping Evolution in Wikipedia
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor
Broadcasting this week’s show on Charles Darwin reminded me of this history flow diagram of the changing face of the Wikipedia explanation of evolution over time. Nearly four years have passed since I read about it in Discover magazine.
What would the graph look like nowadays? I’ll hazard a wild guess that it’s as colorful as ever, with myriad black columns (indicating the entry being deleted by vandals). Boy I’d love to see a follow-up chart for this trajectory.
(History Flow diagram courtesy of Frank Van Ham, Fernanda Viegas, and Martin Wattenberg of the Visual Communication Lab, IBM Research)
