Swivel List by Category

Business & Finance

• Java Jobs by State
• U.S. Music Sales, 1975-2005: Vinyl, Cassettes and CDs
• Annual Sales per Square Foot by Store
• Brent Crude Oil (USD per barrel)
• Who's Holding the US's Bonds

Correlations

• Wine and Violent Crime

Education

• Bachelor of Computer Science Degrees (Men vs. Women)

Entertainment & Lifestyle

• Persian and Greek Army Sizes and the Battle of Thermopylae
• Want to Find True Love?
• % Alcohol by Brand
• Cost of U.S. First Class Stamp
• "Once a Playmate, Always a Playmate"
• And The Flames Went Higher, And It Burns, Burns, Burns
• The Ratings Game
• What is Marketed to You as You Watch the Super Bowl
• Operation: Where You're the Patient
• % of Harvard Undergrad Grades that are "A" or "A-"
• How Does Your Federal Tax Rate Compare to Other Income Brackets
• Heatlh Nation: Chicken and Bottle Water Are In, Red Meat is Out
• Try to Predict the Spanish Lottery, and Fail
• How May Ways Do I Love Thee?
• So You Think You're Upper Class?

Environment

• Running on Empty
• More Environmental Disasters
• Global GDP vs. Yearly Average Global Temperature
• You're Full of Hot Air
• Paper Doesn’t Grow on Trees
• Using Up All That Green
• There's Oil in Them Fields
• US Gallons of Ethanol/Acre of Crop

Gaming

• World of Warcraft and Second Life: Who's on Top?
• Get A Second Life
• Virtual Gold Appreciate Faster Than Real Gold

Personal

• Puppy Love
• Where Do This Swiveler's Website Visitors Come From?

Political

• Who Would You Vote for to Be President?
• The Status of George Bush's War on Terrorism
• Pork Barrel Politics on the Decline
• United States National Debt
• Registered to Vote?
• Unpaid diplomatic Parking Tickets in NYC
• Political Bloggers: Who Are They?
• Bush and Oil Don’t Mix?
• Iraq Worth It?
• More Talk of War Than Peace
• How Many Military Deaths In Iraq?
• US Government Funding
• What is the US Government Not Telling Us?
• Like Parents, Like Chidren
• Cigarette Companies Are Out to Kill You
• The American Homelife Situation
• CPI vs. Federal Minimum Wage

Sports

• You Miss 100% of the Shots You Don't Take
• March Madness
• Highest Paid Athletes
• NFL Refs Not Influenced by 12th Man
• Who's Touring California

Tech

• Sprint Eats Verizon for Lunch and Turds Out T-Mobile
• When's the Last Time You Used a Payphone
• Mobile Phone Market Share 3rd Quarter 2006

World Demographics

• Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor
• Getting Your Foot in the Door
• The United States: Proud Leaders in Divorce
• Too Young to Drink the Fire Water
• Heroin vs. Cocaine vs. MDMA vs. Crystal Meth
• % Atheists, Agnostics, Non-belivers in God by Country
• When Sharks Attack
• How Good Do You Think Your English Is?
• Minorities in U.S. Population and Enlisted in Military
• Prisoners/100 by Country

My Jay-Z Starter Kit

So, I figured I would try out the new "bling" graphing capability on Swivel. As my maiden graph with bling, I wanted to point out the outrageous prices of U.S. postage stamps and the fact that they should just come out with a $0.50 stamp (so that I can keep them for a few years before they become obsolete). I barely mail anything now with e-billing and gifts sent via Amazon.com. It seems like it is going to be even less likely going forward now that all of my stamps will be useless once again.

Diagnosis of Autism versus Mental Retardation

I was reading a news article a few days ago about the substantial increase in the diagnosed cases of autism in the U.S., and how people were attributing it to mercury contamination in fish, vaccinations, etc. This made me curious and I started looking at some figures and their supporting articles. Now, I will state for the record that I have friends that have worked tirelessly with autistic children, and it is both heart-wrenching and rewarding at the same time. However, with modern medicine, I found it hard to believe that autism was spiking so dramatically, as shown below.



Then I found a plausible explanation for the spike. One set of researchers suggested that for the rise in autism over the past 10 years (I believe roughly 9.3 more cases per 10,000), there was a roughly equal decline in the diagnosed cases of mental retardation (down about 9.1 per 10,000). There is some overlap of around 30% of autistic children that are also mentally retarded, but it seems like an ongoing change in the diagnosis of children's developmental problems seems somewhat more likely than an autism epidemic. I would love if anybody out there has any more information (I know that I will keep looking as well).

How to Make Prescription Drug Prices Equitable for Americans

A while back, I was discussing the inequity of drug prices for Americans versus Canadians, Europeans, etc. It is obvious that Americans pay more for brand name prescription drugs than other nations. However, many people don't realize that Americans pay less for generics than in other countries. This is really a function of the size of the buyers and the amount of pressure that is levied by the government.



Other countries have socialized health care, meaning that there is a single buyer for all of the drugs for every person in the country. In the U.S., it is mostly private health care, or government programs for the less fortunate. Unfortunately, the powers that be in the U.S. are either too scared, too lazy or too disorganized to use their collective buying power to lower the price of prescription drugs in the same manner as they have for generic drugs. Let me make this straight: THE U.S. SUBSIDIZES THE REST OF THE WORLD FOR PRESCRIPTION DRUGS. Pharmaceutical companies collect profits in the U.S. to offset lower profits or losses in the rest of their markets.

A friend of mine had an idea about how to solve this issue. Using the graph above, it is clear that the prices are higher in the U.S., so big pharmaceutical buyers can simply state, we want all countries to have an equal price (based on absolute $, or PPP, or whatever). This would lower the U.S. cost by around 20%, but raise other countries costs by almost 2x. It would realign the issue, and force other countries to pay their fair share for drugs. Basically, realigning around maybe 1.20 on the chart.

It would suck for everyone else, but basically the U.S. is paying for everyone else's socialized medicine, instead of paying for its own people.

I Love My Tivo, and my DVR, and my Slingbox, and....

Nielsen Media posted an interesting report about how people use their digital video recorders, specifically focused on the day of the week the content was recorded, as well as how quickly people play back the content.



I know I love my Tivo/DVRs, and I pretty much use them to: 1)record two programs at once, 2)record programs while I am away, or 3)to skip commercials. So, basically, it looks like I am pretty typical, especially when people watch the majority of their content within two days.

Holy Crap My Source Disappeared

I posted a graph on Swivel a couple of days ago about the market share of U.S. record sales.



I thought it was a pretty interesting graph about how the music business is really in the hands of four companies (soon to be three because WMG is trying to acquire EMI). Anyways, after the announcement from WMG, I wanted to see if there was more from the source of the data. However, when I clicked on the source link, the data was gone. I guess there is a sneaky way of Nielsen and Business Wire of only keeping their press releases available for one month. After that, the data is gone. Not just off the original page, but TOTALLY GONE! I can't find it anywhere. If anyone can find the Nielsen Media press release that has 2006 record sales by company as well as the top polyphonic ringtones for 2006 (all in one release), please tell me.

Swivel Hacks: Part 2

This is not really that much of a hack as it is a courtesy to people that click on Swivel links. In future posts, I am going to hack my Swivel HTML to open the graphs into a new window, rather than forwarding to Swivel in the existing open window. I figure it will allow people to appreciate my content while still showing off the greatness of Swivel. For the HTML newbies out there, it is a pretty simple addition to the existing Swivel code. Just add:

target="_blank"

For example: in the case of one of the cool graphs posted on Swivel about the number of political blogs listed on Technorati shown below:



The code extracted from the "BlogThis" button results in:

a href="http://www.swivel.com/graphs/show/8024548"> img alt="# of them on Technorati by Political Blog Type" src="http://www.swivel.com/graphs/image/8052055" style="border: solid 1px #999999;" title="# of them on Technorati by Political Blog Type" />

but I add target="_blank" like this:

a href="http://www.swivel.com/graphs/show/8024548" target="_blank"> img alt="# of them on Technorati by Political Blog Type" src="http://www.swivel.com/graphs/image/8052055" style="border: solid 1px #999999;" title="# of them on Technorati by Political Blog Type" />

And now it pops. I think I am also going to add the Fark slang "clicky pops" below each graph to make users aware that the link opens in a new window. Just my way of keeping the peace. Happy Swiveling.

A pound of bricks or a pound of feathers?

I am sure that many of you have fallen victim to the quick brainteaser: "What is heavier, a pound of bricks or a pound of feathers?" You only fall for it once, but it is great fun in the schoolyard.

Well, despite the laws of physics, I have another one. "Which has more hydrogen, a liter of hydrogen or a liter of gasoline?" Well, the answer is a liter of gasoline. Of course, after thinking about it, you realize that it all involves the density of the substance. However it does have implications on the alternative energy debate. Hydrogen in its pressurized liquid form has far less energy density per liter than gasoline, even though it is much cleaner burning (excluding all of the debate about the power needs to split water molecules into H and O, etc.)



I really want alternative energy, but if you need a pressurized 54 gallon tank in your Hydrogen vehicle (18 gallons x 3) in order to travel the same approx. 360 mile distance as a gasoline vehicle, I am pretty sure America won't adopt it.

I encourage debate, drop me some comments.

I hate it when.....

I was watching a show last night called Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern on the Discovery Channel. The show was highlighting some of the weird foods consumed in Japan, from live frog hearts to lizard sake. Anyways, the food had several info-graphics that popped up throughout the show. Most were interesting, but one caught my eye stating that Japan consumes 1/3 of the world's seafood. Now to put that into perspective, Japan has a population of roughly 130 million vs. the global 6 billion+ (for any math majors out there, that is roughly 2% of global population).

I knew that this was "fishy," pardon the pun, so I checked out the data and uploaded it to Swivel. Turns out, Japan is the largest consumer of fish, but it doesn't appear to have 1/3 of global consumption just looking at the per capita consumption.



Fight bad facts with good facts people. That is all I ask.

Swivel.......Liberating Data

As a fan of Swivel and all of its data goodness, I couldn't help but think of how it is breaking down barriers to information. Well, I threw together a little Photoshop homage to their efforts. Tell me if you like it!

Happy Valentine's Day

I have been hearing that the price of roses goes up for Valentine's Day, but 2007 will be especially pricey for all of the other varieties of flowers because of the recent freeze in central California. Supposedly it wiped out a significant portion of the California flower crop (while roses are usually grown in greenhouses or are imported). However, men can rejoice with the knowledge that flowers are only the fourth most popular form of showing your love on V-day.

Demetri Martin: Findings

I recently watched a recorded Comedy Central special called Demetri Martin:Person. In the special, he had an entire portion devoted to "findings." Basically they were all funny graphs. I had a good laugh and decided to post some of them into Swivel. They are a bit sophomoric in nature, but how often do comedians include graphs in their stand-up routine?

Minimum Wage is Hard Living....

It looks like the $7.25 federal minimum wage increase may get through after being at $5.15 since 1997. There was a graph on Swivel a while back about how the increase just gets minimum wage back inline with inflation.



Overall, I have mixed feelings about this issue. As a former small business owner, I know that wages are the biggest expense in a service business. However, as someone that made minimum wage back in the day, I also know that $7.25 an hour X 2000 hours a year is only $14,500 per year. A minimum wage earner can barely afford housing and food if they don't work two jobs.

I posted the above graph on a forum called "SomethingAwful" a couple of weeks ago during a debate about minimum wage. Surprisingly, I got a mixed bag of responses. Many were supportive of the graph and the suggestion that minimum wage needs to be increased, while the most difficult argument against the graph was whether or not minimum wage was too much relative to living needs in 1979 (and therefore the line didn't need to get back to inflation). I admit, I couldn't back up the graph without doing some serious digging into 1979 living requirements.

If anyone has seen the movie "Thank You for Smoking," you know that you can win a debate without proving you're right, but rather that your opponent is wrong. I guess the debate will continue on.

How Many Californians Does It Take To Change a Lightbulb?

So, recently a California state senator made a announcement that he was going to propose outlawing standard incandescent light bulbs in California by 2012. Furthermore, there was the big announcement by Wal-Mart that they want to sell 100 million compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) in 2007. Therefore, I wanted to throw together some data about the differences between standard incandescent light bulbs versus some of the alternatives including halogen and CFLs. The advocates of CFLs suggest that they last longer and use less energy to produce light (or lumens). The relative value of lumens is show below.



CFLs generally use less power because their energy is used to excite the gas in the bulb, versus heating the filament in standard incandescents. I think that this is generally a good idea. However, I still have a few issues with compact fluorescents. First, you can't place them on a dimmer switch. If you ever want to set up some mood lighting for dinner, you can appreciate this. Second, many CFLs give off a very unappealing shade of light, much like your standard classroom lights in school. I hope that both of these can be overcome. Right now, many communities are requiring that new and remodeled homes have CFLs in bathrooms and kitchens, so the issue may be mute (government forced demand). However, I hope that environment and aesthetics can be balanced in the long-term.

The Top 1%

I recently listened to a webcast of a panel about Web 2.0 start-ups. During part of the panel, the former CEO of Jotspot mentioned a Time-CNN poll where 19% of Americans thought they were in the top 1% of income earners. Well, it made me curious, so I looked it up and threw together a graph. Needless to say, you need to be making some serious coin to break into the top 1%. The top line is the top 1%, followed by 5%, 10%, and top 20%.



If you aren't flirting with a quarter-million per year, you aren't quite there yet.