Which countries are healthiest, wealthiest and most educated? The Gapminder knows. Powered by Trendalyzer and Google Spreadsheet, this free, open source, learning tool can help you investigate the world's sustainability issues right from your computer. In this article, Alan AtKisson writes about why he loves this site: Learn about education (see the chart; it's downloadable). Learn about the Millennium Development Goals, and watch little country-bubbles race toward the 2015 finish line. The thrill of victory ...

Notícia quentíssima, saída do forno nesse exato momento. Uma bomba despenca sobre o Planeta Terra Festival, Nick ‘Peanut’ Baines (tecladista do Kaiser Chiefs), que estava no Brasil para o show da banda no festival, está internado com apendicite em algum hospital da capital paulista. Porém, nem tudo está perdido. O show da banda acontecerá normalmente e já foi divulgado que já um tecladista substituto. Só não me pergunte o nome, porque isso já é querer ...

This article was written by Alex Steffen in February 2008. We're republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective. Infrastructure bores us. Most people in the developed world spend a significant portion of their incomes primarily to avoid ever having to think of the infrastructure we use, or the implications of the way we use it. Therefore, we ignore it. But like most of the ignored products of our minds, infrastructure is about ...

This article was written by Sanjay Khanna in February 2008. We're republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective. By Sanjay Khanna On a summer day, walk down a typical street in almost any city in the world and you’ll observe that cotton T-shirts and personal expression are synonymous. T-shirts capture people’s views about almost anything—from their hopes for a better world, to their favorite bands…to their desire to, um, ride an iconic ...

This article was written by Alex Steffen in February 2008. We're republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective. Most North Americans think of shopping and driving as fundamentally paired activities. After five decades of mall culture and ever-increasing big-box domination, we're grown totally accustomed to the idea that shopping works like this: 1. You get in your car. 2. You drive to a big building full of stuff. 3. You buy things ...

This article was was written by Jamais Cascio in March 2006. We're republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective. There's a theory in cognitive science that suggests that one of the hallmarks of human consciousness is the ability to model another person's thoughts in one's own brain, and do so with reasonable accuracy. It's not simply being able to read expressions, although that's part of it; humans can imagine how another person's ...