Meet the world

[helenic]

Amazing political art project (link from dennyd):





Click for more

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

*confused* But where are all the people who earn between US$1,000 and US$100,000 per month?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Presumably there aren't enough to be visible on that scale - which I'd guess is one of the points it's trying to make.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

They're not there because it's bollocks. The stats arn't true. It's not that they don't add up slightly just to fit in with the flags, it's that things that differ by orders of magnitude are shown as the same size.

I don't like the bad people lying with statistics, but somehow when the "good" ones do it upsets me more

But maybe I should just see it as art, making a shocking point that needs to be made. People need to be shocked by the spirit of the points even if the actual points arn't true. I don't quite buy it though

Although as you'll have seen from my ranting randomly the whole thing really annoys me and then upsets me that it annoys me and just leaves me very confused.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I don't think that the flag is supposed to represent 100% of the country's population, it's just comparing a selection of statistics - ones that fit with the flag's pattern.

[ifimust.livejournal.com]

SOO bookmarked for the teaching of ethics.

Thank you.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

I've had my rant about this once already (http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/1185489.html)

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I follow your working. The flag is comparing the number of people with AIDS, the number of people with Malaria and the number of people with access to medical care. I don't think it's supposed to say anything about what percentage of the population have AIDS and/or malaria.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Well, it is compairing the number of people with AIDS to the number of people with malaria, and showing them as roughly equal (the area of the flag for AIDS and malaria is roughly the same size) But malaria as a problem appears to be at least 5 times larger than AIDS as a problem in Angola, from the stats I could find from a quick google.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Also *google google google*

"Most of Angola's estimated forty-five hospitals, all government operated, were located in urban areas (see table 3, Appendix A). Conditions in the hospitals, however, were often deplorable. Poor sanitation, a lack of basic equipment, and disruptions in water and electrical services were common. Trained medical personnel were in chronic short supply; in the late 1980s, Angola had only 230 native-born doctors, and only 30 percent of the population had access to health services. Most physicians, nurses, technicians, and national health advisers were foreigners--principally Cubans, East and West Europeans, and South Americans. In 1986 there were about 800 physicians in Angola (1 per 10,250 people--a very low ratio even by African standards) and somewhat more than 10,500 nurses. A Western source reported in February 1989 that 323 physicians, or 41 percent of the total number of doctors in government-controlled areas, were Cubans."

Only 30% of the population have access to health services. And only 5% of the population have AIDS.

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

This is representative of another problem: there's a lazy ambiguity about whether it's intended as an accurate graph or as a Symbolic Reference Guide to the Flag ("the red stands for the blood shed by our people in our struggle for independence, the green stands for the natural abundance of our fields and forests, and the taupe just looks fabulous with the curtains") that borrows visual cues from accurate graphs (and if people are fooled into thinking it's an accurate graph, ahem, that's just an unfortunate misinterpretation). And an ambiguity about whether each flag is meant to represent the demographics of that country or the whole world, and assorted other dodginess that comes from combining datatypes.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Yes, completely. But a girl can only do so much ranting on work hours :-)

[robert-jones.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yes. The United Nations tell me (http://data.unaids.org/pub/GlobalReport/2006/2006_GR-ExecutiveSummary_en.pdf) (on page 8) that between 33.4m and 46.0m people are infected with HIV. Wikipedia tells me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria) (and I believe it) that between 300m and 500m are infected by Malaria. "Access to medical care" is a pretty nebulous concept, but on any basis one would have to say that nearly the entire population of the developed world had it, so it could hardly be less than a billion people.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Although the argument then seems to go that they're not representative of the world, they're just representative of the country they're the flag of (which at least makes more sense, especially if you think about the genital mutilation one and the war in Iraq one). Then it takes a little longer (but still not very long at all) to decide that they are wrong.