Health and Other Obsessions

Being a bit of a health nerd I have come across numerous Health info vis in the past. Some of these are quite literally food for thought (sorry, couldn't resist the punderful joke). Mashable has brilliant examples of info Vis also. They have an interesting link here: http://mashable.com/2010/03/19/amazing-health-infographics/ At the end of the day it is hard to advise people on their Health as too much of anything is bad for you and people differ, however using scientific evidence as a good way to get around this:

Some of the not so effective supplements here are rather surprising. I think this is where Info Vis outdoes normal textual Data, at a glance you can see that vitamin A and vitamin E, though popular are surprisingly unbeneficial. The original pice is way more interesting as it is interactive, check it out here. It is also done using Flash, something I am considering using for my assignment.

As I mentioned at the start I'm a bit of a health nerd, I'm also an economics nerd. Another interesting Info Vis I came across was American shame. This is a fascinating piece for many reasons, one it shows that the if we leave the banks go line we've been fed isn't as black as certain parties have been making it out to be, Iceland did just that and currently rank higher than us in this, based on IMF data. Although represented in a fairly traditional manner, the colour holds signifigance here. It's called American Shame as America performs so poorly, this should also finally put the Boston V Berlin debate firmly to rest, look at Germany and look at USA, it's clear which model we should aspire to. Sorry if this paragraph is overtly political!