Very cool post.  I think it’s especially interesting to see the hierarchy, which shows that the fractured multitude of the world’s religions boil down to just a handful of original traditions.

Really great video that points out the difference between weather and climate.  Weather is a description of current conditions and thus represents individual data points.  Climate, on the other hand, represents a trend in those individual points. 

From the wizards at Mozilla, who previously brought you Collusion, here’s a Firefox plugin that lets you see how many of the passwords you use are similar to each other.  Having similar passwords across sites is a bad idea: if one site gets hacked, all of your accounts are compromised.  I’m embarrassed to show my plugin’s real output, by the way.   Gotta do some account updates this week…

Using Mike Bostock’s excellent d3 package, the New York Times gives a great, interactive way to explore the white house’s current budget proposal.  I especially like the “Types of Spending” view, which separates discretionary and non-discretionary spending.

SOPA and Protect IP are very dangerous bills being discussed on capital hill.  Perhaps most dangerous is the lack of understanding of the related issues among both voters AND politicians.  Please spread the word about this and write/call your congressperson.

Another video demonstration about what Facebook knows about each of its users.  Important to know.

This is a really excellent example of a display that is data-driven, easy on the eyes, and rewards deep interaction from the user.  The link that I’ve shared shows the word “fight” as it occurs in the Bible and the Quran.  Notice how everything is out in the open: we can see the context of each and every hit, if we want to.  

I included the word fight for a specific reason.  Take a look at the synonyms below the input box (you may have to close the tip-of-the-day box first).  Notice that it’s not only showing you “fight” but also several synonyms.  Clicking on any synonym removes it from the results.  As-is, the display shows the Quran slightly edging out the Bible.  But remove the words “strive” and “struggle” (they, along with “fight” are all probable English translations of “jihad,” I’m told by experts) and the percentages change to show the opposite. 

From XKCD: another infographic to give us mortals an idea of how big a big number really is.  (It’s big.)

I actually didn’t even know this was something that people didn’t know about.  Ctrl-f is one of the most important things ever.  Learn about this, you 90% of people.