Check out this nice little infoviz by Ezra Klein at The Washington Post, which illustrates the the new findings of a congressional panel:

A Republican plan to extend tax cuts for the rich would add more than $36 billion to the federal deficit next year -- and transfer the bulk of that cash into the pockets of the nation's millionaires, according to a [nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation] analysis released Wednesday.

Via.

1. So you want to be a (freelance designer)?

In one of the best articles I read this week, Steve Friedl shares his experience as a technology consultant. But I think there is much to learn here for anyone who runs a very small business dealing directly with clients (i.e. freelance designers like ourselves).

I'll share one maxim of Friedl's -- of the ethical variety, in keeping with our theme:

Never, ever lie or fudge on an invoice

If you are ever caught — or even suspected — of funny business on the financial front, you will not be trusted anywhere else. It is impossible to give a customer The Warm Fuzzy Feeling™ if they are wondering about the legitimacy of your invoices, and this is fatal to a customer relationship and to ever getting a good reference.

This is not to say that mistakes on an invoice won't happen, but how you deal with them will tell a customer a lot about how you do business. Your goal should be to overwhelm them with integrity.

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Thanks to Coolhunting for pointing out an interesting new book "Cartographies of Time", by Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton, which "dissect[s] and track[s] the methods people used when attempting to record the passage of time."

Some examples:

"Relying on symbolism rather than scholastic precision to recreate a moment in time, Johannes Buno helped redesign and redefine the timeline."

Katie Lewis, 201 Days (2007).

"Lewis used pushpins to represent significant 'sense events' and connected them together with red thread. The result is a precise yet jumbled representation of Lewis' bodily experiences. "

1. Ethical behavior is good for the economy

This paper by David Rea of Victoria University examines the large-scale implications of an idea that we've been kicking around for quite a while.

2. Imagine A Pie Chart Stomping On An Infographic Forever

Source: Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Good Medicine Magazine

Careless designers all too readily sacrifice truth for the sake of aesthetics.

Smashing Magazine calls out designers' statistical illiteracy with a Showcase Of Bad Infographics.

3. 7 Ways to Use Psychological Influence With Social Media Content

This article from Social Media Examiner describes 7 psychological principles that can help your content get people's attention.

4. “Daddy, What’s a Brand?”

Last, this Fast Company article has a number of interesting perspectives on the postmodern practice of branding.

Next to the economics of peer-to-peer recommendation, the old paid-media model looks like a scam. You have to ask yourself how an industry employing so many creative thinkers at such high salaries has, on the whole, gotten away with so much crap for so long. Imagine if all that creative problem-solving power was re-channeled?

1. Take Note: New Facebook Privacy Changes

Did you see a new Facebook service agreement the last time you checked your status feed? The EFF warns that users should be aware of the latest changes to Facebook Terms of Service:

Today, Facebook removed its users' ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users' profiles, "including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests" will now be transformed into "connections," meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don't want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.

Read on for an explanation of why Facebook is doing this and what users can do about it.

2. Dribble

I'm digging on Dribble lately. It's a new website where designers can show tiny (400 x 300px) snippits of what they're working on. Kind of a visual Twitter.

So far, the work seem to have a high level of quality across the board. Despite the small size of the images, there's big inspirado inside.

3. Planes or Volcano?

Image via Information is Beautiful

Another wonderful info-graphic from Information is Beautiful.

4. What's in a Brand Name?

I get a kick out of design trivia, like this Mental Floss article explaining the brand names of 10 top companies. I thought the story of Asus name was interesting:

Netbook computers are the hottest gadget out there, with around 14 million of the cheap little laptops sold in 2008. One of the big names in netbook production is the Taiwanese computer company, Asus, which gets its name from the winged horse of Greek mythology, Pegasus. But if you took a quick glance at the phone book, “Pegasus” wouldn’t have been too high in the directory of computer companies. So, to increase their visibility in alphabetical lists, they dropped the first three letters of their name. It was an unusual strategy, but apparently it worked.

1. Why A Salad Costs More Than A Big Mac

The Farm Bill, a massive piece of federal legislation making its way through Congress, governs what children are fed in schools and what food assistance programs can distribute to recipients. The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products—the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.

The government also purchases surplus foods like cheese, milk, pork, and beef for distribution to food assistance programs—including school lunches. The government is not required to purchase nutritious foods.

Read the whole article here.

2. Sergey Brin on Google's China Decision

I don't actually think the question of whether this was the Chinese government or not is all that important. I know that seems strange. The Chinese government has tens of millions of people in it, and if you look at the associated army and whatnot it's even larger. It's larger than most countries by far. So even if there were a Chinese government agent behind this, it might represent a fragment of policy, as it were. There are many people there, and they have different views.

If you look at when we entered China with our Chinese operation in 2006, I actually feel like things really improved in the subsequent years. And I know there was a lot of controversy surrounding it, when we had to self-censor a fair amount, but we were actually able to censor less and less, and our local competitors there also censored less and less. We from the outside provided notification when the local laws prevented us from showing information, and the local competitors followed suit in that respect. So I feel like our entry made a big difference. But things started going downhill, especially after the Olympics. And there's been a lot more blocking going on since then. Also our other sites, YouTube and whatnot, have been blocked. And so the situation really took a turn for the worse.

Read Google's original statement on China here, and watch the whole interview here.

Image from the New York Times info-graphic: Luge Crash at the Olympics

[T]he precision with which this graphic schematizes the death of a man is unsettling.

This past Friday, Georgian luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed during a training run for the Winter Olympics. Saturday, the New York Times produced this visualization of the circumstances which lead to his death on the track.

I was struck by the experience -- a man reduced to an abstraction, a projectile -- which one manipulates towards the last frame: a photograph showing the moment of his fatal collision. I found the juxtaposition, and my participation in it, troubling.

There's some repetition in the graphic, but it made me look. I'd like to see a list of what's not censored.