The Pew Research Center is one of the most well-respected names in demographic research, including religious demography. This series of maps shows in which country or countries at least 50% of adherents of a given religion live. www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/FT_Religions_Big.png (From https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/08/27/many-religions-heavily-concentrated-in-one-or-two-countries/)
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A sometimes-overlooked component of "freedom" is financial freedom. The Actuarial Foundation has four books available for free download designed to improve high school students' financial literacy: www.actuarialfoundation.org/building-your-future/
Here's a thematic map one doesn't see every day: this map shows which parts of the world historically used elephants in battle.
www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/c6ifji/historical_range_of_the_use_of_war_elephants/ Because this is a four-day work week for many Americans, it seemed timely to reflect on this suggestion by a business school professor in the UK:
"[T]o achieve a more ecologically sustainable economy, changing minds will not be enough, we need to change behaviours. Small tweaks such as not using plastic straws or minimising food waste will make some difference. But if we hope to make real progress, we need to make bigger alterations in what we do. One behaviour change that will have a positive impact on the environment is a four-day working week. According to a cluster of recent studies, working less is good for the environment. One analysis found that if we spent 10% less time working, our carbon footprint would be reduced by 14.6%. If we cut the hours we work by 25% – or a day and a quarter each week – our carbon footprint would decline by 36.6%. Another study found that if people in the US (who work notoriously long hours) worked similar hours to Europeans (who work much less), then they would consume about 20% less energy. ... By working less, we produce fewer goods and services that require precious resources to make. We also consume less in the process of getting our job done. Less work means less carbon-intensive commuting, less energy-sucking office space, and less time on power-hungry computer systems. In addition, working less would help to break down the work-spend cycle. Fewer hours at work mean we ... are also less likely to rely on environmentally costly timesavers such as high-speed travel or takeaway food delivered in plastic containers by someone riding a motorbike. ... [L]ess time spent at work would also help to deal with other problems such as making work more accessible for women, reducing inequalities between overworked and underworked and making organisations more productive." www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/21/help-the-planet-work-a-four-day-week "More than 80 percent of the world’s oceans are currently unmapped, but a $7 million prize pool to explore the deep sea hopes to change that. The Ocean Discovery XPrize was [recently] awarded to teams using uncrewed deep-sea vehicles to map the ocean floor and trace chemical signals underwater. The goal is to develop a comprehensive atlas by 2030. ... A comprehensive map of the world’s oceans may uncover new species and materials, and find old shipwrecks, says Jyotika Virmani, XPrize’s Ocean Discovery director. 'The deep sea is the world’s largest museum, and we don’t have access to it right now,' she says. Exploring is made notoriously difficult by extreme conditions such as darkness, high pressure, and cold.
"A $1 million bonus prize was also up for grabs for entrants to develop a vessel that could detect a chemical signal – a marine-safe coloured dye – and autonomously track it back to its source. The winning team was Ocean Quest, made up of high school students from San Jose, USA, although their vessel couldn’t sniff out signal back to the source within the allowed timeframe. Virmani says the technology could be used to track fish populations or invasive species. It could also be used in search and rescue missions, such as after planes crash into the ocean." www.newscientist.com/article/2205047-uncrewed-deep-sea-robots-will-help-map-the-worlds-oceans/ This map, based on 2017 Census data, shows the most common language, other than English or Spanish, spoken in each of the 50 states: www.businessinsider.com/what-is-the-most-common-language-in-every-state-map-2019-6
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