About the author

Matt is the author, co-author, secondary-author, ghost-author, and non-author of articles, speeches, book chapters, and even entire books! The most recent is his blockbuster The Accidental Activist, which Amazon claims is by his wife Anne Green. So it goes. Currently, he is President of One Step for Animals; previously, he was shitcanned from so many nonprofits that we can’t list them all here. Before Matt’s unfortunate encounter with activism, he was an aerospace engineer who wanted to work for NASA (to impress Carl Sagan). His hobbies include photography, almost dying, and {REDACTED}. He lives in Tucson with Anne, along with no dogs, no cats, no guinea pigs, and only the occasional snake or scorpion.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Hans Rosling, RIP

Rerun:

If you listen to the news and / or read your Facebook feed, it is easy to imagine that the world is going to heck in a handbasket. But it really is the best time ever to be alive (at least for a human).

Hans Rosling has shown this graphically (below; fuller version here). Steven Pinker has documented this as well. This new report – In 1990, more than 60% of people in East Asia were in extreme poverty. Now only 3.5% are. – documents just how much things have changed in only our lifetime!




 Of course, this doesn't mean that everything is perfect; that is obviously not true. But we will be better off at changing the world if we are honest with ourselves and with others about the progress that has been made.

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