FoolsCap

. . .when I LOST my MIND!!  I, too, am on occasion obliged to cover the Gnarls Barkley hit "Crazy."

So I found my way to Swivel today.  As the Tour describes it:

Swivel lets you explore data and share your insights with others. Swivel has data about politics, economics, weather, sports, business and more.

Furthermore,

If you’ve ever wondered how two different things are related to one another like happiness and health, crime and poverty, or home prices and climate then you’re a Swiveler at heart. With Swivel, you can compare all kinds of data with a few simple clicks and Swivel will let you know how well the data is related.

If you see something interesting it might just be a coincidence or it could be something more. Comparing data is simple with Swivel so you can try a whole bunch of comparisons until something brilliant comes along.

At first, I admit, this sounded sort of like gimmick, a site that was happily riding on the coattails of the Freakonomics paradigm.  But, after thinking about it, the Swivel model suggests (or maybe recalls) an interesting invention strategy: the assembly of apparently unrelated data into one space as an attempt to make some sense of the relationship between them (and the writer’s relationship to that effort as well).  What I find appealing about Swivel’s explanation of itself is the emphasis on serendipity, luck, and contingency: "you can try a whole bunch of comparisons until something brilliant comes along."  There is no call for or guarantee of certainty or of brilliance, but rather an implication that there is something of value in making the effort to think about these data in context with one another.

Hmm.