Visualizing 1,400,000 Gravestones [PIC]

There's an exception to every rule, and today's Digg leader is the exception to the rule that only liberal-friendly content will reach the front page. It's a picture of 1.4 million gravestones, the amount of people killed under the Cambodian socialist Khmer Rouge regime. The image is too large to upload to my blog, so you'll have to go here to check it out. Here's why it works:

1) Real-world depiction of a statistic: Statistics have more impact when they're taken out of their raw numerical context and made more "real," thereby utilizing not only logos but pathos as well. "One-point-four million" is simply unimaginable to most people, as most people don't have 1.4 million of anything. But turn it into a cute web graphic, and you're getting somewhere.

2) Picture: It's a picture. Pictures work. We've gone over this before.

3) Relevancy to Bush: Digg users hear the term "war deaths" and immediately their brains think "George Bush" and "Iraq." I'll bet a lot of users Dugg this picture without realizing that the Khmer Rouge was not a rogue Christian government attacking the Middle East, but a Stalinist/Communist/socialist regime in southeast Asia. So even though the picture had nothing to do with George Bush, on Digg -- it did.