The European Debt Crisis: now in SVG

When a major news source uses a rising new technology to present some very important information, you know the technology has begun to hit its stride.

Well, it looks like the New York Times has just bumped non-Flash web technologies: their highly informative new Overview of the Euro Crisis is written in SVG (with JavaScript interactivity).

The graphic is very clear..and I would say 'awesome', except that 'awesome' might look a little short-sighted when the economy collapses in..well, read the graphic.

View the page source to see definitions of various image elements (var canvasData). Here's a left-slice of the code:

circles: [{"name":["Germany"],"radius":["45.793"],"altname":["German"],"ypos":...
arrows: [{"altdebtor":["Italian"],"id":["it_fr"],"color":["DB704D"],"creditor":...
visibility: [{"scene3":[{}],"scene4":[{}],"scene5":[{}],"scene6":["100"],"objectid":["am"]...
lists: [{"creditor2":["Japanese"],"posdirection":["am_ja"],"creditor":["Japan"],"netowed":...

 
(Sorry about the unmatched brackets! I'm cringing too. But less, since I also have the full source in front of me.)

But seriously, go see what the New York Times has done without Flash.