Things that have interested me lately

[undyingking]

• Acceptosaurus -- this, and the comments underneath, are very funny whether or not you're involved in submitting papers, evolutionary biology, etc.
• Lady GaGa is an Illuminati puppet -- does this surprise anyone at all? And the Bad Romance song and video are all about Baphomet, as they would be.
• George Monbiot slams the feed-in tariff -- my own feeling is that micro does have some place, eg. solar hot water. But he does a good job here of exposing the skewed financing behind the current plans. I'd be interested to hear your critiques, if you disagree.
• Flip Flop Fly -- an excellent collection of sport-related infographics. Mostly to do with baseball, but toward teh foot of the page there are a load to do with other sports. Not all of the data is especially interesting, but it's a great showcase of different diagramming / design techniques.
  

[Poll #1533213]

Comments

[zengineer.livejournal.com]

I was reading an article this week that suggested a better way to fund things and a way used more commonly in other countries is that if a government wants something it issues an invitation to tender for it. So if it wants (say) a cheap solar panel factory it should issue an ITT for every south facing government building roof to be retiled with solar panels produced from a UK factory. This is more or less the way it works in defence in which Britain is quite successful and seems less likely to create incentives for people to do perverse things.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be in contravention of EU law? -- I had the feeling it was illegal to rectrict govt contracts to domestic businesses, apart from in certain security-critical areas. Although perhaps that just applies to ownership, not to location of factory.

[zengineer.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure but it does happen. All EU governments give grants for car makers to build new models in their country even with foreign based companies like Nissan and Toyota.