Alright, so this week, not too much to report. Hope you had a great Halloween!

Before our regularly scheduled reading update, I just wanted to thank all of you, the readers, for making this the best month ever in terms of traffic for this blog. In October, there were over 540 unique visitors! Thanks again for visiting.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

In one of the most widely reported stories of the week, President Obama announced $3.4 billion in grants to jumpstart the smartgrid that we need to build for renewable energy to actually succeed. Unfortunately, this is more a token contribution than anything else. It is better than nothing, but not by much. When "smart" power lines cost $10-$15 million dollars per kilometer, we will need an investment hundreds of times that to actually make a difference. Irregardless, its an o.k. start. Via Live Science.

This you simply need to take a look at. Pictures of the damage that China has done to its environment. Take a look. Via China Hush.

While the government is upset about this article, I think it illustrates a great point about government inefficiency. Edmund's states that it cost taxpayers $24,000 for every car sold under the cash for clunkers program, as many of the cars sold were going to be sold anyway. Statistics lie, so take it with a grain of salt, but again, I wonder if there wasn't a better way to do this. 

An interesting visualization of a skin cell. Via Flowing Data.

Have a great week!