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Wednesday linkage: Mars, Indian energy, Afghanistan, solar and more

by Sam Roggeveen - 15 August 2012 11:33AM

A 360° panorama of Mars from NASA's Curiosity rover. Definitely put this one of full screen. (H/t TDW.)
Posted during India's now-resolved black-out, but still useful: 10 interesting facts about India's energy sector.
Speaking of energy, this is a rather naive bit of solar boosterism from the ABC.
Why is no-one talking about Afghanistan this US election season? Because it doesn't matter very much, and Americans know it.
Will nuclear weapons become more or less influential in the emerging international security environment? It depends, mostly on China.
Why it's so hard for Western reporters to get Africa right.
Slate nominates the pallet as the single most important object in the global economy. There's an Australian angle:

As a sort of peace dividend, at war’s end the U.S. military left the Australian government with not only many forklifts and cranes, but about 60,000 pallets. To handle these resources, the Australian government created the Commonwealth Handling Equipment Pool, and the company eventually spawned a modern pallet powerhouse, CHEP USA, which now controls about 90 percent of the “pooled” pallet market in the United States.

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