Tuesday links: Energy, China diplomacy, Syria, Jane Austen and more

7 May 2013 14:12

China becoming a player in Israel-Palestine diplomacy?
Via Fallows, a scathing take on modern China: 'It's becomes painfully obvious to me how something like the Great Leap Forward could happen in China where millions starved. When a society is built on so many layers of superficiality, bullshit and hypocrisy, and passing off responsibility to others, getting at the truth to solve real problems becomes impossible.'
Prices for all major categories of renewable energy continue to fall.
US historian and columnist Anne Applebaum is in Sydney, a city apparently witnessing a 'proliferation of Starbucks'.
'Quantitative urbanism', the mathematical study of cities.
Empathy: if Syria had bombed an Israeli military base, how would the world have reacted?
Jane Austen, game theorist:

'Down and out down under'