Money spent on energy research vs. the Iraq war. (Via Matthew Yglesias.) Amusingly illustrative graph below the fold.

I'm not usually impressed by these kinds of comparisons; if the Iraq war really had inspired populaces throughout the entire Middle East to spontaneously overthrow their despotic governments and inaugurate a new era of democracy, tolerance, and prosperity, it would have been a good idea. The war is expensive, but that's not the best argument against it. Still, the occasional pictorial representation of our spending priorities does help to bring home how messed up they are. Via Ezra Klein, here's the famous food pyramid, along with a corresponding pyramid showing how we subsidize different types of production.

Sometimes this democracy stuff is just depressing.