Tufte appointed onto Obama panel

Edward Tufte has announced today that he has been appointed by President Obama onto the four-man Recovery Independent Advisory Panel which will advise The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, whose job is to track and explain the US $787 billion spent on recovery stimulus funds.

For those of you unaware of Tufte, you could say that he is to information design what Robert De Niro is to acting. This should be seen as a very important appointment for the profile of the subject and the broader field of visual thinking.