Studying in Melbourne this week.

A stream of consciousness meditation on crime from the perspective of a semi-libertarian bleeding heart cynic whose 1990 Mistubishi Galant was found violated and stripped of its CD player this morning:

Fuck.  I am not really angry so much as just really, really irritated at how inconvenient this is.
It took me a whole day to do [...]

Near Kapunda, South Australia.

Along with the wonderful V, I am reading The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.  So far, I am hard pressed to think of a novel I have enjoyed less.
The novel apparently examines “identities and personal relationships in a multicultural society” and “taps into universal tensions and dilemmas around family life and child-rearing”.  So far, though, I [...]

Shock, horror.
Kudos to Kelvin Thompson, federal Labor MP, for having the courage to stand up to the “eternal growth” fools who currently dictate economic and development policies in the western world and point out that excessive population growth is the root cause of most of our serious problems.
It is time for governments and policy makers [...]

One of the “highlights” of Adelaide’s CBD are the bronze pigs on Rundle Mall (often the subject of late night, beer fuelled photos of people riding them). Some inspired person has seen fit to protect us (or them) from deadly swine flu:
(Source of photo unknown).

Anyone interested in housing affordability in Australia (as I currently am) could do worse than to read this fascinating piece by economist Steve Keen, who I have sadly only just discovered.
In short: housing is extremely expensive in Australia; we may well be in line for a major correction in house prices; and there appears to [...]

Following on from the recent bikie-gang violence at Sydney airport, there has been a chorus of praise for South Australia’s abhorrent anti-association laws (summarised here at Larvatus Prodeo, who rightly point out the idiocy of presuming guilt based on a person’s mode of transportation, but overlook the fact that in fact the SA laws are [...]

There is a lot of discussion at the moment about the question of whether Australia is moving towards a tort of ‘invasion of privacy’ as a result of the publication of compromising pictures supposedly of Pauline Hanson. There is a useful note on recent UK developments in the Max Mosley case and some speculation [...]

I thought this was an interesting little article about the present state of the music industry and where it’s heading.
In summary, the big labels know that people paying $30/album and $2/track for recorded music is not going to last forever, and have plans in place to deal with that eventuality. Those plans seem to [...]

You might recall this post from a couple of years back about water use in Australia – basically, the point was that as a matter of measurable, objective fact urban water use is utterly dwarfed by agricultural use, and if we are serious about changing our water consumption in this country the only realistic option [...]

Happy news from NSW, where the police are now going to have the power to secretly search homes and computers continuously for up to three years before any notification is given to the subject of the searches.  This will apply even though the subject has committed no actual offence, and will be based solely on [...]

Cost of producing Acme Consumer Widget™ in two countries:

Item
Country A
Country B

Raw materials
$5
$5

Labour costs in compliance with local
minimum wage and employment laws
$30
$2

Cost of compliance with OH&S requirements
$5
$0

Cost of compliance with environmental laws
$3
$0

Total
$43
$7

So why do we persist in calling trade agreements with countries that lack basic labour and environmental standards “free” trade agreements?
Prediction 1: in 20 years [...]

You may have come across software “End User Licence Agreements” before in the course of installing Adobe Acrobat, Windows or other software.  These are documents which typically require a person wishing to use software to click “I Agree” (or similar) to the terms before they are permitted to do so (called a “shrink-wrap” or “click-wrap” [...]

An update on Harry Nicolaides – he’s set to receive a royal pardon.  Which is great for Harry, but just goes to show that the current Thai legal regime is one in which arbitrary decisions of members of a royal family are more important that principles of free speech or basic human rights.