melbourne

Studying in Melbourne this week.

on finding one’s car has been broken into and one’s car stereo taken

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:

1. Fuck.  I am not really angry so much

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yellow

Near Kapunda, South Australia.

currently reading: the slap

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…

politician tells truth

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…

swine flu in adelaide

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)…

steve keen on australian house prices

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…

south australia continues to push the presumption of guilt

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…

the tort of invasion of privacy

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…

screwing your customers just makes sense

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…

rationality vs political expediency – australia’s problem with water

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,…

creeping fascism update

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…

TANSTAAFL

Cost of producing Acme Consumer Widget™ in two countries:

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cat-tempted interference with contractual relations

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)…

harry nicolaides to be pardoned

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…