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 [...]

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 [...]

The War on Terror is over, says Secretary of State Hillary.  Or, more accurately, the expression is “just not being used”.
It’s often tempting to think that politicians are all the same and that the Obama administration in reality represents only a miniscule shift towards the centre.  In reality, this seems to be another sign that [...]

This picture is incredible – I haven’t done the maths to work out if it’s actually the claimed “1474 megapixels”, but it’s a highly detailed panoramic photo of the Obama inauguration. You can zoom from the whole scene in close enough to clearly see what each member of the crowd is doing, and guess [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

I… don’t know what the hell is going on.  Telstra, harbinger of telecommunications doom, monopolistic behemoth extraordinaire, profit driven dinosaur which ambles across the land devouring its small, innovative mammalian competitors, has made a radically pro-human rights submission to the national human rights consultative panel.
I find it very disturbing to read words put forward by [...]

Obama’s been in office all of five minutes and his hair has already started going grey.

Clinton and Bush had the same experience (scroll down here).
Possible causes:

no longer has to dye hair in order to look younger than John McCain
following Bush Administration’s introduction of everyday use of ‘signing statements‘ to alter reality, now simply orders all [...]

Further to the post about Harry Nicolaides, I thought I would add a link to the case of Associate Professor Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a Thai academic who is seemingly about to be charged under the same antiquated and anti-democratic laws.
His crime?  Trying to better the lot of Thais by conducting open dialogue (by way of [...]

This is disgraceful: a Melbourne man, Harry Nicolaides, has been jailed in Thailand for three years for insulting the Thai royal family in a novel he has apparently written.  The conviction is a result of Thailand’s anachronistic “lese majeste” laws, which make insulting the royals an offence punishable by 3-15 years prison.  As this website [...]

I love it: