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 [...]

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 [...]

You may have heard of Google Chrome, Google’s attempt to take on Internet Explorer and Firefox by releasing a stand alone web browser (no doubt part of Google’s secret plan to gradually take over the world).  As with most Google services, it looks interesting and well designed.
However, as this article suggests, as is also the [...]

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 [...]

Rather ponderously paced, but an interesting insight into the drastic effect the corporatisation of farming had in the U.S. The theme of vast, anonymous commercial organisations arbitrarily destroying productive industries and lives certainly resonates in 2009.

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 [...]

Epic win:

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 [...]

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” [...]

I came across this very informative summary of the current (purported) rights that various on-line communities claim over the content you, the user, uploads.  For example, Facebook’s terms of service are completely horrendous, whereas Flickr is relatively respectful of your rights.  I say “purported” because whether some of the stuff in these agreements would stand [...]

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.

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 [...]