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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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…

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…

why you shouldn’t use google chrome

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…

war on terror semi-officially over

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…

currently reading: the grapes of wrath

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.

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…

collaborating in another holocaust

Epic win:

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…

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)…

manage your digital rights

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…

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…

telstra, defender of the universe

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…