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…

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.

TANSTAAFL

Cost of producing Acme Consumer Widget™ in two countries:

…

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…

DRM-free itunes music files are spying on you for the music industry

You may have read about how Apple, in its benevolence, is finally releasing its entire music catalogue in a digital rights management-free format – i.e., you can copy them freely as you see fit. Sounds great…

iiNet film piracy case

You might remember this from a few days ago – a federal minister reading directly from the film and music industry script about the evils of piracy.

Now, in what seems not to be a coincidence (perhaps a…

what do you mean ‘the bank is out of money’?

This article highlights something which seems pretty obvious to me: it is a bad idea to leave an economic system at the mercy of frequently irrational human perception and emotion, and the current crisis is more a product…

fukuyama on the decline of the American brand

I found this article by Francis Fukuyama to be a very worthwhile read on the subject of the current financial crisis and it’s implications for US politics at home and abroad.

It’s written with a clear-eyed understanding of modern…

refuse to tell your employer about your sex life, lose your job

This is an extraordinary decision by the Industrial Relations Commission.  Telstra has had its right to sack an employee upheld, where the basis of the sacking was that she had sex with another employee (or employees, it seems) outside of…

use telstra and no-one gets hurt

This has to be a new low in corporate spin, even for Telstra.  Apparently if genuine competition is allowed in the Australian broadband market, we will be more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Conveniently this directly links Telstra’s near-monopoly position…

petitio principii

This is a dangerous piece of circular reasoning: the solution to the problems created by an ageing population is to increase population growth.

The ‘logic’ employed appears to be that, in order to sustain the current number of…

how to undo 61 years of progress

This is a heartwarming little story – the process put in place to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay lacks some of the essential elements of fairness that were afforded even to the senior Nazis tried at Nuremberg. That is according…

welcome to the working week

From the letters in The Age today:

CHANGES in the approach to work hours, in relation to family or rest time, are long overdue — but this applies to all sections of the workforce, not just those with

…

freedom just around the corner for you

There is an interesting post on Samizdata (a UK blog best described as libertarian or individualist in philosophy) about the complicity of Western companies such as Google in the crimes of totalitarian regimes, and particularly China :

…one

…