I was in Washington DC yesterday renewing my passport. The US is still imperial, so to comply with Australian metric standards I had to order A4 paper and the photos took two goes before they were within the bounds of the 'biometric' software reader. But the passport is just a...
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About fifteen, perhaps twenty years ago I was talking to a good friend who is an academic in maths education. He was saying that Casio was interested in getting input into the educational potential of their graphical calculators. I thought there was a real opportunity here. On...
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Lets think constructively about the environment and lets try to think 10 years ahead in global environmental debates. There are many global environmental problems, and these are likely to get worse. The best known one is of course global warming likely due to greenhouse gas em...
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Well I just cant stop gnawing at the bone. I saw an interesting post on Joshua Gans site on feature creep (Bottom line we want more features when we buy products and fewer when we get them home). Anyway in responding to it in the comments thread I challenged Joshua to a shooto...
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I spoke with my accountant today and asked her if my company could lend me money - it's got more money than it needs and I've got less than I want. Actually having written that I realise it's not accurate. The point of borrowing money from my company is that I'm borrowing lots...
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Well, things have been a bit lively on the technology side, so no internal hyperlinks (and no wiki, alas). Nonetheless your faithful Missing Link Editorial team (tm) have done their bit to bring you lots of bloggy goodness to enjoy. Kicking off today's issue is a variety of di...
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Im feeling cranky today, so readers beware. A must-read article for all those interested in global warming and CO2 emissions is the recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by our very own Michael Raupach from CSIRO and co-authors, to be found here ....
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Well, this may not look like a picture of the trade balance, but it was certainly the nicest pickie that Google Images came up with when I was searching for a picture of the trade balance. Yum. I reworked this former post of mine for the Age Business section which published it...
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Steven Pearlstein has written an article in the WaPo [reg] arguing that the oil companies in the US require a nationalised competitor in order to make the market, especially refineries and trading desks, efficient. He writes: Standard's first order of business would be to expa...
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From Colin Wicking I'm not sure what's happened to Colin Wicking's excellent Ned the Bear cartoon series. Maybe Ned's gone into hibernation for the dry season, which just hit Darwin belatedly this morning. For readers (including me) suffering Wicking withdrawals, here's a rece...
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What would you do with an academic economic journal if you were given control over it? What innovations would you enforce designed to make the journal more to your liking? Below I list some ideas talked about in the corridors of academia and ask you to give your opinion on the...
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What if I go to Italy and my mother comes here looking for me? How will she find me? So asks Vanya, a six-year-old boy in a depressing orphanage in the middle of Russian nowhere. A nice Italian couple have applied to adopt him. This ought to be a profitable transaction for eve...
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Via the Tele : A FRIDGE, underwear and a Darth Vader voice distorter were some of the items bought by Darwin's lord mayor using stolen council funds, a court was told today. Darwin's Lord Mayor Peter Adamson, 46, is facing four charges, including stealing, obtaining property b...
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Robert Solow is perhaps the funniest economist I know producing the marvellous passage quoted here on ideological orientations within economics. As well as being funny, he's super smart and low key sensible - a doubly rare combination. Here's his review of the McCraw biography...
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1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S. 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Well, the news in this issue of Missing Link is that News Ltd appears to have played lots of people for suckers. First, there was the story that some of the proposed cit...
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When a generation of activists, writers and artists rallies around slogans like " never trust anyone over 30 " and " hope I die before I get old " a book like Mark Davis ' gangland is almost inevitable. But Davis always knew that generationalism was a cheap shot -- a way of gr...
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In the age of the network computer, it seems crazy for school kids to be lugging round heavy backpacks. Backpacks are much better for the health of their backs than the big canvas/vinyl sports bags that we used in our days - which may have played some role in the scoliosis in...
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Mark Davis is not a happy man. I bought his book Gangland a while back - turns out to be ten years ago - and it seemed quite interesting, and perhaps on a worthy theme. But it was strangely dissatisfying nevertheless. Now a piece in the Saturday mags edited from Davis's Overla...
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Via MeFi . This gave me a good laugh, someone is trying to describe Australian politics to an American audience: It's all perfectly simple. Australia's ruling conservative party is called the Liberal Party. The opposing, allegedly more liberal party is called the Labor Party (...
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There've been a few departures today but amongst them is Paul Wolfowitz . I often wonder why righties think that post modernity is some conspiracy of the left. Well I don't really - I guess it's because so many of the philosophers and cultural commentators who are regarded as...
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Jon Kudelka envisages Howard as Fred Flintstone and Bill Heffernan as Dino. Only trouble is that both look much too cute and loveable. Is Jon running out of inspiration? 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad...
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Australia has had a very successful economic decade with declining unemployment, low inflation and fairly strong economic growth. Are Howard and Costello right to argue that it was mostly the Governments doing and in particular that it reflected some hard political decisions s...
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Well bugger me. If Andrew Bolt in todays Herald Sun isnt having a good old whinge about the blatant bias of the recent ABC series Bastard Boys . Whod a thought it hey? The bias unveiled by Mr. Bolt includes inadequate mentions of the nick, inadequate representation of bludging...
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For anyone who's interested, McCraw's bio of Schumpeter will be the main item for your delectation on LNL tonight. Here's a review I've not read yet. 'Prophet of Innovation: Joseph A Schumpeter and Creative Destruction': Phillip talks to Harvard Business historian Thomas McCra...
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Well I keep promising to explain the neurological foundations of homo dialecticus in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments but then there keep being things that the previous post requires as a follow up. A couple of posts ago in this series I discussed feedback within the fi...
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A "dozen or so pages of ignorance and silliness". That's how Andrew Norton describes Christine Wallace's recent article for the Griffith Review -- 'Libertarian nation by stealth'. Wallace's major offence is to confuse Robert Bork's moralistic conservatism with libertarianism....
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If you want to impress an economist, tell him you've got this list of people to support what you want. Kenneth J. Arrow, Robert Forsythe, Michael Gorham, Robert Hahn, Robin Hanson, Daniel Kahneman, John O. Ledyard, Saul Levmore, Robert Litan, Paul Milgrom, Forrest D. Nelson, G...
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Mark at Stoushnet reflects on Heavy Kevy's alleged secret musings about re-introduing some form of AWA 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. The Yartz 3. Life and Other Serious Stuff 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad It's a rude shock returning to editing Missing Link, despite Helen...
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I'm reading an interesting book at the moment called He'll be right OK . It's by a NZ woman who has been working with men in prison for twenty odd years. She got caught up in something called "The Good Man Project" run by some NZ boys only schools and it's a memoire of her tim...
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Here's a nice illustration of the (hidden) costs of red tape. I've just signed up to let everyone know that I'm happy if they use bits of me for better purposes than feeding maggots if I'm dead. The letter I received with my card says that the details of my decision "are prote...
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IANAE but in June last year there was a spate of discussion over productivity and real wages having a one to one correlation. Nicholas Gruen wrote in a comment to his article Economic Nonsense : But in the long run, you expect to see income trending towards productivity. Peopl...
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As a fan of Robert Manne, I've been a bit disappointed in his output of late. But he's usually invigorated by a newly worthy cause and in this case it's academic freedom from the excesses of the culture wars .
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According to Ross Gittins in the weekend Herald , There's been a lot of debate - and confusion - over the right way to assess the degree of stimulus the budget will impart to the economy and how this may affect interest rates. Well, he's dead right about the confusion. But unf...
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Margaret Simmons had a lead article in Crikey recently in which she quoted Mark Day bemoaning the way in which, in his view Packers gaming interests were tearing apart the corporate culture of Channel Nine. As Day put it I believe media is a positive force in society while gam...
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I began this series of posts a while ago, but its theme is that two identifiable schools of economics focus on two economic phenomena as central and tend to underplay something else. The two phenomena and their traditions are as follows: 1. the pursuit of self interest (econom...
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I'm a huge fan of Warren Buffett - the billionaire from a Norman Rockwell painting.He understands the central problem of finance reduced in economists jargon to the principal-agent problem in the context of asymmetric information.Investors need to be able to trust managers, so...
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Thx to to Ric Simes for sendinng me the link to this piece in the New Yorker bemoaning the Bush Govt's lack of accountability. As Ric said it is all of a piece with my bemoaning 'he said - she said' journalism . Attorney General Alberto Gonzaless admission that mistakes were m...
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In the newly dumbed down and still decending A2 Supplement in The Age comes a nicely written review of a bad book about a great actress. My all time fave I think. From the review: " How, one wonders, could she not have wanted to give more sense of Bergman's career highlights?...
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When I first saw that there was a musical called "Keating!" I avoided it like the plague. Keating had his strong points - namely his mastery of the language. But I feared lame nostagia for this Great Land that Keating was going to build. The same Great Land that we heard almos...
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A few quick comments on Kevin Rudd's Budget Reply speech. 1. The text was very well crafted, full of clear undertakings and strong metaphors, and Rudd delivered it with a nice balance between enthusiasm and calm authority. There was none of Beazley's verbosity or Latham's tran...
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Is there such a thing as 'Budget Bounce'? Will Cossie's spend-up save the Coalition come polling day? Or is the budget something of a Curate's Egg - only good in parts? Welcome to Club Troppo's Budget Special Edition, where we round up the best blogospheric commentary so you d...
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Crikey ran a piece of mine today heavily reworked from my earlier Troppo post on 'he said - she said' journalism. In it I tried to further articulate - with the help of my friend George Orwell - how serious this issue is. For me it's the difference between reason and unreason,...
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Crikey has taken it upon itself to run a competition in which people get the same number of words Lincoln used in the Gettysburg address to get their rocks off about this great nation. The entries have been uniformly execrable - well execrable, but perhaps not uniformly. Even...
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Here's my column for the ABC website on the budget which focuses on what's good about the tax cuts - already foreshadowed in my previous post . Tax cuts meld good economics with good politics The test of a good politician is whether they can craft out of their own political se...
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Tomorrow, as the 2007 Extravaganza Budget is knocked off the front pages by the developing drama of Paris Hiltons bid for freedom, the Australian punters, flush with already factored-in cash from yesterdays tax cut announcement, will no doubt cast a critical eye over Treasurer...
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If someone told me they were going to forego some money cutting tax and asked me for some tips these are some tips I would have given them. Cut the bottom marginal rate or lift the threshold at which the second marginal rate cuts in. If you're cutting tax to the battlers consi...
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Paul Kelly is on the button, he tells us : The policy and strategic flaws of the Howard Government have been exposed this week with the appointment by ALP leader Kevin Rudd of Australian National University economics professor Ross Garnaut to produce Australias version of the...
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Former Skyhooks guitarist and media 'personality' - he's a funny man if you're up early in Melbourne on Radio 774 - Red Symonds has taken to video mophing to amuse himself. Crikey often picks up his efforts. Having looked at a few this one particularly took my fancy. If as I p...
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1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Industrial relations got Ozblogistan going this week, with some great stuff from across the political spectrum. That apart, there was some interest in the French election...
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From last week's Fin Review. The Australian Bureau of Statistics publications on government finance measure the financial activities of governments and reflect the impact of those activities on other sectors of the economy. But statistics sometimes fail, mostly because politic...
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Does relative poverty matter? If differences in income just mean that some people have bigger, shinier barbeques then probably not. Big shiny propane guzzling barbeques are nice but, as Clive Hamilton says , living without one doesn't amount to hardship. To many people it seem...
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The teachers were becoming concerned. Week by week, the kids at the Hilltop Children's Center were building a city out of LEGO . And as the city emerged, so too did the children's assumptions about private property and power -- assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based...
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What is Michael Caine doing playing God? He's in the forthcoming film Sophie's World. You might wonder what they're doing turning a kids book on the history of Western philosophy into a film. But then you might have thought a similar things bout the book - which was a huge bes...
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I picked up The Age A2 supplement grabbing some lunch earlier today and read this sweet story . It's nothing that special but I liked its blend of surprise and ordinariness. It's about George Harrison's Mum and the daughter of a Mills and Boon author! It's Troppo category is '...
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Hayek was an an activist liberal rather than a conservative, writes Roger Kimball . And now that the struggle against socialist planning is over, the important question is where Hayek thought we should go from here. What was his vision for a liberal Utopia? In his essay 'The I...
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An exciting day. Dell is shipping Linux PCs. Here's a write up of Mark Shuttleworth talking about the move. He's a major smoothie if you watch the video . I just love the way he avoids the use of the word 'Microsoft'. He he. I reckon it mightn't be long now before Linux become...
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Hat tip to new blogger Leslie Katz. For some reason the You Tube screen is not making it's way through our software - but check this out . Dead simple really!
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1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Well, nothing's so handy as a theme, but this edition of Missing Link doesn't have one. I thought Julia Gillard and Bill Heffernan opening their respective mouths to chan...
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Here's an op ed I wrote for The Age in response to the shock and horror of a scandal that's brewing down here in Victoria. Real estate agents are (gasp) underquoting house prices at auctions. Ask a real estate agent what price they expect a house theyre auctioning to sell for,...
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Well that's too much to hope for. I've posted on 'he said - she said' journalism at least once before. Like reality TV 'he said - she said' journalism is the logical consequence of the economics of profit driven newspaper reporting of politics. The journalists' knowledge is ne...
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Reading the Murdoch Press and hearing the Mining companies, one could be forgiven for thinking the apocalypse would descend on us if Labors IR industrial relations policies were implemented. I have tried to understand what the main concerns of business and the media are and I...
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Guest Post by Paul Hobson. A little bit about myself: Im female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. Thats all you need to know. Its all that matters these days anyway. Thats how Riverbend began her Baghdad Burning blog on 17 August 2003. Although for 4 years the war in Iraq has...
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I may trouble myself to write chapter and verse about why you shouldn't bother upgrading to Office 2007 until the inevitable time (though I suspect those days are dying) when Microsoft manages to trap you into needing it for compatibility purposes. But a picture tells a thousa...
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and his mellifluously titled blog interfluidity are often very interesting. He doestn't post all that often, but that's what Google Reader is for - you don't have to visit his site to know if he's got any new offerings. Steve is interested in the financial markets and in parti...
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For more than three decades, from the late 1940s to the 1980s, Heinz Arndt was the most prolific and energetic economist in Australia. His prodigious output of articles, books, lectures, conference papers, reviews and reports is testimony to his productivity. For twenty years...
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1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Two events captured Ozblogistan's collective attention: the ALP National Conference, and the World Cup Cricket Finals Fiasco. There were some excellent posts about both,...
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