http://youtu.be/UmW1o6rzI7g The Canadians, who have a very strong IP regime have been put on the American's USTR Special 301 Priority Watch List. So they're getting going tightening up their IP for the delectation of the IP boosters. The Spaniards have already passed a SOPA st...
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I see there's a US nationwide campaign against private for-profit prisons. Maybe the campaigners are right. It's certainly easy to imagine ways in which the profit motive would work against the interests of prison inmates and the public interest in lower recidivism rates and s...
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This Thursday, behind closed doors in Melbourne, representatives from nine countries including Australia will take up discussions once again on an ambitious, comprehensive trade agreement for the Asia-Pacific region. Negotiators from Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Vietnam, Malaysia...
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We keep reading claims that Tony Abbott is a low-grade politician who would be wiped off the face of Australian politics if the ALP could only get its act together . Since Abbott has already knocked off one of Australia's most popular prime ministers and taken another to withi...
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Alvy Singer : What's with all these awards? They're always giving out awards. Best Fascist Dictator: Adolf Hitler. Annie Hall It was with great excitement that I read my alumni news for ANU this month . Extraordinary things are happening. KPIs are being broken through all over...
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The picture of Kevin Rudd's prime ministership painted over the weekend by former speechwriter Jamie Button ought to be fatal to Rudd's leadership bid. It jibes with a number of other assessments , including some just this week by senior Cabinet ministers like Nicola Roxon . T...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4
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The view from America: "the plot has thickened like barbie sauce and Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott is the happiest man in Australia." Aaron Goldstein, The Spectacle Blog . Gillard government a policy free zone: "Now that the Rudd agenda has mostly been passed or abandoned,...
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Via Mark Thoma Languages di?er widely in the ways they partition time. In this paper I test the hypothesis that languages which grammatically distinguish between present and future events (what linguists call strong- FTR languages) lead their speakers to take fewer future-orie...
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A small plea to Kevin Rudd and everyone else in the country: can we restrict the term "faceless men" to people who are actually unknown? Today I see a reference to "Crean and other faceless men". For pity's sake, Simon Crean has been in public life since 1979 and in Parliament...
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The Anglophone countries often cluster together on various measures of national greatness or depravity - such as household savings (we haven't been doing much of it - until recently). But it's quite dramatic how much worse we're doing on obesity than anyone else. And boy do th...
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For discussion: one of the far right's greatest achievements in the past decade has been to show post-modernists how wrong they were. Let me explain. In a famous 2004 article on the Iraq War, the New York Times journalist Ron Suskind quotes an aide to George W. Bush (possibly...
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Last week I was ready to write off ABC Melbourne interviewer Jon Faine for ill-judged rudeness and inadequate research . Now he's gone and redeemed himself with a Tony Abbott interview . Faine at his best is smartly, aggressively prosecutorial without actually being rude. Abbo...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJNM0C-7lPk&feature=player_embedded I bought my daughter a very enjoyable book The art of great speeches: and why we remember them by my friend Dennis Glover for Christmas. The book manages the triad of rhetorical tasks very nicely - it delights...
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A tough-talking, motorcycle-riding Texan, sociologist C Wright Mills is about as far from today's stereotype of the latte-sipping left-wing intellectual as you're likely to find. But even though he's been dead for 50 years, you can still see his influence in the intellectual l...
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In 2007 Greece spent 9.9% of GDP on age pensions. This was the fourth highest level of spending on pensions in the OECD (after Austria, Spain and Italy). Australia spent 3.2% of GDP, the fifth lowest level of spending in the OECD (ahead of Iceland, Ireland, Korea and Mexico)....
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We save for the future by building things: "As a society, we save for the future by channeling resources—steel, electricity, human labor power—into the production of things that last a long time rather than things that are more perishable." Matthew Yglesias, Moneybox . Investi...
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And by “internal”, I mean in the same paragraph : “This week, President Obama will release a budget that won’t take any meaningful steps toward solving our entitlement crisis,” Romney said in a statement e-mailed to reporters. “The president has failed to offer a single seriou...
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The bank debate now seems officially out of control. Increasingly foolish notions about banking are being served up day after day. One example: the developing meme that claims the banks have decided they will no longer be bound by official interest rate policy. One morning las...
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James O'Loghlin had me on his Sunday night show which was broadcast on ABC local radio tonight. In fact it would have been, but because of the cricket only went out via live feed on the net. Anyway, it was quite a long interview - went for 20 odd minutes so we got through quit...
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http://youtu.be/-4V40twk63A Screen tests are fun to look at, letting you peek before the actors peak, as it were (or crash). There must be some good philosophy to be written about the uncanny. (Hasn't Susan Sontag written something on this?) [On checking , it turns out that Si...
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As a regular reader of Brad DeLong I was slightly alarmed at a recent post reporting an outbreak of unpleasantness about which OECD country has the most progressive tax system. Brad DeLong linked to an article by Jonathan Chait which rather sharply criticised Veronique de Rugy...
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From the 1891 Taranaki Herald
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Conservatism "thrives on low intelligence and poor information", writes George Monbiot who reports the results of, a recent study showing that "prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence, but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence...
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I was rung today for a comment on second hand car imports by the Global Mail . Here's a Guardian blog about it. I didn't know what it was, but that just shows how out of touch I am here at my terminal. It's a philanthropically funded newspaper. And it's philanthropically funde...
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We are all in Tom Watson's debt for pursuing the corruption of the Murdoch press as vigorously as he has - and continues to. I have had some dealings with Tom arising from my involvement in the Government 2.0 Taskforce. In any event, in addition to continuing his pursuit of th...
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It's a strange thing. Film festivals are great things. Yet in my case I see them come, think "I'd like to go to some of those movies" and an awful lot of the time I don't manage to make it. We have two sectors - the commercial sector that advertises its little head off and ser...
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Public debts in Southern Europe only grew in 2011, and they were already unsustainable in 2010. Worse, the interest rates these countries have to pay on their debts has grown as all the long-term rolled-over debt held by these countries now carries a 7% upwards interest rate....
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Right now Ray Finkelstein and Matthew Ricketson, the two members of the federal government's Independent Media Inquiry , are trying to finish off their report to the government. It's due by 28 February. Writing these reports is frequently difficult, but Finkelstein and Rickets...
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Next month I'm doing a gig for Rotary where I'm going to be on a panel with a demographer and a climatologist and they're going to ask us to say what will happen in the next 20 years. In five minutes. That's five minutes each - so there's plenty of time. I get to talk about th...
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http://youtu.be/YQIMGV5vtd4
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http://youtu.be/x7M47ITv8iQ One thing I think about whenever I sit in a tram waiting for cars that shouldn't be holding up the tram to stop holding up the tram is that trams should have a video cam on them and drivers could have a button that either activates the cam or marks...
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I've been counting those I know who are highly energetic, positive people and who are naturally excited by the possibilities of the web, who have been leaving government employ. I can think of Darren Whitelaw in Victoria, Mia Garlick in the Commonwealth service (though based i...
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Occasionally I get so distracted by the way someone writes that I can't concentrate on what they're saying. Here's John Howard in today's Financial Review : To adopt Shakespeare, Meryl Streep came to bury Margaret Thatcher, not to praise her. This was attempted -- in the film...
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Bad back, sad sack. Yes, folks that's an inane family saying. Which brings me to the point of this post which is to say that my back is killing me. I have a bit of a scoleosis but am told by those in the know that it isn't a big problem or explanation for my back ache - which,...
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[slideshare id=4858111&doc=ourfuturelibrary3-100728100555-phpapp02] Tim O'Reilly proposed the slogan "Government as a platform" for his Government 2.0 activities which he's heavily scaled back in favour of more lucrative opportunities. But there was always a problem. That prob...
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A Twitter randomised trial: "I have a confession to make", writes Andrew Leigh , "I’m a twitter-sceptic." But in keeping with his evidence-based approach to decision making, Andrew Leigh MP is embarking on a one month randomised trial. @aleighmp Why libertarians need to talk w...
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Here is this pesky subscription drive at the top of Troppo again. I'll pull it down in the next few days. But OFFERS END FRIDAY 17th Feb!! It's on again folks. Crikey subscribers on the group subscription I organise have begun getting presubscription emails. Whether you are a...
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Not so long ago ALP politicians controlled the governments of every state. I think they still did at the end of 07, though I may be wrong. In any event, it was an obvious opportunity an amazingly rare opportunity. For that reason I spent a bit of time on this blog and on the p...
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I've always thought that institutions that are set up at arms length from government to offer independent advice to governments would be an excellent venue for online discussions to start taking place. An easy opportunity, pretty comprehensively passed up was the Public Servic...
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