(cross-posted from Core) Though the Assad regime is still brutalising the Syrian population in a desperate attempt to hold onto power, the post-Spring contours of the Middle East are becoming visible. It is now clear that the Assad regime cannot hold on ( see the betting marke...
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http://youtu.be/hOI7G2j_pRM
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A nice Project Syndicate column from Brad Delong . This is how it starts. When French politician and moral philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville published the first volume of his Democracy in America in 1835, he did so because he thought his France was in big trouble--and had lots...
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This NYT article highlights something I've long gone on about - the serendipity of information. Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan stared at a printout of gene sequences from a man with cancer , a subject in one of his studies. There, along with the man’s cancer genes, was something unexpect...
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[ This was written on Sunday. An edited version was published at the G8 universities site The Conversation late this afternoon. ] The Northern Territory's Labor government led by Chief Minister Paul Henderson was swept from power at yesterday's election by Terry Mills' Country...
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By October 8 th of this year, the European Finance ministers must decide whether or not to send Greece 11.5 billion Euros in bailout funds, based on the report of the ‘Troika’ (the EU, ECB, and IMF) as to whether Greece is holding up its end of the bailout conditions. If the T...
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I just discovered Tom Keating, an art forger. I was reading a junky $5 book in a book remainders store on famous criminals (as you do) and as I read his story I'm afraid I liked the guy for the way in which his great skills seemed 'genuine' as it were - driven by the love of a...
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I couldn’t resist buying a copy of Daniel Kahneman’s best-seller when returning from holidays. Several friends and colleagues told me it was a great book; it got great reviews; and Kahneman’s journal articles are invariably a good read, so I was curious. Its general message is...
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Posted in Life, Philosophy, Education, Literature, Society, Economics and public policy, Science, Geeky Musings, Methodology, Information, Social
Some readers may remember this blog post . Here's an update from today's Age/ SMH column. IN 2010 the energetic and forward-looking (then) secretary of Victoria's Education Department invited me to discuss educational innovation and Web 2.0 with senior departmental managers. W...
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By sheer chance, on Sunday I found myself listening on ABC Classic FM to part of the 18th century opera ' The Good-Hearted Curmudgeon '. In her inimitable way, Jen couldn't help suggesting that the opera might have been named after me. Little did I know that within an hour or...
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AKA, "Follow ups no-one asked for". Last year I spent some idle time doing some rough work to see if ethnic and religious populations[1] were more clustered in Sydney than in Melbourne - presumably due to geographical factors. This was done by calculating Gini coefficients and...
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I haven't got time for much of a post, but here's a marker in the sand. There's an interesting conversation going on at Mainly Macro on the Lucas Critique . Amid much discussion about the merits of internal consistency (pretty much everyone thinks it's great. In a messy scienc...
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In a recently published study withTony Beatton (QUT), I looked at how happiness changes by age. For the freely downloadable working paper version, see here. The main findings of the study can be summarised by the graph below, where you can see the way happiness changes over th...
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We are nearing the end of Mario Monti’s first year in office as Italian Prime Minister. As the largest of the Southern European economies experiencing difficulties paying off large public debts, Italy’s fate is crucial for the future of the European Union as a single financial...
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I wrote recently about the prevalence of personal smear tactics by both major parties in the current NT election campaign. It is one of the more repugnant aspects of modern politics, exemplified at federal level by the current Ashby v Slipper shenanigans. Last week the tactics...
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One of Australia's more enterprising journalists, Michael Short asked me to feature 'In The Zone' in the Age a media 'package' he developed and curates for The Age and the SMH. One does a fairly lengthy interview and a short video and then he writes it up for the paper and the...
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A gusty performance by Ecuador, granting asylum to Julian Assange. Assange's claim that he faces further extradition to the US from a disingenuous Sweden, appears to be borne out by the Ecuadorian behind-the-scenes investigations. A simple assurance from the Swedes that furthe...
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I had the pleasure this year of spending part of my holidays in northern Italy. Despite the prolonged recession that you can see the place is currently experiencing, it is still a rich country with good food, great wine, and great scenery. Indeed, there is no real feeling of g...
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http://vimeo.com/28413747
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The 1950s saw Australia's Italian Renaissance which now leaves its traces in the tourist traps of Lygon St. Well they're not too bad, but if you wanted to go to a good Italian Restaurant you'd have to know what you were doing to get a really good one in Lygon St. But things ha...
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[caption id="attachment_21240" align="alignright" width="200"] Socrates Plato Paris Aristotle (it's all Greek to me - sorry couldn't help it)[/caption] Today's report on asylum seeker policy by Prime Minister Gillard's Expert Panel seems so far to have received a more positive...
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Debates over income support are never ending. And part of the reason is that people have different ideas about what they want the income support system to achieve. When it comes to income support payments for people below retirement age who are capable of paid work, there are...
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Here's a poster seeking to raise funds for the World War One effort. As you can see, the symbol chosen was a tad ahead of its time and, given that it was for the British war effort, it was so far ahead of its time that it was decided not to use the same symbol even twenty year...
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I've always liked badminton - to play and to watch, though I do almost none of either . . . Strange. http://youtu.be/0kTxTWwkY6k
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[caption id="attachment_21207" align="alignright" width="231"] Charmanjot Singh[/caption] Not before time, a NSW Legislative Council committee is considering the possible abolition of the provocation partial defence to murder. If the defence is successful it reduces murder to...
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One of the more fascinating aspects of the current NT election campaign from an afficionado's viewpoint is the phenomenon of intersecting and overlapping fear campaigns by the two major parties. Spin doctors take exactly the same set of facts (in this case NT net debt and defi...
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Speaking of his attendance at a sermon by the Reverend Whitefield. He had a loud and clear voice, and articulated his words and sentences so perfectly, that he might be heard and understood at a great distance, especially as his auditories, however numerous, observ'd the most...
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"One punch" or "king hit" homicides have been in the news recently, especially since the killing of young Thomas Kelly in Kings Cross in Sydney a couple of weeks ago. In the Northern Territory dreadful events of that sort have been frequently discussed ever since the killing o...
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Today's Age and SMH Column. GLOBAL downturns are the fault lines around which our automotive industry has always reinvented itself. In theory, managers should restructure their businesses and businesses should change hands whenever it improves productivity. Alas human nature i...
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http://www.youtube.com/v/zmaF7Pys7OI I looked up an old post of mine tonight - and happened upon this post which had the video above embedded in it. It refused to play because NineMSM has asserted its copyright in the clip. Well it's true. NineMSN has copyright in the clip. Bu...
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Hard to Forget: Long-lasting Effects of Social Capital Accumulation Shocks By: Amodio, Francesco (Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit) Very few contributions have dealt with the analysis of specific determinants of social capital accumulati...
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Law and order themes are always popular in NT election campaigns, even more so than other parts of Australia. It's hardly surprising given that violent crime rates are more than twice as high as the Australian average. Almost 6% of Territorians experience a violent crime every...
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Via Matt Yglesias , Ryan Cooper wonders why " why smaller countries are so much better at macroeconomic management ". Cooper suggests that smaller countries have smaller banks that are less able to distort policy debate. Yglesias suggests that larger countries get distracted b...
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Every now and again, someone resigns in a position in which someone figures out a cute way to draw. Bobby Fischer may have resigned in his first (played) game in his famous match with Boris Spassky in Reykjavik. But a few years later in Reykjavik Jaukur Angantysson who had a r...
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It wasn't enough that we were all recently exposed to the unbelievably tone-deaf talents of Craig Emerson. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1pEt7bgY2U Before that there was former Senator Mary Jo Fisher's very strange spoken rendition of the Rocky Horror Timewarp number, eerily...
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Maybe it's time for Labor and Julia Gillard to start thinking about their legacy rather than retaining government.((Note the supposedly incompetent Whitlam government's enduring legacy: - ending conscription and getting out of Vietnam, recognition of China, legal aid, Medicare...
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