[caption id="attachment_24901" align="alignright" width="584"] In the grain fields near Horsham[/caption] Joe Hockey has just announced he is blocking the foreign takeover of Graincorp by Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland. It's a lousy decision. But it at least has the vir...
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Here is a puzzle for you: what is the theoretical link between bitcoins, Australian coal exports to China, and the US becoming a New Switzerland? It’s a bit of a convoluted link, so see at what stage in the story below you spot the answer. Bitcoins are all the rage at the mome...
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It is natural to think of our political leaders as either superhumanly clever and benevolent when we agree with them, or else dumb as dishwater and evil when we don’t agree with them. Yet, if one takes our own group-loyalty out of the picture, we can ask the simple question wh...
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In his introduction to his translation of the Analects of Confucius, Pierre Ryckmans likened that 'literary classic' to a coat hook that has over the centuries acquired so many layers of coats that it can no longer be seen-has become so big that it completely obscures the corr...
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People talk many many times over about the world is getting smaller. About communications technology how it crosses the gulf between here and there. I have seen this in abundance with my own eyes and you too. The new ways of offshoring the jobs and work, like call centre, that...
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The most interesting aspect of the reaction to the governor-general's last Boyer lecture , with its last-sentence support for abolishing the monarchy, is the thinness of the opposition from the left to her expression of her political views. As the events of the past few days h...
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Black to play M Ortueta vs J Sanz 31. ...? See game for solution. If you can't see the move - click through to the game and see how many things had to work out for the tricks to be worth playing.
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Some memories fade too slowly. I was reminded of one such memory by the TV advertisement being aired in the lead up to White Ribbon Day tomorrow (Monday 25 November). It was late morning on Friday, 20 September and I was at the local Magistrate’s Court on a court visit for the...
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Posted in Life, Society, Law
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_8WbDD2mmkw Rating: 2872. Closest behind, Garry Kasparov on 2851. Table of highest rated players ever, with date their best ratings were first achieve d Rank Rating Player Year-month 1 2872 Magnus Carlsen 2013-02 2 2851 Ga...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aUn-I_loNE
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Campaigners seem to be having some success in raising the profile of writers and others giving away the product of their labour for free. The first time I ran into this issue in any big way was in launching the Government 2.0 Taskforce with a design competition. The prize? The...
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To defend free speech does not mean you cannot criticise how others exercise it. The very opposite, if anything. With weaker legal restrictions on, say, racist insults there should be stronger social sanctions - criticism, debate, counter-arguments. It’s called manners, and wh...
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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="557"] This image came up on a Google search for "What's On". It's from The Central Tavern at Springfield Lakes , wherever that is. Seems nice enough, the cocktails can be very red by the looks of things, though there does seem to be qu...
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Dear President Yudhoyono Or can I call you Susilo? We like to use first names here in Australia. It’s a sign of informality. It indicates that you’re not wanting to be stand-offish. If you like we can go with middle names so that’d be Bang Bang right? You can call me Tone, or...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQFTCOiEFk0 Yes folks, I'm not joking.
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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="630"] OK, so this is José Raúl Capablanca v Alexander Alekhine a few years later, but that's blogging for you - no fact checkers, no pay, no responsibility. Not like the MSM[/caption] This is perhaps the most storied chess game in hist...
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The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer came back into the news on Monday (11 November), with reports [i] on a paper published in Nature Geoscience which finds that reductions in chlorinated fluorocarbon (CFC) emissions achieved under the Montreal Prot...
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I've often considered this distinction at the back of my mind, but never really given it much explicit thought. While actively hostile discrimination - for instance on the basis of race of gender - is still around, there's not much of it about. On the other hand people not onl...
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Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are the rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried than before - more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle. I went to see Mr Pip last night. I chec...
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I am no bearded Dumbledore, but it was impossible not to see Magnus as a type of Harry Potter, a super-talent destined to become one the greatest and to leave a deep mark (a lightning bolt?) on our ancient game. Gary Kasparov Well folks, this just wouldn't be Troppo if I didn'...
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"MIT's Openness to Jewish Economists" , E. Roy Weintraub MIT emerged from “nowhere” in the 1930s to its place as one of the three or four most important sites for economic research by the mid-1950s. A conference held at Duke University in April 2013 examined how this occurred....
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As conversational topics go, productivity is hardly a barbecue stopper. Nevertheless, adopting policies that boost national productivity is really the only way for Australia to avoid a slide into national penury as our population ages and the Chinese mineral boom ends. That's...
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How do health and wellbeing correlate, and how do they correlate across countries? No problem, check out this interesting graph which I found in this OECD report on wellbeing through the crisis. I wonder how New Zealand does it - all that equity of health outcomes? Perhaps it'...
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by Prashant Bharadwaj, Leah K. Lakdawala, Nicholas Li - #19602 (CH DEV) Abstract: While bans against child labor are a common policy tool, there is very little empirical evidence validating their effectiveness. In this paper, we examine the consequences of India's landmark leg...
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Schumpeter's two chapters on democracy in his great book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy provide the best framework I know of articulating the things that trouble me about the current state of democracy. The chapters assert the following propositions: Rousseau's idea of th...
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Have a look at the beautiful graph below , which depicts the main trends in Australian emissions and its promised emission reduction targets. Australia's emissions trends, 1990 to 2020 Note : trajectories to the 2020 target range are illustrative The dotted orange line shows t...
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The Australian stock market opened lower this morning on the back of Rupert Murdoch’s speech to the Lowy Institute last night. A senior analyst, interviewed by this correspondent attributed the fall in the Australian share price to the “transparent and misguided attempt at nat...
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