General
« Previous EntriesOnly Clairol Knows For Sure
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008As I mentioned, I coloured my hair to raise funds for the Leukemia Foundation, as did some others in the Risk and Sustainable Management Group. Now, thanks to the marvel of cameraphones, here are the pics
Garnaut review
Thursday, February 21st, 2008The Interim Report of the Garnaut Review is just out. Over the fold, I’ve attached the report and also a quick response from me for Crikey, largely based on hearing Garnaut a couple of weeks ago.
Quick links
Sunday, February 10th, 2008I’ve been too busy to post on a lot of things so I thought I’d just post some quick links with minimal comment. Some very important, and some not.
* One measure of the death toll in the wars launched by Saddam and then by Bush is the number of Iraqi widows, estimated at between one [...]
GM Canola
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007The recent announcement that the production of genetically modifed canola will be permitted suggests that the long controversy over the GM issue is drawing to a close, with a reasonable chance of an outcome that should be satisfactory to most.
GM foods can be produced and sold in Australia, but, in general, must be labelled [...]
What should Rudd do first
Monday, November 26th, 2007Ratify Kyoto - it’s a stroke of a pen, needs no legislation, is a simple Yes-No decision and will have a big impact.[1]
Straight after that, though, something much harder. Rudd needs to reverse the decline in ethical standards that we’ve seen under Howard, and which began much earlier, going back at least to the 1970s. [...]
The spoils of defeat
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007Greg Sheridan pushes Tony Abbott as Deputy Leader for a Liberal Opposition.. As Mick at LP notes, it looks as if I’m going to be disappointed
Half a metaphor
Thursday, November 1st, 2007I’m writing a piece (in the form of a debate with Jason Potts) on the Internet and non-market innovation (open source, blogs, wikis and Web 2.0 more generally) and the editors asked us to say something about digital literacy. I’ve never paid much attention to this metaphor, maybe because of excessive exposure to its [...]
The end of shmibertarianism (updated)
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007As Andrew Sullivan notes, Glenn Reynolds no longer even claims to be a libertarian[1], and his repudiation of this former position is shared by a number of leading shmibertarians, who are now happy enough to identify as orthodox Republicans. I haven’t yet seen anything similar from some others, such as the Volokhs, but the idea [...]
Kelly on climate
Thursday, October 25th, 2007While I’m on the Oz, this exceptionally confused piece from Paul Kelly gets just one thing right. Howard’s refusal to ratify Kyoto, despite accepting all the key terms, is evidence of paralysis. I can’t be bothered attempting a point-by-point rebuttal, so I’ll just state the facts about which Kelly seems to be confused
* The Kyoto [...]
Tear down this paywall
Friday, September 21st, 2007The NYTimes experiment with putting premium content behind a paywall lasted a bit longer than I expected, but eventually the cost, in terms of separation from the Internet at large, has outweighed the benefits. The NYT columnists and archives will now be available to all readers. (Hat tip, Andrew Leigh).
As Jay Rosen says, this is [...]
Vlogging Medibank Private
Thursday, September 20th, 2007I was on Lateline Business last week, with a couple of sentences out of a 10-minute interview on the possible privatisation of Medibank Private. Here it is for your enjoyment
Medibank.mov
Delusionist diehards (Fin version)
Thursday, August 16th, 2007Over the fold is my piece in today’s Fin
Plateau oil
Thursday, July 26th, 2007I’ve spent a fair while talking and thinking about the Peak Oil Hypothesis, and a couple of thoughts have struck me. Looking at the data, graphed below, the big increases in oil prices in the last five years or so seem to have done nothing to call forth additional supply. And for the last couple [...]
Another Word for Wednesday Repost: Conservative
Thursday, July 26th, 2007Conservative: As an antonym to ‘progressive’, the term ‘conservative’ is affected by many of the same confusions.
First, a conservative may be one who, like Burke, believes that that social change should be gradual and organic, rather than rapid, top-down and rationalistic.
Second, a conservative may emphasise obligations to society and community rather than, or as a [...]
Word for Wednesday Repost: Progressive
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007Back in the Triassic Era of blogging, I ran for a while a weekly feature called Word for Wednesday, loosely modelled on Raymond Williams Keywords. I thought I’d repost one entry in response to this interesting debate starting with Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber
Progressive Definition 1: In its political sense, progressive means ‘on the side [...]
What’s wrong with happiness measurement ? (crossposted at Crooked Timber)
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007Over at Club Troppo, James Farrell summarises the main elements of the economic research agenda on happiness, and some of the standard objections to it. For those who came in late, and probably didn’t imagine economists ever thought about happiness, the crucial finding is that “Cross country data shows pretty consistently that on average happiness [...]
Reviewing the Stern Review, again
Tuesday, December 19th, 2006Following the publication of this piece in the NY Times, I’ve had a string of email exchanges with Hal Varian, cc:ing Brad DeLong in the role of interested onlooker. I was surprised by the NY Times article since it included both a correct statement of the way in which Stern treats discounting and income redistribution [...]
New on the RSMG blog
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006Although I haven’t had time to post on the Switkowski report on this blog, Nanni has it covered in a couple of posts over at the RSMG blog, as well as the related topic of carbon trading.
Mark looks at the implications of higher water prices for dairy farmers and concludes that they ‘may not be [...]
Less than zero
Thursday, October 26th, 2006There’s been a bit of publicity about a recent study of the effects of the Australian gun buyback. The central finding of the authors was that, while gun homicides declined after the buyback this was merely a continuation of a pre-existing trend.
I’m dubious about the whole approach. In the absence of a well-founded explanation [...]
The browning of Australia
Saturday, September 30th, 2006Reader Proust points me to this helpful BOM site showing rainfall trends in Australia. You can choose your own region, season and time period.
Here’s the most relevant to consideration of the effects of global warming, the trend since 1970, which demonstrates how much drier the climate has become over the period in which warming has [...]