Life in General
« Previous EntriesBurma Appeal preliminary results
Saturday, May 17th, 2008We’re still awaiting some final confirmations, but the total amount promised by readers in the Burma appeal, which closed a couple of days ago, is a bit over $4000. My calculation show that this blog is marginally ahead of Troppo, but seasoned election-watchers will know that results can change with recounts and similar. Anyway, it’s [...]
Burma appeal progress
Monday, May 12th, 2008The Burma/Myanmar cyclone appeal has been a huge success so far, with donations so far totalling $1390 here and $2050 at Club Troppo. In the spirit of friendly emulation, I’d urge readers here to dig just that little bit deeper as the end of the campaign approaches. Remember that all donations will be matched by [...]
A couple of links
Monday, May 12th, 2008Tristan Ewins has an interesting piece on the mixed economy in Online Opinion.
Prof Anu Mohammed from Bangladesh will be visiting Brisbane to talk about impacts of climate change on Bangladesh. There’s an ad over the fold.
Burma disaster aid appeal
Friday, May 9th, 2008Update: my email is j dot quiggin at uq dot edu dot au
I’m reposting this announcement from Club Troppo of a joint fundraiser to help cyclone relief in Burma/Myanmar. As regards logistics, I suggest readers here donate to a charity of their choice, and send me an email copy of the receipt for record-keeping purposes. [...]
Videoconference bleg
Monday, May 5th, 2008You can see how desperate I am for help by the use of the second word in the title of this post, which I’ve resisted until now.
I have offered to present a talk to a large conference audience in Adelaide, and intended to do it by videoconference, following several successful (and cheap!) presentations to seminar-size [...]
We shall remember them (reposted from 2005)
Friday, April 25th, 2008On Anzac Day, there are two important things to remember
* Thousands of brave men died at Gallipoli and in the Great War and we should always honour their memory
* The Gallipoli campaign was a bloody and pointless diversionary attack in a bloody and pointless war. Millions were killed over trivial causes that were utterly irrelevant [...]
Great Australian Shave, Mark II
Friday, March 14th, 2008I couldn’t repeat last year’s huge success, but I did volunteer to have my hair coloured to raise money for the World’s Greatest Shave. The result is that I look like a Troll, which I guess is appropriate given my frequent dealings with this category of humanoid. I didn’t take a camera, but no public [...]
Peter Cullen has died
Friday, March 14th, 2008Peter Cullen, a leading figure in Australia’s water policy debate for many years, has died at the age of 65. I knew Peter mainly through his work, which made a huge contribution to improving public understanding of the problems we face in managing scarce water resources, and of the possibly policy responses, and [...]
Videopresentation invitation
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008With the release of the Garnaut report, it’s time for me to look again at ways to reduce my carbon footprint. I’ve been trying to reduce air travel, turning down invitations and offering to do videoconferences instead. That’s had some success, but mostly people aren’t set up to handle video, and, by the time invitations [...]
Cromulent
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008Working in a Faculty of Business and Economics, I get exposed to lots of business magazines I wouldn’t read otherwise. I saw one today with a cover which urged me to “empassion my sales!”.
Being a prosaic economist, I would have thought that, as long as a business can embiggen its sales and profit margins, empassionment [...]
Other people’s music
Saturday, January 12th, 2008A bit belatedly, I’m reposting my piece on the Fin from last week, on background music, a topic we’ve discussed previously.
Also in the Fin Review section (paywalled) a couple of weeks ago was a piece by Andrew Ford which inlcuded an observation I’ve made myself, that contemporary music in the classical tradition often sounds [...]
Happy New Year
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008A bit belatedly, Happy New Year to everyone. Some optimistic wishes for 2008
* The end of the Bush era will prove to be the end of political power for the Republican party in its current (religious right/militarist/pro-rich class warfare) form, and will be followed by a return to reality-based politics
* The crisis in Pakistan [...]
A day worth celebrating
Friday, November 23rd, 2007Kevin Berger at Salon reports on , one day of the year when we can hope to be free of the constant ambient buzz of someone else’s idea of appropriate music.
The greatest of crimes (reposted from 2004)
Sunday, November 11th, 2007Another Remembrance (or Armistice) Day and we are still at war. I posted this in 2004, and have nothing to add or change
November 11 marks the armistice that was supposed to bring an end to the Great War in 1918. In fact, it was little more than a temporary and partial truce in a war [...]
Beard or bare?
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007That’s the question I asked on Facebook, and so far the vote has been unanimous for beard. Responses I’ve had in person have mostly favoured bare. So you can have your say here or (assuming there are no access problems) on Facebook.
Life imitates art
Monday, October 22nd, 2007My co-authors will all I thought, at first that he worked far harder than most of the men I knew.
Optical spin
Monday, October 8th, 2007This interesting optical effect is presented as a test for Right Brain vs Left Brain thinking. My sample of one doesn’t support this - I saw the dancer going clockwise which is supposed to indicate Right Brain thinking, and I’m about as Left Brain as they come. But with a little effort you can get [...]
Blasts from the past
Sunday, October 7th, 2007I’ve been working a bit on the Political correctness article in Wikipedia and I ran across the best “PC beatup” story ever, starting with a claim that nursery school students in Oxfordshire had been banned from singing “Baa Baa Black Sheep”.
Back from break
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007I’m just back from a few days holiday on beautiful North Stradbroke island, where beaches are white and Internet connections are patchy.
Wikipedia at 2 million
Thursday, September 6th, 2007Sometime around next Sunday, Wikipedia will reach 2 million articles. It’s about eighteen months since the millionth article was added, and the number of new articles has stabilized at around 2000 per day. So the shift from exponential to linear growth (in article numbers at least) has taken place a bit sooner than I expected. [...]
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