Author: John Quiggin

A view from Bangkok

John Quiggin6 Comments

I’ve been sent the following, which appears to reflect the views of a lot of people in Thailand (or at least among the educated classes in Bangkok), welcoming the coup that displaced PM Thaksin. The author is an academic at Thammasat university, and he is writing a message addressed to foreign students

My own views of Thaksin, whose career I’ve followed reasonably closely, are similar to those of the author – I would have welcomed his removal by constitutional processes. On the other hand, like John Howard, I would have hoped that Thailand, and our region in general, had got past the point where military coups were part of the political process.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs, I hope for a peaceful outcome and a quick return to democracy.
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Presentation: climate change and the precautionary principle

John Quiggin94 Comments

I’ve uploaded my presentation on climate change and the precautionary principle, which I gave at City Hall on Monday night. It’s here in
Powerpoint (4.9Mb)
or
PDF (1.9MB)
formats.

Finally, here’s a version Zipped Mac Keynote (4.8Mb).

Thanks to everyone who’s given helpful suggestions for the upload, and noted problems with the download.

Sorry for the accidental temporary disappearance of this post. I somehow set it to “private”, which meant that it appeared for me, but for no-one else

Heaven and Hell

John Quiggin21 Comments

Pessimism seems to be a newly popular theme in American cultural discourse. Having written a bit about worst-case scenarios, I was interested to get a review copy of Karen Cerulo’s Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst. Perhaps because I’m naturally optimistic by temperament, I’m finding Cerulo’s relentless pessimism a bit annoying, and, not coincidentally, finding a lot to disagree with in the book.

One point particularly struck me. Cerulo claims that “positive asymmetry” is demonstrated by the fact that, in theology and art, Heaven is given a detailed and appealing description, while hell is described only in vague and non-specific terms. She mentions, as an illustration of the latter point, an etching inspired by Dante’s Inferno.

My recollection of Dante is that the descriptions of Hell, and the various categories of sinners, were detailed and intricate, making the Inferno a fascinating book, while Purgatory was less distinctly graded and the Paradiso was unreadably dull. I haven’t read Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained, but I get the impression that the same is true. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I thought this was one of the standard criticisms of religious art – Hell and the Devil are made much more interesting than Heaven and Hell.

Cerulo focuses mainly on paintings, and maybe she’s right on this score, but even here I’d hazard a guess that the work of Hieronymus Bosch is much more widely reproduced than any detailed representation of Heaven.

The science and politics of DDT

John Quiggin14 Comments

Arguments about DDT have been going on for a long time in the blogosphere and similar circles. These debates typically involve a confusion between two unrelated issues
* The bogus story, popular in rightwing circles, in which the US ban on agricultural use of DDT, inspired by Rachel Carson, is morphed into a global ban on DDT, bringing to an end a previously successful compaign to eradicate malaria
* The real disputes, among malaria experts, about the relative merits of insecticide-treated bednets and spraying of house walls, and of DDT and alternative insecticides.

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New economics blogs and blogs by economists

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Andrew Norton has abandoned Catallaxy and set up his own blog, describing himself as Carlton’s lone classical liberal. Andrew has an official comments policy, something I’ve been meaning to set down for ages.

Meanwhile, one of my fellow economists, and occasional commenter here, rabee at jaffa.net has set up a blog offering Progressive occidentalist commentary on a range of issues, including Islamism and the left

Springborg, Seeney, Simpson

John Quiggin16 Comments

Queensland opposition leader Lawrence Springborg has quit. The reason given “to spend more time with his family” is often a euphemism, but in this case it’s the real deal. I thought Springborg was the best of the National party leaders I’ve observed, with the arguable exception of Mike Ahern.

His replacement, Jeff Seeney has always struck me as a thug and, from the reports I’ve seen, I’m not alone in this view. Since he has no chance of becoming Premier, except if he can manage to push through a merger with the Liberal party, and hold on to the leadership of the combined party, I don’t suppose this matters too much.

I managed to ignore Fiona Simpson altogether in my Fin piece last week, writing that the Nats had been wiped out on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts (Mark Bahnisch alerted me to this error). Simpson has held the seat of Maroochydore for some time an now she’s popped up as Deputy Leader. I’ll chance another unchecked assertion and say that this is the most senior parliamentary position to be held by a woman in the National Party. please feel free to correct this.

Ipods and irony

John Quiggin15 Comments

Christopher Breen writes

Far and away, Playlist’s most popular story is Two-way Street: Moving Music Off the iPod, a tutorial, as the name hints, on copying music from an iPod to a computer. (Who knew iPod users were so plagued by hard drive crashes that forced them to use these techniques for recovering their music libraries? I mean, why else would you need to do this?)

He’s teasing, I know, but you can count me as an example. I had a hard disk crash and lost all my music files, and had huge problems recovering them from the iPod.

Double-header plug

John Quiggin4 Comments

I’ll be back at City Hall on Monday for a combined BrisScience and UQ Research Week event entitled “Planning for Climate Change: From urban design to complex systems”. I’ll be talking on “Complexity, Climate Change and the Precautionary Principle ” while Ed Blakely will talk about “Climate change: Planning for it and not just worrying about it. ”

Date: Monday, 18 September 2006
Time: 6:30pm – 9:00pm
Room: Ithaca Room
Location: City Hall, St Georges Square, Brisbane City

More info here