I’ve enjoyed being in Hobart for the first time in more than 20 years. I walked over to Battery Point yesterday morning and enjoyed the historical marker, which said in part

“During the Crimean War panic, a third battery was constructed. Following tradition, it was poorly sited and constructed, and inadequately equipped … More was spent on uniforms and prizes for the volunteer artillery company than on maintaining the guns”

Hobart-based readers are invited to hear my Giblin lecture on the topic “The Information Revolution and the Post-Economic Society”. It’s mainly a look at the role of non-economic motives in Internet-based innovations, including open source software, blogs and wikis. At the University of Tasmania, 5:30 pm this evening.

Just to confuse matters, there are two Giblin lectures, both in honour of the same Giblin. The other used to be presented at ANZAAS meetings, and has now migrated to the Economic Society. But, looking at his Wikipedia bio he did more than enough for two; and the entry omits his role in the Premiers Plan and his work on the export multipler.

Reading Maggie Gallagher on how gay marriage will bring an end to marriage as an institution for procreation and Leon Kass on how the Pill has ruined courtship, you can see the usual story of a vanished golden age. For Kass, it’s the turn of the 2Oth century when “our grandfathers came a-calling and a-wooing at the homes of our grandmothers, under conditions set by the woman, operating from strength on her own turf”. For Gallagher, it seems to be the 1950s.

The assumption is that turning the clock back a century (or half a century) will be enough to restore the golden age. In fact, the turn of the 2Oth century was a period of moral panic cast in terms very similar to those of Kass and Gallagher. As effective family planning became possible for the first time, the birth rate plummeted, falling from 5.1 births per married woman to 2.6 in the space of only forty years for the cohorts born between 1860 and 1900. My mother wrote the book on this. It’s loaded with quoted denunciations of selfish females pursuing pleasure at the expense of their duty to the race.
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I spoke today at the conference of the Finance and Treasury association[1] about risks to the Australian economy. Regular readers will know my concerns, but Ill try to post the presentation once I can get my FTP software working properly.

As is pretty much standard for such events, I got paid in alcohol, in this case in a very nice presentation case. Academics (and other speakers at such conferences) must be about the last group who stick to this great Australian tradition, dating back to the first days of European settlement. Even garbos don’t get beer so much now that they operate retractable arms rather than picking up bins. The custom still survives here and there (I’ve slung the odd slab for favours of various kinds) but public speaking gigs are the only ones when you can count on it.

fn1. The name refers to corporate accounting functions, not to the government departments.

Those who’ve wondered what I (and my colleagues) do in my day job might be interested in the first Annual Report of the Risk and Sustainable Management group (1.5 Mb PDF file)

A big win for the Bullets in mark Bradtke’s tonight, coming back from 20 points down to beat Townsville by 11. It was a thriller, still wide open with a minute to play.

And SE Qld readers can see a demonstration of Seiyushin karate and much more at the Gold Coast Arts Centre on Sunday (about 12:30)

There are now plenty of opportunities to help those affected by the earthquake in Pakistan. You can donate to the Oxfam appeal here, for example. I’m not going to run a special appeal this time, but if anyone wants to give suggestions for future activities of this kind that would be great. In the meantime, please give generously.

To Robert J. Aumann and Thomas C. Schelling for the Economics Nobel, and Mohammad El-Baradei for the Peace Prize. Aumann and Schelling are worthy winners. And if people had listened to El-Baradei a couple of years ago, we could have avoided the whole Iraq disaster.

A great win for the Swans with a game-saving mark in the final seconds. And finally a reward for the South Melbourne faithful who’ve gone a biblical lifetime (threescore years and ten, with a couple over) without a flag. Tim Dunlop is similarly stunned.

The trip back home was long and tiring, but I’m glad to be home again, and Brisbane is beautiful as always. There’s a lot to catch up on – Internet news only takes you so far – and I have quite a few posts planned, but jet lag and backlogs will probably slow me down for a while.