Category: Metablogging

Anonymous comment safe

John Quiggin28 Comments

I just received the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters Inquiry into the Conduct of the 2004 Federal Election and Matters Related Thereto. Uniquely in my long experience of making submissions to such committees, all my main arguments were accepted, and embodied in recommendations of a report, with no dissent[1]. My main concern was to protect bloggers from being required to give their names and addresses and those of commenters. I argued that only paid advertisements should be subject to this requirement, and the committee agreed.

My post and submission here
A supplementary submission here
The Committee report here

Update I failed to recognise William Bowe, also quoted in the report as fellow-blogger The Poll Bludger. Well done! He has some comments on the Committee’s proposals for electoral reform here. See also Oz Politics and the Aussie WordPress blog.

fn1. There were as usual, majority and minority reports, with disagreements on topics like compulsory voting and four year terms, of which more I hope. But there was no disagreement on the issues raised in my submission.

Comment problems

John Quiggin8 Comments

Having deleted some comments myself, I now seem to be having problems with comments disappearing by some process I can’t follow. I’m looking into it, but if you have a point of great eloquence to make, save it on your own system before committing it to the ether.

Update The problem seems to have been caused when I IP-blocked a particularly persistent spammer. I’ve gone back to manual moderation (groan), so comments seem to be coming through OK.

Lurker Week

John Quiggin41 Comments

Via a chain of links starting at Crooked Timber, I found out that it was Lurker Day on September 21. This is the day when readers of blogs who don’t normally post comments are supposed to do so, ideally with some sort of comment about why they read the blog, how they found it and so on. Given that it’s Friday afternoon now, I’m making it a week instead of a day.

Don’t be put off by the term ‘lurker’ which dates back to the days of newsgroups, when there was a feeling that everyone ought to join in[1]. There’s nothing wrong with reading the blog and not commenting, but I’d really like to know that my page views aren’t all robots and spiders, so a short message from you, just this once, would give me lots of encouragement. Feel free to use a pseudonym; most of the regular commenters do.

fn1. Apart from which, if I can put up with ‘blogger’, anything goes.

Crooked Timber lunch

John Quiggin

Today is my last day in DC and I had a very enjoyable lunch with several members of my group blog, Crooked Timber. The group was me, Henry Farrell, Maria Farrell, John Holbo and Micah Schwartzman, making one of the largest collections of Timberites in one place ever to take place. I also met bloggers Russell Arben Fox and Daniel Drezner, both in town for the American Political Science Association. I’ve had an enjoyable and productive time here, but I’ll be very glad to be back in Oz, and home in Brisbane.

Back on air

John Quiggin17 Comments

I’m back on air now, after my longest time in some years out of Internet contact, in upstate New York, where I’ve been visiting my friend and colleague Bob Chambers by the shores of beautiful Lake Skaneateles. We spent a few days tossing ideas for new papers around, and generally getting away from day-to-day pressures. I’m now back in DC (Maryland actually) and glad to be turning homeward, though, as usual, I’ve had a very pleasant stay here.

I can see that I’ve missed more news than usual over such a period, and it will take me a bit of time to absorb it all. I’ll start by expressing my best wishes to the people of New Orleans and other areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. I lived in cyclone-prone areas for quite a few years, but never experienced anything worse than a category 3, which was scary enough for me.

I’ll try to post soon on the economic consequences of all this. Most notable is the fact that a local disruption like this could push the price of oil over $US70/barrel. The guys who predicted $100/barrel not long ago must be feeling pleased with themselves.

As for the Australian political news, it’s startling, but I’ll wait until I’m better-informed before I say anything about it. Feel free to jump in with your own interpretations.

Google growing

John Quiggin9 Comments

Google is about to issue 14 159 265 more shares (the number chosen is derived from the decimal expansion of pi) aiming to raise about $4 billion at an average price of about $250 a share. Given that I argued that Google was overvalued at the initial offer price of around $80, it might be time to take another look, both at Google as an investment and at the issues raised by its position in the Internet. In this post, I’ll stick to the first issue.
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Blogroll changes

John Quiggin12 Comments

I’ve added The Currency Lad to the blogroll. This was long overdue, as CL is easily the best blogger on the conservative side of Australian politics, but for a long time his blog template was unreadable on Safari. I checked a little while ago, and found the template problem now resolved. here’s an interesting first birthday reflection on blogging .

I’ve deleted a few dead or moribund links, among whom I’ll mention Rob Schaap, whose irregular, idiosyncratic and lengthy essays were one of the most interesting features of the early days of Ozplogistan. Feel free to post suggested additions in the comments section. I’m a bit overstretched at the moment, so it may be a while before anything happens.