Things have been a bit quiet for the last week, with the many holidays. This raises the question – would we better off with more public holidays, and more general observance of those holidays, or with less of both? Feel free to comment on this or anything else (no coarse language and civilised discussion, please).

Update The Message Board at its lively best, as the impact of front loading washing machines on underwear battles for mindshare with the economics of the gold standard

I hope everyone is having a great Easter weekend. For anyone who’d like to tell the world about it (or about anything else), here’s your chance to post your thoughts on any topic (no coarse language and civilised discussion, please).

My main reading for the Easter weekend has been the program for the National Folk Festival in Canberra. I’ve had a great time. A quote to remember “Song predates speech” (Frankie Armstrong).

Going to festivals like this always tends to induce the belief that if we would only all be nice to one another and play lots of music the problems of the world would all be solved. This belief is obviously fallacious, but I’m not sure why.

La Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri. Well, not exactly. I’m not reading the original, but an English translation (the much-praised and much-criticised Dorothy Sayers version). And, as with Das Kapital, I’ve only read the first volume, L’Inferno, so far. On a previous reading, a few decades ago, I got to the end of the Purgatorio. My ambition is to read it all in Italian with the assistance of a translation, but I think that’s a long way off. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the image of the simoniacal Popes, stuffed headfirst in a hole, with each new arrival pushing the others further down. I also recently read At the Court of the Borgias, a relatively restrained private diary kept by the official in charge of protocol.

But my main activity for the weekend has been more physical – along with my son Daniel, I’ve been at a karate camp. Martial arts are an essential skill for modern academics , but not one of my natural strengths. So karate camp was like travelling back in time to school, except this time I was at the back with the slow kids. Top Deja vu experience – being made to do fifty pushups for talking in class.

Despite my limitations, I’m enjoying karate very much. Brisbane and Gold Coast readers might want to check out our dojo website.

It’s time once again for your thoughts and comments on any topic (civilised discussion and no coarse language please). My suggested discussion starter – has the war killed blogging ?

I’m doing a review of Remaking New Zealand and Australian Economic Policy: Ideas, Institutions and Policy Communities by Shaun Goldfinch. In essence, the core purpose of the book is to ‘compare and contrast’ to help work out why the NZ free-market reformers got things so badly wrong. Wrinting in 2000, he observes:

Despite policymakers in New Zealand being able to achieve their policy aims to a remarkable extent and notwithstanding claims that New Zealand provides an exemplar of economic reform, the New Zealand economy has generally not performed well since 1984 as measured by commonly-used economic indicators.

Goldfinch gives a lot of evidence to support the standard critical view, that the New Zealand system with a unitary & unicameral government and a relatively small elite was open to capture by a small group of ideologues, what Brian Easton calls ‘market Leninists’, who then bypassed or over-rode any critical views. As Goldfinch says

there are good reasons to suppose that better policy can be made through compromise and negotiation

Since the election of a Labour government which raised the top rate of income tax and partially reversed the 1991 labour market ‘reforms’, there has been some recovery. A few hardy defenders of the reforms outside NZ have had the chutzpah to suggest that the credit is due to Roger Douglas and the Business Roundtable but within NZ, Rogernomics is discredited beyond all hope of revival. It’s been dumped by the Nationals and even the free-market ACT party relies mostly on law-and-order populism for its modest electoral appeal.

It’s time for your comments on any topic. As things have got a little over-excited in some recent comments threads, I want to emphasise my request for civilised discussion and no coarse language

It’s time once again for your comments on any topic. I’d be particularly interested in how people’s views about the war have changed (or been confirmed) now that it’s actually happening. As always, civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

I’m resorting my bookshelves following the move to Brisbane and doing a lot of rereading, including The Aleph and other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges. Given the depressing state of reality at present, a bit of magical realism makes for a pleasant escape.

A new book I’m reading is The Man who knew Infinity a biography of the Indian mathematical prodigy Ramanujan. Although a lot of my work is highly mathematical, I can’t imagine having Ramanujan’s amazing ability to mainpulate infinite series.

It seems like there’s nothing much left to say about war with Iraq, at least until the bombs start dropping, but there are plenty of other topics that need discussion. This is your weekly opportunity to air your views on any topic (civilised discussion and no coarse language please).