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Who said the Nats were washed-up?
The results in the Gippsland by-election have to give a few people pause for thought. By-elections this close to elections generally punish the candidate associated with the party that causes them, in this case the Nationals. However, they were rewarded... More
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Caroline Marohasy rides The Horseman
My friend Caroline Marohasy makes her movie debut in The Horseman, a new Australian revenge thriller, shot in and around Brisbane, including at the Burpengary caravan park. If you like the look of the trailer (I found it was suitably... More
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Radical scepticism
For a long time, I’ve used the term “delusionist” rather than “sceptic” to describe those who reject mainstream science on global warming. In general, the term “sceptic” is inappropriate for the vast majority of this group, since their position is hardly ever based on a willingness to look sceptically at evidence without reliance on a [...]
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Reserve status in doubt
Over the fold is my article in today’s Fin, drawing on a blog post from a while back. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion
The news that the Australian dollar has once again approached parity with its US counterpart has been attributed to the strength of commodity prices and to expectations of higher interest [...]
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Time to increase the eligibility age for the Aged Pension?
Federal politicians understandably got a lot of correspondence expressing concern about the low level of the Age Pension. In amongst those that I got, every now and then there would be one which would assert that we have all had to pay extra income tax for the last sixty years for a fund which was [...]
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Back on the Zeds
As most readers would be aware, I have a bit more spare time at the moment than I’ve had for many a year, so I am trying to take the chance to do a few fun things that I have let slide. One of those things is having a go at doing a weekly shift [...]
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Public ethics prof has public whinge
Online Opinion graciously allows public ethics professor Clive Hamilton a platform to have a whinge against it and about how he won’t write for Online Opinion again. Reason? Because it publishes climate change denialists who are compared to AIDS denialists, S11 truthers and LaRouchites. This sounds like a very confident statement of belief from someone [...]
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Spying on its citizens is OK—Obama
In a time-honored, if not honorable, tradition, Obama has shown, in moving from primary to presidential campaigns, that he too is the master of bait and switch.
He now supports what will result in immunity being granted to the telephone companies that chose to help the Bush administration to illegally spy on American citizens—NYT.
Blech.
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Straightshooter maverick McCain
Want to see how many issues wannabe president McCain has changed his mind about recently? There’s a truly awesome list here.
But it’s all immaterial; the man is an ex-prisoner of war and therefore hugely qualified to bomb Iran, and that’s all that really matters.
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Strategy? What strategy?
The US Government Accountability Office released a report last week about ‘Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq’.
Some of the findings really leave me scratching my head. For example:
Between 2005 and 2007, Iraq spent only 24 percent of the $27 billion it budgeted for its own reconstruction efforts. More specifically, Iraq’s central ministries, responsible for security and [...]
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Nitpicking Aussie Robbie
Robbie Deans’ tweaked team lineup for the upcoming second rugby test against France seems pretty sound to me. Neither speedster Lachie Turner for the injured Tuqiri nor Stephen Hoiles for Wycliff Palu will weaken the team, and Turner might even add desirable speed on the flank instead of Tuqiri’s power.
The unforced changes seem equally solid choices. Adam Ashley-Cooper will add some Latham-style power at [...]
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Anecdote of the week
From this site, via Kathy G, regarding Charlie Chaplin.
They were dreadfully poor. Charlie’s parents were third-string strolling players. His father died early of alcoholism; his mother was often in asylums, whether through drink or because of periodic mental illness. Whenever this happened, Charlie and his brothers had to shift for themselves on the streets of [...]
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Ingrid Betancourt is free!
Wonderfully uplifting news today that Colombian Green presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, has been freed! Betancourt, who had been taken hostage by FARC revolutionary guerillas 6 years ago, was finally released in an apparently extraordinary operation with no loss of life or even injuries.
I personally didn’t meet her when she was in Australia shortly before her [...]
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60% by 2050 not even in the ballpark..
Andrew Macintosh from the ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy and I released a paper on the implications of carbon-cycle feedbacks on climate policy today. The summary is below or the full paper can be downloaded here. It ain’t good news..
The phrase ‘climate-carbon cycle feedbacks’ refers to the interaction between temperature change, atmospheric carbon [...]
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Bureaucracy Bound
Today, I’m an academic. Tomorrow, I become a public servant. After some generous arm-twisting from the brother of a famous econ-blogger (and no small amount of flexibility from my senior ANU colleagues), I’m taking a six-month secondment to the Australian Treasury. I’ll be a principal adviser in the social policy division, working on issues such [...]
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Experiments in the Classroom: Part III
The third classroom experiment returns to an exercise that I posted about on 6 March, at the start of semester. At the end of an introductory quiz, I asked the class:
Looking around the classroom, what percentile of the relative distribution do you expect to end up? For example, 100 means you expect to top the [...]
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still waiting
In the online world it's easy to get the impression that climate change denialism or scepticism is the norm and that most of the population is nervously awaiting the configuration of the emissions trading scheme as if it's the sum total of what can be done.
Clive Hamilton won't be writing for OnLin
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waiting for Garnaut
Ross Garnaut's report on climate change and emissions trading scheme is due tomorrow. It is expected to find that global warming is proceeding faster than projected, and that doing nothing will be far more costly than expected. Well we know that already.
The leaks indicate that the Garnaut's fi
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ALS poll: best libertarian blog
In June last year the ALS hosted the first competition for best blogger. At the time it was “best solo libertarian blogger”, after after much vote-rigging it was eventually won by the self-described “classical liberal” Andrew Norton.
This year we’ve decided to broaden the category to “best libertarian blog” (to give catallaxy & thoughts on freedom a [...]
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Gippsland by-election
Today we saw the first test of the Rudd government with the by-election in the rural Melbournian seat of Gippsland. It has traditionally been a safe National seat, but the Liberals and Labor live in hope of an upset.
After one hour of counting (and 43% of votes recorded) it looks like the Nationals will retain [...]
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Profit from despotism
Who said there isn’t money to made in the West from Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe?
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The dangers of blogging for democracy
My following article appeared in yesterday’s edition of Crikey:
64 people have been arrested for blogging their views since 2003, according to a recent University of Washington report. Three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues in 2007 than the year before. More than half of all the arrests since 2003 were made in [...]
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Exquisite timing
As protesters locked themselves onto a conveyor belt at Loy Yang power station in protest, those of us listening to the ABC heard Tony Eastley intone these words:
With the Garnaut report due out tomorrow and an emissions trading scheme to be introduced by 2010, building a coal-fired power station may not be high on many [...]
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Q&A Lyonised!
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