I’m reposting this announcement from Club Troppo of a joint fundraiser to help cyclone relief in Burma/Myanmar. As regards logistics, I suggest readers here donate to a charity of their choice, and send me an email copy of the receipt for record-keeping purposes. Since the idea is to turn the spirit of competitive emulation to the general good, please feel free to announce your donation in the comments thread for this poist Read more »

A point discussed on the blog recently is whether Limits to Growth actually predicted rapid exhaustion of critical natural resources, or whether this was a misrepresentation by much later critics. The text itself isn’t definitive, since it contains some projections showing rapid exhaustion and others (in which discoveries boost stocks by a factor of five) in which exhaustion takes place over a century or so, and also because the projections were revised in later editions. Read more »

I’m working on a piece for the Fin, and, in my current draft, I say that John Howard never actually used the word “non-core”. Rather, he said he had delivered his “core” promises and we were left to infer that the rest were non-core. Can anyone protect me from error by pointing to an occasion when Howard used “non-core”, or, better still, support me in my contention?

It’s time once again for the Monday Message Board. Please post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

Among the outcomes produced by a market economy, real wages are arguably the most important single variable for most people. With inflation rising around the world, and sensitive prices like those of food and petroleum going up a lot, most people’s living standards depend mainly on whether wages grow faster than prices. I got a couple of pieces of info on this today, which illustrate the difference between data and anecdote. Read more »

I’ve been too busy to do a proper assessment of the water policy announcement made on Tuesday by Penny Wong. The good news is that the government is finally getting moving on buying back water from irrigators, on a “willing seller” basis. That’s a significant change from the previous government, who clearly viewed buybacks as a last resort. However, as the ACF has pointed out, the previous plan did identify $3 billion for this purpose. Read more »

Sorry again for late notice, but I’ll be presenting a video seminar 1pm today at ANU on intergenerational equity. For details contact Ralf Steinhauser on ph: 61 2 6125 4667

It’s not that surprising to read that former Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad has called for an international tribunal to try Western leaders with war crimes over the war in Iraq, nominating Bush, Blair and Howard in particular. Mahathir is well-known as a provocateur, with a fondness for extreme statements and no love for any of the governments concerned. Read more »

It’s time once again for the Monday Message Board. Please post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

Throughout the days of the previous government, its media cheer squad denounced anyone who dared to criticise the government as a “Howard-hater”. This seemed to me to be either a silly piece of rhetoric or just plain wrong. To the extent that it was simply a label for anyone who disliked the government’s policies and therefore disliked the government and its leader, it was just a silly piece of hyperbole. A more natural reading is the claim that people who had no particular quarrel with the government’s policies opposed it because of a personal hatred of Howard. Read more »

The most amusing outcome of the 2020 summit has undoubtedly been the spectacle of Alexander Downer, grandson of Sir John Downer, son of Sir Alexander Downer, old boy of Geelong Grammar, former Director of the Australian Chamber of Commerce, former Foreign minister, now enjoying retirement on full salary at the expense of the Australian taxpayer, denouncing the participants as “elites”. Read more »

It’s time once again for the Monday Message Board. Please post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

The big increase in food prices over the last six months or so raises lots of issues, of which I’ll try to cover a few. Read more »

It’s time once again for the Monday Message Board. Please post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

It’s time once again for weekend reflections.Feel free to write at greater length than for a standard comment thread. As always, civilised discussion and no coarse language.

One of the great themes of rightwing delusionism in recent years has been the alleged ban on the antimalarial use of DDT, supposed to have cost millions (or, on some accounts, billions) of lives. It’s not hard to prove that this ban is totally mythical and that the failure of DDT to eradicate malaria, evident well before the 1972 ban on agricultural use in the US, was primarily due to resistance and cost factors. Read more »

It’s time once again for the Monday Message Board. Please post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

I’m doing my first videoconference presentation for the year on Friday, appropriately enough at a University of Sydney one-day seminar on the economics of sustainability. My talk will be on “Uncertainty, awareness and the precautionary principle”. Anyone interested can get details from Michael Harris M.Harris@usyd.edu.au. I’ve lined up two more videoconferences for the first half of this year, and I hope to do some more in the second half. Read more »

It’s time once again for the Monday Message Board. Please post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

The next in the popular series of BrisScience lectures will be on Monday 31 March. As the title, Schroedinger’s machines indicates, it’s on the fascinating topic of quantum computing. More over page. (more…)

I took the Easter weekend off, so here’s the Tuesday edition of the Monday Message Board. Please post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

As I mentioned, I coloured my hair to raise funds for the Leukemia Foundation, as did some others in the Risk and Sustainable Management Group. Now, thanks to the marvel of cameraphones, here are the pics Read more »

It’s just been announced that JP Morgan will buy Bear Stearns for $2 a share, implying a value of about $250 million. Given that the company headquarters is said to be worth about $1.2 billion, that gives the BS banking business a value of negative $1 billion. Read more »

The Liberal party finally has something to celebrate, with their most senior elected official, Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman winning re-election easily and the Liberals getting a majority on the City Council for the first time in many years. Read more »

It’s time once again for weekend reflections.Feel free to write at greater length than for a standard comment thread. As always, civilised discussion and no coarse language.