Who wins from the Greens' failures in Balmain and Marrickville?
I was bitterly disappointed to see over the weekend that the Greens didn't win the seats of Balmain or Marrickville in the NSW election. If they couldn't win either seat in a year where the ALP's brand...
View ArticleApple charges more in Australia because it can. So what?
The new ALP MP for Chifley, Ed Husic, tweeted triumphantly this morning that the media had picked up his comments about price differences between Apple products in Australia and the US. Why, demanded...
View ArticleI'll tell you one place that isn't overpopulated: Dick Smith's top paddock
Yet more nonsense from population alarmist in chief Dick Smith: Australia should have a 'two child policy'. Given that Australia has a really easy lever to pull to change its population - namely its...
View Article#lolstralian quotes jokes by Tina Fey as newsworthy admissions that mocking...
This is surreal. In a interview about her forthcoming book, Tiny Fey cracked some jokes about her impersonation of Sarah Palin. The Australian, Australia's most serious broadsheet, reported her jokes...
View ArticleWhat's the political point of plain cigarette packaging?
The government announced today that it will push ahead with plans to force all cigarettes sold in Australia to be packaged in the same olive packages. A friend commented to me that the new minimalist...
View ArticleBeing articulate is not the same as having something to say - Paul Keating...
This week I've read contributions to the public debate by Paul Keating and Bob Ellis. Keating resigned his post as Chairperson of the Banangaroo design review panel after the Planning Minister, Brad...
View ArticleInteresting things to read & some music
I'm keen to keep up the frequency of posts here, even though I lack the time to write lots of new content. The solution, I've decided, is to return to my old practice of posting links to interesting...
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Donald Trump is an idiot: The audience of Celebrity Apprentice is the most...
Via The Atlantic, it seems that the audience of Celebrity Apprentice is the most liberal on TV. So of course his recent birth-laced tilt at the Republican presidential nomination hasn't been great for...
View ArticleNow the PM has got on the 2bn watched the royal wedding bandwagon
As John Quiggin, and others, have pointed out it is extremely unlikely that 2bn people watched Kate and William Windsor's wedding. The PM just repeated the number on indulgence in Question Time. I...
View ArticleMy favourite quote on all things Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its...
View ArticleInteresting things to read
In lieu of a more substantive post, here are some things that caught my eye over the last couple of days.Since the Chinese government runs the world's largest censorship regime, they of course have to...
View ArticleWeekend reading!
Sorry that all I'm doing at the moment is posting links, but absent the time to do anything more, I figure this is better than my usual total neglect of the blog!Quora is a the latest and greatest...
View ArticleEddie Cowan is right - we need better stats in cricket. But which ones?
Eddie Cowan, who is fast becoming the best cricket writer in the country, had a thought provoking piece on Cricinfo yesterday about statistics in cricket. He made the argument that our focus on...
View ArticleFree schooling and willingness to pay for education
My views on private and public schooling are in flux. Broadly I think that private schools are useful in that they save the government money that can be used on more needy students. However I recognise...
View ArticleMy defence of clickbait
This week I had an article up on the Guardian, in which I defended clickbait. I've pasted it below. The piece apparently got a pretty decent run on the Guardian in the UK and US as well, and as a...
View ArticleThe standard of living is higher and consumers are more discerning - we're...
My Zite (excitingly soon to be rolled into Flipboard) feed threw up an article from the Drum last week that really irked me. It's a poorly written and argued piece, but the general thrust - that...
View ArticleAndrew Laming attacks the "loose coalition of Greens, gay and atheists" who...
The High Court ruled this morning that the government's school chaplaincy program (which they gave $250m to in the most recent budget, while cutting pensions, health, science and education) is...
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Pyne defends teaching Latin in schools because it is "of course the root of...
Image from the Courier MailIt would be funny if he weren't Education Minister, but on Friday, Christopher Pyne said that Latin should be taught in schools because:Latin is of course the root of the...
View ArticleBoycott the Festival of Dangerous Ideas for giving a platform for a man who...
Update 25 June 2014: This talk was cancelled by the organisers of FODI. See my post here on the cancellation and Channel 7's attempt to interview me about the campaign to boycott the talk.It was...
View ArticleFODI Update: Honour killings talk cancelled, speaker says organisers forced...
I was pleased to read last night that the Festival of Dangerous Ideas decided to cancel the talk they had scheduled with the title "Honour Killings are Morally Justified" (the page for the talk has...
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Jill Lepore's takedown of disruption kind of misses the mark, kind of...
Jill Lepore had the cover of the New Yorker this month with her piece ‘The Disruption Machine’. The piece has been marketed as a ‘takedown’ of both the disruption dogma that pervades across Silicon...
View ArticleMy post on the Qwilr blog: A/B testing when the stakes are high or the...
I've got a post up today on the Qwilr blog where I discuss how to be as data-driven as possible when you can't be properly data-driven.Qwilr are the awesome tech startup I've been working with for the...
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Christopher Pyne managed to be a sexist jerk and woefully uninformed about...
Wednesday night on 7.30, Christopher Pyne was asked about the potential for his proposed de-regulation of university fees to hurt women and the poor. The exchange was (emphasis mine):SARAH FERGUSON:...
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Joe Hockey becomes next cabinet minister to be get his facts badly wrong
Today Treasurer Joe Hockey said that his proposed increases in the fuel excise were fair because the poor owned fewer cars and drove less than wealthier people (my emphasis):“I don’t think that a...
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It's official: Treasurer Joe Hockey doesn't understand what progressive...
Well, the numbers are in folks, and it would appear the Treasurer of our country doesn't understand what progressive taxation is.As I wrote yesterday, Joe Hockey got himself into logical, factual and...
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