Category: Articles
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Dams might be the new controlled burns
The Queensland flood disaster continues in tragic and dramatic fashion, though Sri Lanka and Brazil have it even worse. However, there is a yet more pressing concern in some quarters. You see, this isn’t just about lost lives and property, but about the future of market economics. The real question is: how can we blame this…
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Who is Dennis Ambler?
Continuing on (a bit) from my [intlink id=”1426″ type=”post”]last post[/intlink], I’m going to examine another of Dennis Ambler’s articles for the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI). This one is mostly a long rambling swipe at lots of different and very accomplished individuals, and not (as in the other case) an outright attempt to reinvent the…
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Consensus Bashing
The Science and Public Policy Institute certainly does provide a lot of hilariously twisted commentary on climate change. Two years ago (January 2009), Doran and Zimmerman (D&Z) published a paper based on Zimmerman’s masters thesis. Unsurprisingly, they found that the vast majority (97%) of climate scientists think climate change is real and human-induced. This kind of…
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One brand to fool them all
As you might have realised, I work at Curtin University, [intlink id=”16″ type=”post”]formerly[/intlink] Curtin University of Technology (CUT), formerly – though conceivably somewhat apocryphally – Curtin University of New Technology (CU*T), formerly the Western Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT), formerly Perth Technical College, formerly Perth Technical School, formerly – and definitely more apocryphally – the New…
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Existence continuation
As you have doubtless deduced from my total failure to keep you entertained over the last month and a half, I have in fact been a little busy. Possible illusions to the contrary notwithstanding, my existence is not synonymous with that of my blog. (At least, not yet it isn’t. This may change later in…
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Confounding the confusopolies
A while back I wrote about [intlink id=”1000″ type=”post”]Optus’s pricing structure[/intlink], but the economists have already been over this ground. Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) apparently coined the term “confusopoly” to describe a situation where companies avoid competing on price by making their prices too confusing to compare. (I don’t have Adams’ book The Dilbert…
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Parity pedantry
So sayeth the ABC: “Australian dollar verges on US parity” The Australian dollar is trading at a post-float high of 99.93 US cents. Which is very exciting, but I think it’s worth remembering that breaking through 1-to-1 doesn’t actually mean anything in particular. It matters that the Australian dollar is rising in value, but any…
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An assault on the sensibilities
It’s probably about time I had something to say on matters unrelated to the Australian political situation. Which brings me to my other, recently neglected pet blogging topic – climate change. I came to hear of the 10:10 campaign and Richard Curtis’s “No Pressure” short film via Deltoid, The Guardian and Climate Progress. I’m not…
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You sound a bit defensive, Glenn
I’ve never quite seen what all the fuss was about regarding Glenn Milne (well, except for his drunken buffoonery at the 2006 Walkley Awards). Pure Poison has a go at him every now and then, but he never seems to be on quite so distant an astronomical body as Andrew Bolt or Piers Ackerman, for…
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And for my next wish…
Just [intlink id=”1083″ type=”post”]as I hoped[/intlink], we have a hung parliament. A few days after the event, all I can say is this: Rob Oakeshott, you legend. Oakeshott, one of the three independent kingmakers, has proposed a unity cabient, wherein the two major parties would share power. Doubtless there is much scepticism to be had…