First, the scores: Betting markets: +1; Pundits: 0; Polls: -1. While geeking out on partial tallies, Michael noticed the extremely high informal count in his electorate, and noted that “we’re none too bright here in Rankin”. If you consider informal voting a measure of dumbness, it turns out Rankin’s the dumbest electorate in Queensland (at […]
As the election day dawns, you can just feel the excitement in the air: They seem genuinely excited. Almost everyone does. In the markets, people are actually talking about the vote. Some are driving around with pictures of candidates in their car windows. Posters of every hue cover the walls of central Kabul. Meanwhile in […]
When I reinvented this segment of my blog, I said it was meant to cover economics as well as politics, but I haven’t really been following through on that too well. Since someone thinks I may perhaps have a spec in my eye labelled “not blogging enough”, I figured I’d mix two metaphors with one […]
I’ve got no idea what’s going on in Iraq; but my impression is that things will suddenly appear orders of magnitude better than they do now once the US and Iraqi elections are out of the way — the former’s a problem because people are inclined to emphasise the bad news to defeat Bush, and […]
The Oz and American elections are getting pretty boring. At least Iran seems to be keeping things interesting (via Jonah Goldberg, via Instapundit).
Continuing the darcs theme, it does seem to be fairly pleasant to actually use. Having darcs record go through and prompt you for each change (which you can avoid by saying -a) makes for interesting habits — I’m finding I’m much more inclined to commit once per feature addition, and when I happen to fix […]
After a little more looking at darcs, I think I’m willing to live with its flaws. I don’t think I mind the lack of a nice repository for long-term storage — I haven’t managed to grow to like any of the others I’ve seen (cvs, tla, subversion, aegis), anyway. Tarballs will do in the meantime, […]
I’ve been coming to realise that I’m not really as satisfied with arch as I’d like to be; in spite of being an ardent fanboy for a while now. My main requirement for software is that it be simple and stay out of my way; and while arch is fairly simple, it’s evidently proven not […]
The two top ABC news stories at the moment: Labor offers free day in $1.6b childcare package, and Labor slams ‘crazy John’s end of career clearance sale’. (The third “politics” one is Greens call for aerial spraying inquiry — amazing how all the stories are told from the perspective of left wing parties, even when […]
Wow. The ABC headline: Latham accuses Coalition of school privatisation plan. My thought “Cool. Bold and unlikely, but cool if true.” What’s actually being proposed: The Nationals’ Kay Hull says public schools should introduce fees for parents earning more than $100,000 a year. She also wants poorer country schools to receive more government money and […]
Kim’s angry. Meanwhile the cartels have started up their next scam. Here’s the Sunday Mail: Terror by DVD MARTIN WALLACE 19sep04 AUSTRALIA is being flooded with pirate DVDs and the profits from them help fund global terrorism. Here’s the Australian: Illegal DVDs funding global terror By Martin Wallace September 16, 2004 AUSTRALIA is being flooded […]
Interesting article on “True Separation of Powers” by Jonathan Wilde in response to (and quoting) an interesting article by Jim Henley. The idea behind checks and balances under separation of powers is the restraint of mutual jealousy – each of the three branches will be so zealous of its prerogatives, and so wary of overreaching […]
In a stunning triumph, and as a result of cunning diplomacy and an amazingly well-planned campaign that will surely be used as an example in academies for centuries to come, the mighty blender makes his return to the blogosphere! Only one question remains: is there a plan to win the peace, or will this hard […]
One of the more discombobulating issues of converting to a neo-con has been buying into the liberal media meme. It’s confusing because there’s no particular reason I can see why individual media biasses shouldn’t pretty much average out; but instead I keep finding publications I’d expect(ed) to be written by, for and about The Man […]
As Elvis sang, I don’t need a lot of presents, To make my Christmas bright. I just need blender’s weblog, Up on his website! Oh, Santa: hear my plea! Santa, bring that weblog back to me! Bring back Blender’s Blog!