This is a very good article by Joshua Gans on why a quantified cost-benefit analysis of the NBN is perhaps not really very useful. The opposition might make better use of their time by calling on the government to simply better articulate the benefits and analyse if those are public benefits we want to spend taxpayer money on.

I don't normally link to articles from Crikey, and this one is still a little overblown. But it does make some good points about how blatantly The Australian has become a campaign newspaper. Stating that a particular political party should be destroyed (paragraph 4), even in an opinion piece is shaky ground.

See also this ridiculous article about ( Read more... )

http://om.ly/txLI

This is a rather interesting diagram of the companies that track internet users and the websites that use those companies. Some of the results are a bit surprising.

Some of the worst offenders include Dictionary.com, bbc.co.uk, imdb.com and mozilla.com.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/07/3005028.htm

She's got Bandt, Wilkie, Windsor and Oakeshott. Katter went with the Coalition, so it's 76/74.

For those who are interested, the ABC has put up the Three Muskateers' full list of preliminary demands: http://www.abc.net.au/news/documents/scribd.htm?id=36429842&key=key-kd4t6lt5pxy5dzbohr5Read more... )

I think everyone can agree that the media coverage of the election issues was not as good as we'd have liked. There was an awful lot of focus on trivialities and not much on details of actual policie. Politicians were rarely asked meaningful questions about their policies, instead being asked about earlobes and ex-leaders and whether or not they ( Read more... )

As an aside from today's elecotral news: Police find bears protecting pot crop"Police say officers were dismantling two large outdoor plots of marijuana near Christina Lake, British Columbia, when they realised there were 10 large black bears wandering around the farm property ( Read more... )

I've been watching the public forums and Q and A sessions with Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott lately. For those who don’t know they’re all essentially televised forums where an audience of either self professed swinging voters or 50/50 Coalition/Labor supporters asks the two major leaders questions. The leaders come on one at a time, so they can’t ( Read more... )

Here's a good reason to ignore Mark Latham's advice to vote informally on Saturday.

"But, by my love and hope I entreat you: do not reject the hero in your soul! Keep holy your highest hope!"By keeping to hope over despair, we keep the ground fertile for something new that could, like lightening, strike the old tree at some tremendous moment. In ( Read more... )

Belowtheline.org.au is pretty handy tool for creating your own senate voting guide ( Read more... )