Thursday 9 July 2009 at 11:30 pm
- Ever wonder what American lawmakers do all day? Pointless dedications, apparently.
- Meanwhile, President Obama has been off doing promising work to get new commitments towards nuclear weapons reduction. But I wonder: even with a superstar leader in Washington, is the Russian government really that keen on cooperating?
- Hearing about the Rio exec detained in China worries me; Australia’s relationship with China is crucially important, and being that they’re a communist dictatorship it’s easier to anger them than your average liberal democracy. So while the scandal will inevitably pass, I hope no real economic damage is done. (Also, I’m chuffed that yesterday’s ABC article quoted my honours supervisor!)
- In announcing yet more service cuts (sigh), the WA transport minister is quoted as saying taxis are preferred over NightRider; admittedly I never saw a full one of those buses, but seriously? You don’t think that could possibly be because the routes weren’t ideal or there wasn’t enough promotion? Heck, even the Bay Area (and most big US cities) run 24-hour buses on major routes that are slow-but-decent (despite the times I’ve seen shift workers outnumbered by creepy homeless people).
- And finally, Fake Steve Jobs at his finest, explaining why Google’s Chrome OS announcement is barely worth caring about despite all the blog hype: “As Sarah Palin would say, the engineers at Google are ambitionistic about wanting to progress the world, and gosh, ya know what? That’s darn good for everyone.”
Wednesday 14 November 2007 at 11:31 pm
- There was a column in last Friday’s South China Morning Post responding to the Chinese prime minister’s claim that the economy here has had years of strong growth, and therefore his economic policy is awesome and can’t be faulted. This sounds strangely familiar! And as the column put it, just because we know A equals B doesn’t therefore mean X equals Y …
- And yes, the Latham story died down and we’re back to the same-old of throwing a million dollars or so here, a billion or so there, and who really cares about keeping track of these expenses anymore?
- Team Howard, meanwhile, seem intent on asserting that this election is about the future. I’m not convinced of that, and I doubt the punter on the street could ever be convinced. Is this really the best that Liberal strategists can come up with — after all, aren’t all of the Ruddster’s big policies about the future too?
- I am missing this whole saga with BHP and Rio, which is a shame because it sounds mighty funny. “You’re undervaluing our company!” “No, you’re undervaluing our company!” … or something to that effect.
- Finally I doubt there’ll have been much coverage in Australia of the successful float of Alibaba, the largest e-commerce venture in China (and one of the world’s largest). I was even tempted to write about a new Internet boom in Asia, except that the IPO happened alongside a massive fall on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Markets here behave in their own very strange ways …
Monday 28 May 2007 at 8:08 pm
- So my last post was wrong; Wednesday’s stadium task force report didn’t officially name a preferred site. But I think this was just a political move, since it’s impossible to miss the subtext of “East Perth is best” in the report. Their concept design is undeniably awesome, and I’d love to hear a State official announce that it’ll go ahead without further delay — not that that’s likely. Also, it’s worth noting that the task force’s work is much more carefully considered than some observers seem to think — for instance, they present an almost undeniable economic case for a single multi-use stadium rather than upgrades that preserve the status quo.
- There’s only one way that the BP & Rio Tinto proposal for a new power station at Kwinana can go ahead: big bucks from Canberra. (Given that Howard is looking for policies to improve his score on climate change, that’s hardly improbable.) From a local perspective, I don’t see all too much to praise. The proposal is for their new joint venture to convert coal into hydrogen and carbon dioxide, then store the latter under the sea floor. Aside from putting yet more stress (acidification even?) on an obscenely polluted Cockburn Sound, both companies admit this’ll be much more expensive than gas-fired power. Nevermind that natural gas accounts for 30% of WA’s electricity (most of which is in new facilities) and is subject to a domestic reservation policy that makes it an awfully attractive fuel.
- Briefly, I’m reasonably impressed by the plan to relocate FESA headquarters to Cockburn, since it might stimulate further growth (for instance, some of Parramatta’s current success came from the NSW Police relocating there). But given the State Government’s record with measures like relocating the old DOLA to Midland, I’m not so sure.
- And finally, I’m amused to hear of John Edwards’ new campaign funding source: pirate treasure!
Atom feed
