July 2009

The Arms Trade

27 July 2009

Yesterday iconoclastic commentator on technology, politics and culture, Stilgherrian, shared an interesting discovery on twitter. He had come across the website of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and their Arms Transfer Database. SIPRI has been monitoring international arms trades since 1968 and in the process have assembled an extraordinary database with details of […]

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Love is Old-Fashioned, Sex Less So

24 July 2009

Following on from my post on Visualizing the Hottest 100, I noticed that the UK’s Guardian newspaper has published a list of 1000 songs to hear before you die*. The list was assembled from nominations posted by readers. Even before looking at the list, I suspected that the demographic profile of the Guardian’s readers may […]

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Deleveraging and Australian Property Prices

22 July 2009

A few weeks ago, I had a preliminary look at Australian property prices. That post focused on rental yields and argued that the fact that property prices have consisently outpaced inflation over the last 10-15 years can be associated with a steady decline in rental yields which has been matched by a decline in real […]

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Park the Debt Truck!

16 July 2009

About two months ago, I tried to bring some perspective to concerns about growing government debt in Australia. Last week the opposition has rolled out the “debt truck” to add to the hysteria about growing government debt, so I feel compelled to return to the subject for another attempt. Last time I looked at net […]

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Visualizing the Hottest 100

12 July 2009

Today radio station Triple J finished broadcasting their Hottest 100 tracks of all time, the first all-time vote since 1998. For those outside Australia and not familiar with the tradition of the Hottest 100, it began back in 1989 and results are determined by listener votes. After two more years the format changed and votes […]

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No Alternative View of Dubai

3 July 2009

Back in April, I announced that the Mule was to be graced with a guest post providing an alternative, more positive picture of Dubai than the one painted by The Independent. Sad to say, although written, the piece is not going to see the light of day. My guest poster’s employer has ruled out any […]

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