Shmandatory Shpree-coshmitment: Will New Pokies Regulation Work?

Mandatory pre-commitment. The idea is to make problem gamblers think consciously about their actions, before the addictive behaviour kicks in, and to then bind them to their sober choices.

Will the plan work? No. But is the thought in the right place? Kind of, I guess. But is it the right approach? Doubtful. Here's why:

The Final Solution to the Problem of the Boat People

I've been listening to Gillard, Abbot et al arguing about how best to come up with a final solution to the problem of the boat people, and while I can believe they're acting like this, it still totally disgusts me how partisan the Australian parliament is, at the expense of the human rights of those already at risk.

I was saying as soon as the High Court decision came down about the Malaysian solution that Labor would probably try to change the Migration Act. If Liberal were in power, they'd be doing the same thing, human rights be damned. The only reason Liberal are trying to block it is because they're not in power.

I don't know if I've blogged about it already, but this is an almost perfect example of how democracy can be abused by partisanship and factionalism:

German Pirates Storm Berlin's Parliament

Berlin's Pirate Party has won 15 seats in the state election on the weekend just passed.

It's a fantastic result. The Pirate Party got 9% of the vote, which places them as the fourth largest party in the parliament. They are also the smallest, because Germany mandates a 5% minimum to be allowed representation. This is to filter out fringe parties (3 of which got between 2%-3% of the vote), which means in Berlin, the Pirate Party is now mainstream.

Congratulations to all the German Pirates involved!

Safe Investment Strategy?

What would you call something that works like this?:

1. A company asks for an investment of money, with the promise of returning your principle as well as a guaranteed rate of return.
2. Investors get confidence by seeing the returns, and if any of them tried to individually exit the investment scheme, the company would be able to pay them out.
3. The company used that confidence in order to convince investors to leave their investment with the company.
4. The company could only continue paying out returns for so long as enough money keeps coming in to cover the guaranteed rate of return.
5. If every investor tried to take their investment from the company, the company would go bust.

Double-blind Experiments for Dummies: Wine - Part 3

This is the final part of my wine-tasting experimentation trilogy preceded by Part 1 and Part 2.

Here, I'll be presenting the results, some basic analysis and a conclusion, including an evaluation of this experiment's credibility.