Larvatus Prodeo’s Last Post
As of today, Larvatus Prodeo will cease publishing: the blog began to wend its way through the online world on March 17, 2005, so it’s a very old beast in internet years. We collectively feel seven years is enough.
How the Wivenhoe engineers fell foul of the Floods Commission
As I outlined in the first post, in February this year the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry reconvened as a result of reporting in The Australian by Hedley Thomas which suggested there had been a major breach of the flood [...]
Could the Wivenhoe flood engineers have done better?
As I mentioned in the other post, which is necessary reading for background, the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry in its Final Report did suggest that the engineers could have done better – a little, perhaps – but were sufficiently [...]
Amazing rain, and what the flood engineers did about it
Most people had the impression that the four flood engineers, Robert Ayre, John Ruffini, John Tibaldi and Terry Malone, had done pretty well during the Brisbane 2011 flood event, which began on 6 January when the Wivenhoe Dam first exceeded [...]
Framing the drug law debate
For anyone who’s paid any attention whatsoever to expert opinion on the issue, the Australia 21 report on illicit drug policy is profoundly unsurprising. Prohibition has failed, and imposes massive human and financial costs on all of us.
The coming death of the “high street” – and does it matter?
Embarrassingly, it was only when I initially lived in London in 2007 that the concept of “the high street” really twigged; growing up in Penrith, New South Wales, the fact that our main street happened to be called “High Street” [...]
On stuffups
In Brian’s wrap of the Queensland election, he observed that “competence” was a factor in the election loss. I’d like to pick apart this notion of “competence” a bit.
Quicklink: Planet Under Pressure Conference
Whilst our attention has been focused on the disaster that struck Queensland on the weekend, a major international conference, Planet Under Pressure, is currently under way in London. Here’s a report on what leading scientists have being saying at the [...]
Queensland election wrap
We’ve reached 400 on the other thread and I’m not sure we are done yet. Any way I wanted to make a rather long comment. To me there were three general factors and three specific ones. The first general one [...]
Queensland election roundtable
The polls will be closing shortly. The expected result, as no doubt everybody knows by now, is a massive swing to the LNP with only an ignominious rump left for Labor.
The games miners play
It’s basic bargaining strategy. Threaten to walk away. Behre Dolbear have just released their 2012 annual survey of Ranking of countries for mining investment. Australia, Canada, Chile, Brazil and Mexico are ranked in that order as the top five nations [...]
