New site

I have a new site at WordPress:

http://www.harryrclarke.com/

Readers please adjust your browser settings.

It is goodbye Blogger for at least a while. I have got to express my sincere thanks to Goggle.com for making the incredible Blogger software available free. It is amazingly simple and powerful software. My reasons for making the change? I want to try something new and want to play around and learn about WordPress.

Bleg: I tried to export my earlier Blogger posts to this new Wordpress site but the WordPress instructions for the export (somewhat ominously) did not work. The problem with the export tool in WordPress is well-understood and analysed in their discussion groups. The usual suggested work-around is to first copy files to a WordPress.com hosted account and then copy them across to the Wordpress.org self-hosted account. That did not work for me as my Blogger archives are far, far too big.

If anyone knows some way to effect the export I'd appreciate any help/advice. I will pay to have the files successfully transferred.

Update: On 15/8/2009 I did copy most of the files across successfully without drama.

Stuff white people like

This is a fun blog that has been operating for a bit more than a year.  I'll add it to the blogroll.

Moleskine notebooks - expensive without additional functionality.
Coffee - particularly fair trade coffee - that $2 makes a difference.
Asian girls - they don't have mid-life crises and produce attractive hybrids.
Funny or ironic tattoos - these tattoos you don't tire of short-term.

Thanks RH

A wander half way down my blogroll

Reading blogs is often more fun than writing blog posts. Before I started this blog I naturally did it much more than I do now.  Below are some highlights I selected from a couple of hours wandering down through the first half of my blogroll - I stopped at Marginal Revolution.  I'll do a wander through the other sites at a future date.

Among OECD countries Australia won the recent Olympics using a measure that adjusts both for population and the degree of economic development. Oh yes, Jamaica won the global top spot and the US came 17th.

The value of day-dreaming as an input to creativity.  A wandering mind is in its default state according to this post.  3quarksdaily is a blog I should read more frequently. Recommended.

Adrian’s night shift driving a taxi with interesting statistics and no drunks – a great blog by the way compiled by a man with compassion and intelligence.

Clive James has some impressive clips of the late Sir John Gielgud - the voice of the Bard indeed! Listen!

From the Dog’s Bollocks I learned of a new (apparently very good) web browser – Chrome – supplied by Google.

Stephen Dubner proposes a tax on sex. It’s a joke (I guess) but like a lot of the stuff at Freakonomics it is neither funny nor clever. At the same site Daniel Hamermesh argues the case for the superiority of American toilets. Yuppie economics on a bad sample path! Not my taste at all.

But this was very cute. A Danish chain of gyms provides memberships for free with the only caveat being that you are charged if you don’t turn up. Certainly reduces those procrastination incentives but if their business plan is smart it implies a fairly low view of humanity.

George Borgas draws on a study of 30 billion electronic communications to suggest a 6.6 degrees of separation claim.  I think this is deep.....well.....

Warwick McKibbin has some very useful papers on climate change at his website.  I listened to a paper Warwick gave last week and was impressed.  Not light reading but valuable suggestions for our post-Kyoto future.

A break from blogging

Apologies to readers for the recent lack of posting. I have been busy lately with preparations for forthcoming teaching and have been travelling. Hopefully things will normalise over the next week or so.

On Friday this week I am presenting a seminar on 'Policies for Reducing the Costs of Cigarette Smoking in Australia' (a much earlier version here) at the University of Queensland from 11-12pm in the Colin Clark Building Room Level 6. I'll be in Brisbane Thursday-Saturday morning and would like to meet blog readers in Queensland. I'll be staying at Hotel Ibis on Turbot Street.

The good news this morning is that the much-maligned Premier Iemma has moved decisively in NSW to ban the public display of cigarettes in stores and to fine the 10% of smokers who insist on smoking while driving when there are young children in the car. This follows similar moves in other states such as South Australia.

Passive smoking is particularly injurious to kids and lurid displays of cigarette products are primarily designed to attract young kids into this disgusting habit (a source of Phillip Morris' disgraceful opposition to this move).

Well done Morris and brickbats to those hideous corporates who continue encouraging our kids into making a premature visit to the morgue.

Update Sunday:  Brisbane was sunny and University of Queensland a pleasant destination.  Saw old friends and had a great few days. Now back in freezing Melbourne.

Fake Trojans

My PC had been running normally up until a couple of days ago when it suddenly started giving popup messages suggesting it's operating system was about to collapse because it was infected with trojans and spyware. A very official-looking Windows-type message then urged a full system scan. Clicking on this connected me to an apparently bogus spyware firm's website PC-Anti-Spyware which, you guessed it, offered to get rid of the trojans and spyware at a price. Then every 15 minutes PC Anti-Spyware operated as nagware with repeated popups that led to a new threat/offer: Get rid of what seem to be trojans and spyware and the annoying popups urging purchase, by making the payment. As the trojans seemed to be fake - my computer operated properly despite the claims of impending disaster - the main problem was the apparently unending stream of popup advertisements. Moreover, at $39-99US the anti-spyware software apparently does not even work.

My assumption is that this firm somehow installed or arranged to have installed these messages as a virus attached to a website I had accessed and then used the threat of them and the despicable popup sales messages to try to sell their bogus software. I say this because I have never contacted this firm nor sought any support or help from them in managing my software.

I searched the web for information and came to a website Spyhunter which warned of the PC-Anti-Spyware scam and offered to delete both PC-Anti-Spyware and the false messages. Again I was led through a series of webpages to yes, you guessed it again, a request for payment to actually remove the damaging programs. Again appalling stuff. I have no idea if Spyhunter is an offshoot of PC-Anti-Spyware.

I couldn't get rid of PC-Anti-Spyware using the McAfee package which I routinely run as background anti-virus software or by using old spyware removal favorites such as Lavasoft and Ad-Watch. Finally, I scouted the internet and found a number of favourable articles recommending Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware which I ran gratis. It seems after 24 trouble free hours (touch wood) to have finally got rid of the despicable PC-Anti-Spyware and the despicable popup messages although - being burnt several times in this last episode - I offer no guarantees regarding the use of this (or any) software.

This type of intrusion is socially costly. The cost to me was inconvenience over several days. Other people subject to the same scam would have eventually paid up and still had to endure the effects of the scam. I assume that legal action to prosecute these firms would be difficult to sustain because it might be impossible to prove that a virus had been loaded to provide the basis for a sale. Sometimes I despair of the ragged edges of free-wheeling capitalism and of anything-to-make-a-buck attitudes.

Blogs

Sarah Boxer of the New York Review of Books examines what is distinctive about blogs. There is quite an emerging field of literary work on blogs comparing them to newspapers, analysing their style (or lack of it) and so on. Boxer captured a few aspects but still misses the mix of anarchy and information provision that characterises blogging and the blogging movement. It is a slightly snobby, literary rant.

When I ask myself why I operate a blogsite I am unsure. I just do it and often manufacture what is only ever a partially accurate motivation if pressed on the issue. It has something to do with ego, with keeping an online diary, with summarising interesting observations as I scour the web and with having an online conversation. There is also a fun element. But to be frank the motivation varies - it is an open-ended activity that provides surprises.

By the way Boxer claims there were 100 million blogs at the end of 2007 with 37% of posts now in Japanese. At the end of 2003 there were 2 million.

Comments policy

I have changed my philosophy towards comments on this blog. I hope that readers will continue to feel free to comment but I want to take greater care with respect to comments which contain insulting and even conceivably defamatory language.

Simply put I will not tolerate personal, abusive language at all. I do have a persistent problem with troll(s) and I am dealing with them.

All comments will now be moderated although comment submission itself will be simplified because I have switched off the word-recognition requirement.

If you do wish to post under a pseudonym that is fine but you must use the same pseudonym every time you comment. You cannot post as 'anonymous' or change your identity with different posts.

If I detect people trolling under different pseudonyms, perhaps with different IP addresses, I will ban the person permanently and inform other blogs.

I welcome discussion of this policy.

Tim Blair

I was shocked to read on his blog that Tim Blair has cancer. He is having major surgery so let us hope he stages a full and rapid recovery.

Here is an apt comment from Mark Steyn.

Keeping it simple: computers & blogging software

I am (by constraint) using a MAC to post for the next couple of weeks. It is amazing these clumsy, clunky fiendishly obscure toys survive when the modern PC offers such convincing competition - simpler, cheaper and very robust with modern operating systems such as XP or Vista. It is testimony to the extent that dislike of Microsoft and Bill Gates can distort people's tastes. I have witnessed the anger colleagues feel for Microsoft and the wholly unnatural love MAC owners feel for their machines. But, even ignoring the economics that favour PCs, I still think PCs are easier to use. Maybe a couple of weeks forced use will improve my MAC ability.

While I am on it there are strange preferences for blogging software as well. The adult software to use is widely seen to be WordPress. The kiddie level software that I have used without hitch for nearly two years is Blogger. But from my perspective - having tried both systems - anything you can do in WordPress you can do far more simply in Blogger. I always assumed that WordPress offered advantages if you ran a site with enormous volumes of traffic to monitor. But I notice that Greg Mankiw's excellent blog, which has upwards of 14,000 posts per day, operates more efficiently than smaller blogs that use WordPress.

For example, among Wordpress users, Larvatus Prodeo seems to be having an endless maintenance problem - it attributes these to right-wing inspired 'spam' attacks but I wonder if these lefties don't worry about Liberal Party agents spiking their cornflakes. There are also recurring problems presenting themselves at John Quiggin's blog and Troppo.

So until someone convinces me to make the switch, with clear evidence of enhanced capabilities from doing so, I'll continue to blog on a PC using Blogger. Just keeping it simple.

Economics blogs

This is the most comprehensive list of economics blogs I have seen.

Formatting my blog

I have resisted the temptation to play around with blog formatting but have finally made some obvious changes. The list of recent commenters has gone - at a pinch I could reintroduce it - and the 'over the fold' feature has gone too. The former hard blue screen was sometimes a bit difficult to read and bolding of text often wasn't clear.

I'd be interested to know whether readers think it is an improvement. Sometimes the visual output varies by type of computer and monitor but, on the laptop I am using in my travels, the new formatting is a vast improvement in clarity.

Having switched to the newest Blogger site design software I can more readily make editing changes on formatting. Suggestions are welcome.

Supporting the right in the face of leftist barbarism

I am often criticised for supporting John Howard and the Liberal Party. Many people in the blogosphere think that for some reason it is idiosyncratic, and even somewhat perverse, to support a political party which has gained the majority support of the Australian population over four successive Federal elections and whose leader has been overwhelmingly popular in the electorate over that period.

This prejudiced view shows how narrow-minded and out of touch the crazy section of the Australian left has become. It also shows the contempt they feel for Australian public opinion and their need for abuse in dealing with figures such as the Prime Minister. He is a ‘liar’, ‘a rodent’ and so on. He deceives the ignorant masses and tricks his way into power.

Howard is none of these things. He is a decent and widely respected Australian who would never descend to the depths of the leftwing rabble. He has won successive elections because most Australians like him and his policies. Backing Howard and the Liberal Party is backing a consensus view in Australian politics - not an extreme one.

I generally can’t be bothered reading the diatribes on left-wing blogs. These sites do have some excellent writers and some good posts but, in the main, they operate as echo chambers where fanatics reinforce each other’s fantasies.

This sites do contain some really unpleasant posts. Let me pick on just one recent effort by Ken Lovell on Road to Surfdom to illustrate my point. This is a particularly ugly diatribe criticising John Howard’s decision to lay a wreath on Remembrance Day on the grounds that Howard is politicising the occasion. That he has been doing it every year for a decade or more matters little. Nor does it matter that a batch of Labor politicians are doing the same thing. This is the strident voice of one-eyed hypocrisy.

KL sees Howard on this occasion as displaying:

‘ ... creeping opportunism, his cynical expediency, his tawdry instinctive lunge for the cheap immediate party-political point-scoring over any thought of the national interest … along with all that must be reckoned Howard’s destruction of the office of Governor-General’. (my bold)

The sentence shows, more than anything, KL’s preference for exaggerated, derogatory language. In a break from his linguistic barbarism KL solemnly sees Remembrance Day as a day:

‘that above all calls for ceremonies that bring us all together in a solemn spirit of remorse and shame at the youth and the beauty and the joy of living that was sacrificed upon the altar of old men’s pride and avarice’

Note how KL terms a solemn occasion into a populist anti-war rant involving 'old men's pride and avarice'. What a shocking statement to make about our fallen war dead and the reasons for their deaths. KL, moreover, knows who should have carried out this ceremony – it is not our elected PM but the unelected Head of State:

‘Someone of the order of Zelman Cowen or Bill Deane or Roden Cutler who can find the words and the manner to express the better part of what we feel as Australians’

Instead KL sees John Howard involved in the ceremony which disgusts him. This is what KL wrote:

‘Needless to say, he (i.e. JWH) seized the opportunity to wrap himself in the flag and talk a lot about the sacrifice and suffering of those whom he had bravely sent off to fight in the Middle East … thereby subliminally reminding us all of course of the importance of re-electing a Strong Liberal Government who can be relied on to keep fighting the War on Terror.

What a slimy, self-regarding, small, repugnant, grub of a man. Four weeks into an election campaign this worm has the indecency to stand up and pretend to speak for all Australians on the most solemn occasion in our calendar … a few minutes before he throws himself back into the partisan fray of lies and deception and divisiveness’. (my bold)

This is ugly language and largely deceit. JWH didn’t ‘talk a lot’ about those he had ‘bravely’ sent off to fight. Note the twisted, political viewpoint KL pushes here in the midst of his ‘respect’ for this solemn occasion. The language is as ugly as anything I have seen for a while - KL has problems in articulating a sensible view of what happened because of his deep hatred for Howard.

Howard had, in fact, reminded us that two soldiers recently died in Afghanistan. Moreover, to the inevitable response that Kevin Rudd leader of the Labor Party was doing much the same thing at the same time – he laid a wreath at King’s Park in Perth - KL writes:

‘...but in Rudd’s defence I have to say that if he hadn’t, he was certainly risking 48 hours worth of vicious mud-slinging from Howard’s amoral vacuous baying media leeches about his insensitivity to the fallen.

If Howard had any decency at all he would have declined invitations to participate in these ceremonies and urged Kevin Rudd to do likewise. It’s a job ideally suited to state governors and the Governor-General. But there was never any chance of that happening … not when the little shit could get some footage in the nightly news being Father of Our Nation’. (my bold)

Words run away from KL here and Rudd is not acting indecently he is just avoiding criticism. The intemperate language and narky criticisms scarcely suggest KL is well-equipped linguistically to be the left’s Miss Manners but he continues with advice to the incoming PM:

‘The incoming prime minister will have many opportunities to begin to restore this country’s dignity and decency. One will be to appoint a successor to Michael Jeffery who can be an eloquent and inspirational symbol of national unity on those occasions that transcend the grubby pissant politics which obsess the John Howards of this world’. (my bold)

This nonsense gets an award for some of the most tasteless tripe I have seen all year. KL does exactly what he wrongly accuses Howard of doing – politicising a solemn occasion where we honour our dead. Hence KL is a hypocrite - he does exactly what he criticises others of doing. He is also a narky buffoon - he sacrifices a solemn occasion to vent his hatred for John Howard. It is a commentary that displays prejudice, and the foul-mouthed stupidity of the worst of the riff-raff who support this end of politics. The comments made on the post at the Road to Surfdom site are just as stupid and unpleasant – a couple of them bemoan the fact that a majority of Australians have backed Howard! I wonder if they have the intelligence to understand the implications of what they are saying.

In fact, what Howard said at the Remembrance Day memorial service is accurately reported here. What he did refer to was the fact that two Australians have been tragically killed in Afghanistan during the current election campaign. There was no political element in it at all or any appeal to back one side or the other that anyone other than a leftwing grub could pick up.

I am happy to retain my preference for civilised people and civilised discourse on the right. The left convince no-one but themselves with this type of 'analysis'. If Kevin Rudd wins the forthcoming election it will be no thanks to this bunch. Indeed Rudd would retain towards them the same contempt that I do.

A ramble: time, golf & death - the last taboo that you cannot postpone with optimism

Another week disappears as 2007 gets devoured – time passes quickly as we age since each year is a smaller fraction of our life so far. Yet our discount rates decline – we become less impulsive. This is the reason that the initiation of destructive drug-taking is concentrated among kiddies and the reason some of us are wise.

The blogosphere goes into partial hibernation each weekend and I feel a bit too disgruntled this morning to make a sensible effort at posting to meet limited reader demands. So this ramble is it.

My golf game yesterday was full of high hopes but disintegrated into a sequence of bad shots. This damaged what was otherwise a promising end to the week. The Zen of a good golf swing - it eludes me!

I am still thinking about death and two websites caught my attention last night:

The Australian Museum has an interesting online discussion of death. One of my favourite web pages at this site is the page on 'corpse fauna'. It is an eexcellent discussion of death.

I also liked this post from ScienceBlogs on whether cancer patients benefit from a positive mental attitude. In short they don't live longer but they do, of course, enjoy a less painful exit.

This is not quite consistent with the advocacy of my earlier post on rational death - I favour realism rather than unthinking optimism but, if you do want to exit with the help of a cognitive error, this is the way to go.

Enjoy your Saturday.

Burma turns off the internet

Bloggers are a major part of the opposition to the ruling military in Burma. Initially they were targeted for arrest but that still left a stream of news leaving Burma coutesy of blogs. Now the regime has simply turned off the internet.

'While the veteran democracy activists, and then the Buddhist monks, marched in their tens of thousands against the military regime, it was the country's amateur bloggers and internet enthusiasts who brought the images to the outside world.

Armed with small digital cameras, they documented the spectacular growth of the demonstrations from crowds of a few hundred to as many as 100,000.

On weblogs they recorded in words and pictures the regime's bloody crackdown, in a city where only a handful of foreign journalists work undercover. With downloaded software, they dodged and weaved around the regime's increasingly desperate attempts to thwart their work.

Now the bloggers, too, have been crushed.

Having failed to stop the cyber-dissidents broadcasting to the world, the authorities have simply switched off the internet.'

I am pessimistic about the situation in Burma a country whose future I have followed since the late 1970s. A resource-rich, beautiful country with beautiful, cultured people who live in an authoritarian timewarp. The military will crush the current dissent whether it comprise monks or bloggers.

In the 1980s I taught quite a few Burmese students while based in Thailand. The common characteristic they all had was they did not want to return to Burma. At one point my colleagues and I counted that of 7 Burmese students we had taught all had sought refuge in the US. A tragic loss of able people for a desparately poor country that should be one of the wealthiest in Asia.

Optus makes me out of touch

I've been lying low for the past week as I have been travelling and trying to catch up with that thing I call 'work' which pays me an income.

To complicate things, with respect to my blogging, my Optus supplied home broadband service has been 'slowed' because I have exceeded my monthly allowance of 12GB. On checking I find I am paying considerably more for this than for other newer Optus deals which provide a larger 15GB allowance for less. I will have to deal with this.

I had originally switched from Telstra to Optus because Telstra didn't know that I could be given a cable connection - their automated service determining accessibility said no cable connection was possible. Yes, and of course Telstra provided expensive and terrible service.

The change to Optus was a switch from one expensive, lousy monopolist to another. When the 12GB limit is hit with the Optus plan the service is supposed to 'slow' to that of a dialup service. My distant memories of dialup however are that it was much faster than the slowed Optus service - today it took up to 5 minutes to download my home page.

In my view the option to pay more to get increased capacity is better than the 'slow' option.

It is frustrating. When you seek to make price comparisons across plans with Optus you are not provided with information about your own service relative to others. Indeed you are asked to upgrade without being told precisely what you will get. When you call their service personnel you are deliberately deceived - I assume the unfortunate call centre staff are told to pour smoke on situations of customer dissatisfaction.

The economic device Optus is relying on (as with the banks) is lock-in. It is very inconvenient to reconfigure an email address (or automatic bill paying facilities) so there is the propensity to plod on with a poor, expensive service.

If readers know of good broadband cable deals out there I'd be interested.

Open thread

I haven’t tried an open thread for quite a while so I’d thought that I try one again. I am taking a break for a few days as I travel and also try to clear out a backlog of work.

To be honest I am also reading a couple of wonderful books that I want to finish. Les Carlyon's The Great War. Just great writing and very emotionally involving. Also reading Andrew Roberts, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. This is ideologically-driven but a welcome change from the usual anti-American, anti-British histories. George Bush liked it, JWH liked it and so do I. I'll post on both these books eventually.

A couple of points Lee pointed out to me in this morning’s press:

• Dr. Alex Wodak argues that John Howard is to blame for the emerging HIV epidemic in Asia because even though he utilises harm-minimisation policies in Australia he says that he doesn’t. Can I hear a fantail cuckoo calling in my backyard? Wodak to the rescue. Poor JWH!
• Drinkers who consume more than 14 standard drinks per week will have brains 1.6% smaller. So that's my problem.

I’ll comment on the situation at La Trobe University – and its purchase of the asbestos-ridden Argus Building - in a future post. Actually, no, I probably won’t - I wouldn't want to disturb Mr. Costello's beautiful unemployment numbers.

My blog is getting more visitors than ever before – numbers have trebled since last December. It would be great if some of you who lurk in the background would introduce yourself – pseudonyms are fine. Of course if you post repeatedly on this blog and wish to use a pseudonym please be consistent and use the same pseudonym.

As usual unrestrained praise for my work in maintaining this blog is welcome as is polite criticism and suggestions for future blog postings.

Spam & discussion policy

Over the past few months traffic to this site has more than doubled and my non-monetary 'effort' costs of maintaining the site have increased more than proportionately.

Spam. I have again begun to receive Spam. Unless I impose the letter-recognition procedure that I used until recently for comments made (this increases commenter time costs) I get repetitive Spam each day to particular sites (which increases my time costs).

An alternative to imposing the recognition test is to require people to register for use of the site – something I am reluctant to do since it cuts out the occasional reader who has particular interest in one topic. The difficulty with the Blogger software I use is that I need to enter each posting individually to delete any Spam. This is time-consuming.

An alternative is to switch to using Wordpress and use some anti-Spam software. Given problems that I observe other sites (with far more volume than this site) have experienced in making this type of move I doubt it would be effective.

I welcome views and advice but need to do something.

Comments policy. Recently I have received some narky, negative, personal comments so, yes, I took a big step – for the first time ever I deleted comments.

I just can't be bothered dealing with personal attacks based on assumptions of bad faith – particularly, but not exclusively, when those attacks are made under the cloak of anonymity. If you do use a pseudonym that is fine but please be careful about the character of your comments.

Some commenters now change their pseudonym and make abusive comments under different names (they ‘sock puppet’). Such comments are easily identified by me and will be deleted without any remark on my part. One advantage of making the spam reforms cited above is that I can ban such individuals permanently from this blog.

I publish many comments critical of my own views – sometimes the negativity gets to me – but I expect to receive such comments. Blogging is a conversation and in some cases I have changed my own view in response to comments. But I dislike abuse that suggests bad faith and which is primarily designed to insult.

Contrary to the impressions of some this is not a public place. There is no automatic right to comment. Comments are welcome from anyone willing to engage in ordinary civilised discussion but not those which are nothing more than personal attacks.

Discussion of this policy is very welcome. My main intention is to enjoy blogging without spending too much time dealing with spam and without getting involved in the antics of serial abusers.

If you don’t wish to abide by these rules it is very easy, go elsewhere.

Blogging as a behavioural addiction

There are no deadlines to meet in running a blogsite that are not self-imposed. One does not need to post every day or, indeed, do anything that that doesn't yield pleasure. It would be unrealistic to suppose that running a blog does not have its addictive aspects – getting lots of people to visit your site and reading lots of comments boosts your ego – but blogging remains (or should be) a self-centered, pleasure-driven activity.

Well-known and very active (and able) bloggers Skepticlawyer and Mark Bahnisch have pulled the plug and publicly announced various degrees of self-imposed exclusion from future blogging. But, in my view, their basic argument – that they have enormous workload commitments – would suggest a case for cutting back on post numbers and size rather than exiting. They are both members of team blogs so the blog itself will survive even if they slow down.

Sir Arthur Casingbroke at LP made an astute remark regarding the publicly-announced resignations:

‘Making a public statement like that Mark makes me think of smokers and substance abusers who announce they are giving up to improve their chances of kicking the habit; fear of public exposure of breaking one’s undertaking being an instrument to help one to stay away.

I agree but the ‘reduced pace’ approach is more sensible and it’s that I’ll take whenever work pressures get to me – cut-back and take a break rather than quit. Sir Arthur is implying that blogging is an addictive compulsion. The self-exclusion idea is a type of person rule or pre-commitment these bloggers are employing because they believe they lack self-control. Other effective personal rules in this situation are to limit blogging time to 30 minutes per day or to only blog twice a week. A really effective commitment device would be to offer to pay a substantial donation (say $10,000) to your worst enemy in the blogosphere should either party relapse and break their ‘no blogging’ commitment.

If blogging is a behavioural addiction we can expect blogging relapses perhaps under pseudonyms – in my relatively short-time in the blogging community I have seen several of these. We can also expect substitution towards other forms of self-expression such as writing and speaking. SL and MB have indicated that such substitutions are on the cards.

Do we need an ex-blogger treatment clinics where sufferers can dry out? Surely no need for lobotomies?

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday Kalimna! You are 1 today. Over the past year there have been 607 posts here, an average of 1.7 per day, with around 180 daily visitors looking each day at a total of 350 page views. This performance won’t break records but it is a start.

I initially made a resolution to give blogging a trial for a year and then to rethink options. And I will continue, though my efforts may be scaled back. Joshua Gans celebrated the 1st birthday of his Core economics blog just 2 days ago and remarked that he seldom spent more than 30 minutes per post. My guess is that I spend closer to 45 minutes per post - maybe I am less productive than Joshua - so posting takes 1.5 hours each day. This is hard to sustain particularly as I spend time looking at other blogs and websites. I also have a job, family, my yabby and….you know the rest...

I have had some well-intentioned grizzles about the emphasis on work-related posts but work is an important part of my life and posting on work-related topics reduces implicit costs of blogging. I have also had several less well-intentioned grizzles that have been consumed, chewed over and externalised.

I gave this blog the name Kalimna rather than Harry Clarke’s blog as I thought I might want to take on partners (the name is also a favoured non-native rhododendron hybrid, the intended name of Clarke Mansions and a reasonable Penfolds wine) but I have come to realise that I prefer to run my own show and have occasional guest posts so, from today, I’ll revert to a more straightforward title.

So reader, consider today to be a birthday celebration and use the chance to voice your concerns, criticisms and praises on any aspect of my blog. Its an open post.

Finally, thanks to readers and particularly those who commented on my postings. You helped make blogging an enjoyable or at least stimulating experience for me.

New Blogger

I painlessly upgraded to the New Blogger. The main advantage is that I can now attach labels to posts. It is then easy to search for posts on a particular topic. (Entering labels caused a slight hitch - as I did this tonight for the last 20 or so posts Goggle assumed I was a Spam blog and temporarily stopped me continuing by switching me out).

New Blogger also provides options for customising template design - something I might get around to.

Blogger is looked down on a bit in the blogging community for its simplicity but this seems to me a virtue. I have played around with WordPress blogs. Their main advantage over Old Blogger was the ability to post quickly but, as I look around, they often seem to run amok. New Blogger is much improved in its ability to post quickly.

One thing I had hoped was that people who do operate blogs that run into problems with software, or indeed with hosting services, would comment explicitly on their problems and how they were resolved. It would be a useful service for the blogging community.