Crikey Blogs

Absolutely! Here's a simple example:

I'm a recovering information addict who used to perceive myself as having a deep need to know things, which was actually anxiety around and fear of uncertainty or not knowing.

In recovery, I've learned there's very little I need to know, learning to tap into my intuition, instead.

One indigenous story dealt with exactly this.

I used to think of myths and mythology as ancient outdated beliefs. I now view them as learning opportunities. I've found it useful to view literally everything this way, which is another teaching I've encountered in indigenous stories & I learned on my own beforehand. I now view beliefs as tools for configuring cognitive biases and can find many useful ways to prime my brain this way.

So yeah...crazy useful and totally counter to modern society's teachings, probably because these lessons work against the more toxic/limiting aspects of modern life.

Thanks for asking! There are timeless teachings about how nature works (at least until nature evolves away from them) in indigenous cultures, which includes how to care for ourselves. That's stuff that was for sure missing from my upbringing and education.

Also, here's another example of how what I consider Western science is only just now catching up to some indigenous teachings: https://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2015/11/08/ornithogenic-fire-raptors-as-propagators-of-fire-in-the-australian-savanna/
The local indigenous tribes in that area told of birds that were…

From my observational experience, and limited study on the issue, markets don't seem to be solving this optimally, at least in Melbourne, Australia.

Overall, the market for apartments seems to be supply constrained. The main factors:

1. Government approval is required to build large apartment buildings. In general, this seems to lag behind demand.

2. Large buildings take a long time to build

3. There have been a number of years of high immigration, especially in and around the CBD.

All of these factors combine to cause high prices. In a high price environment, many residents are stretched for cash. They essentially have to pick the lowest price apartment available. It's not uncommon to have multiple people sharing a room in order to decrease costs. This creates a high price floor. Mid range apartments don't tend to be much more expensive, simply because many residents are already super stretched financially and unable to afford the extra marginal cost.

As a property developer in a high floor, low marginal payoff environment your financial incentive is now to build as many low cost apartments as possible.

>> The majority of Victoria’s newest apartments are so small they would be considered unliveable in Sydney…More than three-quarters of new one-bedroom apartments built across the state are 50 square metres or less, which means they probably would have been illegal in Sydney, London and Adelaide. [1]

Making these apartments meet a reasonable minimum standard could…

This is one example of statistical sloppiness in reporting, comprising:
(a) sloppiness about the quantity or proportion being asserted (e.g. "many" rather than "at least 4000" or "10%" or "24"), and (b) sloppiness about the confidence interval.

I'd love to see a sidebar to articles asserting trends providing both a clear quantity estimate and the confidence interval around it. I'd even settle, in early articles on a supposed trend, for something like "We're asserting that this has happened more than N times." where N might be as small as 0.

I'm aware that my proposed standard could even be applied to this comment:), so I'm simply asserting that this sloppiness exists. Here's one exemplary takedown:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/contentmakers/2010/03/27/did-the-media-get-it-wrong-on-batts-gate/

There's a reason this guy (and story) showed up three times on /r/badlinguistics in the last two days [1], [2], [3]. Because what he's saying is rubbish. The discussion at [3] links to the refutation [4].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/badlinguistics/comments/3qh1jj/gday_mate_lazy_australian_accent_caused_by/

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/badlinguistics/comments/3qmt1l/australia_we_need_to_talk_about_the_way_we_speak/

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/badlinguistics/comments/3qo63v/linguists_respond_to_frenkels_claims_about/

[4] http://blogs.crikey.com.au/fullysic/2015/10/29/when-media-gets-drunk-on-absurdity-and-tries-to-tell-us-we%E2%80%99re-the-ones-who-sound-drunk/?wpmp_switcher=mobile

Citizen policy juries, selected by random sampling of the electorate, with access to experts making public recommendations on policy.

Even if they don't have formal authority to legislate or execute policy, politicians enacting laws in conflict with those recommendations would have to at least explain why.

Some Australian experiences:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2010/08/10/behind-the-scenes-of-a-citizens-jury-on-health-policy/
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/jury-still-out-but-the-idea-is-to-promote-true-democracy/story-e6freuzi-1226440720146
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/citizen-power3a-citizen-juries-advise-on-energy-policy/4383260

I'd like to see a smart city with grand infrastructure (subways designed ahead of time, the garbage system outlined in this article, etc) but designed on a human scale.

That is, not bulked out by endless roads and parking allowances. There are many charming and walkable cities around the world but so often these "designed" cities are created on the scale of cars and end up feeling so wrong.

If you need service roads and parking, hide them underground perhaps.

Images of Houston are often used to demonstrate the sprawl you get from giving way to the convenience of cars and parking: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/files/2012/06/Houston-parking1.jpg