TOMCAR AUSTRALIA

I just want one.

TOMCAR to be manufactured in Melbourne by MTM

These are the days of miracle and wonder…

A Human Planet and the shape of things to come

Here are a couple of videos which I think offer glimpses of the true meaning of human ingenuity.

The first is a promotional preview for BBC’s landmark documentary series Human Planet. If you get the opportunity I really recommend you watch the whole series. You can purchase the DVD from BBC.

I also like the slick little video player which is courtesy of Private Video Networks.

This vision of the not too distant future from Microsoft speaks for itself!

Infinite Information

No wonder I feel tired. Click on the image to view full size.

Oprah and Walgreens

This is funny.

Some very clever marketing here.

A great idea

I really like this idea for recognising Australia’s Indigenous heritage. I think it will be a great landmark for Melbourne.

Building featuring portrait of indigenous leader to become Melbourne’s newest landmark

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national/apartment-building-featuring-portrait-of-aboriginal-leader-to-become-melbournes-newest-landmark/story-e6frfkvr-1225923123092#ixzz0zYNmCsoO

Got my postcard!

Che Guevara 1962

http://threesixtyfivepostcards.wordpress.com/page/2/

http://exultant.net.au/blog/2010/03/365-postcards/

Something for Facebook users to think about

“Privacy advocates are raising further concerns about the use of personal information from social media sites. They say the practice known as “sentiment analysis” or “sentiment mining” may not be illegal but it is often unethical because people are unaware it is happening.”

For those of us who spend time on Facebook I think this article is definately worth having a closer look at.

Read the full article at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/26/2937709.htm?section=justin

Help save rainforests

Ecosia is a new search engine powerered by bing, Yahoo and the World Wildlife Fund. Each search you do saves around two square metres of rainforest.

It looks pretty good to me. I have done some test searches and got results similar to those provided by Google.

What exactly is the ETS?

We have all seen the recent high drama in Canberra over the Government’s attempt to legislate an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). It has been great fun to watch but there has been all sorts of bullsh*t spouted as to what the ETS and Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) are actually all about. I came across a pretty good description by “darren” on the JTI blog at The Australian. Here is an edited depoliticised version of  Darren’s post.

The CPRS for Dummies

The CPRS creates a legal right to pollute, measured by co2 emissions. To keep this simple I am going to call that right “permits”. A permit is a type of property that a lawyer calls a Chose in Action. A permit is the same as a Share or a Unit in a fund (which are both simply rights to share in profits of a company or Fund and to vote at meetings of members). Choses in Action form the basis of just about every major market in the world.
 
The permit gives the holder the right to produce a certain amount of pollution per year. As a result a polluter has to buy them, by having a finite number of permits; it is possible to know the TOTAL pollution produced per year. That’s the control mechanism. Over time, the number of permits is bought up (like government bonds) and the total level of pollution is reduced.
 
When a polluter buys a permit they lose NOTHING. In cost accounting terms, the polluter buys a permit by debiting their Cash column and crediting their assets. In other words the net financial position of the polluter is unchanged, because the permit is an ASSET, not an expense. It can be sold for cash. If the polluter is a company that is wound up, the permits would be sold (converted back to cash) and the cash distributed amongst shareholders. Compare that to a TAX – which is basically a permanent removal of cash from the company – in other words, akin to a tax deductible expense.

When the polluters buy the permits, the money they use will be funneled back to them. By funneling the money back, the government is largely alleviating the cost – I say largely because, by taking some cash, the polluters’ cost could go up and some of the money is being funneled to consumers. This is how the GST was implemented. This is not necessarily a good thing because it means that people who get cheaper permits like this will make a windfall from those who come into the market later and need to pay full price – which is exactly why the polluters have been causing so much fuss about it; they want to use it to solidify their market share against possible competitors. When you see INFORMED people talking about rent-seekers in the CPRS, that’s what they’re talking about. The good news is that it’s unlikely that anyone will be rushing to build old fashioned polluting energy generating plants in future.

So there it is the guts of the CPRS for Dummies.

 Permit = valuable asset, NOT a tax