Wall St bankers made redundant by the Global Financial Crisis have turned their fortunes around by running GFC tours of the strip, giving tourists a first-hand look at America’s economic disaster. Sounds… fun.
September, 2009
Australians: the worst polluters in the world
Australia loves coming first, and here’s another gold to add to the collection: a new report says Australians are the worst polluters of carbon dioxide in the world, with an average output of 20.58 tonnes of C02 per person per year.
Libs get their mojo back
Malcolm Turnbull now has the power to hand pick MP candidates, which will keep messy NSW factions in line. The Liberals are starting to look electable again, writes Glenn Milne.
Wall Street’s fallen idols: where are they now?
The Global Financial Crisis has claimed its fair of big scalps in the banking and finance sector. A year on, where have the big players on Wall St landed after their unceremonious falls?
Vale Norman Borlaug: he “saved more lives than any man in human history”
Scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug has passed away, age 95. His work to create a high-yield wheat crop helped double world food production between 1960 and 1990 and is credited with saving a billion people from starvation.
McGurk’s secret tapes could destroy NSW govt
Explosive claims that murdered businessman Michael McGurk secretly recorded offers of bribes with five NSW MPs and a federal MP, with reports the tapes would bring down the NSW government.
Fairfax launches new website under an old masthead
Fairfax Digital has launched a new website under a resurrected masthead that hasn’t been published since the mid ’80s: The National Times. So what is it? Pure Poison investigates.
Wright: Rudd and voters are singing the same tune
The Federal Opposition has been wasting its breath trying to paint the Rudd government’s stimulus measures as irresponsible, says Tony Wright, with voters voicing their approval.
Nielsen: Aussies want more
stimulation
This month’s Nielsen poll comes in with a two-party preferred of 55-45 –- a 1 point drop for the ALP — and finds widespread support for the government continuing on with its stimulus measures.
Twitter: giving a voice to the biggest mouths in town
Enjoy the unfiltered tweets of pollies Joe Hockey, Kevin Rudd et al while you can. Pretty soon, press secretaries will be wrenching their Blackberrys from their hands, says Annabel Crabb.
Pitching to boys
Boys spend billions each year on apparel, toys, and video games. They’re hard to reach but a gold mine for those who succeed. The media is increasingly looking for ways to cater to their whims.
Power to the people: forgive the tyrants
Forgiveness of a dictator and ensuring an end to their actions is more crucial than prosecuting them for war crimes, writes Sholto Byrnes. Refusing to seek vengeance shows victims “to be better than their oppressors”.
Employment on the move
Today’s 20-somethings can expect to change jobs four times before they’re 30 and 10 times before they’re 40, says John Zogby who asks what this technology-enabled transience means for community, housing and even children.
Breakfast Media Wrap: Good poll for ALP and Mark Day slags off Crikey
The pick of Monday morning’s papers.
9/11: thank God it happened before Twitter
In light of the Iranian election, Hudson River plane crash and other recent big events that social media has gone nuts for, The LA Times imagines if the World Trade Center attacks had happened in today’s Twitter-happy world. Sounds like 9/11 times 100.
Does Putin want to be President again?
After serving a little over a year as Russia’s Prime Minister, former Russian President Vladimir Putin looks have sit sights set back on the country’s top job, announcing he may run again in 2012.
Don’t quit your day job: the Taliban’s weekend warriors
An increasing number of Afghanistan’s urban white-collar workers are taking up a new weekend hobby, and it’s not golf. During the day, they sit behind a desk pushing papers, but come the weekend, they travel back to their hometowns to fight for the Taliban.
Breakfast Media Wrap: The PM goes to the country footy with bushfire victims
The pick of Sunday morning’s media
Breakfast Media Wrap: Another day of state Labor Party troubles while Rudd called creepy
The pick of Saturday morning’s media
graph pr0n 
State of the planet
Is our world getting better or worse? On the one hand, standards of living conditions are improving, but on the other, violence and environmental destruction continue to rise. New Scientist collates all the stats to see whether there’s any hope left for this little blue marble.
Dramatic turn: the art of the last minute replacement
What happens when the opera stars you book get sick, twist ankles or fall off cliffs? It’s a nightmare — as Placido Domingo’s LA Opera company is finding out — that can also sometimes turn into an opera-worthy miracle.
The worst sports column ever written
It’s important for a story to be newsworthy, but perhaps sports columnist Mark Whicker should have looked for a better ‘hook’ for his column than Jaycee Dugan, the girl recently found after being kidnapped 18 years ago.
Media treads heavily with Semenya gender issue
For teenage girls with gender ambiguity a good doctor would prescribe a long period of introspection, so they can figure out who they really are. The media has deprived runner Caster Semenya of that possibility, says Hanna Rosin
The economics of happiness
H = f (P, Y, X, ε) — that’s the formula for predicting people’s happiness as a function of their income, the public good and other observable data. And according to Arik Levinson, happiness data that can be used to work out the monetary value of public goods.
