Ok, we get it, you don’t get Twitter. But you’ve just signed up for it. And your first “twit” is something along the lines of “No idea why I’m here.” That’s a good thing - neither does anyone else, and that’s what makes it something entirely new, and that’s why some people are very excited by it. I’m not sure whether this is just another passing fad, but it certainly has exploded over the last few months as its visibility has gone viral. ...

All of the following are linked to Japan in one way or another, and look damn good - can’t wait. The most obvious one is Okuribito, or Departures - this is the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film this year, and looks gorgeous. It will probably be as slow as any Japanese drama is, but I guess that’s the genre conventions. The next is Shinjuku Incident, Jackie Chan’s new film about a clash of triads and yakuza in Tokyo. This looks like your more standard action fare, and obviously it’s Jackie. How could that not be awesome? ...

I remember once upon a time I’d discover a new blog and spend hours going backwards through time to try to reach the first post. It felt practically necessary - the only way context could be sufficiently established, that you could follow along with new developments. In the days before RSS - that is, only 5 years ago - you’d click through your list of links daily, just to discover if they’d posted something new. ...

Max Barry (my favourite Australian author) is experimenting with publishing a ‘real time serial’ online, I guess kinda along the lines of how novels were published in days of yore. Depending on how it goes, you’ll be able to buy the full thing later, as a way to support the author directly. Launches tomorrow, so sign up now!

A response to this rather infuriating article: Paul Sheehan has a rather glaring contradiction in his article on Monday, accusing “Comrade Rudd” of being a great illusionist. To claim on the one hand that the Prime Minister falsely represented himself as an economic conservative, but argue on the other hand that following Keynes’ General Theory is not economic conservatism appears somewhat contradictory. Keynes’ ideas of macroeconomics had been largely displaced by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Business’ laissez-faire monetary approach since the 70s, so it seems that a return to older ideas would indeed conform to the ideas of conservatism in the field of economics. Applying the approach used to solve the Great Depression of the 1930s seems like the very model of conservatism. ...