I always look forward to Willem Buiter's posts, and his latest, on a common tax rate on all forms of capital income is absolutely spot on. In fact I've added it to my manifesto.

I especially like the added justification on the end:

[stop the] privately profitable but socially unproductive …

It was uncanny the way that every scene was exactly as I had imagined it when reading the book. Very moving, I was embarassed to be tearful several times during the film. The theme of typing, cleverly hinted at the fact that this was Briony's narrative. This device ran the …

We've got a new domain name, and redesigned the site for http://www.own-id.com/. We're sort of trying it out at the moment, so let me know what you think.

Good answer! I think you've nailed it.

I think I'm still going to go ahead and write a sci-fi novel set in a democracy. I know it would be boring, but that's where I excel!

There's no current selection pressure to become 'grey goo'; a virus has no method of replicating itself other than hijacking other cells functions, and then having a mechanism to pass to another host. Viruses are also quite fragile in the environment, most need some sort of fluid transfer between hosts …

Long answer: When people write Sci-fi they tend to write about what ifs, often reflecting hopes or more commonly fears in their current society. Would you have 1985 without the fear of communism, the I robot series with out fear of automation removing jobs. The genre has now become more …

This is the second Vernor Vinge I've read, and it came up to the same high standard of the first. Again his imagination stands out as exceptional.

In this and many other sci-fi books, democracy is ignored. Why is that?

I've put up a gadget that lets you use your own domain name (e.g. id.tlocke.org.uk) as an OpenId identifier. The code is released as Free Software.

It says on the news that little information is coming out of Burma. Mobile phones cut off, internet cafes shut down etc. Regimes shut off the flow of information so that they can commit attrocities without anyone knowing. To get the information flowing again, why doesn't the UN fly over …

The bailing out of Northern Rock was a misuse of taxpayer's money. The FSA aleady guarantees the first £2,000 and then 90% up to £33,000 of any deposits. The further guarantees that the bank was making just makes it more likely that banks will be even more reckless …