Modern Life Is Not Rubbish

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural…

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China Eastern Airlines Passenger Eats For Free For A Year? I Call Bullsh…

So there’s this story doing the rounds. It tells of an enterprising guy in China who supposedly managed to eat for free for the best part of a year, purely by purchasing a first class ticket, which he then used to access the airline lounge. Once he’d finished eating for free in the lounge, he simply cancelled and rebooked his fully refundable ticket for the following day, and then repeated the exercise 299 times. When…

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Sloppy Data Journalism

Flicking through The Age as I chewed on my lunchtime sandwich yesterday, this article, about car thefts in Victoria, caught my eye: It’s more interesting for what it doesn’t say than for what it does. It quickly skips right over what to me would be the most interesting part of the story: While total thefts hit a 10-year low of 9624 in the 2012-13 financial year, the number of cars fewer than five years old…

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