Greetings from down under, where it's a balmy 80 degrees and the sun shines until after 8. It's Summertime.

(more on flickr)

Since arriving in Sydney last Wednesday, I've put in a few days of hard work on our project with Energy Australia. It's an interesting mix of fun and frustration, with a lot of moving pieces and a rapid rate of development. I expect to be finished working in Sydney by Friday, 15 March.

So far, I've seen mostly tourist attractions, like the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, the historic Rocks, and a few good restaurants. I dined with friends of friends at a delicious Chinese-Malaysian place called Mamak, which was absolutely delicious. Then last night, I sampled some fine Belgian beers and ate some amazing mussels at the Heritage Belgian Beer Cafe, followed up with a couple of Aussie beers at the Hotel Australia. Many thanks to Bang and friends for showing me around!

Sydney is a beautiful, modern city. The central business district is pretty generic, but the outlying neighborhoods have some more character, which I'll be exploring more today.

The Opera House is one of the most impressive structures I have yet to behold. I've been lucky to see some phenomenal architecture in my three short decades, but this is the first building whose sight brought a tear to my eye. It is completely distinctive, entirely unique, and its lines so beautiful and organically flowing that you almost forget that it is a building made by man. I'm going to see A Midsummer Night's Dream on Thursday, and can't wait to get a peak at the interior. Keep Reading >>

I unfortunately hold both a checking account and a Visa credit card account with Bank of America. I've been a good, monthly-paying customer for over seven years, paying my account on-time each month. I also had an auto loan with B of A, which I never missed a single payment on, and paid off in February.

I logged into my Bank of America checking account yesterday, to check my balance before making a purchase at Home Depot. I was expecting to find about $1200 there, though I wouldn't have been surprised if I were off by $100 or so. Instead, I was horrified to see that my balance was a mere $216 and change. Needless to say, I put off my trip to Home Depot.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I've recently fallen a couple of months behind in making payments on my credit cards. So apparently Bank of America took it upon themselves to just take what they considered theirs. Without my knowledge or my authorization, they deducted nearly $800 from my checking account to put towards my credit card debt. And away goes my December rent ... poof! Thanks guys. I guess that will teach me to deposit my money with you. I'm glad you're so grateful for the taxpayer bailout dollars you've been raking in, that you're thanking us by literally stealing from under our noses.

You may think I'm a low-life or a scum-bag for missing my credit card payments for a few months. But the reality is that I haven't had a full-time job since I graduated from law school in May, and my loans ran out in August. I'm scraping by, but forced to choose between eating and paying rent, or paying credit card bills, I've made the obvious choice of paying for food and shelter. Desperate times and all that. Keep Reading >>

California's capital punishment system is a disaster. It is yet another example of the collateral damage imposed by California's system of ballot initiatives. It is an injustice that only the voters can remedy.

These are just some of the conclusions I reached while completing an extensive research paper (pdf, Creative Commons license) for my seminar in capital punishment law. What I discovered only strengthens my conviction that California's system of ballot initiatives is little more than a tool for political manipulation, which should be abandoned or significantly reformed.

I, personally, am a death penalty abolitionist. I believe that capital punishment is impossible to justly administer, and represents a cruel and unusual punishment that has no place in modern society.

But regardless of one's moral views of the death penalty, it is clear that California's death penalty is in need of significant reform.

First, how is California's capital punishment system a disaster? Keep Reading >>

By now I'm sure most people have seen the television ad campaign extolling the virtues of High Fructose Corn Syrup, and directing viewers to sweetsurprise.com to get the "facts" about High Fructose Corn Syrup.

What Sweet Surprise fails to mention is covered nicely by The Murky World of High Fructose Corn Syrup. HFCS is made by refining corn starch via a number of enzymatic reactions. The enzymes used to break down the corn starch into fructose and glucose, which are mixed into the corn starch mixture, are made from genetically engineered microbes.

Moreover, contrary to the claims of sweetsurprise.com, the health effects of HFCS are considerably greater than those of standard table sugar. Fructose can only be removed by the liver, and the high concentration and ready absorption of the fructose in HFCS can cause cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. The claims made by sweetsurprise.com - that HFCS is both natural and healthy - are simply false. The only reason corn syrup is so ubiquitous is because corn production is subsidized by the U.S. government.

My Thinkpad T61 has been running hot lately. Really hot. Hot enough that it was uncomfortable to hold in my lap for any considerable amount of time. Hot enough that the left metal hinge could almost burn flesh. I became convinced that my laptop must be plagued by the recently-discovered thermal defect with nvidia's graphics chips, as my T61 uses an nvidia Quadro NVS 140M, which is one of the affected G86 family.

Meanwhile, the right hinge of my screen had become a bit loose, so I removed the bezel to tighten the hinge, and while I was at it, I cleaned the whole inside of the case with a can of air. As I cleaned the heatsink fan, a cloud of dust rose from the machine. Then I blew air in through the copper heatsink fins, at the left-rear of the machine, and another large plume of dust erupted.

After finishing both jobs and rebooting, system temperatures are back in the normal range. My conclusion: the heatsink fins are so small and so close together in this system design that even a small amount of dust accumulation (1 years' worth) significantly interferes with system cooling. Advice of the day: keep those Thinkpads clean!

The most popular technology article in today's New York Times is Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic. The article reports on the news that several ISPs, including Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and AT&T, are considering a move to a "metered Internet" pricing model for consumers. That is, the more bits you download (or upload), the more you pay.

I suspect it's no coincidence that the move to metered pricing comes at the same time as more strident calls for network neutrality regulations. The current net neutrality legislation is so broadly worded that it would prevent ISPs from managing traffic on their networks. This will ultimately stand in the way of media convergence and force companies like Comcast to maintain separate networks for their Internet service and, e.g. television. This inefficient duplication of infrastructure is bad for everyone: consumers, ISPs, and content providers.

I'm certainly opposed to some forms of network discrimination, like charging content providers extra for Internet access, as Ed Whitacre of BellSouth famously proposed back in 2006. But the current, broadly-worded legislation creates a real danger of market fragmentation and inefficiency.

For a counter-example, look to Germany ... Keep Reading >>

Google quietly announced a new service last week: Google Health. Google bills the service as an application "to store and manage all of your health information in one central place." To that end, users are encouraged to log in to the site, and begin entering all of their most personal healthcare records into Google's server farm.

Yet Google has declared itself exempt from HIPAA, the law regulating how consumer health data can be stored and transmitted electronically, which should make consumers think twice before entrusting their healthcare data to the tech giant. Keep Reading >>

I just finished reading one of the most disturbing articles I've seen in some time: Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know, by Kevin Phillips, in May's Harper's Magazine.

Phillips documents the changes that various administrations have made to the statistical methodology used in calculating the three major economic indicators: GDP, CPI, and Unemployment. Since 1961, nearly every U.S. president has "tweaked" the calculation of these numbers to mask certain politically inexpedient economic realities.

The cumulative result of these successive tweaks has been a severe case of what Phillips terms "Pollyanna Creep." The true health of the economy has come to be severely overstated by inflated statistics. Keep Reading >>

I just returned from my first ever trip to Las Vegas, the chosen destination for JK's final nights of craziness before his impending marriage. "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," as they say; all 20 of us had a pretty amazing time, and sent J off in good style!

I missed out on the $44 Virgin America flights that most of my bay area friends seized upon, and ended up driving the 520 miles each way. The drive was surprisingly pleasant, but for a few hours on the I-5 (aka the "Slaughterhouse 5").

Driving through the Nevada dessert reminded me of Burning Man (further stoking me for this August!), and the analogy continued as I came upon Vegas. You see the glow of Vegas before you see the city, or even the strip, itself. The strip is a dazzling light show of glitter and glam, much like the Playa at night. Both Vegas and Black Rock City - oases in the desolation of the Nevada wilderness - require a certain suspension of disbelief, the voluntary adoption of a particular frame of mind, helped along by hedonistic consumption of substances.

Yet that seems to be where the parallels end. The Vegas frame of mind is 180-degrees opposite from the Burn frame of mind. In Vegas, you have to ignore the fact that the odds are stacked against you in every game; that you're literally handing over cash to build more billion dollar casinos; that you're being ripped off and hustled at every turn; that happiness can't be found in money and conspicuous consumption.

In BRC, you have to ignore the comfortable banality of everyday life; forget about money and find value in community; open your mind to different forms of art and expression; let go of the limitations of the status quo; and live simply.

Unfortunately, Vegas is the permanent presence, and the manifestation - even the epitome - of the modern American consumer culture. BRC remains but a fleeting memory in the desert, a mirage undulating in the hot sand, an ephemeral glimpse of an alternative world unrealized. Yet to me, BRC is the real, and Vegas the mirage. Keep Reading >>

Good news! It looks like I'll qualify for a Public Interest Law Certificate by the time I graduate, without even having tried! I'll have 20 units of qualifying credit by gradution:

• Nor. Cal. Innocence Project (NCIP) (4)
• Mass Communications, Broadband, & Convergence (3)
• Broadband Regulatory Clinic (3)
• Environmental Law (3)
• Antitrust (3 - Fall '08)
• Law of Non-profit Orgs (2 - Fall '08)
• Community Economic Development (2 - Spring '09)

NCIP satisfies my "core" public interest requirement, with enough hours left over to also satisfy the certificate's 50-hour community service requirement (I worked enough hours this semester to earn two units, but I'm only taking one). The Community Economic Development course I'm taking in the spring will meet the "identity politics" course requirement; and my Mass. Comm. paper should meet the writing requirement.

Of course, who knows what good a "Public Interest Certificate" is, but it can't hurt!