Blog news

Andrew Norton has now set out on his own (exiting the Catallaxy blog) with, guess what, Andrew Norton’s blog here. I think there are some technical issues - I could not connect this morning. Andrew will presumably continue to post on happiness research and other topics – but it is in the area of education policy that he has most made his mark.

My colleague Damien Eldridge has established his own economics-oriented blog Economics Geek here with some top posts of how undergraduate macroeconomics should be taught. I think my university now has the maximum number of economists blogging in Australia (namely 2)! A pace-setting ‘new-age’ Department!

An interesting site that I have only just become aware of is Conservation Finance which discusses many things but focuses on providing business models to help conserve biodiversity. I am unsure this is an easy mission but an interesting site.

A post on ‘Planning for Food Health?’ interested me at Russ Degnan’s Knotted Paths. I had started to post on this myself. There have been articles in the press recently suggesting that sprawled-out cities that create car-dependence force people to eat junk food contributing to the obesity problem. Russ dumps on the idea and I think he is right. There is however some evidence that poor planning can lead to more sedentary behaviour and hence obesity – I’ll try post on that eventually.

Finally, my son William has posts on music lessons and animal cruelty at William’s blog. His spelling is almost worse than mine but I think they are good posts. He complains that no-one visits his blog and I really would like to connect him up with other young kids who have blogs – a quick Web search didn’t help me do this. I’d appreciate advice on how to get a group of kids safely blogging.