The press gallery:

Andrew Elder writes: Re. “The major economic reforms no one voted for, not even pollies” (yesterday, item 1). Bernard Keane wrote:

“All of these examples are to make a point about context in current political debate. We attribute our politicians with far more power than they actually have”.

Who’s “we”? Journalists assigned to the parliamentary press gallery think that if they cover what goes on in parliament, this effectively covers the gamut of all governmental and social activity.

This fallacy is bought undone by declining consumption of media and engagement with “politics” as represented by standing political parties, and an increased distrust of both journalists and politicians.

There is plenty of news about “politics” that is not to be found in Parliament (and not to be found at scripted media events at photogenic locations, either), so stop assuming that journalists are only in the press gallery because the public want them there.

Chris Mitchell:

David Havyatt writes: Re. “Mitchell’s ‘magnificent obsession’: the man behind The Oz” (Tuesday, item 2). Given that in a normal press conference Minister’s respond to questions in an “open outcry” method, I wonder why it is seen as such a shock to the media that a Minister should make the Q&A process transparent. After all it is the print media that has most decried the loss of the “traditional” press conference and criticise politicians doing one-on-one interviews on electronic media.

To avoid the risk of selective editing it is now also standard for Ministerial offices to release official transcripts of press conferences.

The question to ask is not why Conroy’s office chose this tactic with the Oz in this circumstance; it is why this doesn’t become standard operating procedure.

Bitcoins:

Dan Bourke writes: Re. “Tips and rumours” (yesterday, item 7). Crikey published:

“Bitcoins, as Crikey explained on Monday, is an online-only currency system quickly increasing in value. And one ABC staffer has apparently cashed in, in a serious IT breach Crikey understands is being investigated by the national broadcaster. An ABC insider takes up the intriguing story…”

Frankly, that’s bullshit. The class of computations used to generate bitcoins are not particularly amenable to processing on CPUs, they’re much more easily done using massively parallel processors like the ones in high-end video cards. If there was a way to get a web-browser that level of access to a machine’s hardware reliably, there would be no digital economy at all, as every machine in the world would be compromised as soon as it opened a website, and all your passwords would be sent to whoever wanted them.

As for the “shady” nature of bitcoins themselves, they’re a means of exchange. They carry no moral weight, per se, only their uses, and I think on even a surface inspection, more awful things have been done by, with, or for Australian or American dollars, gold, diamonds or even salt (you know … a while ago). There is no significant difference between a bitcoin and a dollar sent by EFTPOS, excepting that the dollar was probably produced by ripping something out of the ground and damaging our environment, ultimately, while the bitcoin was produced by doing maths. Lots of maths.

A server admin using idle cycles on his machine for personal projects is also not inherently problematic — idle cycles are just that, idle, and useless. Putting them towards some beneficial end seems like the right thing to do, though one might rather the admin had chosen SETI or Folding@home for his pet machines…

Cigarette packaging:

Nicholas Brody writes: Re. “The case for plain packaging of tobacco” (Tuesday, item 10). It’s a stretch for blogger Alistair Air to claim that “The smoker has imperfect information, as smokers can’t assess the effects of smoking on them as individuals.” A

listair clearly hasn’t seen the bajillion anti-smoking adverts I have seen. Hyperbolic discounting, maybe, but imperfect information, definitely not.

Greece:

Mick Peel writes: Re. Niall Clugston (yesterday, comments), a subtle point, yet a fairly obvious and significant one for anyone exposed to economics: yes, Argentina defaulted (and have done a number of times over the last century), but the ensuing currency de-valuation eventually led to growth in productivity and exports (not to mention deflating remaining debt). All of this delivered economic recovery and fiscal adjustment.

Unfortunately Greece does not have this option — it is a member of a single-currency union, along with states like Germany and France.

Cryptic suduko:

Zachary King writes: Re. “Menadue: a flash card to help navigate the refugee fact free zone” (yesterday, item 10). While not in any way wishing to disparage your good work on dispelling myths about our manufactured refugee crisis, this caught my eye:

“It ignores the fact that the Pacific Solution cost more than $1 billion over five years, at enormous human pain, yet diverted only 46 persons away from Australia, at a cost of $35,000 each.”

In the immortal words of Manuel, que?  I can’t figure out any easy, typo type error to make 35,000 go into a billion involving 46 as a variable. Is this a cryptic suduko thing?