Australia's "direct action" scheme to support renewable energy investments mainly funds schemes that were going to go ahead anyway.

It might nonetheless do some good, since it will effectively subsidize those schemes and make them easier to set up. However, a carbon tax would do a lot more.

It turns out that children's learning really suffers when they don't get a good breakfast.

Government policies that squeeze the poor often mean that children don't get enough to eat at any time. These policies hold children back for their whole lives, in this way and other ways, including lead poisoning and other effects.

The plutocrats then point at the consequences of this to claim that those people deserve to be poor.

The "connected car" is the dumbest idea in automobiles ever, or at least since the Edsel.

There is the danger that someone unauthorized will break the security of the car. And the even greater danger, to society as a whole, that this will be used to track where you drive. Remember, there is no such thing as "the cloud" — that's a misleading name for "someone else's computer".

Let's organize now to stop either the state or companies from pushing society into using "connected cars"!

Using computers frequently for reading can reduce your ability to understand information abstractly.

Want to Know What Facebook Really Thinks of Journalists? Here's What Happened When It Hired Some.