Since the days of Alexander the Great, binge drinking has been a very popular past time - leading to him apparently killing a friend and burning down Persepolis while drunk.

Those are some Great shoes to fill.

Yet, governments, schools and the media have repeatedly tried to teach us of binge drinking's dangers. 

Dartmouth University has taken the lead, instigating a new nationwide policy to curb heavy drinking by their students.

Pour me another glass.

Binge drinking is defined as "the consumption of five or more drinks in a row by men — or four or more drinks in a row by women — at least once in the previous 2 weeks. Heavy binge drinking includes three or more such episodes in 2 weeks."

Seems I don't know anyone who isn't a heavy binge drinker.

Do you think this definition should be changed or should we change people's attitudes? Or should you follow HPD's no fools guide to drinking a lot but not dying?  . . read more

No one would be stupid enough to expect anonymity on the internet. We know that Cookies saves what you've looked at, we know Facebook has been called a U.S spy machine and that Apple has used the iPhone to record your every movement.

Even lovable Google can be scratched off the list of the good guys, as The Sydney Morning Herald reports today, that a criminal suspect was tracked down in conjunction with the police because of the locations of where he accessed his gmail account.

The interesting thing is that this proves a double-edged sword for companies and governments. Sure you can use, sell and give the information but you're equally susceptible to leaks as we all know all to well.

It seems the net has a lot of holes in it and that it serves a lot of people for them never to be sewn up.

What do you think about internet security? Do you think about the seemingly innocent information you provide on the net that might be being recorded? Tell us and remember...Disqus!

  . . read more

It´s official, Time magazine´s Person of the Year for 2010 has gone to Facebook´s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg; but is the choice a worthy one?

On the face of it (`scuse the pun) yes he is, he´s managed to create a network that connects 600 million people (just under a tenth of the world´s population) and he´s done so in a way that seems unlikely to slow down. The interface he built is simple to use, he´s in the media which constantly fuels attention and he´s reached a tipping point whereby everyone has to have a Facebook account to have an online identity- in the same way that everyone had to have a mobile a few years a ago to keep in touch.

On the other hand the line from Time magazine´s Editor that "he is both a product of his generation and an architect of it" seems a bit exaggerated, if Facebook hadn´t come along then I´m sure that Myspace would have stayed on as the social network of choice and the world wouldn´t have suffered for it. 

But I suppose cheers to Zuckerberg, a man who seemingly doesn´t care about privacy and knows we don´t really care about it either, who has made an absolute fortune but seems to be prepared to give a bit of it back too.    . . read more

Remember when the Internet was dubbed ‘the information super highway’?

Well roll over you algorithms for knowledge.

The number of daily hits using words and pictures for relationships on Facebook has just surpassed those on Google. This transformation is an early warning indicator of a world in deep flux.

Parallel this with the astounding success of YouTube (20 hours of video uploaded every minute) and the ‘wow’ factor of the multi-media iPad and here comes the new literacy.

A world of sight and sound crammed to the gunwales with networking people.

Tactile and physical as well as intermediated and digital. . . read more

I've always wondered this; do crazy people who walk around the streets muttering to themselves and yelling about Jesus realise they're crazy?

Or do we seem insane to them?

I ask this because North Korea is supposedly about to name its next heir.

Re-read that.

This is a country that has the world's largest single importer of Hennessy Cognac as its head of government, has an enormous penis on one of its flags and the largest mine-field in the world on its southern border- but this remains the craziest thing to come out of the hermit kingdom. 

How can a country in 2010 still have a completely unrepresentative government, which operates entirely behind closed doors giving dictatorial power to some Communist party cadre for life?

Do the elites seriously look at the democracies of the world and think they're doing it better?

Or do they know how crazy they are?  . . read more

No amount of technology, diplomacy and political manouevering can hide the fact that to achieve innovation when it comes to global action on climate is a matter of ethics. And that ethical outcomes are themselves dependent on what we want to do.

The geopolitics of who goes first, the economic compensation programs, the views of scientists are all second order issues.

You can’t give up smoking unless you want to and once volition is in play then it’s pretty easy.

Ditto the inconvenient truth.

Let’s create an ethical harmony based on desire before we try and nut out the programme for implementation. That requires a universal accord and not one driven by the power brokers.

‘All for one and one for all’.  . . read more

"It is interesting that the term ‘social network' is used to describe this type of platform. The term ‘social' means looking for and enjoying the companionship of other people and the word ‘network' implies ‘an association of individuals having a common interest, formed to provide mutual assistance'. Does the combination of words both suggesting face-to-face interaction, lead us to the meaning of a website which allows us to peer and pry into the lives of others? Is there not a perverse twisting in this phrase?" . . read more