Recent reading: gambling politics, nose to tail, non-rail public transport and the Chernobyl death toll

I've been using Instapaper to push longer articles to my Kindle for later reading. The tool isn't without some significant limitations but it works well enough for me.  It's great to no longer skip reading longer pieces of text, but instead read them at leisure.

Here's some of the stuff I've been reading recently.

Grog's Gamut digs through his own experience in the gambling industry and the Productivity Commission's report to demonstrate how evil poker machines really are. Key points are that clubs make 40% of their gambling earnings from problem gamblers, not the people having a fun flutter, and the supposed benefits bestowed by clubs don't really exist.

This event in Germany sounds awesome, though I definitely draw the line at raw pork. Have these guys not heard of trichinosis?

The basic idea here is nothing new. Rail is really expensive, slow to build and inflexible. Other methods like buses can be great. The biggest problem with on-road public transport in Australia is that our politicians are loathe to give up road space and dedicate it to public transport, rather than storage of private vehicles. Just try catching a bus down King Street, Newtown on a weekend when cars are allowed park.

George Monbiot idiotically claims only a few dozen people died from Chernobyl, Helen Caldicot claims a million. The truth is somewhere in between, and can't be boiled down into a simple soundbite.