The hacker community may be small, but it possesses the skills that are driving the global economies of the future.

The speed with which WikiLeaks went from niche interest to global prominence was a real-time example of the revolutionizing power of the digital age in which information can spread instantly across the globe through networked individuals.

If the public can't see justice being done, or afford the costs of justice, then the entire system becomes little more than a cozy club solely for the benefit of judges, lawyers and their lackeys, a sort of care in the community for the upper middle classes.

Say what you will about Americans, but one thing they are not is passive. The Bush administration may have pushed through the Patriot Act weeks after 11 September, but, as the American public got to grips with how the law was affecting their individual rights, their protests grew loud and angry.

After driving around your community this afternoon, I have to say that, at all costs, save your courthouse and your schoolhouse.

Eighty per cent of global warming comes from livestock and deforestation.