I finally got so irritated with myself that I twisted my own arm behind my back and updated the Troppo Armadillo blogroll!! I've tried to be as inclusive as possible, linking all Australian bloggers who can be described even vaguely as "political". If your blog isn't listed, i...
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Bill Clinton is often described as one of the keenest political intellects of the age. Simon Crean never will be, to which his ill-advised blundering about in the crocodile-infested Second Sydney Airport swamp bears eloquent testament - were further testament to the fact not e...
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Gummo Trotsky has a truly inspired post on why libertarians dislike yum cha! Scott Wickstein spares no sympathy for OzTaliban David Hicks. I agree, but I certainly don't agree that the Americans are justified in depriving him of basic civil rights (like legal representation of...
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After 5 years of an absurdly overheated residential property market, especially in Sydney and Melbourne, it's hardly surprising that housing affordability rates are at record lows : First home buyers in Sydney are being forced to fork out a record 40.6 per cent of average inco...
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Ken rang me today telling me to read a comment he put on a blog exhorting me to comment on the Rugby. When I went there, I notice Chris said the same thing. While I was looking I read the Wog's piece for her/his father - and I had to email her/him saying that her/his father wo...
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My thanks to Gummo for pointing the way to one of the most telling, funny, wry and altogether moving valedictories to a parent, I've read for a long time. If you haven't read it, go there .
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Here's another of Suzy Kruhse's joke emails. I'm sure it's just one of the standard ones that circulate on the Internet, but some of them raised a chuckle in me, anyway. For those who love the philosophy of hypocrisy and ambiguity. 1. Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet...
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Grieving Somali widow Muna Zulu Iyama emails me with the deal of a lifetime. From : Mrs. Muna Zulu Iyama refugee Camp South Africa muna_helpline@indiatimes.com Dear Friend, Complements of the season. I am delighted to contact you after coming across your contact in the interne...
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A reminder that the " 29 bullshit expressions in a single sentence " contest remains open until Friday afternoon. The contest has already attracted some quality entries, the last from William Burroughs' Baboon, who is himself about to initiate a new contest where contestants m...
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We live on the Cook's River, about 10 kms south of the Sydney CBD, and a couple of kilometres upstream of Botany Bay. A 15 minute run downriver from our place brings you to the point where the 6 roaring lanes of the Princes Highway cross the stream. On the far side, a clump of...
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Now that James has access to all the dirt - well everything that goes on in (quasi) government departments must be filed in the library, n'es pas ? - we'll all be much better informed. Personally I'm pleased to see he has got a (nearly) real job, all he needs now is a haircut!
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I've always been profoundly suspicious of flat tax advocates. However, a post this morning by Graham Young on the OLO Forum has me intrigued. In fairness to Graham, I should point out that he's only thinking aloud and not actually advocating a flat tax regime as such. Indeed h...
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Well, we now know what previously we just strongly suspected. The Wallabies are so far behind New Zealand they can only hear the thump of their own reputations hitting the tarmac. The largest loss to the All Blacks ever at 50-21 says most of it. John Connolly in the SMH someho...
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The Right is notoriously short of clever humourists but Canadian RWDB - if that's not oxymoronic - Mark Steyn can be very funny. This piece of his from the UK Telegraph - which I beg you to believe I'm not posting in search of a political debate - is really, very funny. Link v...
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Just-published ABS figures on income inequality are a good opportunity to blog on this topic, which I've intended to cover ever since co-blogger Chris Sheil blogged his hell in a handbasket post . Michael Costello also focused on the ABS figures in yesterday's Australian . The...
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Bite the bullet . Why is it easier to expose emotions and vulnerabilities to hundreds of strangers on a blog than to just one on a tram? The evolution of a trend towards blending of the personal and political in the blogosphere, arguably initially orchestrated by Gianna , is a...
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(Via Tim Blair ) After noting Uncle at ABC Watch's blogging of Andrew Bolt's response to Media Watch's slagging of him last week, I should also record that Crikey.com is hosting the ongoing slanging match , with a response from David Marr and a further riposte from Andrew Bolt...
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Readers not yet in the tertiary stages of Alzheimer's Disease will recall that a couple of months ago I conducted a contest where comment box participants were invited to nominate how long Tim Blair could last without mentioning his bete noire Margo Kingston . Sadly, all my re...
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Is plucky, Baghdad blogging, man of mystery, Salam Pax really Robert Fisk!? Scroll down to read this observation: "At that press conference there was a gentleman who asked an extremely important question which was answered by Sanchez with "that is speculation. Next question."...
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Living adjacent to a beautiful waterfront park is a mixed blessing. On Cracker Night (1 July) it's like being in the middle of the shock and awe bombing of Baghdad. It's made even worse by a mob of casino workers who rent the big house opposite and regularly have parties start...
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Malaysiakini one of the few truly independent Malaysian media voices, reports as follows: Three judges in Anwar's trials promoted Arfa'eza A Aziz 11:25am Wed Jul 23rd, 2003 Two infamous High Court judges who were involved in the controversial trials of jailed ex-deputy prime m...
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Forbes magazine carries an interesting graphical representation of the most recent OECD data on comparative total tax takes of the 48 member States (including Australia) as a proportion of GDP. As you'll see, Australia has one of the lowest total tax takes in the OECD, with on...
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The High Court's Cattanach v Melchior decision has attracted much attention both in the blogosphere and mainstream op-ed media. Angela Shanahan , Janet Albrechtsen and Sydney legal academic Regina Graycar have all published op-ed pieces about Cattanach (although not one of the...
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Today's Newspoll has been most perplexing. We learn that J. Howard and his cronies have mysteriously endeared themselves to the punters such that 45% of them would vote for the Coalition compared to just 35% for the ALP. Were this to be an election result the ALP would be shed...
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I'm not one of those people who plonk myself in front of Media Watch every Monday evening in the delicious anticipation of being Thoroughly Outraged and Deeply Disturbed at the manifest evidence of Left Wing Bias. That the ABC will largely reflect the broadly left liberal slan...
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Web design genius (and my former blog landlord) Mark Gallagher has kindly provided me with the code allowing comment boxes to be resized by users just like any other Window (by using the maximise icon at top right). It's a feature Ron Mead requested, and his wish was our comma...
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Robert Corr blogs a post about yesterday's demo near federal Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock's house. Rob effectively unpicks (I won't say "unpacks" because of its pomo denotations) the somewhat hysterical media coverage of the event, uncovering the usual mix of exaggerat...
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Caroline Baum had an interesting piece in the Weekend Age dealing with the stresses fiction authors may place on personal relationships when they use thinly-disguised friends or acquaintances as fodder for a novel or short story. As a blogger who occasionally pens "vignettes"...
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Shock news from Washington DC confirms the extraordinary power of the blogosphere. Scarcely had the Battle of Tim-Tim ensued on the net than the US House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee exploded in an uncannily accurate - and similarly acrimonious - reprise of that...
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In a previous blog The Business of Health I copied a paragraph from Penelope Williams's book, Alternatives in Cancer Therapy ; The economic argument is certainly compelling. The cancer industry, indeed the entire health industry, is a tangle of vested interests including the p...
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I see that Bright Cold Matt and James Russell are both in despair about the blogosphere in the wake of the Tim versus Tim blog wars. Matt's reaction is especially understandable, because it was a fairly innocuous post of his musing about Delta Goodrem and the nature of celebri...
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I have been known to be critical of Tim Dunlop's obsessive ongoing focus on Iraq and WMD. However, this post is Tim at his finest; careful, coolly analytical and even-handed (qualities of which you'd seldom accuse the other Tim). It's well worth a read.
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I blogged a couple of days ago in defence of the reasonableness of MPs' superannuation arrangements . I deliberately omitted any reference to the other most frequently mentioned alleged politicians' rort: overseas "junkets" at taxpayers' expense. Coincidentally, Alan Ramsey ha...
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Taking a break from his playground spat with Tim Dunlop (see here and here ), in which both Tims and their respective supporters are competing to see who can dream up the most childishly spiteful arguments against each other on an issue of mind-blowing triviality, Tim Blair bl...
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I see that both Scott Wickstein and Bernard Slattery have already blogged on yesterday's Cattanach v Melchior decision, where the High Court dismissed an appeal from a Queensland judgment where substantial damages had been awarded to a couple (the Melchiors) who ended up with...
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You'll see from a glance at the sidebar that I've implemented a "Most recently commented posts" category, using code kindly supplied by John Quiggin . Like John, I'm hoping that this innovation will tend to promote more considered, reflective comment box debate over an extende...
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24601 has a useful post over at Australian Libertarians blog. It links pretty well all the recent blog posts about the nature of libertarianism and the merits and otherwise of its various sub-cults. The principal features of the sub-cults themselves are also succinctly summari...
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I see rightie Australian newspaper columnist Janet Albrechtsen reckons politicians are tricky and greedy for continuing to award themselves what she sees as over-generous (and unfunded) superannuation benefits. Leftie blogger Stewart Kelly agrees. We have a rare cross-ideologi...
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It's estimated that as much as half of the world's wealth is tied up in real estate. The value of the world's real estate far exceeds the market capitalisation of all the world's stock markets, futures markets and bond markets. Vast fortunes have been made and lost in real est...
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Peripatetic blog commenter Norman Hanscombe fires the latest shot in the "culture wars" , with a guest article on Tim Dunlop's blog detailing inaccuracies in Lyndall Ryan's work uncovered by Keith Windschuttle. Having digested Windschuttle's book in a rather hasty scanning ses...
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Suzy Kruhse cultivates female friends even more eccentric than herself. I suspect she finds the comparison reassuring. Billie-Jean is a prime example. Middle-aged grand-daughter of a well-known pioneering pastoral family, Billie-Jean has a torrid relationship with her long-tim...
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I don't know about you, but I've just about had a gutful of these whinging lefties rabbiting on about whether the PM knew about doubts over the reliability of intelligence about Saddam seeking uranium in Africa, and why assorted spy outfits failed to tell him despite the fact...
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Miranda Devine doesn't pretend to be much more than she is: a once-over-lightly agent provocateur for the Fairfax stable. One of her few redeeming qualities, in fact, is her tongue-in-cheek self-awareness of the brief. She rarely strays down the path of ponderous self-importan...
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The Guardian publishes it's annual Media 100 List . The top movers and shakers across UK publishing, advertising, TV and Radio are ranked 1-100 with ex-Australian and Left-wing dartboard pin-up, Rupert Murdoch, coming in at number 2. Less predictably, 'A blogger' sneaks in to...
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The just-released independent evaluation report on the 18 month safe injecting room trial in Sydney, is positive on the benefits the facility offers in terms of ongoing harm reduction benefit accrual. John Della Bosca, the Minister for Miscellaneous Political Fixes, indicated...
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Tim Blair blogs an item about Australian gun laws and crime rates: Despite Australia having "the most up-to-date" gun laws, gun crimes still happen somehow: From 1999 to 2002 the number of robberies involving firearms in Sydney's most populated areas rose by 34 per cent, whil...
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Jennifer Lopez has breakfast in the nude according to the funky side of the Sydney Morning Herald website. In the third most accessed SMH article since midnight AEST, the extraordinary talent who the New York Daily News has ungallantly dubbed "the broad-beamed Bronx bombshell"...
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You'd have to be very unobservant not to have noticed that there are an awful lot of bloggers with an avowedly (and sometimes aggressively) libertarian political philosophy. There's even an Australian Libertarians group blog, and a British equivalent called Samizdata (whose ti...
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As readers may have noticed, I haven't been posting much over the last week or so. I apologise belatedly for the hiatus. I've been flat out marking exams and essays, and cranking up the systems for NTU/CDU's external law degree program. It's being delivered solely via the Inte...
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I thought Crean did a useful job with the Shadow Cabinet reshuffle. Gilllard and Roxon are definite assets and - pragmatically - the across-his-brief Kevin Rudd is still in place, despite less then total support for Simon. Craig Emerson, well.. let's wait and see and Mark Lath...
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We all know that talking on a mobile phone while driving (except with a hands-free setup) is an offence. However, having sex while driving apparently isn't , at least in Germany. Can anyone offer an opinion on which kama sutra position would be most consistent with road safety?
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My thanks to my co-blogger on Armadillo des Tropiques, Christopher Sheil, for inspiring the brilliant header. If there's a God, the evidence for Her existence is unconvincing. Nevertheless, if you have to have one, the traditional Anglican version has always had appeal. Sort o...
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From the Weekly Standard : PJ O'Rourke trashes the Rodham-Clinton memoir in the funniest book review I've read this year. He's way good! I'd offer some excerpts but I'm crying too much to do it. Go there - and enjoy.
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