My father reached his 77th birthday two weeks ago. I love him dearly and I don't like to disagree with him but in the last few years he's become obsessed by, what he calls, the blight of single mothers. It started out with his bitching about the cost of welfare payments. He us...
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Sonia Harford has written a pretty piece, A long-lashed barman leaning across the counter to ask for your order. A couple on a bus smiling smugly and leaning into each other as the vehicle bumps and sways. A woman's long, languid yawn, bangles skittering down her arm. A police...
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In the late 1800s, economist and avid gardener Vilfredo Pareto established that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. While gardening he later observed that 20% of the peapods in his garden yielded 80% of the peas that were harvested. And thus was born a...
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Matt Price always a master at reporting the shenanigans at Parliament House has a short article in the Sunday Telegraph, which I stumbled upon by accident. The story focused on the Senate vote to increase the printing allowance of every MP to $150,000. You might recall that Pe...
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Fount of blogospherical wisdom, Bargarz, points to the lamentable tendency for Simon Crean to emerge like some cheapjack, showbag Jack-in-the-box - roughly every fortnight - to report on his latest "gate' discovery. "This is ethanolgate" he sonorously pronounced shortly before...
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The comment thread to my previous post Can Pauline Sue Tony Abbott? has thrown up some fascinating discussion. It also seems to have reached a consensus of sorts, well summarised by Dave Ricardo: " I agree that what Abbott did was just grubby business as usual politics. But th...
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I like reading ... anything, everything, my tastes are exceedingly eclectic. I'll sometimes pick up half a dozen books from the library and read the lot in a day or two, even though I know from the first page that they are crap, it seems that once started I feel as though I ow...
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For those of you who don't know - or who've forgotten - Scott Wickstein is taking your entries, under the heading, The Ten Most Influential Australians Of the 20th Century over at his place . He's going to be collating them tonight and plans to publish the outcome tomorrow. Th...
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Uncle at ABC Watch and Tim Blair have both blogged on ABC Radio National's suspension withour pay of Religion Report host Stephen Crittenden. Nothing surprising about that in itself. Both are serial Auntie-bashers from way back, and both seem to define "bias" as a concept meas...
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Gianna is pregnant ! Congratulations! Plenty of time for late night blogging while coping with teething, chronic gripe and insomnia from 4am feeds.
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I must say I've been a bit bemused by the reaction of some in the media (not least Red Kezza on this evening's ABC 7.30 Report) to the imagined revelation that Tony Abbott had lied to Four Corners in 1998 about whether he had bankrolled or arranged the bankrolling of disgruntl...
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What with the Blaster virus and Sobig F still causing headaches in computer networks around the world, I thought it was worthwhile posting this joke email just forwarded by Suzy Kruhse BE ON THE LOOK OUT FOR THE FOLLOWING VIRUSES: CLINTON VIRUS: Gives you a 7 Inch Hard Drive w...
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What an unedifying spectacle we have before us. Pauline - according to her sister Judy - wearing thongs! "I've never seen her wearing thongs before" Judy confided merrily - perhaps a tad too merrily, given the circumstances - to the massed media outside Walco Gaol. I for one f...
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This post is just an exercise in housekeeping, intended to provide short biographical details (and in some cases photos) of the Troppo Armadillo blogging semi-co-operative. The biographies are mercifully short, although they may still tell you more than you really want to know...
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In a hopefully minor aftermath to the Chris versus Norman flamewar of a week or so ago, Christopher Sheil is still upset that I accused him of being "wrong" about the spelling of the Aboriginal man "Mosquito". His name is spelled that way in the Oxford Companion to Australian...
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Niall Cook blogs an amusing (and surprisingly honest for a leftie) appraisal of the Public Service: The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed down from generation to generation, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to immedia...
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Sometimes I find the inspiration for a blog post in the most unlikely places. Earlier this evening I took Jenny out to the after hours medical clinic at Darwin Private Hospital for treatment for a persistent migraine. Being a rather expensive establishment, it doesn't get the...
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Here at the 'dillo we're more on to it than Marr - and much merrier with it. Especially when it comes to Mike Carlton. Weeks before David the Dilettante pointed out that the SMH's Saturday polemicist had elevated Senator Robert Byrd to the Moral Conscience of the Age, without...
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It's a gray day in the Emerald City. Rain is setting in and I'm a feeling just a bit hungover. What better restorative than to proceed to my local bookshop to purchase the just released Judith Brett opus - Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class - from Alfred Deakin to...
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You were Columbus! You were born in Corsica in 1451. As a child you caught rides on ships; you always loved the sea. You didn't get much formal education but you were very clever when it came to navigation and sailing. Your idea to sail west to Asia was not to prove that the w...
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Remember you read it here first ! Well, after you probably saw it here . Today's NT News reports that the local Army Reserve has begun training the ultimate deterant to invasion of the Top End. Major 'Sammy' Serambuka, project team leader told the News, "Crocs may appear stupi...
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Apropos Ken's article on the Evatt Foundation site (contributors to TA are required by our verbal contracts, you know the one's not worth the paper they're not written on, to shamelessly promote the chief Armadillo's work), it's pleasant to see the toothless revolutionary deli...
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Those of you planning Battle of Bosworth Field Memorial wakes today - hard to believe I know, but it's 518 years since Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field, time flies etc - will be gratified by this In Memoriam notice from todays SMH: PLANTAGENET, Richard...
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It all seemed so sudden. One moment she was photo-opping in time-honoured fashion, the next she was being sent down for three years. Shut away in the sort of seclusion that will be the stuff of a dozen New Idea covers - "Pauline's Prison Torment!" Indeed, it's already started...
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This month's Atlantic includes an interesting piece by Christopher Hitchens on Edward Said's Orientalism , which is being re-released with an updated introduction. As Hitchens points out Said's upbringing was ideal in allowing him to traduce the conceptions of several cultures...
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The concept of the rule of law is not one that most people readily associate with Indonesia. However, if this article by Ross Clarke in the Australian Journal of Asian Law is anything to go by, the assumption that judges of the new Indonesian Constitutional Court will be pliab...
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Years of bitter experience have taught me that if you don't blow your own trumpet, it's fairly rare that anyone else will do it on your behalf. As readers may recall, a couple of months ago Tim Dunlop wrote an excellent analytical article about blogging for the Evatt Foundatio...
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On the day after murderous terrorist suicide bomb attacks on the UN headquarters in Baghdad and a bus in Jerusalem, I can't think of anything more appropriate than to reproduce without comment (except the headline) the following extract from Andrew Denton's interview with form...
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Professor Bunyip has been notably AWOL from the blogosphere over the last week or so. However, his bile has obviously been quietly but ominously building up volcanic pressure during the hiatus, and today it burst forth in a spectacularly dazzling virtuoso spray against his fav...
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One knows not to question the wisdom of the Delphic seers , those voices of prescience whose cryptic counsels were so poorly interpreted by their clientele. Whether that be poor ole King Polydectes who was warned he would be killed by his foster-son or some other glutton for a...
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(Via Gummo Trotsky ) Big Western Benito is an Aussie ex-pat blogger who recently arrived in the Solomons, apparently on an extended stay. It's fortuitous given that his arrival coincided with that of the Australian-led peacekeeping contingent. Benito's blog is certainly one to...
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As Harry Belafonte might have put it: "Down the way where the nights are gay, And the sun shines daily on the mountain top. I took a trip on a sailing ship and when I reached Jamaica, my eyes just popped! For, just erected (if I might use that word) in Kingston's Redemption Pa...
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Catallaxy blogger and Centre for Independent Studies thinktank denizen Andrew Norton has a useful article in this morning's Australian about the distinction between neo-conservatism, ordinary conservatism, neo-liberalism, ordinary liberalism and so on. He suggests that the "ne...
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The Australian newspaper is obediently singing in harmony from the John Howard songbook in its editorial of this morning : JOHN Howard is being denied his right to govern by alliances of convenience between Labor and the motley collection of minor party and independent eccentr...
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Kooky eccentric, former UN Weapons Inspector and all-round funster, Richard Butler has just been appointed as Her Majesty's Representative in Tasmania. Last heard of banging on pretty much endlessly about Howard's perfidy in claiming Iraq had WMD - despite the fact that he him...
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There are few things I find more deliciously enjoyable than a story in which every single character is thoroughly detestable with no redeeming personal qualities whatsoever .
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Tony the Teacher doesn't think much of "Kasey Chamber-pot ", who he accuses of "inflicting on us the worst, most whiney, most tuneless, most irritating song in living memory". I certainly agree "Am I Pretty Enough?" is a first rate puke-inducing shocker, but the worst in livin...
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Blogger Paul Watson , whose work I greatly admire, has a chip on his shoulder. He sees himself as a "Generation Xer" whose opportunities in life have been circumscribed by the self-centred hedonism of the babyboomer generation that preceded him. It's a repetive theme on Paul's...
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I've just discovered through following blogroll links on Tubagooba that its author Dan is part of what may well be Australia's first (almost) complete blogging family. As well as Dan (whose surname appears to be Gordon), Dan's brother Angus also publishes a blog (a shiny new T...
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One fairly obscure aspect of the Manildra affair (which John Howard seems to have successfully if unjustly "toughed out" despite clearly lying to Parliament and failing to retract or apologise) relates to corporate political donations. The other day I heard Labor frontbencher...
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Jack Balkin blogs an interesting post about an attempt by Rupert Murdoch's (US) Fox News group to stifle free speech by litigating to enforce US trademark dilution laws: Fox News is suing Al Franken in the New York courts, attempting to enjoin sales of his forthcoming book, "L...
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The running feud between Christopher Sheil and Norman Hanscombe is really getting quite out of hand IMO, and spoiling everyone's enjoyment of what could otherwise be challenging and worthwhile debates. I don't intend to censor or ban anyone from this site because it's against...
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So ran the header on Radio Australia's Tokpisin News broadcast . The item related to John Howard's advocacy of former DFAT First Assistant Sec - and 25 year Pacific veteran - Greg Urwin, to head the Pacific Forum secretariat. Suva-based Pacific Islands magazine , in it's Augus...
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If you're a white/red-neck racist, sexist jerk with a chip on your shoulder, you'll be ostracised by "polite" middle class urban society and possibly dealt with by HREOC or a State or Territory anti-discrimination body for "racial vilification". If you're an urbanised (part) A...
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Christopher Sheil reckons there's no such thing as a Left Wing Death Beast. It sounds to me like a dubious proposition at best. What about Paul Keating? Admittedly it's a bit of a stretch describing him as a "left winger" but at least he's an ALP politician not a Tory. Here's...
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The post below this one introduces Stephen Hill as an occasional member of the Troppo Armadillo motley crew. Stephen published his own witty, elegant blog "Rambling Man" until fairly recently, but found the time demands unsustainable because of tertiary study/research commitme...
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Second instalment of an extended allegorical cricketing yarn, begun as a comment to the post Australia's worst government? : Well we've just come back from drinks, and there's little new to report. Adding to the scoreboard we have been a couple wides after a wayward over from...
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I've resisted until now the temptation to blog about the death penalty, because it's dancing to John Howard's tune. But I keep thinking about it, so I suppose I'll just have to write it out of my system. Others have already beaten me to the punch here , here and here (update -...
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Long lunch at Law School expense, thanking Law Librarians for their efforts in running e-tutorials under stress. Good food, fine wine, gazing out across the bay from the terrace of the restaurant at Darwin Museum, listening to Yothu Yindi playing their entire repertoire in reh...
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Yesterday's post Australia's worst government? generated one of the longest, most entertaining and occasionally incisive comment threads I can remember on Troppo Armadillo . Comment no. 54 by lapsed cultural blogger Stephen Hill is one of my favourites. Stephen manages to sust...
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I see that the High Court yesterday reversed an earlier Full Federal Court decision which had ruled in favour of the South Sydney Rabbitohs Rugby League Club in relation to the circumstances of setting up the 14 team NRL competition to settle the so-called "superleague war". T...
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John Quiggin blogged yesterday on the fact that John Howard manifestly lied to Parliament over the Manildra/ethanol issue, and the equally manifest prospect that he'll get away with it. John also pointed out in a post-script that a former Howard Chief of Staff is now a Manildr...
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Geoff Honnor blogged on this not so long ago, but it's worth recording the gratifying news that Nigerian email scams are spawning rapidly, making the repetitive task of inbox deletion at least a bit more varied and entertaining. I received one from the Philippines the other da...
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If there's one aspect of the identity of the mysterious Professor Bunyip about which we can be completely confident, it's the fact that he really is a parent of teenage children. Only another fellow sufferer could have written this : The real surprise about teenagers isn't tha...
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At the risk of boring readers rigid, I can't resist another blast on climate change/global warming. It's partly provoked by Wayne Wood's Homer Simpson perspective on global warming (immediately below) and partly by a Salon article linked by John Quiggin , which highlights the...
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I don't really understand the in-depth research done by the IPCC, and always thought a 'hockey stick' was something Nova Peris used to get a gold medal. Then there is the usual dash of Ricardo ridicule, providing evidence once again that somebody enjoys Ken's blogging so much...
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Troppo Armadillo doesn't have the huge audience of a megablog like Instapundit, but it certainly attracts the attention of more than a few key participants in important debates. The latest is Nir Shaviv, one of the two researchers whose paper on the influence of supernovae on...
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Catallaxy's Andrew Norton blogs a review of Judith Brett's new book Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class . He actually makes me want to read it, and seems to explain its content and purpose far more thoroughly than Paul Kelly's effort in the Australian . Kelly appear...
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There are times when Tex's earthy blogging style really suits an issue perfectly. This is one of them .
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My wife and I have been away for a couple of days, far from the madding crowd. We went 250 kilometres down the Stuart Highway to a place called Edith Falls, actually it's called some other Aboriginal name now since it's been incorporated into Nitmiluk National Park, but we'll...
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From my fairly hazy memory of it, Judith Brett's Robert Menzies' Forgotten People ranks as one of the less incisive Australian works of political biography I've read in the last decade or so. But if Paul Kelly's review is anything to go by, her latest book Australian Liberals...
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The currently on-vacation Andrew Sullivan races back online to share his enthusiasm for Arnold Schwarzenneger's ah....candidacy....and demonstrates that gay bloggers need to be particularly conscious of the double entendre morass that unbridled metaphorical allusion can lead t...
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Alfred Einstein ? Still it's all relative, I suppose.
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Bali bomber Amrozi's death sentence has generated some strange resonances with the just-concluded Troppo Armadillo debate on Alison Broinowski's ideas about Asian perceptions of Australia. The first is that Amrozi's apparent apology to Australians (dealt with below by Christop...
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Ian Firns, the courageous (possibly in a Sir Humphrey Appleby sense) contract academic at the centre of the Newcastle University plagiarism cover-up scandal, contributes some fascinating observations to the comment box of my previous post . One of them is to express a degree o...
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Rob Corr has an excellent post on yesterday's decision by the High Court upholding the applicability of Australian industrial awards (and the jurisdiction of the AIRC) in relation to foreign-crewed and owned vessels operating in Australian coastal shipping. Here's an Age artic...
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I've been puzzled by the failure of any bloggers or mainstream op-ed pundits even to mention last week's Nine Network Sunday program which revealed apparent serious erosion of fundamental academic standards at University of Newcastle. It appears that widespread plagiarism by f...
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Despite my Resident Poof status on 'Dillo de Trop - or maybe because of it - I've resisted blogging, up till now, on the vexed question of gay marriage, propagation of the species and the increasingly strident demands of the over-privileged gay minority - and ever-cognisant of...
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My previous post about Alison Broinowski generated quite a bit of discussion. However, it's apparent that most commenters haven't actually read either her book or her thesis. I can't really blame them for that. Although the thesis is freely available in PDF format, some people...
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At the risk of fuelling up John Quiggin and UnAustralian Ken Miles (though only with renewable energy resources), here's a fascinating post on Aaron Oakley's Bizarre Science summarising new research suggesting that much of the observed 20th century global warming is actually c...
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Despite the title, this isn't a Bob Hope obituary. In fact it's a continuation of the Asian theme initiated with the previous post. I've just posted on the NTU Law School website a paper recently presented by NTU's Professor Jesse Wu in Malaysia. It was the 4th Professor Ahmad...
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I've been pondering on Indonesia and realpolitik. Professor Bunyip's elegant pay-out on Alison Broinowski first set me off on that track. I even took the time to skim-read Broinowski's doctoral thesis (of which her new book is a reworked version), which the Professor kindly li...
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I generally like the way Deirdre Macken writes for the AFR. She has the happy knack of making the most mundane report appear interesting. Her piece in the Weekend AFR is no exception. She discusses the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's 2002 report, in particular the...
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Having just finished Man of Honour , Michael Duffy's new book about John Macarthur - Founding Father, Sheep Husbandry Enthusiast, Major Rorter and all round cranky bugger - I'm extremely grateful that The Great Perturbator predated the internet. There'd be more stepping out go...
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Like a blogospherical supernova, this pundit says it all in one brief incandescent burst - and then goes out. Link via Tim Blair . Illuminating!
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I can live with Right Wing Death Beast Paul Sheehan's dissing of Harry Potter , but stretching a single joke, and an unfunny one at that, to fill an entire column is another thing entirely. Even Phillip Adams doesn't usually sink to that level of uninspired op-ed desperation....
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The blogger behind the amusingly named in de-nial has taken blogging anonymity to new heights. S/he doesn't even adopt a pseudonym as far as I can see. I think I'll refer to him/her as Floating Baby Moses, because I suspect this will be a blog I'll be mentioning frequently. FB...
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(Via Aaron Oakley ) Rachel Carson's Silent Spring anti-DDT tract was a fraudulent beat-up , and millions of third world residents have died from malaria and other easily preventable insect-borne diseases as a result of its ill-advised banning in the early 1970s. The author eve...
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It isn't just bloggers who rely heavily on the Google search engine, it seems. Ian Firns , the Perth-based Newcastle University contract lecturer who uncovered the fact that 30% of his Malaysian students had plagiarised large slabs of their assignments by copying and pasting f...
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Posting has been light from me for the last few days because it's been crunch time for NTU Law School's new external law degree program, for whose implementation the Dean and Head of School made me responsible, not least because I've touted it unmercifully for the last 3 years...
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