I'll be in one from tomorrow: New Zullind to be precise - until October 12. I won't be posting until I'm back but I'm sure I'll find the opportunity to comment from time to time.
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Nigeria has just launched it's first satellite - from a missile base in Russia. The Washington Post reports Nigerian space agency spokesman, Solomon Olaniyi, saying that the government plans to use the $13 million satellite to monitor water resources, soil erosion, deforestati...
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Out go Richard Alston and Wilson Tuckey - they'll be hoping there's no ambassadorial vacancy in Chad. Vanstone to Immigration, Ruddock to Attorney-General, Abbott picks up Health, Patterson gets Family and Community Services, Daryl Williams goes to Communications and De-anne K...
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Over the next couple of days I'll be peripherally involved with the Charles Darwin Symposium titled " The Eye of the Storm: Northern Australia's Location in an Arc of Instability " being conducted at my place of employment. I'm co-ordinating the digital recording of the procee...
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Molly, our elderly neighbour has just popped over. She lives a few houses down the river and is one of the few residents left who can remember the days when Undercliffe was a bold Chifleyite housing solution to the overcrowded slum terraces of Surry Hills and Erskineville. To...
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Dennis Shanahan ran a piece, in Saturday's tree edition of the Australian - no online link - covering a speech that Wayne Swan gave to the Blaxland FEC on Friday night. Much of it was predictable stuff: "if we get it wrong at the next election we're out for a dozen years; Howa...
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Earlier in the week, Thabo Mbeki - in New York attending the UN General Assembly meeting - granted an interview to the Washington Post , wherein, he observed: "Personally, I don't know anybody who has died of AIDS." Asked whether he knows anyone with HIV, he added quietly, "I...
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Keeping a blog gives you a glimmer of insight into what it must be like to produce a daily current affairs program on radio or TV. Finding enough fresh and interesting material to put to air can be problematic on slow news days. Of course, blogs aren't really like that, in tha...
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Federal Liberal MP, Teresa Gambaro, burst from deep backbench cover this morning with the funniest tax proposal since Pauline Hanson's little - "take 2 away from 2 and add 2 " - side-splitter convulsed the nation back in 2001. Ms Gambaro - also from Queensland, oddly enough -...
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I've been catching up on surfing my favourite blogs (it seems many blogspots were down yesterday) and I came across a 'pome' on Gummo's blog. Even though I'm a "wise old wood god" who has seen the offspring of "first primeval calf", to tell you the truth I don't understand why...
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Big Armadillo and expert in legal hairdressing jurisprudence, Ken Parish, has announced his 50th birthday. Ken confided "long lunch plans" as celebration. I would not anticipate a learned exposition on Callinan J's judgment re Hanson, anytime soon.
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Perth uberblogger, Gareth Parker, turns 21 today. Run on over and cheer him up with predictions as to how long it'll be before he goes bald, and stuff.
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Those who lament the UN as a bastion of lefty luvvies should take heart from today's release of the latest report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Fresh from the trenches you might say.... The first ever UN global survey on amphetamines and ecstasy, claims that in the pa...
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There's something profoundly Australian about an heroic, one-eyed Kangaroo named Lulu rescuing her owner. She may well be suffering under the misapprehension that she's actually a Blue Heeler - she may even bark like a dog - but never mind. We know, deep down, that she represe...
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Mark Latham has achieved his aim of deflecting attention from Simple Simon's poor poll results by hyping his 'saving plan for low income families'. Mr Latham said breaking the poverty cycle was crucial in overcoming many social ills, such as welfare dependency and crime. "If y...
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Allison Henry, the national director of the Australian Republic Movement had one of those characteristically, ill-humoured pieces in the Oz this morning that always manages to reduce the Republican cause to a joyless, lemon-lipped bitchslap. Harry "Blue" Windsor is plainly ent...
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Earlier this afternoon we drove down towards Palmerston (Darwin's satellite city, more commonly known locally as Palmerslum) to inspect progress on the Darwin-Alice Springs Railway. Track-laying reached Palmerston on Friday and was supposed to be due to end 10 km further north...
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I had a relatively late start to REAL work. I was having such a good time at Uni (supported by my wife; I only agreed to marry her providing she graduated successfully and was able to keep me etc. etc...) Then after one year masquerading as a teacher, bumming around Europe for...
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Margo Kingston has a fascinating follow-up piece on the AEC and its current Commissioner Andy Becker. This story may turn out to be more significant than I first imagined. Update - EvilPundit highlights a Labor-related body called the "Fair Go Alliance" that also seems to fit...
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Slim Dusty passed away this morning. There'll be the odd pub with no beer in Tamworth tonight..... (and a patently insincere and tasteless tribute from Ken Parish).
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This article from News Online may say more about Australia's World Cup prospects than all the pundit analysis to date: Rugby league recruit Lote Tuquiri jumped up on to the canopy. Matt Dunning and Matt Burke were "up close" at the front of the boat when the crocodile lunged....
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Margo Kingston's Web Diary hosts an excellent post this morning by UNSW Latrobe law lecturer Joo-Cheong Tham discussing the issues surrounding whether the Australian Electoral Commission should require Tony Abbott's delightfully deceptively-named Australians for Honest Politic...
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There's plenty of room for cynicism about the Howard government's motives in Tony Abbott's introduction into Parliament today of tough new legislation regulating the troubled building industry, just as there was in relation to the Cole Royal Commission that gave rise to the pr...
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Despite Geoff Honnor's elegant demolition of Germaine Greer's egregious Quarterly Essay titled " Whitefella Jump Up - The Shortest Way to Nationhood ", and even despite Greer's figurative self-immolation on Andrew Denton's program last Monday evening, I continue to feel compel...
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Scott Wickstein , ever-perceptive, concludes that Sydney and Australia are different places. The incontrovertible evidence that Scott produces to support his proposition is the extraordinary brawl that broke out yesterday between former Kings School alumnus, now professional R...
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I was just thinking about the last time I wore shoes. Since ceasing work in an office I find that the occasions where I have to wear 'proper' footwear are becoming less and less. Going to work these days involves donning a pair of bathers and an Austswim instructors shirt to p...
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Greg Sheridan - on the History Wars - in The Australian this morning: "One of the most irresponsible things in normal democratic politics is to inflate the language you use about your opponents, to import moral absolutes into the prosaic and wholesome debates a democratic peop...
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After persistent shaming by Mark Gallagher , I've finally gotten around to implementing some code he supplied that creates permalinks at the foot of all comment box contributions. People will now be able to create hyperlinks directly to specific comments published on Troppo Ar...
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This post is an experiment in audio-blogging (or oral blogging) using streaming audio. Click here to listen. You'll need to download and instal the latest version of Windows Media Player (free download) to be able to listen in "streaming" format (i.e. without waiting for the e...
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There I was sitting in front of 'Lateline" and Secretary of the Treasury, Ken Henry - who looks alarmingly like Malcolm Turnbull in a certain light - pops up on the screen. I'd clearly nodded off and had entered the realm of telepathic communication, because his message was ob...
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As today's Australian notes , bail applications and appeals against refusal of bail by One Nation founders Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge were yesterday refused by Queensland's Court of Appeal. What I hadn't realised (not being a criminal law specialist) until I did some qu...
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A 10 year old girl is mauled by a croc in a billabong at Patonga in Kakadu and where do I read about it? In The Australian breaking news ! What has become of the Northern Territory News ? Surely that publication's sole raison d'etre is to record the table d'hote proclivities o...
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You've got to hand it to Margo Kingston - our own roll-your-own, Oriana Fallaci-in-a Flannie. While lesser political commentators - "Quislings" as Webdiary , rather derivatively terms them - waste time on considered analysis, reasoned reflection and logical conclusion, Margo g...
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For those of us married to Kiwis, last night's smashing 48-22 NRL win by the NZ Warriors over the Canterbury Bulldogs raised seriously for the first time the depressing prospect that Kiwi teams might well take out both the Rugby World Cup and the NRL premiership. Sux months of...
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My brother and his wife are currently touring the old dart and I thought you may be interested in an extract from their recent newsletter. On the Isle of Skye we went to a Highland Games, great entertainment, the spectators sit on a grassy rise surrounding a flat arena where s...
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The Twin Towers rise again. If you don't believe it you don't know Darwin. Back in the 1980s our principal gay nighclub was named Dix, while its main hetero competitor was called Fannies. PS - Speaking of restraint and good taste (not to mention wit and intelligence), I see Ti...
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This story is worth reproducing in full: People who want to live longer and stay healthier were urged by an expert on ageing to have more sex and earn more money. Dr Ronald Klatz, president of the American Academy of Anti-Ageing Medicine Inc, said on Thursday that a British st...
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I'll let the man in black speak "I hear the train a comin'; it's rollin' 'round the bend, And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when. I'm stuck at Folsom Prison and time keeps draggin' on. But that train keeps rollin' on down to San Antone. When I was just a baby, m...
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Germaine Greer's just-published Quarterly Essay, Whitefella Jump Up , adds yet more credence to my theory that Greer has metamorphosised into a Barry Humphries creation: the eccentric old bluestocking aunt who loves to blather on in a colourfully opinionated, slightly shocking...
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Michael Costello seems now to have joined the ranks of those (including this armadillo) betting on an early double dissolution federal election. From memory of a bet made months ago, I win a nice bottle of red from Michael Jennings if a DD election is held any time between Dec...
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From the transcript of last-night's Lateline -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TONY JONES: Except of course Al Qaeda, for example, would still have safe and quite prolific training camps and bases inside Afghanistan wh...
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CNNNN tonight had a hilarious episode in which the immutable backbencher Alan Cadman challenged for the Liberal leadership, which is an amusing enough as a stand-alone scenario. In a wonderful parody of the navel-gazing speculations of the press gallery, Cadman entered the pic...
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Now that the debate about what white Australia can do to improve the living conditions of Aboriginals is back on track I thought I'd add my two dollars worth. $2 because this is a subject that I actually know something about, having put my snout, along with almost every other...
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Fouad Ajami makes the case with the sort of elegant eloquence to which this armadillo can only ever aspire - unsuccessfully. In Foreign Policy magazine , Ajami, the Majid Khadduri professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, and a contribut...
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I might as well spread this one before some other smartarse does. How many lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb? "Such number as may be deemed necessary to perform the stated task in a timely and efficient manner within the strictures of the following agreement: Whereas...
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One of the difficult things for us non-expert lay observers of the ongoing global warming debate is that the zealots on both sides seem to have little hesitation in misusing climate statistics to "prove" their case. The website of global warming sceptic John Daly currently con...
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I had a terrible shock a few minutes ago. As I walked out of my bedroom about to leave for the office (after a morning of updating the NTU website from home), I came face to face with a Catholic nun standing at the front door. Lord forgive me! I instantly thought. They always...
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Former ARM President Greg Barns sallies forth into the History Wars today, but only to bemoan their pointless tedium in a way not dissimilar to most of us in the blogosphere (other than the committed ideologues on either side): When Melbourne University history department coll...
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It's not often that I agree wholeheartedly with flaming pink blogger Rob Schaap, but I have no hesitation in endorsing just about every word of his fine post on great Aussie blunders (responding to Gummo Trotsky's contest ). Does this mean I'm lurching to the left as I approac...
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Paddy McGuinness is enthusiastically (and no doubt mischievously) pushing the "Carr for Canberra" cart. He touts Leaping Leo McLeay as the bloke most likely to surrender his lucrative seat on the parliamentary exercise bike for the greater good. Leo is Geoff Honnor's local mem...
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John Quiggin answers the question "Are blogs chatrooms?" with the obvious response: NO. But he also inserts a throwaway asserton that: Political blogs like this one are intended as competion for mass media such as newspapers, and have had at least some success in this role. Sp...
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(Via Tim Blair ) For us execrated boomers it's a black day. Warren Zevon's dead after a "long illness". I thought you only got mesothelioma from asbestos.
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Carita Kazakoff asks about spring in Darwin in a comment to Geoff Honnor's slightly sardonic Sydney spring soliloquy Christopher Sheil's poem of earlier today. As an habitue of East Timor I thought she'd realise there's no such thing in the monsoonal tropics, at least if you j...
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Our house fronts on to the Cooks River, along which a public pathway gives access to a continuing parade of runners, power-walkers, dreamers, cyclists and The Old Greek Homeless Guy who sleeps in the facilities block in the park across the river and makes his way along the pat...
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I thought I should post a belated apology for the lack of bloggage from this armadillo over the last several days. I've just been flat out like a lizard/armadillo drinking. Fortunately the co-armadillos have maintained an admirable flow of challenging posts. I'll post a commen...
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It wasn't on the Road to Damascus - and he isn't St Paul - but colourful C-Filer Jack Strocchi has had a revelatory moment of truth about Iraq. It's an entertaining read and a rare and gracious moment of blogospherical concession.
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I hold relatively few politicians in high regard, but Bob Carr is an exception. He's an unlikely political success story in our culture: bookish, verging on teetotal, private to the point of suspected misanthropy, but still with that indefinable something that begins to build...
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Windschuttle fan Suzy assails mild-mannered centrist armadillo with Keith's most persuasive argument (click thumbnail image).
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In response to the question "I was wondering more whether the antipodean Aristotle might have a range of Op Ed commentators in mind whose prose might "make the heart skip a beat?" Whose legacy might be enduring?" posed by Geoff, in this blog Chris mentioned the name Charles Be...
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Yet another grand conspiracy, just a fortnight ago it was the firebrand from Ipswich who seemed to fail to recognise a political party is more than a cult of personality. This time its Outdoor Recreation Party 4WD-greenie-anti-grennie-friend of the worker-master of the mystica...
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Boris Johnson, Editor of The Spectator and Tory MP for Henley-on-Thames, offers a few thought-provoking musings on the great gulf between the discourse of the journalistic-politico class and those he terms the "civilians." Using the Kelly case as his example, he goes to the he...
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The responses to the blogs I've written about David have been, without exception, very supportive, and thank you one and all. I really expected that there would be one or two that said something like "wake up and get a life loser, stop wallowing in self pity and write somethin...
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Paul Keating ripped into it last night as he launched Stuart Macintyre's new book, The History Wars - upon which Chris Sheil blogs below. It was colourful, controversial and indeed ground-breaking as interesting words like "Tintookies" (puppets apparently) emerged from etymolo...
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Singapore's Straits Times gives the Abu Bakar Bashir trial outcome the sort of finessed analysis that eludes the crapped-out, where's-the-fuckin'- handle-gone gestetner, that is the PR vehicle of the alleged Leader of the Australian opposition. You could imagine the briefing C...
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Tim Blair blogs approvingly on (of all things) an Alan Ramsey column in the Silly Moaning Hillmer which castigates Labor frontbencher Craig Emerson for his apparently inept performance when interviewed by Laurie Oakes about the Hanson/Abbott affair on the Nine Network Sunday p...
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We watched the first doco 'The Topic of Cancer' ten years ago while our son David was in the middle of chemotherapy treatment. At the time we were certain that he would pull through and consequently found the program interesting but not particularly upsetting. Even when the Da...
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MEMO TO : OFFICE OF NATIONAL ASSESSMENTS FROM : DEFENCE SIGNALS DIRECTORATE SHOAL BAY ECHELON INTERCEPT DATE : August 28 2003 CLASSIFICATION DISTRIBUTION TO LEVEL MSC1A Based on identification of DICTIONARY item " Department of Defence" the following intercept was received on...
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Steve Edwards blogs about the latest Newspoll on the standing of the federal parties and their respective leaders. I agree with pretty well everything Steve says, especially this paragraph: The ALP is behind by two-percent in the two-party preferred stakes. This doesn't sound...
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Chapter 3 of Suzy's autobiography Close to the Bone is now formatted and uploaded. I've broken each of the three chapters to date into smaller, bite-sized chunks so they're much more manageable for Internet reading. I suspect I won't be blogging much myself until I finish load...
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