I thought I should post a brief Christmas message; if it's good enough for the Queen it's good enough for me. May all loyal Troppo readers (and even the disloyal ones) have a happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year. It won't surprise readers to learn that I don't expect to be...

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The Peruvians are great wall builders. Show the poorest campesino a field full of rocks and before you can say Sexy Woman, he ´s knocked together a wall - around his house, around his field, along the river, up and down the mountain side. Travelling across the altiplano throug...

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Ahhh the magic moments in travelling. Not that I could begin to match the masterwork by Yobbo, but then anyone who goes to that sterile island off the coast of Malaysia and compounds the error by flying Qantas deserves what he gets. I ´m sitting at an Entel terminal in La Paz...

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In his usual idiosyncratic fashion J.M. Coetzee has orated his Nobel Lecture through the persona of Robinson Crusoe. With great plagues, decoy ducks, parrots and mutliple Defoe references Coetzee weaves a fascinating tale of isolation, unease and confused identity. Worth a rea...

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Its just three weeks from Christmas so I thought I'd help those news organisations with a few ole trusty news angles that appear every Christmas. Early this month we had a new variation with Cocaine Christmas cards from Chile , which I believe would provide a new style of seas...

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It's all a bit tragic - not least in the timing. On a slow news weekend - when the next biggest story seems to be that Bob Brown has invited Mark Latham to tour the old growth Tassie forest - Senator Andrew Bartlett's fall from grace has exploded all over the season of ho, ho,...

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A veritable Niagara of comment has poured forth about Mark Latham in the last couple of days but the Daily Telegraph's sordid little contribution gave me special pause. Latham's first wife, Gabrielle Gwyther, is featured , observing that: "He talked about climbing the ladder t...

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You would think that at a time when the United States needed all the resources at it's disposal it might have thought twice about it's ludicrous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy which excludes openly gay servicemen and women from the Armed Services. The Washington Post covers th...

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This sad little story concerns a 7 year old boy named Marcus whose seat of learning is Ernest Gallet Elementary School in Lafayette, Louisiana. He was nabbed telling a classmate, (in response to a question), what "gay" means. "It's when a girl likes another girl" he offered, b...

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What else is there to say? How depressing! I think I'll return to blogging hibernation. I just hope they surround Motormouth with sensible minders, and spike his morning coffee with Prozac. For John Howard, Christmas has come 23 days early. On my part, my election date bet wit...

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