Another Falconio/intrusive media rant that I understand is to be submitted for publication under my name. Actual authorship is another question, but it certainly reflects my views very closely: There is nothing more dangerous than the wrath of the media scorned. So now it's re...
Continue reading →
As you may have deduced from earlier blogs about global warming I don't believe we'll have time to worry about the gradual increase in temperatures leading to asphyxiation from carbon dioxide, world's end will be due to a well-overdue Dansgaard Oescher event. Reading the weeke...
Continue reading →
I got some more emails from Tarun and Dan today, if you want to read about their adventures click here.
Continue reading →
Any masochistic readers interested in hearing this armadillo raving on at leangth about the Falconio murder committal (and related legal and policy issues) can listen to the Real Audio recording of today's ABC Radio National Media Report by clicking here . There are also extra...
Continue reading →
Not only is global warming scepticism dangerous, but so too is blogging. News Online reports on yet another blogger dismissed from her employment for exposing her personal life in the blogosphere. However, in this case it's very personal indeed. Jessica Cutler, whose nom de bl...
Continue reading →
Don't you hate the way advertisers treat you like a moron. UP TO 99% OFF screams the ad. What a waste of money !! Does the advertising guru really believe that the average consumer watches/listens to/notices garbage like that; or has (s)he used so much nose cleaner that connec...
Continue reading →
The life of a global warming sceptic is a dangerous one, it seems. Well-known sceptic John Daly died suddenly of a heart attack earlier this year, and now one of his frequently-published colleagues (on the Daly website at least) Theodor Landscheidt has also shuffled off a few...
Continue reading →
The Basement website (live Internet radio, jazz/blues concerts etc), beamed out of Sydney's longstanding Basement venue at Reiby Place, Circular Quay, is about to close, according to this story on News Online. It was one of the few Internet music sites that I actually used to...
Continue reading →
Sam "Yobbo" Ward has put in a blatantly self-serving bid to win this week's Blog Bile Award by republishing substantial extracts from his previous anti-West Coast Eagles rant under the guise of a new rant against just retired Weagles player Glen Jakovich . Despite the arguably...
Continue reading →
The Falconio murder committal hearing remains "on hold" this afternoon, as barristers for the Nine Network, Murdoch Group, DPP and defendant Bradley John Murdoch (no relation to Rupert as far as I know) continue to argue before a Full Bench of the Supreme Court about whether M...
Continue reading →
The review of Fallen Order: A History (Karen Liebreich) by Miranda France in The Guardian Unlimited tells us that Catholic priests have been sexually abusing children for 400 years and still nothing has been done to punish the perpetrators. The web is full of reasons, excuses...
Continue reading →
"Good evening Fele". I nodded politely to 'Lady' Fele Mann, President of the Darwin Philippine community association, as we arrived at their annual beauty pageant and charity fund-raiser along with a squirming army of local politicians. "Good evening, Mr Mann", I said, acknowl...
Continue reading →
The Troppo Armadillo, posing as a legal academic, was overshadowed by Roger Maynard, correspondent for the London Times in a discussion of the Falconio case in Territory stateline on Friday night. TA blogreaders would have been amazed at how quietly Ken sat while the Times goo...
Continue reading →
A recently-retired friend of my wife applied to a local volunteer organisation to assist immigrants in learning English. She was informed that she would have to acquire an accreditation involving three hour sessions, two nights a week for eight weeks, two assignments and a thr...
Continue reading →
I'm thinking about instituting a "Blog Bile of the Week" award for the most impassioned, hate-filled blog rant, where the author makes no attempt whatever at balance or objectivity. After all, blogging isn't academic writing, so why even try to maintain a semblance of detachme...
Continue reading →
Watching Red Kerry on the box the other night I got a bit prickly over a report that the World Health Organisation was concentrating on obesity at the Health 2004 conference, "attended by representatives of the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, health ministers fr...
Continue reading →
Robert Corr has a couple of interesting posts about the current furore over federal Liberal MP Trish Draper's apparently dodgy claim for travel allowance for an overseas trip with her "spouse", and an injunction she obtained to preent screening of a TV story about the controve...
Continue reading →
The Charles Darwin Symposium Series is one of several initiatives suggested by highly-paid consultants to resuscitate the somewhat tattered reputation of the Northern Territory's only university, which Paddy McGuinness famously dismissed as " a so-called university which has n...
Continue reading →
A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a friend in NSW publicising the effort to find Daniel Morcombe. As a rule I don't do anything about pleas such as this because I have been hoaxed in the past, but in this case I made an exception and forwarded the email to my addr...
Continue reading →
Manly Council, the local authority for the beachside area in Sydney where I spent the first 29 years of my life, has just banned smoking on its beaches . Mayor Peter MacDonald (a local doctor and former left-leaning Independent State MP) is quoted as saying: "I guess this is a...
Continue reading →
I'm getting increasingly pissed off by the spam porn "comments" appearing on Troppo Armadillo , especially because it seems the spammers have now decided to target us every day, and with a particularly nasty type of spam (beastiality, incest etc). We're now getting 10 or more...
Continue reading →
I've just updated Darwin travellers exploits in a kibbutz and the Golan Heights and their experience with the Maasai.
Continue reading →
I forgot to mention that we went to hear John Butler Trio on Friday night. Freeloading on the beach adjacent to the Casino Lawns, along with several thousand others. I had a great time; in fact it would have been almost perfect if "B" hadn't locked her keys in the car at Mindi...
Continue reading →
Up early this morning to buy a second-hand washing machine for Casa Armadillo. Had to leave the last one at the Nightcliff Road house when Jenny P rented it fully furnished. Drove out to a newly-opened reconditioned whitegoods warehouse at Berrimah. Middle-aged bloke, crewcut....
Continue reading →
As longer-term readers of this blog will be aware, in a general sense I accept the practical necessity of the Howard government's offshore processing system for asylum seekers, sometimes referred to as the "Pacific solution". That isn't to say, however, that I see no legal or...
Continue reading →
For the parents of teenage girls. Letter to a Mother: A mother enters her daughter's bedroom and sees a letter on the bed. With the worst premonition and trembling hands, she reads it: Dear Mom, It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm telling you that I have eloped with my...
Continue reading →
After posting the item immediately below about Timor Leste Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta's pronouncements on Iraq, it occurred to me (without detracting from Horta's sincerity) that he may be motivated in part by a desire to build up international reserves of goodwill for...
Continue reading →
Over the last decade or so, the Nobel Peace Prize has thrown up some dubiously worthy (at best) Laureates, including former US President Jimmy Carter, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and, of all people, Yasser Arafat. I suppose at least they didn't present the Nobel to Osa...
Continue reading →
I just came across this site. I know quite a few people from overseas look at this blog and thought some of you might like to catch a glimpse of how we see ourselves. You know what a sucker I am about Dads writing poetry for their sons, so, if similarly inclined look here .
Continue reading →
While we were hiking in the glorious Argentinian Glaciers National Park were overheard some other hikers speaking strine and started to walk with them back to El Chalten where they had a camp. Along the way we found that they too lived in Darwin and indeed that Dan is the son...
Continue reading →
Not before time, the zeitgeist has begun generating discussion about the future role of the United Nations, notions of national sovereignty on which the existing international order is based, and principles that might underpin future humanitarian interventions that challenge e...
Continue reading →
I began reading newspapers - well one newspaper, The Weekend Australian about a month ago. The world is just as interesting now as it was when I stopped thinking around 1998. (Really it is, I'm loving it.) To my joy the Australian last Saturday has begun talking to me and abou...
Continue reading →
I posted a couple of days ago about income tax rates and an intriguing tax cut proposal by the Centre for Independent Studies' Peter Saunders. As promised in my comment box, John Quiggin has now responded and sought to prove that Saunders has exaggerated the extent to which Au...
Continue reading →
I've fulminated against the iniquities of racial vilification laws on more than one occasion ( here , here and here ). ABC Radio National Law Report also covered the issue back in 2002. What I hadn't known until now is that a couple of State governments have gone even further...
Continue reading →
(Via David Tiley ) It had to happen I suppose : First, there was the novel written without using the letter "e". Now a French author has produced what he claims is the first book with no verbs. Perhaps inevitably, critics have commented unfavourably on the lack of action in Mi...
Continue reading →
The old truism about lies, damn lies and statistics is graphically demonstrated today by two equally dodgy ideological warriors from opposite sides of the barbed wire fence. Writing in today's Australian , the Right's Janet Albrechtsen predictably joins the Bush/Howard push ag...
Continue reading →
I've believed for some time that Australian governments need to spend more on health and education. That conviction flows not from a social democratic orientation but from a classical liberal democratic belief in maximising equality of opportunity (not outcomes) for all citize...
Continue reading →
I think I'm finally sufficiently motivated to be bothered implementing the MT-Blacklist feature to block the increasing number of spam "comments" appearing on Troppo Armadillo . My current best intention is to begin entering IP addresses in the Blacklist starting next time a w...
Continue reading →
I'm pleased to see that John Quiggin has debunked a recent article by that pathetic parody of Sixties radicalism Richard Neville , about the imagined political apathy and disengagement of "Generation X" compared with Neville's "Baby Boomer" generation. As John remarks: Of cour...
Continue reading →
Both blogging and reading blogs depends upon my mood for the day. It sometimes takes, I'm sure you will agree, a degree of fortitude to bear the tidal wave of crap that spews forth onto the blogpages of cyberspace. However, no matter what sort of mood I'm in, I usually take th...
Continue reading →
Melbourne historian John Hirst has an excellent article in today's Australian newspaper about aspects of Aboriginal self-determination in a post-ATSIC era. Hirst argues that local community co-operative control of service delivery has been a failure for reasons flowing in part...
Continue reading →
The SMH reveals - in a piece of shameless advertorial - that 1,000 Australian men were so sadly bereft of life-fulfillment options that they measured their penises and sent the results off to some vaguely-defined corporate entity - for marketing dept fun and company profit. Fo...
Continue reading →
In one of several grumpy posts last week, I described indigenous music as: " ... musicians with poor to mediocre instrumental skills, playing and singing boring, derivative songs out of tune ." I stand by the comment as a broad generalisation, and I justify it on more than gro...
Continue reading →
I was checking out Alexander Downer's bio the other day, as one does, and came across this: "Alexander Downer was born on 9 September 1951. He was educated at Crafers Primary School, Geelong Grammar School, Victoria; Radley College, Oxford, United Kingdom; and the University o...
Continue reading →
Tim Dunlop has a good post up about Brian Toohey's piece in yesterday's Sun-Herald . Toohey argues that much of the commentariat hand-wringing about malign shock-jock influence could be sensibly addressed by politicians simply not giving them the issue-based oxygen they requir...
Continue reading →
There's few things less attractive than a former enfant terrible who insists on clinging relentlessly to his former persona. OK, domestics in comment boxes comes close but Richard Neville's latest diatribe in the SMH surely plumbs the depths. In a call-to-arms to Gen X'ers (wh...
Continue reading →
Yay! The dry season's here; cool nights and crisp, windy mornings. After a few months of sauna-like Darwin weather you tend to forget how pleasant it is not to be always bathed in sweat. Friday was officially the last day of the wet season and, as if to commemorate its passing...
Continue reading →
