In my post on Redfern , I referred in passing to the the actions of Sydney Archbishop Cardinal Pell in appointing conservative Priests from the Neo-Catechumenate movement to St. Vincent's, once the parish of Fr Ted Kennedy and a hub for the Indigenous community - a subject of...
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Friday marks the 150th anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion. For all I know, this might be big news in Victoria, but I suspect the current debate over the cultural and political significance of this event is not being widely heeded. But it's worth taking a look at. Let's start...
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For anyone who might be idly curious about my continuing blogging absence, here's an update. Jen and I have moved successfully into our new home, and we're very comfortable. We're even getting a pool installed starting tomorrow, a week ahead of schedule. So we'll be swimming b...
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At the suggestion of commenter Alex on an earlier thread about the electoral and policy ways forward for the ALP , this is a thread thrown open for any readers who'd like to give the ALP an early Christmas present and suggest a philosophical/political strategy to re-invigorate...
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America's young conservatives have President Bush confused with Buffy the Vampire Slayer Take the National Review Online's Jonah Goldberg for example. Even conservatives have reason to "cheer the immense popularity of the Buffyverse," he wrote in June this year . Why? Because...
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Or, The End of Empire Part Two John Quiggin has an excellent take on the US Imperial overstretch I commented on in an earlier post .
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As Latho multiplies the apologies by adding one to all of us for the Labor Party's latest bout of navel gazing and back biting , finally someone in the ALP has something sensible to say. Wayne Swan's staffer, Denis Glover, calls on the party not to ditch the elites . Analysing...
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Photo by the Sydney Morning Herald's Dean Sewell. There could be trouble ahead in Redfern. I can remember when, in search of affordable hotel accommodation attending a conference at Sydney Uni in 1998, I stayed in nearby Chippendale. The hotel manager warned me not to walk the...
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It's been an amazing spring here in New England. There's been a lot of good rain followed by warm weather, so the countryside looks fantastic--green and lush, with flowers everywhere and lots of budding fruit (and sadly, lots of flies, too--the sheep farmers must be having a d...
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I don't often agree with observa, a frequent commenter on this and other blogs. However, I was struck with this comment on the Latho thread : one of the great attributes that Howard has, is a management style that allows the various personalities to make the running from time...
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Journalists everywhere are wringing their their hands about the consequences of Australia's ageing population . But why is it that they have left out the most important part of the demographic transition? In the future, old people will become drug-crazed cyborgs. Falling ferti...
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There is a good review in the Guardian by Simon Waldman of Dan Gillmor's new book on the impact of blogging on journalism , We The Media . And the Guardian is also raising the profile of the British blogosphere for its readership with a competition for the Best British Blog ....
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Well, it'll be an interesting day in Canberra tomorrow when the ALP Shadow Cabinet meets. Mark Latham, who increasingly finds himself subject to leadership destabilisation , has taken the bit between his teeth and vowed to discipline Senator Stephen Conroy, the Labor Senate De...
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Nightmares including SQL databases crashing, and the like. UPDATE- Everything seems to be back to normal. The SQL part of the server crashed, and I had to remember to repair the database. Once I did that, everything worked, except for Troppo, which required a rebuild. To see h...
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We seem to be returning to Ancient Greece for our film plots. The latest entry in this genre, Alexander , being an Oliver Stone film, has stirred up some controversy . And it's not just about Colin Farrell's silly wig, or Angelina Jolie's portraying his mum when she's only a y...
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Yesterday I bought, and am nearly finished(it's a real page-turner, you see!), a new and very enjoyable crime novel, The Walker, by a new Australian author, Jane R.Goodall. Set in London in 1971, with a prologue in 1967, it's a very spooky, well-written and unsettling read abo...
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Paul Keating's intervention during the 1996 election campaign when he claimed that Asian leaders wouldn't deal with John Howard is almost universally recognised as a big mistake. Of course, a lot of odd things are said on the hustings - well, that is to say, impromptu odd thin...
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Over at Kick & Scream , Rob Corr's commenters kick around the idea of another non RWDB-centric Australian Blog Award. Rob also has some interesting thoughts on bloggers and commenters meeting in "real life". I'd be interested in hearing Troppo readers' perspective on this. Do...
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Tim Dunlop is complaining about the prevalance of creationist ideas , and notes that it is not just a US problem: Speaking completely anecdotally, I have a cousin who is a geologist and who was doing surveys in NSW a few years back. He said he had to speak to a lot of property...
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Around the time of the US election, Don and I had quite a few posts about the cultural divide in the Land of the Free and its implications for politics. For new readers wanting some background, go here , here , here and here for a sense of the debate... Continuing this convers...
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Norm Geras had on his site today a link to a great article by the wonderful Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials and the Sally Lockhart Quartet, amongst others, about adaptation, from novel to stage as opposed to film. It is well worth reading--as always, with Philip,...
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Today is moving day, when Ken and Jen move into the new nest we've been preparing. The removalists are due at Jen's place at 7am, and at my joint some indeterminate time later to move the piano and the rest of my worldly goods for the third time in 12 months (aaagh). I'll prob...
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Or at least February? More reports are in today suggesting that Latho's shelf life may be very limited , with the leaks turning into a stream and the knives well and truly unsheathed. I commented in an earlier thread that any attempt on Latho's part to reach out to new constit...
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In his SMH column today, Ross Gittins reports on some interesting new research which shows that while Independent Schools do better in getting students into Uni, these same students are out-performed in first year by students from Government and Catholic schools. Gittins also...
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Do films based on printed fiction do justice to their source? Or do they trash the original spirit of the book? Can a film be better than the book it's based on? Or is it always, inevitably less satisfying? I don't think there are general answers to those vexed questions, but...
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Now is the time to submit your nomination for Best Australian Blog . Apparently, according to Jess at Ausculture , Tim Blair wins every year. Will this poll break the run of the 'coalition of the willing'? UPDATE: David Tiley advises us in comments below of another Best Austra...
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As the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a new BBC Channel 4 reality tv series will show footage of couples having sex (in a tasteful way and for educational purposes, of course), news.com.au brings us the tantalising tidbit that Gretel Killeen has dumped Saxon . The wonderfu...
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Have you ever thought that music, even instrumental music, shows definite national characteristics--that Russian music sounds, well, Russian, and French French, and German German, and English English, and so on? Well, it's not just an instinctive, slightly politically incorrec...
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Sadly, BackPage s is no more , but Gerard Henderson continues to provide fuel for bloggers' illogic spotting impulses . In today's Sydney Morning Herald , Henderson tackles Latho's triangulation dependency . Mark Latham is a long-time proponent of the Blairite 'Third Way', fro...
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One of the unpleasant things about being in the literary field is the snobbery that surrounds the definition of 'literature'. There are people who seem to think that if a novel is accessible, fun, and exciting with a gripping story and vivid characters, it's bound to be bad li...
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Knowing the academic bent of Troppo readers, I thought I would advise that Google has a new offering - Google Scholar . The aim is: Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts a...
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Yes, you read correctly. The great German sociologist Max Weber once answered the perennial question of whether religion was primarily conservative or progressive in nature through a discussion of theodicy. His answer was that it can be either. Theodicy is the philosophical pr...
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No, James Naughtie is not a Tory MP. Rather, he's a British journalist who's just published a rather interesting book called The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency . Naughtie's analysis of the close identification between Blair and Bush is fascinating - and rev...
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Or, Latho's Farewell to the Working Class Robert Reich, Harvard Economist and Clinton's Labor Secretary, made something of a splash in policy terms with his coinage of the term "symbolic analysts" in his 1992 book The Work of Nations . Reich argued that comparative advantage i...
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Sometimes I get an overwhelming feeling I'm living in a strange and totally alien world where almost everyone is quite mad. Or maybe I am? How could anyone not question reality itself when a fat ugly chick who shouts wins Australian Idol , and the world's worst batsman scores...
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The other reading problem According to the Australian's Janet Albrechtsen teachers have been inflicting 'whole language' teaching on kids for more than 30 years and the consequences have been disastrous. If this was the whole story you'd expect to find that Australians who sta...
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She's 18 , anti-nazi , and wants drugs decriminalized . Why is this news? Well... her name is Julia Bonk , she looks like this , and she's been elected to parliament in Saxony.
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I have just spent the last hour deleting and rebuilding over 400 spam comments that came in a wave just after midnight. I'm trying to watch the soccer, not hacking away with this blog all night. But it only took that long because the server was belching under the assault. Once...
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I know I'm supposed to be one of those over-educated lefties but one thing I love is a good hamburger. Hamburgers and beer. What could be better on a Friday night? The trouble is, most of the burgers you buy at the big chains are gross. The beef patties are small and thin, the...
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Last night, we watched 1940's The Philadelphia Story (starring Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart and Cary Grant), the latest in a long line of old romantic comedies that we've greatly enjoyed--mostly, much, much more than modern romantic comedies. And it set me thinking again a...
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The playboy, the lawyer, the Catholic college, and the big fat burger The Sydney Morning Herald is carrying a third-hand story about Hardee's new ' Monster Thickburger .' But do a little Googling and things get a lot more interesting. If you're going to do cut-and-paste journa...
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Sad day. Christopher Sheil has given up blogging , at least for six months or so while he finishes writing a book. The blogosphere will be a less interesting place without him. Chris and I didn't always see eye-to-eye (to put it fairly mildly), but he is an unfailingly thought...
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What with most southern capitals facing severe water shortages and scorching summer temperatures already beginning to occur (I gather it was 37 in Adelaide yesterday), it's an opportune time for passionate advocates of the Kyoto Climate Protocol to start ratcheting up the rhet...
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Well, the SMH is playing host again to a Masson family piece! This time, it's actually a Masson-Leach piece, our youngest son, 15 year old Bevis, writing an opinion piece about the joys of skateboarding , free of the controls of well-meaning programs like the government-funded...
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I think with Sophie on board we'll have to start a Troppo Literary Award! Stimulated by Sophie's post on Les Murray , I've been pondering the lack of popular or media recognition of some for our excellent emerging and young poets. This is no doubt partly explained by the econo...
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For fellow admirers of Les Murray, here's some fantastic just-breaking news: the latest international honour to be awarded to our greatest poet. I had it hot from the lips of my agent, Margaret Connolly, who is also Les' agent. Les will be awarded one of Italy's top literary h...
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I can remember sitting in an undergrad Political Sociology lecture in 1991 and hearing the acerbic Lecturer authoritatively state "Women in politics are only suited to nurturing roles, like Minister for Families or Social Welfare". I piped up, "What about Joan Kirner and Carme...
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Yesterday, when I was talking to one of my France-based sisters over the phone, she told me my 21 year old nephew Stanislas, who's been training as a helicopter combat pilot in the French Army, may well be sent off to the Ivory Coast soon as part of the 4,000 strong French tro...
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The months of October and November are sometimes referred to as suicide season in Darwin. Even when, like me, you're having too much fun to consider such a drastic solution for existential angst, the unremitting humidity still breeds rampant crutch rot while the screeching of...
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Chris Sheil has brought us a marvellous story - you read it first in the Australian blogosphere (unless you're a Guardian subscriber, of course). The Tory Shadow Minister for the Arts, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, also editor of The Spectator , has had to resign after l...
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Politics looks complicated but it's actually very simple. As an aspiring leader you are looking for people to follow you, to be inspired by your penetrating insights, to hand out how-to-vote cards for you, and - most important of all - to love you. So here's how it works. Thin...
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Journalists, academics, and educators in the United States are constantly hounded by right-to-lifers, evangelicals, and creationists demanding that their opinions on scientific topics be given the same weight as those of mainstream researchers. The latest example of this is th...
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Fantasy fiction, like crime fiction, looks set to becoming one of the dominant cultural genres, in both books and films. In books, fantasy is making huge inroads; not only was Lord of the Rings voted top book of the 20th century by a majority of readers in the English-speaking...
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Observant and long-time readers will certainly have noticed "spam" comments popping up frequently in Troppo's "most recently commented posts" sidebar. I say "observant" readers because the spam never lasts very long. I delete it as soon as I see it, and that's always within an...
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(via Chris Sheil ) Here's a passionate if profane rant about those Bible Belt Republicans whose votes may or may not have been crucial to Bush's election victory. It echoes and amplifies this passage from a MSN Slate article by Daniel Gross that I quoted at the bottom of a rec...
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One of the remarkable aspects of the high profile achieved by conservative Christians as a result of the recent US and Australian elections has been the claim that they represent a reassertion of much-needed "values" in western society. The tacit assumption inherent in that cl...
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During the election, a number of groups including the AMA noted the inattention paid by both political parties to urgent issues about the living standards, economic outcomes and health of Indigenous Australians. After the abolition of ATSIC earlier in the year (supported by La...
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I'm not sure if there's actually going to be a definitive answer to this question in this post, but I'd like at least to advance some ideas as to why so many Aussie films flop with punters, and often with critics too. First of all, there is, with several honourable exceptions,...
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Tim Blair isn't a dumb guy but you'd hardly call him an education expert . Across the internet Ayn Rand loons , von Mises enthusiasts , and even the exceedingly grumpy Phyllis Schlafly have been denouncing a teaching method called 'whole language.' Obviously it's possible to d...
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From Nietzsche's Zarathustra : State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it tells lies too: and this lie crawls out of its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.' That is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith and a love over them: thus t...
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I was a child who was often 'away with the fairies' --the very first book I remember reading was a Little Golden Book(in French) of three fairytales--Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast and Toads and Diamonds. Stories about once upon a time in a kingdom far far away were guaranteed...
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As I mentioned in my earlier posting (Screen pleasures), I did not have TV when I was growing up, as my parents found it second-rate and a waste of time, compared to films. That didn't stop us children from being quite 'au fait' with a lot of TV programmes, mostly because we'd...
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In the course of wrestling with a half-written post about the influence of neoconservative thinkers (especially Leo Strauss and Alan Bloom) on current US politics (foreshadowed here ), I've found myself being diverted onto exploring the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, not least b...
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Loquacious commenter Nick has contributed a long but interesting soliloquy on the mentality and concerns of the average American voter. However, what most struck me about his analysis was that his list of "tsunamis on the horizon" didn't include any economic factors. Nor has t...
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Or, What We Really Know about the "Culture Wars" and American Elections Who'd have thought that Thomas Frank and class analysis would set the Australian political blogosphere on fire in our attempts to analyse the American election? Ken's sought to douse the theoretical flames...
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They get to be too busy to blog. I promised Ken a post as to my views on the US elections; my post got overtaken by events, and by the time I will have time to finish it, it will be very stale indeed. But I notice much angst about 'the state of the left' in electoral terms, bo...
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The lot of a political centrist is sometimes not a happy one. Lately I've been suffering pangs of angst and self-doubt. After joining the anti-Howard and anti-Bush camps for the recent elections and jinxing both of them, I couldn't help wondering whether I might be suffering a...
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Thomas Frank - critical theory, prairie style When John Quiggin reviewed Thomas Frank's One Market Under God (2000) he was surprised to find a reference to Osama bin Laden. The book gave Quiggin the "eerie impression that Frank, writing at the end of the twentieth century, had...
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Chris Sheil at Backpages , Don Arthur here at Troppo and myself in an earlier post have all been picking up on the work of Thomas Frank in an attempt to understand what happened in the US election. The more I reflect on this, the more I realise that what we've all done - in di...
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When a society becomes as rich as the United States status is no longer about quantity - how big your house is or how many cars you own - it's about quality. Today status is more about what your possessions say about you as a person. And the trouble with status in 21st century...
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It looks like the blue states and the red states split in the US presidential poll is almost identical to the results in 2000, and both Houses of Congress are still almost evenly poised - with some small movement to the GOP. Chris Sheil's post at Backpages and comments there b...
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Tim Dunlop sums up my thoughts about the US Presidential election and likely future prospects far better than I could have done myself. But read John Quiggin as well for more detail on the economic dimension.
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According to this story at News Online, citing this story at MSN Slate, exit polling shows Kerry leading Bush in a tight contest in the late afternoon in the US. Of course, exit polls are dubiously reliable . But pending meaningful real results, they at least give us something...
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If Bush is re-elected tomorrow, there is speculation that Colin Powell will step down and Paul Wolfowitz (currently Deputy Secretary of Defence and the most senior Neo-Conservative in the administration) will take his place as Secretary of State. If Bush loses (and I'm hoping...
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Troppo talks to Jon Kudelka about the Prime Minister, weapons of mass destruction, and Star Wars "I was hoping to get the phrase 'fully operational death star' on the front page of the national broadsheet" says cartoonist Jon Kudelka , "There was beer in it." Kudelka has been...
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I was brought up on films as well as books, and the silver screen loomed quite large in our family story. My paternal grandfather worked as a cameraman in the French film industry in the inter-war period, and indeed the story goes that he stood in for Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who...
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When politicians make ignorant statements in an election run-up period, there's a fair chance they're focus group-driven and designed to cater to the lowest common denominator of public taste. When they do it immediately afterwards, however, it's a good bet they're just displa...
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I remember reading somewhere that The Australian's columnist Janet Albrechtsen has a law degree. If that's right, she should know better than to make this silly statement in a recent article where she slagged High Court Justice Michael Kirby: Gleeson could have added that he,...
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John Gray provocatively begins his interesting article "The Curious Dogmatism of Atheists" ( reprinted in Friday's Fin ) with the assertion that - A revival of atheism is a curious byproduct of the September 11 attacks. We've read a lot recently about religion and politics, wh...
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