Chess players are nothing if not temperamental. The story so far - at least as I could be bothered learning about it is that: Topalov's camp protested about the frequency with which Kramnik was going to the toilet(!) The officials seem to have required Kramnik and Topalov to u...
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It all started on the 10th of March with the Dragons and Tigers and will end about 8:45 Sunday night with either the Broncos or the Storm being the 2006 NRL Premiers. It has been an interesting season but the post mortem will come later. The immediate concern is who will win S...
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Two weeks ago Ken wondered aloud on 'weekend reflections' that it might not work all that well on Troppo. It had only attracted between four and ten comments in the past. Anyway, the very thread he wrote this on attracted some interesting comments. Last week's weekend reflecti...
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In 1963 the Australian Government ordered the F111 at the then astronomical cost of $112 million with the final cost a decade later being 324 million. It has been the best bang for the buck purchase Australian has made in defence. Like all good deterrents it will be retired wi...
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There is nothing, I'm sure you'd agree, more fascinating, more delightful to observe, or more satisfying to the soul, than to see two grown men poke their tongues out at each other, fully extend to the other, the middle digit of both hands and for good measure unbuckle the bel...
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It is generally accepted that Popper did not give a thorough account of the way that science actually works, and that is supposed to indicate that by the 1960s he was a bit out of things. Perhaps he did some interesting work back in the 1930s that challenged the logical positi...
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I've been doing some (fairly idle) thinking but not much reading about globalisation and the extent to which large amounts of 'offshoring' of labour will be good and who it will be good for. I can't say I've got far but was interested to read this post which was pointed to by...
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I'll be giving a presentation with the above title at the University of Canberra tomorrow - Wednesday 27th of Sept in Room B34, Building 6 University of Canberra at 12:30 pm. This is a repeat of a seminar I did at the ANU last year, but if you missed it and the title or abstra...
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The shelves in American bookstores relating to politics over the last few years have become dominated by titles such "How to kill a liberal and get away with it", or "How to dice a conservative and serve them for dinner without wasting pepper". I often think when faced with al...
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Susan Polgar - one of the best women players in the world on the second game between Topalov and Kramnik. Looks like the same story, as last game but different format. Topalov bounced out of the blocks with white and mounted a ferocious attack on Kramnik's king. Kramnik held o...
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So it happened again. No Melbourne team in the grand final. In fact, none of the top four teams in the AFL competition were from Melbourne. We will go through the motions of pretending that grand final week still means something. And at 5.30 on Saturday there will be a quiet e...
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Those many of you who don't follow chess will not know that the first game in a unification bout for the World Anyweight Champion of Chess took place last night - our time. The players? Topalov whose extraordinary swashbuckling style - never mind that rooks are supposed to be...
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This open thread last weekend started off with a whimper, but turned into an interesting discussion about why nothing was happening on the thread! How's that for naval gazing! Anyway, a long time ago when I put on a sketch as an undergraduate at Burgmann College Robin Bell the...
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Today's Crikey has a brief piece by me in reaction to a piece by Christian Kerr on Wednesday. I've written about this a couple of times on Troppo before. Here's my reprise for Crikey. What makes Australia's social security system great The memes are out in force again, I see....
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I've admired Paul Monk's writing for a while now and have linked to a particularly good essay of his in the past. In any event, he's agreed for me to post essays of his on Troppo. Over the fold is an review essay of John Armstrong's recent book on Goethe and happiness. From th...
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I'm not much chop at reading poetry, but I was listening to a podcast of the Book Program and heard this discussion about Elizabeth Bishop. There was a marvellous reading of a poem about a Moose (would you believe). I reproduce it over the fold, though I expect I wouldn't have...
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Even Pope Benedict now agrees that some of the words in his recent speech at the University of Regensburg were just a tad ill-chosen. His regrets, however, may not be as acute as those of the friends and family of the nun apparently murdered by Muslim thugs as a result, or eve...
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Researchers say we've never been happier -- so where's the problem? According to economist Andrew Leigh only a handful of nations outrank Australian on measures of happiness and life satisfaction. Looking back over survey data collected since the 1940s, Leigh finds that our "o...
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That's the headline of the Washington Post's editorial on the subject. (Courtesy of Brad DeLong's Blog .) Of course, Mr. Bush didn't come out and say he's lobbying for torture. Instead he refers to "an alternative set of procedures" for interrogation. But the administration no...
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The IPA's article on Australia's 13 biggest mistakes (pdf) is a good conversation starter. I'm not very good at exercises like that, so I don't have a list of my own. Certainly the 'mistake' of publishing J S Mill's On Liberty is an odd one - I guess kind of tongue in cheek it...
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There's a delicious game going on in the regulation of financial advisors. 'Financial advising' grew out of insurance salesmanship. That was simple. Insurers paid good money to salespeople who could sell insurance. They got large quantities of the policies they wrote with the...
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Last week I spent some time collecting some data from various sources that summarise the differences and relationships between various crude measures of national performance, mostly for an introductory class on regression (which according to Rafe is the most fun that you can h...
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Is the childhood obesity epidemic caused by irresponsible fast food chains or by lax parenting and lazy kids ? Is poverty caused by a lack of opportunity or by the behaviour of poor people ? Is global warming caused by suburban energy gluttons or is the sun to blame ? The war...
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Imagine super-nanny on crystal meth. That's how Lawrence Mead 's ideal case manager deals with recalcitrant welfare recipients: One man I know in Milwaukee, who works for a private employment program ... summarized his message to his male clients this way: “I’ll do anything to...
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[photopress:robson.jpg,full,pp_empty] TodayTonight host Naomi Robson was trying to get to Papua to save the life of a young boy earmarked to be eaten by a tribe of cannibals, an industry source claims. They're kidding, right?
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Phillip Coorey in today's Herald praises the Opposition Leader for showing leadership in the debate over values. (In response to Howard's critique of Muslims who won't assimilate, Beazley proposed that vistors, including tourists, should sign a declaration on their visa form t...
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Via ex-coblogger Jason Soon , in case any Troppo readers haven't found it yet: Andrew's new blog . Andrew is an articulate and elegant writer, backs up his claims with facts and figures, avoids hyperbole, responds thoughtfully to reasoned criticism, and graciously concedes a p...
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"One of the best public intellectuals on the conservative side of politics" says ANU's Andrew Leigh . "A very thoughtful writer on the liberal side" says Mark Bahnisch at LP . A "radical neoliberal" says the University of Wollongong's Damien Cahill . Earlier this week Andrew N...
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I was setting up to deliver my talk on open source software at the Fabian Society. I decided to throw caution to the winds and the switch to Vaudeville by staring off with the same scene from Witness - 'raising a barn' - that i began my original essay for policy with. I'll ind...
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It's a question I hope to learn more about. These kinds of debates always take on heavy ideological overtones. There was the 'what made the Asian Tigers roar' debate of the 1980s in which free traders spoke past protectionists and didn't get very far. There was the 'Why can't...
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Economists have long been challenged by the question: how does one decide if a particular social program is in the national interest (to use the Prime Minister's favourite expression)? We economists talk a great deal about cost-benefit evaluations but it is never clear what go...
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More on Collingwood . Review of a collection of Collingwood's essays on political philosophy. Chapter 1 BENT OF A TWIG UNTIL I was thirteen years old I lived at home and was taught by my father. Lessons occupied only two or three hours each morning; otherwise he left me to my...
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Cedric Emanuel (1906-1995) was one of the most productive and versatile of Australian artists. He has major importance as a visual historian. For almost seventy years he sketched and painted the rapidly changing scenes of Australia from the outback to the inner suburbs of Sydn...
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Fear gripped the pulsing metropolis of Melbourne on this meaningful Monday the 11th. Fear and dread. Fear, and dread, and doubt (no doubt). We'd been warned just this weekend passed that we were on the top of the list of targets, and so on this day of symbolism and portent, we...
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Surely we cannot let 11/9 pass without a single relevant post? After all, the world changed forever five years ago today. For a start, folks the globe over ( sans moi ) have now begun quoting dates backwards, like the Americans. SBS recently aired a bizarre documentary allegin...
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Late night live sounds like it might be interesting tonight. I don't have time to read even this link , right now, but it all sounds interesting. World Bank economist Branko Milanovic says globalisation is in trouble. He shifts the focus from the economic effects of globalisat...
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Invited by the indefatigable impresario of ideas Race Mathews to talk to the Fabian Society I'll be doing so this Wednesday evening. The topic is the economic and social significance of open source software as a new mode of production, and I'm still working on the slides. Plea...
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In Jason Soon's capitalist utopia you can hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon , rear cattle in the evening and criticise after dinner . It's a world where the welfare state has withered away and in its place is an unconditional basic income paid to each adult citizen to...
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A woman was riding a bike and was shot in the chest with a .22 bullet. It almost hit her heart, but it didn't and she was OK. It transpired that the accused person was cleaning their .22 rifle on their front porch and the gun accidentally discharged. The accused was charted wi...
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Charles Murray and Peter Saunders both want to dismantle the welfare state -- they just have different strategies for doing it. Murray's plan is to convert current welfare state spending into cash grants for every adult American (except those in prison) while Saunders' plan is...
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Nicholas has very kindly invited me to contribute to Club Troppo. This is my first post. So it's virgin territory for me. Please be gentle. And, of course, I hope you will enjoy it"¦ I was driving to the shops last night listening to this PM story about workers in Melbourne no...
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Jason Soon thinks welfare payments should be replaced by a guaranteed minimum income scheme . Rather than subjecting welfare recipients to a regime of case management and workfare, Soon thinks they should be free to make their own decisions about work and lifestyle. ' Bad ' Pe...
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Here's the text of a letter of mine published in the Australian today. In the last five years, Australia has enjoyed a windfall gain of nearly 50 per cent in its terms of trade. This has added tens of billions to the coffers of the Federal Budget. Here was a great opportunity...
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It wouldn't be at all surprising if politicians and other commentators who have never seen an increase in interest rates that they thought was warranted seized on yesterday's June quarter national accounts as grounds for criticizing the Reserve Bank's decisions to lift interes...
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"I have done that," says memory. "I cannot have done that," says pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually-memory yields. Friedrich Nietzsche Perhaps if you were to update this saying for today's pacier times, you'd remove the word 'eventually'. John Quiggin reminds us of who...
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Something light to start off with. I woke up this morning to the clock radio's bad news about the Bali Nine and sitting in a traffic jam on the Easter freeway I wondered about what was really going on and reminded myself that 2+2 usually eqauls 4. Listening to RN in my office,...
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Cass Sunstein pumps out an amazing amout of stuff and yesterday I came across this brief blog post. The idea of ideological amplification rings true - though it needn't be ideological. Language itself and all use of it is an inherently co-operative exercise. Individuals use co...
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One of the ways in which economic reform might have developed and deepened from the fairly formulaic deregulationist mind set it got itself into from around the late 80s on would have been in the area of reforming legal procedure. It's still being left to lawyers. Here is a go...
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I'm very sad to say that Ken Parish has called it a day on Troppo. As he said there were some important private reasons motivating him, but there was also the agro and misunderstanding that flies around routinely. That increased the stress and tedium and that's a standing invi...
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Even though the game had no bearing on the final eight I spent a lovely day in the sun at Leichhardt Oval yesterday drinking beer and watching the Tigers flog the Bunnies. Even with the both teams out of the finals there was that air of expectation as the crowd enjoyed the bea...
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I don't have time for a substantial post on this, but have just seen a 2005 report by Seek - it was no doubt in the news at the time - but I didn't see it. Anyway this is one thing it says. Despite an environment of high employment and a buoyant economic outlook, job insecurit...
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The first time I heard about Steve Irwin, I was in the back of a taxi in San Francisco in 2000 with a couple of other Aussies. We were engaging in humorous banter with the heavyset black taxi driver. As you do when you're OS and you're looking to sample the local mood, and get...
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Interesting article in SMH wth which I agree. Especially this part. Yet this bedrock of the game - the Sydney and Brisbane club competitions - the source of most of the players for the four state teams, and most of the Wallabies, is never allowed its day in the sun, never allo...
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I once heard the late Lin Onus a teriffic aboriginal artist give a lecture to somewhere like the press club. He told a story of hearing his son singing the national anthem, which his son had picked up orally, to write out the words. They were truly hilarious when compared with...
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Michael Duffy never wanted the soccer World Cup here. Now he has solid grounds for his dread. He was evidently grazing in the archives of the Library of Economics and Liberty, an indispensable resource for rightwing culture warriors, when he came upon t his anti-soccer polemic...
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This is a blogging experiment. I'm teaching Jurisprudence to undergraduate law students this semester for the first time (although I've long been interested in legal theory). One of the early tutorial exercises I've set for my students arises from a very famous 1949 article/hy...
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Peter Faris today expands his defence of the anti-terrorism laws under which Jack Thomas has been subjected to a control order. He frames this analysis as a reasoned legal one: Two issues arise. First, is the control-order legislation good and appropriate legislation against t...
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Self-described "libertarians" all seem to have a blind spot about gun laws. Some of them are radically dishonest about their quasi-religious pro-gun obsessions. American "academic" John Lott, whose multiple misdeeds are chronicled obsessively by ozplogger Tim Lambert (to such...
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