My Sweet Lord ... This story is disappointing if unsurprising: A MANHATTAN art gallery has cancelled its Easter-season exhibit of a life-size chocolate sculpture depicting a naked Jesus, after an outcry by Roman Catholics. The sculpture My Sweet Lord by Cosimo Cavallaro was to...
Continue reading →
Staunch defender of freedom and Minister for "DIC" Kevin Andrews lunges for a firm grip on "Roger Migently"'s gonads 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad The usual superbly diverse collection of blogospheric...
Continue reading →
In recent blogs on this site, especially regarding the phrase `war on terror' and the political mud slinging of recent weeks, I have frequently seen the hope expressed that the media should be free of bias and just report the truth. A praisworthy sentiment. Can you however rea...
Continue reading →
From a recent Michael Kirby speech [pdf] : For example, our Constitution is too rigid. It is one of the most difficult in the world to amend. This feature of Australian legal arrangements can sometimes protect us from the risk of mistakes, as in the Communism referendum of 195...
Continue reading →
This brief article by Zbigniew Brzezinski in the Washington Post provides a useful contrast to Albrechtsen's opinion piece. Here are the opening few lines to give you the flavour: The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation...
Continue reading →
Courtesy Daily Flute 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. Troppo Sports Stadium 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad The NSW election was the big 'news' over the weekend, although - in this humble scribe's opinion (SL) - it was slightly less interest...
Continue reading →
Last night I listened to a very arresting speech by Salman Rushdie on - Secular Values, Human Rights and Islamism. You can too by clicking on the link.
Continue reading →
On the 24th August 1987 the last volume of Manning Clark's A History of Australia was launched by David Malouf. Peter Ryan was Clarkâs publisher at Melbourne University Press and Manning thanked him generously at the launch. "Peter Ryan was an is a great publisher. . . . Thank...
Continue reading →
I think there is a tradition on blogs in which visitors are invited to click on links to Amazon books and if they buy a book some credit is given to the blog for the purchase of books on the wish list. Well, loosely based on this tradition I suggest someone go visit Eva Breuer...
Continue reading →
Econometricians are often pretty smart at thinking up ways to measure things. I recently attended a seminar by Professor Matthew Gentzkow from University of Chicago Graduate School of Business who is doing research on the vexed issue of media slant. You might think that media...
Continue reading →
This proposal is still ill-defined and it may be too early to make definite pronouncements on it but I thought I might chance my arm. First, is it needed? This is not my expertise but there are enough experts around arguing that it would have a high benefit cost ratio for the...
Continue reading →
From the 'where has Nicholas Gruen been?' department I just thought I'd mention, in the spirit of Missing Link, that I happened upon a stray copy of the ALR at Melbourne Uni the other day. It is now several weeks since it came out. I read what I think was the first of the edit...
Continue reading →
If we are to credit her latest effort , Janet Albrechtsen believes Islamic terrorism is an enemy almost as deadly as the 20th-century totalitarians, if a little less conventional. On this premise she assembles an argument of sorts that liberalism, with its concern for legal n...
Continue reading →
Courtesy of Daily Flute 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. Sportz 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad This exciting and fun-packed edition compiled and edited by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Helen Dale, Jason Soon, Cam Riley and our new arts recruit...
Continue reading →
In 1806, the Bowman's of Richmond, NSW flew a flag to celebrate the English victory at Trafalgar. The amazing thing about this was, the Bowman flag looks very similar to the modern coat of arms. It has a Kangaroo and Emu holding up a shield adorned with heraldry. Kangaroos hav...
Continue reading →
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="168"] No job's too small for Mickey[/caption] Today I got a message from the Victorian Government. I had to get a new drivers licence but . . . the good news was that as part of their arrive alive! strategy I was getting back one third...
Continue reading →
Libertarianism is in crisis because it refuses to accept big government, says Tyler Cowen . As governments turn away from central planning and embrace free markets, their societies grow wealthier. And wealthier societies can afford bigger governments. According to Cowen, it's...
Continue reading →
On the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war, Prime Minister John Howard has been forced to clarify his position on the existence of a plan to cut and run . The Opposition asked John Howard whether he was aware of reports the United States (US) has prepared a plan for a phased wi...
Continue reading →
UNCLE KEN NEEDS YOU Missing Link needs a new volunteer. Darlene Taylor has been forced to withdraw from the "Troppo Cabal" due to pressure of other commitments, so we need someone to review and compile the ML arts-related blog category. The arts category currently consists of...
Continue reading →
A cute account of one of our favorite tribes . The Econ tribe occupies a vast territory in the far North. Their land appears bleak and dismal to the outsider, and travelling through it makes for rough sledding; but the Econ, through a long period of adaptation, have learned to...
Continue reading →
He lost his father to a car accident and his mother retrained as a nurse so that she could earn a living and support her family. It was a narrative that told voters who he was and why they should trust him to lead the country. Scenes from his childhood were woven into a video...
Continue reading →
Another one from Daily Flute Monday's Missing Link is an eclectic mix of political and broader posts, as well as a couple of rugby league posts from Shaun Cronin. No dominant theme, but a wealth of good reading. Editors again are myself, James Farrell, Patrick Garson, Darlene...
Continue reading →
A little post in last weeks' science news said that the South Korean government was thinking about the 'golden rules' of robot-human inter-relations. They are doing this because they sincerely believe that the technology of neural networks and miniature chips will pretty soon...
Continue reading →
American conservatism is as much about rhetoric as it is about policy, says Sam Tanenhaus . Few conservative leaders are as revered as Ronald Reagan, but his supporters often forget that he made government bigger rather than smaller. They forgive him because he believed what t...
Continue reading →
Last week, a fellow by the name of Patrick West, TV columnist for the UK based internet-magazine Spiked ( Yes, the one of dubious provenance ) , published an entirely stereotypical and quite unenlightening piece about we marvellous Australians. Because despite all of their pro...
Continue reading →
Crikey's Christian Kerr wants to know . . . . Here's his guest post calling for input. Power â with and without glory Who are the people in politics and the media who will really decide the outcome of this yearâs election? There are the obvious big names of the Gallery and the...
Continue reading →
Is John Howard a strong father or just an annoying older brother? Voters see their nation as a family and its leaders as parents, says cognitive linguist George Lakoff . In the US, voters often see their leaders as the world's parents -- as if it was their job to protect small...
Continue reading →
Not my words, but all the more amusing for that. They were the description -- by the friend of a friend -- of the two participants in Thursday's extended LNL interview . A sufficiently decent interval has now passed, I think, for me to once again risk such a promo. Phillip spe...
Continue reading →
When I saw that Paul's post was about chicks and tuna, I had an overwhelming urge to Google "naked women + fish" ... hmmm[KP] There was a very interesting talk yesterday by prof. Sean Pascoe of CSIRO on 'chicks and chuncks: a story of tuna and birds'. It raised an unusual ethi...
Continue reading →
Michelle Grattan was speculating this morning on Fran's Chat n' Chew , that the fulsome confession out of Gitmo resident and terror mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed might turn the tables in Australian politics. Ms Grattan's theory was along the lines that having a real proven...
Continue reading →
Courtesy of the great Daily Flute This is the second edition of Missing Link created by the collaborative method Jason Soon has christened the "hive mind" with a sly nod to hackneyed anti-feminist labelling. Using a wiki to compile a post like Missing Link certainly seems to m...
Continue reading →
If John Howard could beat Mark Latham , then Gordon Brown can beat David Cameron , says Third Way architect Anthony Giddens . In a recent piece for the Guardian , Giddens writes: Look what happened in Australia. The prime minister, John Howard, is ageing, and he does not exact...
Continue reading →
This post began as a comment on James Farrell comment on a recent thread in which I linked to a bit of dirt on Chomsky. James pulled me up twice, in each case in ways that I appreciate. He (and Paul F) suggested in his first comment that a slip-up in a quote ainât no crime and...
Continue reading →
Have a look at this video . It's pretty damning. Please comment below if you know of any come-back that Chomsky might have.
Continue reading →
I always think of this line when asked for a reference. Today Crikey carried a whole bunch of similarly ambiguous one liners for references from LIAR The Lexicon of Intentionally Ambiguous Recommendations. They're over the fold. I cannot recommend this person too highly. I rec...
Continue reading →
It's been fifteen years since Captain Jeff Kennett, and his corporate turn-around team took the reigns in Victoria and started the State on the road to recovery. It's been thirteen years since Mr. Kennett applied his marketing genius to spruce up the State's fleet of car numbe...
Continue reading →
Poster for International Women's Day via Kirsty at Galaxy of Emptiness Missing Link is now into yet another manifestation. The problem is that it's just too time-consuming for any one individual to read lots of blogs, even with the help of a feed reader, and then produce a dec...
Continue reading →
I argued in a prior post that a directly elected and separate executive is a more democratic form of governance. Not content with that, over at SSR we developed a gubernatorial constitution for NSW. This constitution is nothing new. It contains concepts and existing constituti...
Continue reading →
I reckon this is a bloody good picture. It took my eye in the National Gallery Magazine. It's by Tobias Koster and most of the background is missing - which is a long strip to the right and left of the market in which one presumes the subject of the painting works. Tobias is f...
Continue reading →
Chris Young didn't feel cared about . The food was good, the service was better than usual but it wasn't enough -- he wanted more from his waitress: I didn't feel like she really cared. Sure, she was attentive, but I didn't feel cared about. And I didn't feel like she was bein...
Continue reading →
I'm strongly inclined to liberality of laws when it comes to lending. That is not just because as a lenders' agent I have a conflict of interest. I actually detest the paternalistic idea that lenders trying to lend money at a profit is something bad. We have a ridiculous situa...
Continue reading →
Would Adam Smith please come to reception. Adam Smith Google Alerts have many things to answer for - in particular you can't name anyone without them turning up to your site in seconds answering your charges. Gavin Kennedy (I am convinced) gets Google Alerts every day on where...
Continue reading →
As I've mentioned to Troppodillians previously , Melvin Brag has an interesting show on BBC radio called 'In our time'. It's a kind of amateur hour with a professional broadcaster. He (usually) interviews three 'experts' about something that he's interested in but ignorant abo...
Continue reading →
We're having hell's own trouble with the server at present, and when I posted ML last night I simply couldn't load up three You-Tube videos. So I'm trying again here. Here's Ron and Nancy's message on drugs - remastered to clarify some issues from the earlier screening in the...
Continue reading →
News and politics stuff In reporting Kelvin Thompson's resignation Tim Blair links to this lovely piece of blue baiting. Don't you just love it when people humiliate other people. I know I do. Tim Blair says that "Quite without meaning to, Tim Footman writes the perfect obit f...
Continue reading →
Astonishing revelations Nicholas has already alerted readers to John Quiggin's call for sponsors in The Great Shave. But apparently the wind has gone out of the sails , so he's asking for a bit more help. He will throw in $1000 of his own if the $2000 target is reached by Mond...
Continue reading →
Brad De long republishes a great piece of his arguing that Keynes Tract on Monetary Reform was a great monetarist document. As he concludes: [F]rom our perspective today--in which the Great Depression is seen as a unique disaster brought on by an unprecedented collapse in fina...
Continue reading →
I asked fellow missing linker Darlene who I should go see at the Comedy Festival. Being a reviewer she was very discrete and said she didn't want to play favourites, but that I could of course check out people on you tube. Of course! I hadn't really used you tube for that - th...
Continue reading →
Tim Dunlop thinks this picture is just begging for a caption . He's run a very successful competition supplying one. Troppodillians please help out in comments, either identifying the best comment on Tim's site, or suggesting one of your own. Prizes - well if you're in Melbour...
Continue reading →
Because Wednesday's Missing Link won't be up till this evening, here's a titbit that needs to go up earlier. On the book launch of âOutrageous: moral panics in Australiaâ. The launch is by Richard Ackland and itâs at Gleebooks.
Continue reading →
One of the fundamental intuitions of economists is that there are difficult trade-offs to everything you do â in life and in policy. I think this is overblown often â that often there are âvirtuous circles;â full of mostly good things and vicious ones. As Fred Argyâs been at p...
Continue reading →
Well you won't see them any day on this planet. You've got to change your perspective on things to see the earth eclipsing the Sun or Saturn from above/below. Click on either image for the full picture. Magnificent non?
Continue reading →
What is this object and who does Barista think should be using it? Just one of the things you'll find out from this edition of Missing Link. Well I can tell you that this Missing Link exercise is no pushover. It has probably grown a bit even since Ken started it, but itâs take...
Continue reading →
Seventy two hours (give or take a day) after the news that Kevin Rudd had met with disgraced Labor scuzz-bucket Brian Burke way back in 2005, and the Government scoured the Old Testament looking for language to describe the evil they were witnessing, and the Canberra press gal...
Continue reading →
A few weeks ago, Ken wrote an excellent post on the hue and cry over what many viewed as Peter Garrett's craven about face on US bases. It produced a long and lively discussion on hypocrisy, on cabinet solidarity, on what room there is within the party political system for pub...
Continue reading →
One thing everyone can agree on: people, media and politicians: is that elections are important. Democracy is the moral under-pinning of our political system. I remember watching the HBO documentary on Diebold and when it was shown that the electronic voting machines could be...
Continue reading →
Dove, no doubt for its own good commercial reasons are running a (cough) Campaign For Real Beauty which has been picked up by my daughter's school. Check out this striking video of the passage from the modelling studio to the unblemished looks of a poster.
Continue reading →
Once again, this isn't skepticlawyer's ML - it's Darlene Taylor's. Enjoy. Welcome to Missing Link 2: The Darlene Edition . Almost as good as Basic Instinct 2 , but without the aged sex symbol. This time I have busyness rather than technophobia to use as an excuse for lateness....
Continue reading →
Courtesy of Ross Gittins.
Continue reading →
Elections are surprisingly poor determinants on whether a Prime Minister will change in the federal government. The following graph has a post-1942 pie chart of Prime Ministers removed by general election (orange) vs those removed by just about everything else (maroon); includ...
Continue reading →
Well folks - do you want this feature or not? We had it up and it got quite a few comments for a while, and then they dwindled. I then stopped posting it without attracting howls of protest. Let me know if you want it to stay and I'll hoist it up at a time of general choosing...
Continue reading →
Every year I scan the Melbourne Comedy Festival catalogue which appears in just about every form imaginable from March onward. This year's festival starts on April 4th. I often go along to a session or two keen to check out developments in what people think is funny. I'm usual...
Continue reading →
By way of background, a few words on how I view the relevant players. I lost what regard I'd had for Howard during the Tampa standoff and the children overboard affair. His readiness to ruthlessly exploit vital issues for party political ends finished him for me. I could still...
Continue reading →
I've always thought that when my kids get to drive I want to buy some system to install in the car's computer that will give me a readout of how they drove when I ask it. How fast they accelerated, revved the engine etc. I've been surprised not to see anything like this market...
Continue reading →
I was talking with my nine year old Alexander this evening. I asked him through the pleasure of having him sprawled over my lap and telling me about school whether he fancied growing up or whether he had it too good the way it was. (I remember at that age thinking that the res...
Continue reading →
If you like your crime stories to be littered with corpses. To feature brutal crims who live in a world of paranoia,deceit and ego, whoâll stop and nothing to be the last man standing, then youâll love this tale of true crime Melbourne style. And today the mystery body was als...
Continue reading →
This is a question I've asked myself for a long while - with particular regard to Whitlam's outrageous behaviour on a matter that turned out to have importance which vastly overshadowed any domestic events during his Prime Ministership. Here's Former Australian Timor diplomat...
Continue reading →
Since Troppo has recently become 'Happiness Central' I thought I'd share this snippet from the indefatigable Andrew Oswald and his collaborator David Blanchflower (nice names these guys have got). A modern statistical literature argues that countries such as Denmark are partic...
Continue reading →
