The Journal of Economic Perspectives calls this a 'discussion starter'. Barun Mitra discusses Saving the Tiger: China and India Move in Radically Different Directions. Since the 1970s, India has enacted tough laws and mobilized huge resources to stop hunting and trading in tig...
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Continuing the occasional series of 'why oh why' here is a Microsoft edition. Way back in 1997 Microsoft put out Outlook 97 which was a pretty natty program. It wasn't an act of genius but it was a good program that integrated a calendar and an email client in a useful package...
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In recent weeks on clubtroppo and elsewhere, there's been a lot of attention given to untruthful journalism, media bias , and lying politicians . The situation appears the same internationally, with Blair and Bush being criticised for lying about Iraq and media bias being more...
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Well, after my R v Hurley -imposed-hiatus, I'm back (thank Christ). Once again bringing the best of the blogosphere to you via the redoubtable Missing Link crew (if I ever make enough money, I'll be commissioning Hilltop Hoods to write us a theme song). I could have done witho...
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I'll be interested to see what fallout there is from last night's Media Watch story on Alan Kohler . The topic for the week was the outsourcing of expert financial news and commentary on TV. In the case of commercial networks, it seems they have actually been paying getting pa...
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Mr Howard's new plan for NT indigenous communities, announced on Thursday, has overwhelmed other topics of debate on Australian political blogs. The question: has the PM finally summoned up the New Tampa his opponents have been expecting? tigtog thinks so , except that: Unlike...
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You might recall a few months back during both the Victorian and New South Wales State elections, when Opposition Leaders Ted Baillieu and Peter Debnam were parading around in Speedos in the lead up to their campaigns, that they were widely mocked for scaring the children and...
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Welcome anyone who's arrived here since listening to Radio National. For others, you may be interested in a discussion on blogging on Radio National this morning . I prompted it by emailing Geraldine Doogue suggesting that she consider doing a regular weekly or monthly 'around...
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As I watched this interview with Claire Martin, I thought how marvellous it was that Tony Jones blocked Claire Martin's call to 'move on' and talk about the future. He insisted on going back over the way in which Claire Martin and her Government had belittled the coverage of t...
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If Noel Pearson is a man of integrity (and I think he is), he will be appalled by John Howard's just announced "plan" for Northern Territory indigenous Australians. Certainly, Pearson's plans also involve breaking the cycle of welfare dependency in Cape York by tying receipt o...
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It's probably not worth responding to Tony Abbott's 'column' in yesterday's Herald , except to critcise the newspaper itself. Plenty of people have commented on how completely inappropriate it is to publish these thoroughly partisan polemics as opinion. It's one thing to repro...
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Having blogged for a couple of months now, I am conscious of the lure of writing 'why dont the people in charge do as I say' pieces. As an antidote I'd like to offer 5 observations which strike a European like myself on why Australia is a great country, some of which are likel...
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From New Matlida (Subscription required). I didn't know any of this - but I should have. On 22 June 2007, Australian resident Hew Griffiths is due to be sentenced in a US Federal Court in Virginia. He is charged with conspiracy to infringe US copyright, an act committed from h...
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Brad Delong runs various families of posts beginning with the heading 'why oh why'. As in Why oh why - are we ruled by these idiots? - are we ruled by these liars? - can't we have a better press corps? and so on. Why oh why do inane conventional wisdoms circulate in the media...
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Arleeshar thinks new right wing Liberal candidate and David "Godfather" Clarke protege Alex Hawke is a scarey and soulless looking dude . The sheila looking at him seems to have a similar opinion ... Andrew Elder and Oz at Decomposing Trees don't think much of Hawke either. Th...
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Quentin McDermott's Four Corners report on Telstra's management practices and their effect on employees was powerful and polished. I found it useful for several reasons. First, it revealed the secret of a large part of the productivity miracle of the 1990s. Of course this is n...
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The Prime Minister and Treasurer frequently criticize the States for going into debt and warn that it will put pressure on interest rates (e.g. see Rudd torpedoed twice: PM Weekend Australian 16-17 June). It is disappointing that the Coalition is running such an irrational lin...
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Guido's take on Howard/Hockey's portrayal of Sharan Burrow and the ACTU reaching out to Australian workers 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 second half of the week has been dominated by tit-for-tat e...
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Anyone who remembers Channel Nines greatest contribution to Australian political life will remember the worm. A wobbly plot of aggregate punter intent scrolling across the bottom of the telly, that purported to assess, real time, the leader in the political dogfight showing on...
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Earlier today here at Troppo, Nicholas Gruen picked up on outgoing British PM Tony Blair's op-ed lament about the instatiable appetite of the modern mass media for continuous sensational crisis stories. Not surprisingly given his recent 1Q question about the relevance of motiv...
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It is clear to everyone with eyes that the Murdoch press, and especially The Australian, is currently campaigning actively for Howard. The editorials and opinion pages do not matter but the front page stories what is covered and how are having and will continue to have a big i...
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there was a policy discussion seminar given 2 weeks days ago, headed by A/Prof Benno Torgler, on the issue of whether Australia should have a tax amnesty (see here ). For those, like myself, who know virtually nothing about this area, its handy to realise that tax amnesties ha...
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The Australian Democrats, when faced with an argument in a Senate debate, which they think has merit, they decide to support it [pdf] . Senator Bartlett (Queensland) (6.46 p.m.) - I thought I should make a few short comments to indicate support for the Labor amendment. Senator...
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Tony Blair on modern politics. From Crikey, but you can read more (pdf) here . The media world -- like everything else -- is becoming more fragmented, more diverse and transformed by technology... The newspapers fight for a share of a shrinking market. Many are now read online...
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The internees of The Dunera tend to lie on two sides of a divide over their incarceration. One lot - more self consciously Jewish and typically from the Dunera Boys who ended up in Melbourne tend to view the Dunera incident as a scandal - an outrage, perhaps even an attrocity....
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In an earlier post I listed the main contentions of the happiness research program , and invited readers to contribute to the critique. The response was gratifying, and the student found them very helpful -- in the comments here, in further posts by John Quiggin and Don Arthur...
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As I noted in yesterday's Missing Link, the second of Tim Dunlop's 1Q series of questions to bloggers is out and about. This weeks question (devised by Harry Clarke) is: How relevant are motives in assessing the public policy stance of a politician or commentator? Responses to...
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This post follows on from a discussion begun by Paul Fritjers and continued HERE . Most human activity has changed drastically over our lifetimes. And the rate of change is increasing see for instance the next generations user interface for computers. You would hope academics...
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Terry Sedgwick has the definitive word on the Paris Hilton in prison affair 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad A return to the Missing Link editing chair for me while Helen D does her judge's associate thi...
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July 24, 1959 , the American National Exhibition, Moscow. Vice President Richard Nixon gently steered Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev towards the model kitchen . He wanted to show him a brand new washing machine . We want to make the lives of our housewives easier, said Nixon...
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The War of Jenkin's Ear between Britain and Spain has a bizarre origin. Robert Jenkin's ship was boarded by the Spanish to determine if he was complying with the Treaty of Seville. Jenkin's claimed the Spanish cut his ear off - he pickled it, and took it to Parliament. War was...
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To free the market classical liberals need to help break the nexus between income and status. The more strongly the two are connected, the more the left will try to regulate the economy to prevent the growth of income inequality. This is because the left's concern over income...
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Over the fold, a screenshot of Windows' Vista advanced search interface. What the hell were they thinking? It is a confused and cluttered mess. Unfortunately I am trapped on the Windows platform for the moment due to commercial reasons. The best pairing of hardware and softwar...
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Background Briefing's latest effort is a lecture to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco by the journalist, academic and practicing surgeon Atul Gawande. He's the author of Complications which is a popular book on the science and art of surgery - well worth a squiz if you ge...
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Well, I couldn't round up a theme this time, although - as usual - there have been some memorable bits of bloggy goodness. My personal post of the week is from Legal Eagle, who has a superb piece on Nick Cohen's What's Left? (A book meme that appears to have been started by Ia...
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Just when Tony Abbott thought he had found his adopted son, Hunter S Thompson put a gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. Perhaps Thompson burned his way into Abbott's mind that day -- the emotion of the time made everything that happened then seem more intense and signi...
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The military coup which suspended the Thai constitution occurred in September 2006 - which is eight months ago now. Since then Thailand has been run by a military junta that is operating under a state of emergency. Australia signed a Free Trade Agreement with Thailand in Janua...
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The papers are reporting that Cardinal Pell is considering denying the Eucharist to politicians who vote for the stem cell bill currently before the NSW Parliament. The use by Catholic bishops of this particular sanction has caused a lot of acrimonious debate in the US, mostly...
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Here's an op ed just published in today's Fin. John Howard has form on cutting red tape like Paul Keating had on making tax cuts the L.A.W. Having won government promising to cut red tape by 50 per cent, Howard then introduced a new tax which, as Treasurer in 1981, hed rejecte...
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On Saturday the Prime Minister was Wile E Coyote -- the hungry predator whose cunning plans are never quite cunning enough to catch the Roadrunner. But with the results of the latest Galaxy poll , commentators might wonder whether the campaign is going to become a tortoise and...
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1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Well, it's not often we get Culture Wars, inter-blog stoushing, religion and grievous bodily harm all rolled into one, but today's issue of Missing Link highlights a memo...
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Every 2 weeks at QUT, we set up an economic policy discussion evening. We pick a topic for debate, have someone knowledgeable introduce it, and then let 2 students argue for or against particular policy reform proposals. We go out of our way to make the policy proposals realis...
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Well, thanks to some shilly-shallying about by your humble correspondent, it's been delayed. Admittedly there are a couple of outstanding bloggy conversations that I want to summarize (and they're still maturing tastily), but for the most part it's because both I and some of t...
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Deutscher-Menzies have a great auction coming up. I love, totally love, this Arthur Boyd. But do not alas have a spare 200K. If you are a Troppodillian who does you should high-tail it down there. While you're there, I reckon you should buy this Charles Blackman - a steal at a...
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John Howard introduces his strategy for the future.
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(another one of the Lost Files following the Great Server Crash) "Exempting any group of people from criticism is not a blessing but a curse. Thomas Sowell " It was reconciliation week once more last week, a good opportunity to debate some of the more thorny issues surrounding...
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Re-posted following the great server crash. Originally posted by Nicholas Gruen on Sunday, May 27, 2007 When I read the first paragraph of Noel Pearson's latest op ed my heart sank. I have watched with awe how the progressive lobby turned al-Qaeda recruit David Hicks into a re...
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If human behaviour is about maximising utility from a stable set of preferences, why assume that a rational actor will accumulate true beliefs? What if the most efficient way of satisfying an individual's preferences involves false beliefs? If theorists like Gary Becker are ri...
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Well I'm sure there was, but you wouldn't know by reading this bit of nostalgic Weekend Age fluff by someone who's apparently planning to turn her reminiscences into a book. I had the same response to this that I had reading Virginia Trioli's little debut in the book market. A...
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Here's a resurrection of Don's post of a couple of days ago just before the great unbacked up server crash. I put it up because, having read the Wolfers piece I wanted to offer a comment on it. Over the fold is Don's post and my response. I could do the same work Im doing now...
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"I don’t think of myself as a ‘heterodox’ economist," writes John Quiggin . Despite his left wing views, Quiggin defends the methods and assumptions of mainstream economics. As he sees it, the mainstream is broader than most people think. In a recent article for The Nation , C...
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The mailing costs of small US magazines like Mother Jones , The Nation and National Review will rise sharply after July 15. The United States Postal Service is set to adopt a new rate formula based on proposals by Time Warner -- the publishers of mass circulation magazines lik...
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Close on the heels of the latest ABS publication on Working Time Arrangements , the subject of a long blog discussion on Andrew Nortons site, the ABS has followed up with Preferred Working Hours of Wage and Salary Earners, Queensland. This Survey found that, of people surveyed...
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Political movements develop around policies rather than belief systems. And as support for the Bush administration's policy agenda crumbles, so too does America's conservative movement -- an unstable alliance of conservatives and libertarians. In the Wall Street Journal Peter...
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1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad First up, an apology from the Missing Link crew for failing to produce a Monday edition. To make up for it, we've prepared a bumper issue for today, in the hope that y'al...
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In various columns and articles (pdf) Ive pointed out the irony of the fact that, at a time when were deregulating the labour market, were paying next to no attention to the problem of getting information to prospective employees about the quality of workplaces. Though workpla...
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