You wont get any deep insights from Ronnie . The autobiography of Ron Wood, the other Rolling Stones guitarist. What you will get is a stargazing jaunt through the best part of British Rock history. Youll also get plenty on the booze hes drunk, the coke hes used, and the women...
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From this site - courtesy of Krugman.
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I found this document in a filing cabinet at home on Christmas Day but Troppo was down. But I thought it was an interesting document to 'share' as Dr Phil would say.
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About fourteen months ago I wrote a post called 'An apology anyone' . As I recall there were lots of calls for public apologies from the latte sippers by the right in triumphal mode. I asked if anyone could point me to any - but no-one could, so perhaps I am imagining it. I ma...
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I've been having a look at the PC's recent draft Review of Australias Consumer Policy Framework which at least on the reading I've done has some good stuff in it. One thing, which must have been planned well before the change of government is that the report makes it clear how...
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Paul Krugman offers a spirited defence of his book against a review by the Economist . Then again when have you noticed anything from Paul Krugman that isn't spirited? The exchange is well worth checking out, indeed a bit of a 'must' for anyone thinking about inequality. For o...
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Next year, you really should consider volunteering to help out with BB08 - that is the Best Blogs for the year series that James Farrell is currently editing with the help of a few of us. There's some dross of course - which gets most of us grumpy! And then there are some marv...
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What are your views on compulsory voting? I think I'm in favour of it. I've always been surprised that right leaning parties don't try to get rid of it in Australia. I've always assumed that it's in their interests to have voluntary voting as I assume the left leaning parties...
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In reading for Best Blog Posts 07 there are several first rate posts on the aboriginal intervention. And one of them linked to this fascinating piece by one of our great journalists - Jack Waterford - of a more clearly well motivated exercise in the mid to late 70s. Then the i...
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Christopher Hitchens has some strange views. But it's not hard to see why he gets published. Triffic writing - as for example in this post on Robert Hughes.
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To your right is a graph of carbon emissions - megatons of C02 equivalent per annum. We'll get to them in a sec. As Dani Rodrik observes , when a WTO dispute resolution procedure requires the US to do something it doesn't want to do, guess what it does? It actually does it! So...
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Via Andrew Leigh's blog I came upon Give Well which attempts to rank charities in terms of their effectivenss. Damn good thing too. I have a question to any Troppodillians who might know which is this "what has been done, if anything, to 'internationalise' our capacity to dona...
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By Aaron Edlin Here . In the best of all worlds, we would all benefit from the so-called network effects that result from most people using the same software: everyone could easily communicate with each other and teach each other how to use the software efficiently. Unfortunat...
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Below the fold is the final part of the series on the CIS's recent paper on the Australian and New Zealand economies. I decided to write the whole thing out as an integrated whole and it has now been posted on Australian Policy Online . There's been a fair bit of rewriting and...
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Being a bit of a columnist, I like a good column. I think the best column I've done was on greenhouse. I've just read the best column I've read this year, and it's on greenhouse. By a master of the column - Martin Wolf. Go read it - I've reproduced it below the fold for you. I...
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There are 100,000 times as many stars in the universe as sounds and words ever uttered by all humans who have ever lived. This is the tenth of ten big facts about the universe. See how many you know here .
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Yesterday evening was one of those nights that remind Jen and I why we still live in Darwin despite its many drawbacks. The warm wet breeze blowing as the sun set over the harbour, silhouetting a huge gas tanker leaving for Japan, sitting under the palm trees at the Ski Club l...
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Can't say I've ever been remotely tempted to get involved with "social networking" sites like MySpace or Facebook. It's probably something to do with being fundamentally anti-social, sometimes even bordering on misanthropic. But it's also an instinctive aesthetic aversion; it...
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Below the fold is my column on Bali and greenhouse from today's Australian . AS representatives of the world's peoples wrestled in Bali with the greatest challenge to human co-operation we have ever known, different ideas of what was fair and what wasn't threatened to tear the...
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While absent-mindedly sauntering home the other night from a little Melbourne city gathering , I was shaken from my reverie by a fellow who adopted a strange stance as I approached. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that he had lifted one leg from the sidewalk, and swung i...
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Dani Rodrik has a post on the differences between himself and Joe Stiglitz on development. With appropriate genuflection to the vastly greater knowledge and intelligence of both men, I agree with him and disagree with JS on all four points - which are over the fold. To caricat...
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Fiona Campbell For the sake of completeness, here's a brief and belated reaction to Juditha Triumphans , which I previewed last week. The production surpassed even my very high expectations. As commenter John Greenfield noted, the sets were not lavish, but I thought the use of...
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The National Museum of Australia has launched its annual Behind The Lines exhibition, featuring the work of the country's top editorial cartoonists. (I didn't submit anything this year so I'm not in it.) This year's review covers everything from the NT Intervention to Kevin 07...
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Here's poor Odysseus being tempted by the sirens. I wouldn't mind being so tempted - but there you go - you can't give in. He made sure he couldn't give in by getting his crew to tie him into the mast - they then blocked their ears with wax. No reference to Kevin Rudd was inte...
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Like the Wallabies and the All Blacks, Australians and New Zealanders argue about who's economy is doing better and why. Well we're not arguing about the first of those questions any more. Coming from a very similar standard of living in the 1970s, both countries embarked on w...
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Christmas isn't quite the same in the southern hemisphere, is it? (via Darryl Mason ) 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad We've been operating short-staffed here at Missing Link over the last 2 or 3 weeks,...
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I've been writhing around writing a column on greenhouse. I find columns on greenhouse hard as I complained here . But rewarding when you get what you wanted to say said in the exacting form of an op ed. I've just finished writing an op ed for the Oz on Bali and was contemplat...
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Yesterday's op ed in the Fin is a first for me. It's the first time in scores of op eds I've written, that a paper has picked up my proposed headline. Below the fold is the piece as originally written before it was chopped back from 700 to 500 words. It's a direct development...
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Yea verily. Just click through to Phylotaxis and have a look around. Remember to move your mouse through the logo when you first arrive at the site and then have a play around inside.
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Here's an informative set of graphs from a column by Martin Wolf on climate change. Australia's failure against it's emissions is unexplained in the diagram - since we're much closer to our Kyoto target then the graph has us - but I presume the reason is that the emissions cou...
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This is a diagram of a game that was played nearly 150 years ago. White castles long (on the Queen's side) and is completely lost, something that's clear within two more moves. See if you can suggest what black's two next moves are.
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Courtesy Tanja " Poligoths " Stark 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad This weekend edition of Missing Link has been produced by a reduced complement of James Farrell, Gilmae, Jim Belshaw and Ken Parish, wi...
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In part 1 of this post I attempted to outline some of the main principles that should underpin good policy in the indigenous affairs area, drawing especially on the work of the Productivity Commission and indigenous academics Toni Bauman and Marcia Langton. In this second part...
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Here's an article for Crikey called 'Remaking Australia' - on the theme of broadening economic reform. Economic reform had become fairly formulaic by the early 1990s though a lot of things that were announced in the late 80s or early 1990s took another ten years to get impleme...
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From Crikey! linking to the NYT. Unnoticed and unappreciated for five decades, a large female turtle with a stained, leathery shell is now a precious commodity in this citys decaying zoo. She is fed a special diet of raw meat. Her small pool has been encased with bulletproof g...
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In today's Crikey! Glen Dyer tell us that the RBA has been "caught badly short". In the statement accompanying today's decision to hold rates at 6.75%, the RBA recognised the worsening in global conditions. In fact the sharp increase in turbulence and volatility was why intere...
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"With the Howard era over, we are about to engage a new family that we know little about, except that Theresa Rein is very rich and dresses like Count Duckula. In fact the entire family, with the exception of Ruddstar, likes to dress LOUD." (lifted from the Daily Telegraph) 1....
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I've just received an email from Liberty Victoria. It says this: In 1999 the Howard Government amended the Migration Act to permit the Minister for Immigration to deport non-citizens on character grounds irrespective of how long they had lived in Australia. Previously, permane...
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A few years ago, some members of the ALP's Left faction were battling to change the entrenched practice whereby its ministerial nominees were always allocated the federal aboriginal affairs and immigration portfolios. One anonymous Left Caucus member referred to these portfoli...
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Christophano Allori, Judith with the Head of Halophernes Every December Pinchgut Opera puts on on an opera at The City Recital Hall in Angel Place. Juditha Triumphans is their sixth production, following Semele , The Fairy Queen , L'Orfeo , Dardanus and Idomeneo . As usual the...
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This guy has to be the most talented politician I've ever seen. That's not to say he was a great president - sadly he was just a quite good one - at least comparing him to some others. If I were a politician I'd just watch footage of this guy and try to figure out the lessons...
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We've been having a behind-the-scenes debate at Troppo for some time regarding the copyright claims for material published here. The site has had a standard copyright notice since its inception way back in 2002. However, I have intended for ages to move to a Creative Commons l...
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Cross-posted from Peter Gallagher's site , with Peter's permission in light of Nicholas Gruen's post here at Troppo on the same topic. Sir Nicholas Stern argues , ahead of the Bali meeting of the UNFCCC, for binding, differentiated emission targets and international trading. I...
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From this weekend's Financial Review Friday Review. "Labor will grapple with those choices, just as all those who triumph in the battles of politics and of power struggle with the balance between continuity and change. It is difficult to win those battles without demonising op...
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But if it is true that in subjects of great complexity we must rely to a large extent on such mere explanations of the principle, we must not overlook some disadvantages connected with this technique. Because such theories are difficult to disprove, the elimination of inferior...
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I was disappointed by this op ed from fellow second generation Dunera Boy Sir Nicholas Stern. As we know, Sir Nicholas threw the switch to Vaudeville in his report on the economics of climate change. I don't have too much problem with that given the seriousness of the issue an...
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Who said this? Historically the concept of the 'real' has been formed in contradistinction to mere 'illusions' based on sense deceptions or on other experiences of purely mental origin. There is, however, no fundamental difference between such corrections of one sense experien...
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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 I was expecting the blogosphere to sink into a post-election/pre-Christmas exhausted torpor this week. On the contrary, almost everyone is firing on all cylinders, albeit...
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