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...

Continue reading →

From this site - courtesy of Krugman.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

HT - Peter Martin.

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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 .

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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,...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

Courtesy of Greg Mankiw

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

"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....

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

Dramatic photos from The Age this morning show Melbournes enormous Port Phillip Bay on a tilt. Readers were witness to the astonishing spectacle of giant cruise liner Sun Princess apparently motoring uphill to berth at Station Pier. There was no explanation for this perplexing...

Continue reading →

A collection of useful words arranged in satisfying ways for the benefit of future historians. (Also beneficial when faced with drunken red-faced Howard-Huggers at Christmas parties over the next month who embarrass the host by rudely asserting that Mr. Howard was the best Pri...

Continue reading →

Bryan "Ozpolitics" Palmer on the state of play with counting in doubtful seats as at 8:24 this morning: The ABC Computer now has Robertson on the doubtful list (previously a Labor gain) after the pre-poll votes went in the Coalitions favour 53.3 to 46.7. It also has Solomon on...

Continue reading →

Miss Haversham refuses a proposal from Terry Sedgwick 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 nearly going to call this the Year Zero edition of Missing Link, but it would give people the wrong idea. I'm...

Continue reading →

If John Howard were to summarise his legacy, he would emphasise economics. As he claimed in the election, Australia has a strong economy with low inflation and low rates of unemployment. With the benefit of asset sales and budget surpluses, the commonwealth has the financial c...

Continue reading →

Here's the column foreshadowed in a previous post as published today in the Fin . I was only given 500 words, so whether or not you find it sweet, I had to keep it short. Fiscal Problem - what Problem? Its the alarm du jour. Going into the election with an overheating economy,...

Continue reading →

From today's Crikey! Brough, Pearson, Yunupingu rejected by Aboriginal voters Editor of the National Indigenous Times, Chris Graham, writes : I never quite understood how Mal Brough managed to escape genuine mainstream media scrutiny so often during his brief but, shall we say...

Continue reading →

Well, it's not standard Troppo fare I know - though aficionados may recall similar departures from me in the past , but Natalie Gauci won Australian Idol on Sunday night. Idol is quite a show - for the few who are uninitiated it's a kind of souped up talent quest in the age of...

Continue reading →

Peter Costello battles his emotions on election night Is it conceivable that the government would have scraped back in with Costello as PM? Nick Minchin thinks so, if his comments to Virgina Trioli on Sydney radio this morning are any guide. The Senator obviously would have pr...

Continue reading →

I've just read this piece by Judith Brett on why Howard will lose (it was written at the beginning of the campaign). I don't agree with it all, (why do people go on about that handshake? Even if it wasn't a good look, it just seems amazing that it would have tipped too many vo...

Continue reading →

From today's AFR Bob Hawkes election victory in 1983 was so sure that he and his treasurer-designate, Paul Keating, were able to meet treasury and finance officers within 72 hours of election day. The 1983-84 budget, was the agenda item because the Fraser government - with Joh...

Continue reading →

As I argued in a recent column , the Coalition has been a policy free zone for some time. Of course it's been in government, so of necessity it's had lots of policies. But it's heart has not been in them - it's jadedly presided over a jaded bureaucracy. This spilled over into...

Continue reading →

I don't have much to add to Rex's overall post-election rant , except to suggest that this is in many respects the result that might well have occurred in 2004 had John Howard's dishonest interest rate scare not been so successful and had Mark Latham not been a victim of his o...

Continue reading →

Its a repudiation. Its a rejection of Mr. Howard and much that he has stood for, and behold it is good. The Labor victory is so emphatic that it makes a mockery of the conservative vanity that somehow they were more attuned to the pulse of the nation. Yesterday Mr. Howard turn...

Continue reading →

Honorable mention? Could this curdle milk at five hundred paces? Congratulations to reader Doug, the clear winner of Missing Link's prediction competition . I use the word 'clear' advisedly: I was intrigued when I tabulated the predictions to find that there was a very large g...

Continue reading →

Yesterday I started classifying the questions that Kerry O'Brien asked the candidates in his final interview with them. Kerry's got a well deserved reputation as a pretty tough interviewer - I've seen him do a good job. But all his hard questions were really driven by the way...

Continue reading →

What could be more appropriate on election day than to reproduce the last two of Jon Kudelka's epic series 101 uses for a John Howard ? Moreover, they're even ideologically balanced (well, almost). Speaking for myself, the best use I can think of for John Winston is as a crotc...

Continue reading →

What do Nicholas Stern and Peter Brent have in common with me?

Continue reading →

I liked the Ross Gittins speech that I posted on Troppo a week or so ago . I didn't join in comments, but had a nagging doubt. While I'm sympathetic to Ross's idea that self control is a big thing in an age of plenty, I guess I felt a little uneasy at a certain intimation in t...

Continue reading →

Australia is blessed with great cartoonists. John Kudelka is one such. There are some terrific cartoons on his website - which I've reproduced below the fold. In the meantime, he's doodled away to produce a book of cartoons and light commentary on the theme of 101 Uses For A J...

Continue reading →

John Clarke rose to new heights on tonight's 7.30 report. Definitely a case of LOL. Go check it out .

Continue reading →

If the government changes hands on Saturday, the pundits will make an immediate beeline for their retrospectoscope. Within a few short months and a few columns by Paul Kelly and Hugh Mackay we'll have an official version of what went wrong. The Liberals will be trashed - as we...

Continue reading →

The idea that Hillary Clinton is the most likely person to win the presidency for the Democrats beggars belief. It's certainly possible she could win - but then look at the position from which she'll start. But how a Republican could beat Obama or Edwards beats me. Another cas...

Continue reading →

"My wife was absolutely outraged when she heard about the incident." Let her convince us. "We, I hope, live in a society where we treat husbands and wives - although we respect the closeness of their relationship - we treat them as individuals and we shouldn't automatically tr...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Last weekend I read Melanie Oppenheimers article in the most recent Australian Literary Review entitled Women missing in action , I was struck by the use of the word "misogynist" to describe retellings of Australia's World War One which did not give serious attention to women....

Continue reading →

Most economists like myself have come to believe that monetary policy now carries so much punch because a reduction in interest rates has a compound impact on borrowing costs, on exchange rates and on asset prices that it is unthinkable that we will have a serious recession ev...

Continue reading →

I saw Kevin Rudds National Press Conference address. At the start, there was a technical disconnection between his mouth and the words that came out which was distracting but it was soon corrected. The speech also seemed a little too long and repetitive (Rudd still lacks Howar...

Continue reading →

Joshua Gans draws our attention to Amazon's attempt to create the iPod for text. Kindle . Joshua's quite keen though unimpressed by Kindle's inability to display pdfs. I'm more seriously unimpressed by that, and don't reckon it will be a goer. At $400 US it's expensive . And I...

Continue reading →

Warney dressed as his mum for a new TV beer ad. What is it about beefy Aussie sporting blokes that makes them want to dress up in drag in front of the cameras? The boofheads at the AFL and NRL Footie Shows seem to think it's funny too. Courtesy Will at The Corridor (cricket bl...

Continue reading →

Election campaigns are fascinating events for a social scientist. In a poor country with lots of tensions, the issues would be about survival and bitter divisions, whilst in some sedate countries with no problems election campaigns are about the length of socks. Hence the issu...

Continue reading →

Courtesy of Crikey!, here's a list of five things to like about JWH. I completely disagree with the fourth point, and the first is at best half a thing to like about Howard - I'd argue that a great weakness of his reign is a basic lack of interest in policy (as opposed to the...

Continue reading →

Yes Troppodillians, a new Troppo competition - hopefully you'll just keep coming back till 24th November when you will have weightier concerns on your mind. Please record in comments, the stupidist bit of punditry you've seen in the campaign so far. I confess I'm convening thi...

Continue reading →

Details below the fold. Optional fanfare. This time last year, regular readers may remember, Club Troppo sponsored a showcase of Australian independent blogging, which we called 'Best Blog Posts of 2006' . From a large pool of nominations drawn from a multitude of Australian b...

Continue reading →

I've long harboured the idea that economic journalists are a special breed because they have an actual subject. There are plenty of them about juxtaposed against political commentators, but the political commentators spend their time blathering - they're engaged in what I call...

Continue reading →

As linked to by Paul Krugman , here's a bunch of pundits smothering the claims of Rudi Juliani with punditry not on whether the claims are true or not (they're not) but on whether they'll work or not. And of course as the link points out with punditry of that kind, they improv...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

I was recently sent this correspondence by occasional Troppo poster, and person of considerable knowledge about the tax and transfer system, Spog. Here's what he wrote. Hello Nick, I haven't bothered you in a while, so I thought it was time to send you something out of left fi...

Continue reading →

I have only been keeping a casual eye on this - but this post is very enlightening.

Continue reading →

There's a bit of a thread running through three articles I've read recently. These two articles from the NYRB on Gordon Brown and Paul Krugman respectively both paint emerging responses to the excesses of yet another low dishonest decade. Brown is studied in his apparent desir...

Continue reading →

Gandhi's take on Miranda Devine's attempt to rescue fellow RWDB pundit Caroline Overington from her own ham-fisted effort at electoral rorting by the time-honoured RWDB gambit of labelling lefties "humourless". Nitpickers might observe that Miranda is actually a Fairfax Angel...

Continue reading →

Many years ago someone did up an animation for Peach Home Loans in flash and supplied it to me in an exe file . But you can't upload exe files onto YouTube. Cam Riley says that he thinks those with Apple OSX might be able to take a moving screen capture of the animation. If an...

Continue reading →

In The Shock Doctrine , Naomi Klein argues that radical free market reform requires some kind of crisis . Wars, terrorist attacks and natural disasters pave the way for authoritarian reformers to impose their fundamentalist visions on an unwilling population. Critics like Tyle...

Continue reading →

Trying to check up on some claims I made about Gordon Brown's promise to involve Parliament in any decisions to commit troops abroad, I found myself at pm.gov.uk. It's a much more interesting site than pm.gov.au - or at least what I remember of it. There are podcasts of often...

Continue reading →

Valid till 22 November.

Continue reading →

Black Inc's 'best of' series are in the bookshops - Essays, Short Stories, Poems. In scanning the latter of these volumes I read the poem below and bought the book. White -Water Rafting and Palliative Care for my late wife, Gloria If I had understood (when down the river you a...

Continue reading →

With the polls remaining seemingly immovably against John Howard, it probably isn't surprising that some left-leaning bloggers already have their hatchets out. Howard sacked 6 department heads after his 1996 election victory, and if bloggers have their way Kevie will be sackin...

Continue reading →

Here is a picture of Harrison's Chronometer (a late version), which was so accurate that it effectively solved a huge problem with navigation - enabling sailors to figure out their longitude when thousands of miles from home after many months. No other method had worked. Harri...

Continue reading →

Below the fold is a column of mine about 'me tooism'. In short, not all bad, and something that could be usefully extended in various ways. You Too Just as Paul Keatings penchant for divisiveness and cultural warfare was a prelude to his successor John Howards brand of politic...

Continue reading →

I don't s'pose that's news. but this graph from today's morning Crikey! provides the relevant "compared to whats".

Continue reading →

I was pretty impressed with this. From a real game at the highest level, between a world Champion who is white. It's his move. What should he do? He did the wrong thing. Find out what he did below the fold. Then work out how you can beat him.

Continue reading →

Courtesy of Terry Sedgwick (where there are more orangutan policy images) 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Today's Missing Link predictably publishes a plethora of political content, but we also have ver...

Continue reading →

From today's Crikey! by Greg Barnes. When the Howard government and its allies in the ALP fell over each other in their mad scramble to pass draconian anti-terror laws, there were some wise heads warning that such legislation would open the door to abuse by law enforcement and...

Continue reading →

Courtesy Terry Sedgwick I've been getting increasingly puzzled about the course of this election campaign. Both parties are promising tax cuts and spending programs that would make a drunken sailor blush, although the Coalition has decisively outstripped Labor ($65 billion to...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

At my request, Ross has sent me the text of at least three speeches he's given. I've printed out the last, but not read it yet, but of the other two I'm an admirer of his ability to write compellingly on a theme with references to the books that are current on the topics he's...

Continue reading →

I was discussing a project with a software engineer last week and mentioned Gruen Tenders, which I've bored Troppodillians with previously here and here . He said that I was describing ' Evidence Based Scheduling ' as described by software geek and commentator Joel Spolsky (ob...

Continue reading →

Old pals Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser are on a campaign for better standards of ministerial accountability. Good on them. I read that (I think) Malcolm said it wasn't party political. It was addressed to all parties. Now I wouldn't for instance say that Howard is particula...

Continue reading →

Paul Kellys piece in last months Australian Literary Review was in its way quite well done. Many of his general arguments were not only sensible, but were expressed with clarity and, at times, considerable force. Nevertheless, as did Raimond Gaita in his response this month, I...

Continue reading →

That worthy organisation ACOSS has asked me to get the word out on their national conference - to be held in Adelaide on the 22nd and 23rd of November this year - just before election day! Since we hold various debates on social policy here, it seems like a good place to put u...

Continue reading →

Secret Internal polling conducted exclusively for Club Troppo , has found its way into the public domain today. This new poll, a welcome addition to the cacophony of other polls testing the mood of the nation reveals that my confidence in the Government as effective economic m...

Continue reading →

Hopefully Troppodillians will forgive me for tackling another Pearson piece only two weeks after my last effort. I'll try not to make a habit of it, I promise. With your indulgence, then, let's proceed. Is it relativism to hold our liberal democratic traditions to a higher sta...

Continue reading →

I was listening to the ABC Book Show and Ramona started talking about anti-spam technology - which rather surprised me. She was interviewing Luis von Ahn who created CAPTCHA who had now produced reCAPTCHA. You know those nasty little visual quizes you fill out to prove to some...

Continue reading →

Andrew Leigh and Joshua Gans' latest attack on the Howard Government is causing collateral damage. According to Helen Smart , the publicity surrounding their latest Baby Bonus paper "spawned a disgusting hatefest on news.com.au and similar forums, with all the usual suspects g...

Continue reading →

John Mathews emailed me suggesting I might be interested in posting a link to this op ed on development policy. He was right. The article makes points that I've quoted Dani Rodrik making against the Washington consensus in earlier posts . I have little doubt that the article i...

Continue reading →

The Sydney Morning Herald's article on the Sea-Eagles trying to sign Willie Mason has fallen to cost cutting journalism and now the server just returns a meta-comment which saves on journalist labor the and reader's precious time: Forbidden You don't have permission to access...

Continue reading →

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 edition of Missing Link compiled by James Farrell, Gilmae, Peter Black, Amanda Rose and Ken Parish with editing by the latter. What with the election campaign and al...

Continue reading →

I went to Richmond last weekend to look at what I thought was an exhibition of paintings by Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack - sometime of the Bauhaus and subsequently art master at Geelong Grammar with transport to Australia being supplied by HMT Dunera in 1940. The exhibition turned o...

Continue reading →

Puke!

Continue reading →

This scene unfolded during an electioneering wander by John Howard through a shopping centre complete with all the hoopla of cameramen etc. A woman was knocked over. The video which can be accessed at the bottom of the page here only begins after the woman has hit the deck, so...

Continue reading →

As America entered the 1990s, Republican speaker Newt Gingrich was busy making plans for the nation's future. " I keep reminding my friends we've entered the decade of the teenage mutant ninja turtle ," he wrote. His plans for the decade of the TMNT included "transforming the...

Continue reading →

The article - filched from Crikey! is over the fold. Have no doubt, further plant closures in Australias car parts manufacturing industry are much closer than anyone thinks. The rapid escalation of the Australian dollar has created a price competitive crisis. But theres more t...

Continue reading →

As usual my correspondents seem incapable of taking responsibility for their own emotions. Troppo reader Don Arthur asks : Dr Troppo, I’d like your advice on something I read in the newspaper this morning . According to Peter Hartcher subjects in a Dutch study found politician...

Continue reading →

Peach's longest serving employee is pregnant! Isn't that good! Well I think so and so does she. But she now has a problem. She's a vegetarian because she hates eating meat (not because she's strict about it on principle). But she's very very tired a lot of the time given her p...

Continue reading →

What a lucky little girl Polly must be to have a dad who gives her a story like this for a fifth birthday present . Read it and other polished jewels at Melbourne playwright Sam Sejavka's blog Sails of Oblivion (via Alison Croggon's equally wonderful blog Theatre Notes ).

Continue reading →

In Nicholas's thread below tigtog raised the topic of The Sounds of Aus , John Clarke's documentary on the Aussie accent , written by Lawrie Zion . (Apparently there's no web site, nor even a page on the ABC site). I enjoyed it too, but a few issues weren't resolved to my sati...

Continue reading →

Australia's unemployment rate is at 33 year lows. This achievement is far from unique. It is a global phenomenon and Australia has benefited from the world boom more than most because of the impact on our export prices. That said, it is quite possible that some of the Howard G...

Continue reading →

Guest Post by Dan Walsh of Kwoff.com.au. For some time I've straddled two digital worlds. My 'hi geek' dual monitor setup allows me to read my daily dose of Crikey on one screen and the constant stream of tech news from Digg.com on the other. One world is determined by an edit...

Continue reading →

I travelled overseas a while back. I was tasked with an important mission for private enterprise so I flew Business Class. Business Class Travel has a lot to offer the practiced observer of the human condition. Just arriving at the airport for example offers an appreciation of...

Continue reading →

I noticed a link at the bottom of a piece on Auden by John Clarke in an Age supplement which is a couple of weeks old but which I just read today. I figured his site must have been there for a while, but not so. It seems to have been launched on 17th October this year. Complet...

Continue reading →

A picture tells a thousand words (via Apathetic Sarah ) 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're running a day late again. My fault, but we'll still publish again late tomorrow (Friday). This edition compi...

Continue reading →

As a fictional character, I'm fascinated by people who don't exist . There are just so many of us -- fictional people , imaginary people , hypothetical people and people who will exist but don't exist yet . But despite our non-existence, we are able to generate facts about our...

Continue reading →

House prices in Melbourne and Sydney - particularly in better suburbs - have risen very fast in the last few months. At the same time, home lending is sharply down. As Peach business partner, financial e-newsletter The Sheet reports "The Australian Finance Groups mortgage inde...

Continue reading →

On a visit to an art gallery yesterday I was told why paintings of the same size are typically priced the same, even when the artist and the gallery think one is better than the other. Any guesses as to why she said this was? It made perfect sense in terms of 'behavioural econ...

Continue reading →

You get a lot from your parents. Money, 'human capital' as they call it these days. Language, political orientation (to a substantial extent). If your ideology is your 'values' then I'm sure that parents play a large part. But how public spirited are you? Turns out knowing how...

Continue reading →

Bicycles for carrying stuff Most Australians think of bicycles as children's toys or sporting equipment. The typical suburban bike shop is packed with full-suspension mountain bikes , lightweight road bikes and fat-tired retro cruisers . And as wonderful as these machines are,...

Continue reading →

This Krugman column reminded me of the strange role of lies in politics. With some they just roll along. Everyone knows them but they're not election issues. Then others become election issues. Read the Krugman column below the fold, but it put me in mind of a very strange int...

Continue reading →

I continue to be amazed at the way the market for computer laptops evolves. Around eight years ago I bought myself a fantastic little Sharp with an external CD drive which meant that since you don't use the CD drive much, you could cart this little beauty round in your briefca...

Continue reading →

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 edition of Missing Link is a couple of days late, owing mostly to Ken Parish's broken Dell PC (don't buy one, their warranty service is truly appalling). It was comp...

Continue reading →

The week began with the combined forces of the Foam-O-Sphere directing their heavy artillery on a supposed weak spot in the hitherto impregnable defences of the Rudd campaign. Altitudinous egghead Peter Garrett, provided the foamers with their first big break when he neglected...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

I found this post from 2007 mysterious sitting deep in the bowels of the software on Club Troppo. I don't think it was published then - not that it's any great shakes. But it's published now. Tonight Alison Tate, the International Officer for the Australian Council of Trade Un...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Oh, Darling... please don't ask.. it's too horrible! Here, for the record, are Troppo readers' election predictions from the last two editions of Missing Link. No more entries will be accepted unless they fall outside the current range, in which case they'll be accepted until...

Continue reading →

Recently, we had a policy discussion forum about the issue of whether Australia should follow most of the rest of the OECD and introduce the right to paid maternity leave. For the full slides, see here . During the discussion I introduced the topic of paid maternity in the con...

Continue reading →

From Crikey! (the figuring behind the blue line is set out here ).

Continue reading →

I was disappointed and perplexed that an excellent service run by Regional Express (REX) between Melbourne and Canberra was discontinued a few years ago. The tickets were a fair bit cheaper than the competition - and you just had to sit in a turbo prop for an extra half hour o...

Continue reading →

"It's like the Ferrari of bikes" says photographer Sam Ash. In Friday's Financial Review Magazine Ash is pictured standing next to his red Tommasini fixie -- a bike with one gear and no brakes . Given that the average age of AFR Magazine readers is 46 this doesn't bode well fo...

Continue reading →

I recently picked up a remaindered copy of a strange and compelling book by John Lukacs the author of Five Days in London: May 1940 a gripping account of five of the first days of Winston Churchills Prime Ministership in which he faced down the defeatists and appeasers in his...

Continue reading →

A sense of gloom settled in as I ploughed through The Weekend Australian yesterday. It felt like February 2003 again, only worse. Then, an optimist could at least excuse the thumping of the drums of war as the triumph of hope over experience. In the light of the last four year...

Continue reading →

Cub Troppo readers have presumably been following my discussion with Brendan Halfweeg on the comments thread of Nicholas's post on interest rates and tax cuts , with the eager fascination normally reserved for a match-point rally in a Wimbledon final. The ball is currently in...

Continue reading →

The column below the fold was published in the AFR two Thursdays ago while I was in Korea. It began as a post and then I decided that I felt strongly enough about the points - and wanted to do what I could to advertise them to others - that I'd write it as well as I could and...

Continue reading →

Alan Moir on the election, via Apathetic Sarah . If Alan Moir is prepared to put his reputation on the line, and so is Alan Ramsay (despite having forfeited his spectacularly in 2004), why can't bloggers and blog commenters be as bold? In response to last week's challenge, a f...

Continue reading →

We had an interesting recent economic policy discussion here at QUT about the topical issue of urban water management, chaired by Clevo Wilson, a senior lecturer in environmental economics. The full presentations can be downloaded here . The essence of the debate was whether i...

Continue reading →

For a limited time only - until Nov 1 to be precise. And if you might want to buy more than one book - I know it seems silly but print out multiple copies of the coupon - which is located by clicking on the image.

Continue reading →

The Age asked me to do another 300 word piece for today's production on the subject of wages and inflation. They haven't rung today so it looks like there'll be nothing from me tomorrow! In any event, below the fold, for the record, is my piece. It is a pleasant surprise that...

Continue reading →

Michael Short the excellent editor of the Age's excellent business pages asked me at pretty short notice to write a little op ed - 300 words - on the issue du jour - which is whether the bipartisan policy of handing back the revenue windfall from the mining boom will increase...

Continue reading →

One of Labor's proudest achievements is that it introduced compulsory super. A good thing too. What a pity that when it did so it did it in a manner that provided much larger benefits to the rich than the poor. Super has a flat tax of 15% - or rather a range of flat taxes whic...

Continue reading →

What happened today in 2136 BC? No doubt Google will come to the rescue of those who don't know (mutters beneath his breath that the world is not what it used to be)

Continue reading →

I seem to be the only one, that I have seen anyway, in the Australian blogosphere who is excited about the 37c tax bracket going the way of the dodo in Labor's tax policy announcement. Peter Martin even suggested it might be bad politics . Hopefully this policy becomes 'common...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Hearts were aflutter and the paparazzi were nowhere to be seen as Jen McCulloch married middle aged sweetheart Ken "Troppo Armodillo" Parish in a deliberately low key ceremony in Fitzroy Saturday. Naturally your Troppo correspondent was there and enjoyed the proceedings immens...

Continue reading →

Which one do you like best? The Debate was a worthwhile exercise. The format worked pretty well, and ninety minutes was a reasonable time to cover most of the issues. I wonder why the ABC bothered to telecast it, given that Chanel Nine had both the worm and Annabel Crabbe. How...

Continue reading →

To which organisations do these two logos belong?

Continue reading →

I've written about this before. As the material I linked to in my previous post seemed to show, while there are a bunch of good reasons - both experimental and observational for assuming that mobile phone use will be associated with higher accident rates, it's still hard to fi...

Continue reading →

If you're not with us, you're against us. Thanks to Arleesher at Stoush.net . As was made clear in the previous edition, we don't discuss politics in the Introduction to Missing Link. Aussies prefer to talk about sport. On Election Day we watch TV all evening with the intent a...

Continue reading →

As the Government turns up the heat in this campaign and tries to araldite the 70% Union Bosses tag to Mr, Rudds forehead, damning information about the Governments own front bench has surfaced which places this debate in a whole new light. One of the Governments key lines in...

Continue reading →

Not exactly home-grown art, but irresistible. Via Remember the West , original provenance unspecified. The News and Politics section is full of links on the election. But the Introduction to Missing Link is reknowned for its dignity and fair-mindedness, and not the venue for d...

Continue reading →

Not because I don't want to, but because I can't. I have been purged from the electoral roll. Like many Australian Diasporans I am in the curious position of being completely disenfranchised. My home country has kicked me off the rolls, yet I am not a citizen of another countr...

Continue reading →

Thirty Four Billion Dollars. Sounds a big number right? Its more than Ive got and Id hazard a guess that its more than youve got too. Its a number so large, such a very very big number, that only a Government can throw it around and still be taken seriously. Today Mr. Howard a...

Continue reading →

Review of Tao: On the Road and On the Run in Outlaw China by Aya Goda. Translated from the Japanese by Alison Watts. Published by Portobello Books. The painting reflects the artist, Young Number Four Son. If you want to paint, you must start by building your character. Paintin...

Continue reading →

So Mr. Howard has this morning climbed into the back of the Prime Ministerial Comcar slid across the shiny leather seat and ordered Jeeves to the Governor Generals pile to officially name the date for the election. It would, I suppose, have been a surreal moment. Sitting in th...

Continue reading →

The Dunera association had its celebration of the 67th anniversary of the Dunera's arrival in Sydney recently. Since my daughter had recently done a major assignment on the Dunera she and I flew up and she gave a little talk on what she'd found. I always enjoy being with these...

Continue reading →

Want to buy an expensive Swiss watch? Not everyone can afford a real one-a Patek Philippe timepiece can be worth many thousands of dollars, and some very exclusive makes, such as a Vacheron Constantin, can cost over a million! Still, you may have found a convincing lookalike i...

Continue reading →

When first drafting I'd intended this to be a one part post. But by the time the first post went up it had became a two part post. But when I got to writing up part two I continued and extended the discussion with Damien Eldridge which had begun in part one. Now it's time to m...

Continue reading →

Wilcox on the McClelland Affair, via Ken Lovell Hard on the heals of the Sudanese Affair is the Pine Boxes Affair; between them the two have raised the fury of the Government's boo-squad to new heights, whether from outraged principle or from fear that the tactics may work. An...

Continue reading →

Here's a guest post by an Open Source Programmer Con Zymaris You may not be aware of this, but you're probably reading this editorial using a product sourced from perhaps the world's largest monopoly market. A monopoly more profound and more ingrained than any run by a former...

Continue reading →

The emotional politics of Howard's aspirational nationalism There's a difference between guilt and shame. When you see yourself as a good person who's done a bad thing, you feel guilt. But when you see the bad thing you've done as evidence that you are a bad person, then you f...

Continue reading →

In an earlier piece on economic freedom I raised inter alia the issue of Australias welfare to work measures under Howard. This attracted some debate and it seems appropriate to reiterate my views on the topic. Australias welfare to work measures have involved a tightening of...

Continue reading →

This post is filed under life. How long have you got?

Continue reading →

CEDA have proposed a gradual extension of the age at which you qualify for the pension from 65 to 67 . What with all that hard policy lifting that Peter Costello's been doing on behalf of intergenerational equity (at the same time as lining the pockets of the country's aged su...

Continue reading →

Yes folks, that's what Julie Andrews says in the Sound of Music , and this week, amidst the ruins of all those securitised sub-prime loans, the International Financial Law Review tells us that the first rated securitization of subordinated microcredits securitisation took plac...

Continue reading →

Where do they get these numbers? It completely beats me. Reminds me of a line in Annie Hall in which Woody's mother says to his father in conclusion of their latest argument. "Have it your own way, the Atlantic Ocean is a better ocean than the Pacific Ocean." Or as Keynes said...

Continue reading →

The AES has an interesting graph which shows trending on how people consumed political information during elections. Unfortunately the trend ends at 2004, however, the internet was already rivaling talkback radio, newspapers and radio for media consumption patterns. I am sure...

Continue reading →

Paul Krugman's blog - at its pithy best on how right is wrong . And Steven Levitt making some very good points about how laborious the process is for publishing peer reviewed material. We're making progress but in many ways given the opportunities presented by the net, progres...

Continue reading →

Strange but true - in case you haven't heard, the world is full of amazing people with amazing stories who do amazing things . Perhaps this is a portent that the hideous catastrophes of the twentieth century are behind us. Well - obviously they're behind us. What I mean is, he...

Continue reading →

The Government's opponents are routinely accused by its supporters, and even by self-styled sensible centrists, of having a 'visceral hatred' of John Howard. Either that or it's a 'hysterical hatred ', a 'rabid hatred' or a 'deranged hatred'. Because the poets in our midst can...

Continue reading →

Via Gary Sauer-Thompson : The Australian Electoral Study's Trends in Australian Political Opinion [PDF] is a goldmine of graphs, polling and trending all thoughtfully gathered into the one document. Especially for graph junkies . It is also interesting to see where the polling...

Continue reading →

The Patriot, courtesy of Mark at Seeking Asylum Down Under If there was a topic of the week it was the Immigration Minister's decision that Australia will accept fewer African refugees, and the associated furore about Sudanese gangs. Andrew Bartlett reports on a forum of the E...

Continue reading →

A few days ago I got invited to participate in the Melborune Uni Debating Society's annual debate "That the Howard Government has failed the Australian Economy. Andrew Charlton, author of a recent book called (inevitably) Ozonomics pulled out and I'm the consolation. Regulars...

Continue reading →

Microsoft is a remarkable company. When you run the world's biggest internet mail operation, the default option for most high school students, when you're being threatened by companies that make better stuff but don't have your head start, it's not that difficult to respond to...

Continue reading →

This month's edition of Ceteris Paribus the newsletter of the Victorian Economics Society carried the article below by Gerard Brody on regulatory gatekeeping. I don't agree with all of it, but it's general point (highlighting the fact that our regulation review institutions te...

Continue reading →

I can't. Confession 1 : American track star Marion Jones admits using performance-enhancing drugs and will almost certainly be stripped of the five medals she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. She will probably face a maximum of six months in jail for perjury, but that could be...

Continue reading →

In the last two and a half decades, the idea of economic freedom - low levels of government intervention in the economy and wide scope for individual freedom of choice -has been widely embraced by both conservative and social democratic governments. This is because of the wide...

Continue reading →

Hayek has an enlightening concept of the 'extended order' in society. Society begins around a community order which extends only to the hunting group or whatever and families and clans within it. Often those groups, later villages are at war with other groups. As human, econom...

Continue reading →

Reading the Dunera News (of all things) - the Dunera is the prison ship on which my father came to Australia during World War II - I came across some fun quotes. Some I'd heard before but not recently and some I'd never heard - including one from one of my faves - Oscar Wilde....

Continue reading →

The posting rate on this blog is sufficient that the initial post has already disappeared into the blog ether. But the story so far is that I posted a link to an article that Dani Rodrik had praised to the skies. It argued that economists make all manner of short cuts when arg...

Continue reading →

Apropos of my piece a while back on bullshit , since I found the cartoon of the concept in Andrew Charlton's book Ozonomics (I think Ozzinomics sounds better) I thought I'd share it with you - as they say. Since you won't notice that I've also used it to illustrate the piece....

Continue reading →

THERES no doubt that housing affordability has deteriorated substantially over the past decade or so. Indeed as conventionally measured in terms of the income required to service the mortgage needed to purchase a median-priced house in any of Australias major cities purchasing...

Continue reading →

Today's column in the AFR . Exporting Australian Funds Management As the AFR reported late last week, a small new front is opening up in the election at least at the big end of town: Turning Australia into a funds management hub for the region. Its a worthy aspiration. But rea...

Continue reading →

I guess I might have made it to this post by Richard Freeman on WorkChoices as both the blog he wrote it on and another blog that it was reproduced on are on my blog reader (now featuring 477 unread posts!) But thanks to Helen for linking to it in the earlier thread on George...

Continue reading →

Some interesting speculations from Brad Delong.

Continue reading →

The following article appeared in today's AFR. Australian living standards (measured, albeit imperfectly, by real net national disposable income per head) have soared by about 16% or nearly $8000 per person in just the last five years a great leap forward unequalled in any sim...

Continue reading →

Telstra's just made my life easier by forcing me to upgrade my account from wireless broadband I to wireless broadband II. Having locked me into a 2 year contract on the first system, they cancelled it after about a year (their right to do so was all in the contract) and said...

Continue reading →

Crikey asked me to comment on this article itemising some likely initiatives on superannuation by the ALP. So I did. The result is over the fold. Walking and chewing gum Contrary to the opinion of his critics, John Howard has not robbed from the poor to give to the rich. Hes l...

Continue reading →

In case you haven't seen it. And, to remind you of this blog's 'centrist' roots, remember as you're watching, it was Paul Keating who first introduced this style of advertising. Remember Bill Hunter clambering around the wide brown land telling us what a great thing 'Working N...

Continue reading →

My brother and I both tried quite hard not to be economists. And we both failed fairly miserably. He's been busy producing some interesting graphs concerning the two intergenerational reports.

Continue reading →

Not only is life tough but you try finding a parking spot in a busy shopping centre. Whenever I do I can usually find some place where they could have fitted an extra parking spot. And pretty obviously if theyd have done so I could park there. Well actually I couldnt. If there...

Continue reading →

Who said this? Though it sounds paradoxical to say that . . . to prevent ourselves from making the wrong decision we must deliberately reduce the range of choice before us, we all know that this is often necessary in practice if we are to achieve our long term aims.

Continue reading →

I've just been to see Hairspray - a cinematic version of a Broadway Smash - well I don't know if it was a box office smash but it won lots of awards. It's a musical set in Baltimore in 1962 about rock and roll and a plump girl who takes a rock and roll show by storm with her e...

Continue reading →

For a fair while I've been interested in things like who appoints and pays for auditors of public companies and whether we've got it right (given that the information provided by auditors of companies for instance is a public or quasi public good when produced and firms have a...

Continue reading →

I'm generally in favour of free trade. So are quite a few economists who have reputations for being against it - even though they are not. At one point Keynes, who was a strong free trader argued (I think in the context of England being constrained by fixed exchange rates) tha...

Continue reading →

I've just become aware of bot blogging curtesy of these three links to posts I've just put up. I guess they're part of the escalating SEO war. Anyway, if you look below the fold, my hope is that some geek will have explained what it's all about, whether and the extent to which...

Continue reading →

Well, the speculation in my previous post was essentially spot-on. The High Court has ruled in Roach v Electoral Commissioner (reasons for decision published late yesterday) that Australians have a constitutionally guaranteed right to vote in federal elections, flowing from se...

Continue reading →

From today's Crikey! The NSW hospital crisis and an ALP hackette Alex Mitchell writes: In today's front pages is the story of a female emergency patient miscarrying in the toilet of Sydney's dysfunctional Royal North Shore Hospital after being neglected by staff for several ho...

Continue reading →

Apropos the discussion of a few days ago, Stephen Fry - yes that Stephen Fry - has some interesting observations on his blog about the iPhone. Apple is now doing what we all (well almost all) wish Microsoft would have done, which is to at least make beautiful things from its p...

Continue reading →

I'd like to know what's wrong with all the studies using different methodologies that find a link. Intuitively I find that using a hand held in a car is distracting at least when I'm dialling. It's all in the paper from the looks of it, but I won't get round to reading it and...

Continue reading →

(This is the third and last in a series of posts exploring Australian federalism (the first part is here and the second is here ). I've been struck by the seeming popular lack of interest in Australian federalism, not only judging by the lack of public outrage at John Howard's...

Continue reading →

What a slimy, condescending, pox-ridden excrescence is ABC's Media Watch program. And Phillip Adams isn't far behind, judging by his response to Helen "skepticlawyer" Dale's complaints about his characterisation of an interview with her that apparently never took place ("chill...

Continue reading →

The Central Bank is supposed to target inflation - and providing price stability is vouchsafed help if it can to keep growth ticking along. There's a lot of loose talk about how central bank action 'underwrites' risky moves by financial operatives. But creating more liquidity...

Continue reading →

In a story in Today's Crikey! , Guy Rundle raises a subject dear to my heart about which I am, alas, ignorant. Why are so many of our planning regulations negative - the most obvious being height restrictions, when what we really want from regulation is collective action to ma...

Continue reading →

What have these two men got in common? And who the hell is the guy on the right anyway? Find out at a seminar I'll be leading tomorrow, Tuesday 25th September from 12.30-1.30pm in Seminar Room 4, on the 1st Floor of the J.G. Crawford Bldg - the Public Policy School adjacent to...

Continue reading →

Mungo MacCallum has an article in today's Crikey which tends to take a similar - entirely pragmatic approach to the Parliamentary snarl that occured last Thursday. I happened to see edited highlights of it on "Order in the House" which confirmed all my previous feelings on the...

Continue reading →

My daughter has a dilemma! Should she replace her aging iPod nano with a new generation iPod nano or with an iPod Touch. I'd heard that Apple were producing an iPhone without the phone but I'd not watched the promo until my anxious daughter showed it to me. Watching it you can...

Continue reading →

Like many of you I saw this on facebook: Graham Young is fighting attempts to expel him from the Liberal Party this Sunday. This is Graham's article on Ambit Gambit from July describing the situation and why the party is seeking to throw him out. I hope Graham gets the result...

Continue reading →

Nelson: "Order the signal, Hardy." Hardy: "Aye, aye sir." Nelson: "Hold on, that's not what I dictated to Flags. What's the meaning of this?" Hardy: "Sorry sir?" Nelson (reading aloud): "'England expects every person to do his or her duty, regardless of race, gender, sexual or...

Continue reading →

I'd not seen this before - though many better travelled Troppodillians will have. For those that have not - you read it first on Troppo! With the company slogan ruling out evil things, Google continues (so far) to do good things.

Continue reading →

A terrific lecture by Robert Manne on 'Reconciliation' is to be heard and/or downloaded from the Hindsight program on the ABC website. I've heard it previously, so it's not that new, but it's a good listen if you have the time.

Continue reading →

When the stuff about Kevin Rudd's heart broke I thought 'well here we go again'. A bit of quasi dirt. Now it seems like a reasonable assumption that the government knew of the revelations and encouraged them. Of course it's entirely possible that they didn't. But on form you'd...

Continue reading →

Thank you all for your comments on my earlier posting ("why the electorate may want change") which sought to explain the apparent willingness of many swinging voters to switch sides. I argued then that it cannot be due to substantive policy differences: they exist (on industri...

Continue reading →

Doubts have started to emerge today about the resilience of Kevin Rudds leadership in polls. Liberal Party sources confirm that doubts do exist, which has led to intense speculation among some parts of the media as to whether the ALPs ability to project an air of confidence ha...

Continue reading →

Former Territory Labor Opposition Leader and Keating government Minister Bob Collins has died in Darwin at the age of 61. Whether from the bowel cancer he had suffered over the last couple of years or from some other cause is yet to be revealed. I knew Bob Collins very well in...

Continue reading →

I reproduce below the gist of my letter in today's Australian in the hope that it will elicit some opposing comments on why the electorate may want to replace the Howard Government Letter follows. Imre Salusinszky (misled by hatred, 20/9/07)) forgets that there are at least as...

Continue reading →

Just as I'm praising him to the skies , uberjournalist Paul Krugman, not content with two fantastic columns a week, gives us a blog as well . And having discovered it, what is the first post I read on it? Krugman summarising the very point I drew attention to. That he has a su...

Continue reading →

Visit Grodscorp to suggest a caption The federal election is absorping more than its share of attention in Ozblogistan, and is certain to do so for the next two months. For those who care, there is feast of psephology at Poll Bludger, Simon Jackman's Blog , Peter Brent's Mumbl...

Continue reading →

Over at Lava Rodeo, tigtog posts about an advocacy site put together by American-inspired and left-leaning lobby group GetUp! and an assortment of greenie groups "advocating placing your vote according to candidates records on climate change." Tigtog laments the lack of any an...

Continue reading →

Australian Mateship is the name given to the practice of referring to a person as mate when you cant remember their name.

Continue reading →

I taped last Wednesday night's LNL and only listened to it last night. Download the mp3 file and be amazed. Do it NOW! The file will disappear tomorrow night.

Continue reading →

The article below began, in my mind at least, as a post. Then thinking that it might be worth putting the effort into it to make it read pretty well, I spent some time on it and sent it unsolicited to Crikey! They prefer stuff they've asked for or that you've pitched, and they...

Continue reading →

Australian Policy Online asked me to tidy up the post I put up a while back on Child Poverty - Take a Bow Brian Howe. For the record and to enable anyone who wishes to offer further comment, I've done so here . Readers can download a Word file from the APO site. Thanks to Pete...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

I remember as a young bloke reading an ad for a Holden FJ that was nearby for $3,000. I rang the seller and then jumped in the car to look at it. Unfortunately even back then three grand only bought you a rustbucket FJ that is up on blocks. I ended up buying a 1962 EJ Holden i...

Continue reading →

Crikey it seems has a need for 'balance'. What else would explain the quality of (at least some of their) right leaning correspondents. Below the fold was today's effort by the redoubtable Alan Jones and John Howard fan Professor Flint. It is not very good. That a former diplo...

Continue reading →

Well no doubt this has been around the net for months, but this is the first I saw of it. Prediction markets, ready go go on the net - well pretend ones - with token bets. These guys could make a lot more money - and we'd have better markets - if you could bet real money. But...

Continue reading →

Some people think that Paul Krugman should get the Nobel Prize for his economics. I disagree. It's not that good - though a prize a year, often shared beteween the architects of various fields means that the field is likely to narrow down over time - they'll be scraping furthe...

Continue reading →

The Book Show picked up the theme of blogging today . I'm a complete fan of the Book Show - how they pump out 40 odd minutes of good content each day beats me. Ramona Koval is a good sort - good fun to listen to. Unfortunately, like so many MSM encounters with blogdom, it was...

Continue reading →

Well you've seen me grizzle about Microsoft before now, and in particular Office 2007 including a debate with Joshua Gans on the subject . Well I've now taken the extra-ordinary step of uninstalling Word 2007. It was better than Word 2003 in lots of small ways, but the ribbon...

Continue reading →

When I first saw this portrait, I thought it was a damn good portrait and - though you could see it as unflattering - those narrow eyes, I didn't see it that way. The eyes could equally be visionary - scanning the horizon for those new vistas that George was going to take us t...

Continue reading →

Here are a couple of monuments , the first recently errected in Dublin, the second on the drawing boards. They're by the same architect. Where Melbourne got the angular yellow beams of Denton Corker Marshall, Dublin and soon Wales will have the gleaming spires of Ian Richie Ar...

Continue reading →

Jen's brother Stuart is a lifelong Hawthorn supporter. His wife Jo is an equally passionate Collingwood fan (there's no accounting for taste). Jo is 9 months pregnant with twins. They were due almost exactly today, but they hadn't turned so Jo was booked in for a caesarean nex...

Continue reading →

Courtesy Brad DeLong's site , packaged up understandably enough in Brad's Why Oh Why Series under the heading "Why Oh Why Does Tom Friedman Still Have a Job?"

Continue reading →

This article - now many years old - discloses that Peter Singer gives away one fifth of his income. That's a very very fine thing and a damn site better than me. According to his own calculations, which I have no reason to doubt, that means he's saved thousands of lives. Perha...

Continue reading →

Writing op eds you often wonder how the subbie will bugger up your meaning by putting a headline on your piece that effectively prejudges the way people will read what you say. Still Catherine Deveny has struck it lucky. The subbie has captured the essence of her writing and h...

Continue reading →

The Chinatown area of Cavenagh Street, Darwin just before World War II (This is the second in an intended series exploring Australian federalism (the first part is here ). In this part I test the proposals of those who think we would be best advised to abolish the existing Sta...

Continue reading →

I got this email from an old friend currently living overseas in response to the notes I posted on manufacturing. I haven't thought much about manufacturing. But I would start with trying to see what Australian people can offer others. Trade surely is more that ever the way of...

Continue reading →

Australian rugby guru Rod Macqueen, one of the architects of the Stellenbosch rules Missing Link arts editor and Sidelined sports pundit Amanda Rose habitually refers to rugby as "yawnion", and this commenter received short shrift from Chris Sheil for expressing similar sentim...

Continue reading →

A few hails and farewells to kick off today's issue of Missing Link. Condolences to the family of Charles Murton, erudite proprietor of Diogenes' Lamp . Charles died after a lengthy battle with cancer, and will be remembered for his astute engagement with all comers across the...

Continue reading →

Last night on the 7:30 report Mr. Howard gave us the truth. We know this because he said so several times. He levelled with the Australian people last night. Its a new tactic to seize the initiative. The Honest John tactic. The question is will it work? In a way its refreshing...

Continue reading →

Because I managed to say some things in the interview of the report on Regulation and Innovation more compellingly than had been said in the report (pdf) or in the op ed of the report , I was about to try to hunt someone down in India to transcribe the relevant part of the pro...

Continue reading →

For the record - over the fold. Crikey asked me to edit some notes of a keynote speech I gave at Kevin Rudds Manufacturing Roundtable which I posted the night before on Club Troppo. In addition to the micro-economic agenda I quoted yesterday, I raised some macro-economic and t...

Continue reading →

The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades by Nathan Nunn Abstract: Can part of Africa's current underdevelopment be explained by its slave trades? To explore this question, I use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Martin Feldstein wants to cut US interest rates by one percent. I agree with him for all the reasons that he puts. And disagree with the opponents of a rate cut for the main reason he does. The idea of a 'Greenspan put' is pretty silly when the put, or the implicit guarantee,...

Continue reading →

Well, two afternoons after actually. This post is here as a matter of record as it's largely a repetition of a story posted here on Sunday . Anyway, Crikey asked me to write the notes up and what with their word limit it's serialised into two parts - the first of which appears...

Continue reading →

During yesterday's Constitutional Law lecture, I noticed that one of my students was quite distracted and continually fiddling with his mobile phone. I wasn't entirely surprised, because I was talking about section 109 inconsistency, which isn't the world's most rivetting topi...

Continue reading →

A befriended blogger made a careless comment recently that American newspapers (with the New York Times on top) were 'unquestionably the best in the world'. Being from European stock, and hence growing up with the equally silly idea that everything European is better than anyt...

Continue reading →

A couple of weeks back I wittnessed a discussion meeting here at QUT on whether Hedgefunds should be outlawed, or at least heavily regulated. The main speaker was Dr. Robert Bianci who has sent a large part of his PhD degree on the functioning of Hedgefunds. The PowerPoint sli...

Continue reading →

When Peach Home Loans was first launched it was called Plum Home Loans , and the avalanche of calls that we got after appearing on A Current Affair did not endear us to Plum Financial Services, of which we had not been aware. I had thought that having registered our business n...

Continue reading →

No not me. I don't want it!

Continue reading →

If only I knew how to use Photoshop ... About 3 weeks ago I pointed out that, although the MSM polls had Labor way in front, the overall trend (at least up to July) seemed to have the Coalition on track for a very close election result by late November or early December. Howev...

Continue reading →

Names are de rigueur around Ozblogistan this issue, as sundry people riff on a piece by resident Age bomb-thrower and lefty Andrew Bolt alternative, Catherine Deveny. Nick Gruen and Legal Eagle got going with two thoughtful pieces apiece, while Darlene Taylor was in wholeheart...

Continue reading →

Bryan Palmer writes : This gives an average of 58.25 for Labor and 41.75 per cent for the Coalition. Plug these numbers into the election calculator and see what you get. A pie chart of the "see what you get" with a uniform national 11% swing (normal caveats etc): The red area...

Continue reading →

I'm a speaker at Kevin Rudd's Manufacturing Industry Roundtable on Monday. I thought I'd outline a few thoughts here and invite feedback. Ive thrown these points together quickly as Ive got to get on a plane so apologies for any typos and for the staccato delivery. But feedbac...

Continue reading →

One formula for op ed writing is to annoy your readers . Another is to lay out some set of actual or imagined social phenomena onto some Procrustean ideological bed for interpretation. This lazy and infuriating piece of fluff from Catherine Deveny in the Age which is headed by...

Continue reading →

From the abstract to a recent article . In this research, we assess whether the number of public comments filed in response to proposed agency rules has dramatically increased as a result of the automation of the submission process. Specifically, we compare the volume of comme...

Continue reading →

I have no reason to accuse Troppo readers of being particularly representative of the community from which they come, but I'd still be interested in the experience of those whose experience is relevant to this question. Why do women use their husband's surname when they marry?...

Continue reading →

When I think of the latest polls I think of Gough Whitlam polishing off Billy Sneddon, Paul Keating seeing off Alexander Downer. If only they'd eased up a little their own political fortunes might have been a little better. If I were advising Kevin Rudd I'd have suggested he m...

Continue reading →

I've just happened upon a transcript of a Gordon Brown press conference at No 10.gov. The blogosphere pointed me there because of this controversial passage - which read just fine to me. I think Mrs Thatcher, Lady Thatcher, saw the need for change and I think whatever disagree...

Continue reading →

They must not get away with this. "Protest is not violent, war is violent," student Rainee Lyleson told Wednesday's rally. "We will not be intimidated." Rainee is fifteen and in Year 9 at Mosman High School. She spoke at the rally , at Belmore Park, attended by 300 school kids...

Continue reading →

It has been over 7 years since Judge Jackson issued his order for Microsoft to be broken up into an applications and a operating system business. Due to various complications , that never came to pass. But what if it had? What would the computer world look like today? The brea...

Continue reading →

John Quiggin has an interesting post on the progress (or perhaps lack of same) of the Brough/Howard intervention into NT indigenous communities. Both the post and comment thread are worth reading. John also asks: One of the striking features of the governments intervention in...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

RIP

Continue reading →

Andrew Inglis Clark This is the first of several intended posts about Australian federalism. Federalism doesn't seem to have very many supporters in early twenty-first century Australia, at least judging by the fact that both our current Prime Minister and Opposition Leader ar...

Continue reading →

I mentioned when reviewing Opera Australia's Barber that there was another production of the same work in the pipeline. By now it's actually too late to see Pacific Opera's season of The Barber of Seville , which finished last weekend. But it's still worth a comment for the be...

Continue reading →

There is speculation building that Holden is gearing up to full production in order to export the Ute to the United States. Holden Ute - Pontiac G8 Ute photochop by Aych Es Vee The traditional Ute platform in the US has been the Chevrolet El Camino, but it appears that the Ute...

Continue reading →

APEC and election speculation is clearly dominating bloggy concerns, and people are starting to get a tad silly with it all. The latest hacking victim is Andrew Landeryou , who joins his ideological opponent Jeremy Sear in having had his site hacked and blog nicked. Love em or...

Continue reading →

I'm not a soccer fanatic. But it's a nice game. In my limited experience, Ronaldinho is the most exciting player I've seen. Someone described this to me over coffee today and it wasn't hard to find on YouTube. Enjoy. And just since I saw it, there are some nice ones in the sec...

Continue reading →

"[T]he [Reserve] bank doesn't lift rates two months in a row, never mind in an election year. Glenn Dyer, Crikey, 5th Sept 2007

Continue reading →

Just following up on yesterday's post I managed to secure AFL tickets to Saturday's final between Collingwood and the Swannies, or - as Tandberg called them in one cartoon featuring Ita Butrose as one of their main supporters - the Thidney Thwans. Displaying some of the proble...

Continue reading →

Yesterday I received an email advising that Black Inc.'s excellent magazine The Monthly has begun publishing selected articles online for free access. I bought a 12 month subscription for my dad as a Christmas present last year. After reading some of the free access articles l...

Continue reading →

When I was a kid I was a master at getting into the MCG - squeezing through gaps left between those revolving door exits and the walls, wandering in when no-one was looking. These days on the right side of the law it's not much easier. Each week that Collingwood play in Melbou...

Continue reading →

Two of the most fashionable ideas in social policy thinking are coming together -- conditional welfare and early childhood intervention. Together they'll create a new supernanny state that fights crime, prevents teenage pregnancy, lifts employment and leaps rigorous cost-benef...

Continue reading →

The latest national accounts suggest that over the March and June quarters of 2007 there has been a surge in market sector productivity growth (market output divided by hours worked in market sector). The ABS tells us this is the result of an increase in market sector output o...

Continue reading →

The AIRC website reassures readers that: An employee who believes he or she has been unfairly or unlawfully dismissed has 21 days from the dismissal date to lodge an unfair or unlawful dismissal application with the AIRC. There is an application lodgment fee of $55.70. However...

Continue reading →

Where The Engineers Are looks at engineering in the United States, India and China under globalisation and the role economics, commerce and education have in the development of engineers. The paper discovered that the US and India were pumping out about the same number of Engi...

Continue reading →

If was only a matter of time before politicians retreated even from the 'doorstop' and handed out audio and video feeds for the media's consumption. I think I predicted this on Troppo somewhere in the dim dark past, if so I can't find where I did. In fact it's a bit unfair to...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Watching this interview on Thursday night, as Paul Lennon explained that his job is to grow the Tasmanian economy and attract big investors; that he had no choice but to bend the rules to get the pulp mill approved in time; that 'the Greens are a political party in Tasmania op...

Continue reading →

A day or so ago I put up this popst to ask Troppodillians to suggest a foreign aid charity I could get excited about. Well there are plenty of charities that are exciting - one of which I forgot to mention in the original post was the micro-credit operation Opportunity Interna...

Continue reading →

Well, I could bill this as the Andrew Johns druggie special edition, because Joey's turn at the Notting Hill Carnival has certainly made a few waves around Ozblogistan. As is often the case, Wicking managed to combine Johns' efforts with one of the stranger animal interest sto...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Commenting meaningfully on a High Court decision in which the Justices are yet to explain their reasons presents a distinct challenge for legal bloggers: THE High Court has ruled that a federal law banning all prisoners from voting is unconstitutional, after an Aboriginal inma...

Continue reading →

This webpage surveys the various products on offer to rip (a groovy word meaning 'record' I guess) streaming video and audio into files like MP3 files. I'm not too interested in video, but occasionally want to convert a streaming audio into an MP3 file. So in the very likely e...

Continue reading →

Many years ago I used to donate quite a bit of the money I donate to charity to Community Aid Abroad. It seemed like a good idea to try to combine charity and aid with some attempt to address some of the political causes of poverty. Empowering poor communities seemed like a go...

Continue reading →

The American innovation on English Constitutionalism was that there is fundamental law - expressed in the constitution - that cannot be ignored by the executive and cannot be statutorily pasted over by the legislative. The Americans called them natural rights and entrenched th...

Continue reading →

From PC Pro: He's already endured five months in prison. But now a Linux user convicted of piracy is facing the ultimate punishment - he's being forced to run Windows. Scott McCausland was the one time administrator of the Elite Torrents, until the FBI shut it down and he was...

Continue reading →

Politics is all about compromise and trade-offs. Sensible politicians target the median voter not the extremists on either side. On that test, Labors IR package seems to get it about right. Moreover the proposed changes are transparent for all to see and contain a lot more det...

Continue reading →

We'll start with a community service announcement: The Australian Blogging Conference is to be held at the Queensland University of Technology on September 28 this year. Peter Black, one of the Missing Link crew, has put a considerable amount of time into getting it off the gr...

Continue reading →

On behalf of all Troppodillians I had lunch with Joshua Gans today. Actually it wasn't on behalf of anyone. I just felt like writing something pompous. Anyway, we spoke about many things including writing columns. Joshua writes all or many of his blog posts in the morning whil...

Continue reading →

"Michael Gerson never wrote a single speech by himself for President Bush", writes former colleague Matthew Scully . Along with Gerson and John McConnell, Scully was part of the team that crafted some of George W Bush's best known speeches. In a bitchy article for the Atlantic...

Continue reading →

Tomorrow sees the publication of a Lateral Economics report commissioned by the Victorian Government on Regulation and Innovation. It argues that our current approach to 'regulation review', though laudable in intent, is having at best modest success and that the reason for th...

Continue reading →

If you've ever wanted to make a burger with 100% pure bacon or you need a recipe for caramelized bacon then I've got links for you. Welcome to the baconsphere! "Bacon is totally meat candy," says bacon enthusiast Heather Lauer. Heather blogs at Bacon Unwrapped . See Heather's...

Continue reading →

Forget about strippers, the greatest menace on the campaign trail is food. Birthday cakes, pizza, cheesesteak sandwiches, or pork chops -- they can all stop a campaign dead in its tracks. Remember the unlosable election of 1993? Everything was going well for John Hewson until...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

I refer to my earlier posting ("well done Murdoch shame on business") regarding the current business advertisements and Steketee's critique of them. Peter Hendy, Chief Executive of ACCI, has a letter in the Weekend Australian claiming that Steketees criticisms were wide of the...

Continue reading →

First up, an apology for the lateness of this issue. I've been overdoing things at the Edinburgh Festival, with the result that Missing Link has suffered. Still, there's plenty of goodies here for your weekend delectation, so sit back with something drinkable and enjoy. I'll k...

Continue reading →

On Monday Media Watch castigated The Australian for refusing to correct its misrepresentation of the opinions of Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC. Anyone who hasn't followed this story can get all background from the Media Watch story itself, from Tim Lambert , who was on...

Continue reading →

According to Patricia Karvelas in the Australian yesterday (accompanied by the picture below) , it will be up to John Howard to decide whether or not same-sex couples will be granted equal status with heterosexual couples under Commonwealth law, since the Cabinet could not agr...

Continue reading →

Megan McArdle asks : "Did John Quiggin just write that it doesn't matter whether the New Republic ran a false story?" The short answer is 'no'. The long answer is over the fold. The whole thing starts with a story about dogs dying in Baghdad. What false story? Last month The N...

Continue reading →

While not retreating from my earlier accusations of systematic bias in the main Murdoch press, let me now strongly commend The Australians Mike Steketee for his column in todays edition of the paper. He takes on the business lobby for telling big fibs in their advertisements o...

Continue reading →

I'm sure that when we look back in twenty years, we'll see that some of our declining media were actually sitting on Web 2.0 gold mines that they failed to realise or tried to realise in ways that they completely bolloxed up . Here are some great ideas proposed for the New Yor...

Continue reading →

Who wrote this telegram? "1. Hang (hang without fail so the people see ) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. 2. Publish their names. 3. Take from them all the grain. 4. Designate hostages -- as per yesterday's telegram. Do it in such a way that for...

Continue reading →

Some of the true believers of the blogosphere are getting nervous about Labor's prospects of victory at the almost-imminent federal election. Fred Argy here at Troppo attributes his doubts to the evil and biased Murdoch press, while Mark Bahnisch over at LP blames the "me too-...

Continue reading →

I believe that the media will play a significant role in deciding the outcome of the next federal election. In particular, the role played by the Murdoch press- which controls some 2/3 of Australias national and capital city news market will be crucial. At this stage, Murdoch...

Continue reading →

See, this Kevin bloke walked into a bar... Ozblogistan (like the MSM, but somewhat more cynically) got into Kevin's Komedy Kapers at a New York strip club big time, and spent (a fair bit of) time concluding it was a storm in a teacup, albeit a highly entertaining one. Some of...

Continue reading →

"Australia is working again - moving ahead after decades of falling behind," says John Howard in his speech to the Millennium Forum . At the Sydney Morning Herald, Phillip Coorey thinks he hears echoes of Ronald Reagan's " It's morning again in America " campaign theme. And he...

Continue reading →

As long-term Troppo readers may recall, I don't have a terribly high opinion of the ethics of SMH journalist/"blogger" Jack Marx. But he certainly didn't deserve to be sacked for writing a (deleted) post imagining Heavy Kevy's experiences in a New York strip club. It's a relat...

Continue reading →

On Friday we heard that the Governor of the Reserve Bank stated that he is prepared to raise the interest rate during an election campaign , contrary to received wisdom. This was actually two pieces of news for me, since I'd never heard about the received wisdom in the fist pl...

Continue reading →

According to Glenn Milne , Kevin Rudd's visit to a New York strip club gives lie to "his claims to be a churchgoing family man who counts as his hero Dietrich Bonhoeffer , the Lutheran pastor martyred by Adolf Hitler." But what would Bonhoeffer say? Dietrich Bonhoeffer took ri...

Continue reading →

I always liked Frank Lloyd Wright. I have a theory that lots of ideas somehow get converted into their opposite as they propagate through the community. Thus for instance the theory of the second best in economics was a theory which showed that if you were in a second best sit...

Continue reading →

Well there you go! I read that blog action day - whatever that is - is due for the 15th Oct. Not only is it blog action day, but it's all been arranged that we rap about the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own t...

Continue reading →

After two years of solid blogging, I reckon Im entitled to a bleg (not that this is a promise to wait another two years before my next one.) My problem? Firefox is giving me hell. At the late stages of Firefox 1, I got a bug in which the program took about ten seconds (during...

Continue reading →

Having looked at several Googled images of Glenn Stevens, it's clear to me that the subbies are asking for 'stiff upper lip' pickies of the Governor. I was very pleased to hear Stevens' comments yesterday that, if the circumstances were appropriate he'd raise interest rates in...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Backroom Girl was nice enough to tell me of a paper being given by one of the world's experts on the tax and welfare systems of the world in Melbourne yesterday. Australian Peter Whiteford was out from his current headquarters at OECD Paris and was giving a talk to the Brother...

Continue reading →

Commenter Link asked me to post on an interview I did on Counterpoint last Monday . In fact the transcript is up on the ABC website so I'm not sure there's a need. But because it's there I'll put up an edited version of it below the fold. Might be a good discussion starter for...

Continue reading →

With any sort of luck, this issue of Missing Link will wend its way out to our subscribers via email, as Jacques slowly rebuilds the Troppo server using the dedicated equipment he's just bought on the site's behalf. Let us know in the comments if you received the email, and ho...

Continue reading →

The Government Giveth and the Government Taketh Away is 'bad' Peter Saunders' latest book. He argues that the welfare state once supported the poor by taxing the rich. Today it attempts to support the non-poor with their own taxes. He calls this 'tax-welfare churning': Churnin...

Continue reading →

Has the electorate's hip pocket nerve finally gone numb? In today's Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hartcher writes , "we are beneficiaries of the most successful macroeconomic management in the developed world, yet we seem ripe for a government that might want to promise to supp...

Continue reading →

From a back-issue of the ABC Law Report . A patient at UCLA's School of Medicine named John Moore, went in and was diagnosed as having hairy cell leukaemia. His treatment was to have the spleen removed, but before the doctors did that, they did blood tests and found he had a v...

Continue reading →

Teenage Affluenza Add to My Profile | More Videos

Continue reading →

Troppo aficionados will know that a Don Arthur often repays careful reading and linking. His links are full of interest and surprises. Anyway, no surprises that his link to what the great economist James Heckman thinks links to an interview . But what an interview. It reminded...

Continue reading →

Economists spend large amounts of time evaluating existing policies or pushing for some particular new economic policy. Equally important, but less frequently done, is to say what should NOT be done and why it shouldnt be done. Of course these 'warnings' have to relate to a po...

Continue reading →

"Australia's online news commentariat that has found passing endless comment on other people's work preferable to breaking real stories and adding to society's pool of knowledge", says the Australian . I can understand that when you've tracked down sources for interviews or pa...

Continue reading →

The plight of children is one of the most compelling arguments for government activism, say Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray . But in their 1994 book The Bell Curve , they argue that governments should resist the urge to intervene in dysfunctional families and communities...

Continue reading →

The Parliamentary Library released a research paper which divides numerous economic trends up by Governments from Whitlam to Howard . It turns out party hats don't work so well in analysing these trends. This is an interesting graph with a nice trend. Economic policy makers ov...

Continue reading →

Another day, another blogger... or, in this case, another member of the Missing Link crew. Ken Parish is leaving us temporarily (although he will be back, be assured of that). This means the Centrist Bloggers require a new custodian, and we'd like you to make gilmae welcome. A...

Continue reading →

Why is it that, in the endless discussion in the mainstream media about who had a 'better record on interest rates', we never hear any mention of the real interest rate? If you go on nominal rates, then no matter what interest rate you pick, or what period, Labor is going to l...

Continue reading →

I'll be doing another round with Geraldine on her Saturday Morning Radio National do this week on blogging - I expect with one or two other people. The Executive Producer has suggested we talk about the way in which blogging can take you into a discussion between people who re...

Continue reading →

Well I'm a friend of Crikey's Christian Kerr. He wanted to be my friend and I wanted to be his - it's Facebook you know. I guess his email contacts just twigged with mine and all of a sudden we're friends! Another degree of separation - gone! Anyway, we were gonna meet up for...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Thank God you're here is a lot of fun. Here's the best effort I've seen. From Shaun Micallef a truly funny and very silly fellow. In the (likely) event that Wordpress won't properly embed the screen, you can click here .

Continue reading →

"It really is social science pornography," says Murray, as he pulls income and IQ statistics off his laptop computer. In a 1994 interview with New York Times reporter Jason DeParle , the think tank researcher talks about race, intelligence, poverty and Thai bar girls. Murray i...

Continue reading →

Many years ago I took up the Microsoft email client Outlook. It's a good program. At least in theory. It combines a powerful e-mailer with a few gimicks that I don't use and a calendar that I do use. Oddly I don't know any other email clients that offer that integration of cal...

Continue reading →

Today must surely be a watershed moment in the lead up to the 2007 election. Malcolm Farrs revelations concerning the secret Liberal party polling conducted by Textor Crosby, the findings that the voters see Howard as old and dishonest and its recommendation to respond by blam...

Continue reading →

Gam has been busy with Photoshop since JWH urged us all not to over-react to Australian soldiers getting pissed and dressing up in KKK outfits at Darwin's Robertson Barracks. 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and...

Continue reading →

Peter Whiteford, an Australian working with the OECD in Paris will be presenting a seminar in Melbourne next week at the Brotherhood of St Laurence in Fitzroy (details below the fold). People who are regular visitors to this blog and some others such as Andrew Norton's and And...

Continue reading →

The Barber of Seville is the most popular opera buffa in the contemporary standard repertoire and, according to one estimate , the seventh most performed opera in the world. This is for good reason, because the work is a gem, and also one of the most accessible. However, opera...

Continue reading →

With the national government digging its selective anti-federalist paws into the Tasmanian health system it might be a good time to look at the nationalist (as opposed to federalist) structure of government. This usually takes the form of state abolition ; where the states are...

Continue reading →

On Thursday 26th July, we had another policy discussion meeting figuring Nicholas Gruen as the introducer of a potential policy reform. The issue debated was whether we should have a national information policy. Ben Ives argued in favour, Tony Beatton argued against. The under...

Continue reading →

Via Gummo Trotsky's Tugboat Potemkin This edition of Missing Link is not only a little late but also rather abbreviated. Writing and commenting about the Haneef case has consumed all my blogging time, so there is no coverage in today's edition of either blogs that we classify...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Kevin Andrews is a sanctimonious, god-bothering twerp who acted as John Howard's cypher in torpedoing the Northern Territory's ground-breaking (if slightly flawed) euthanasia legislation some years ago. In fact, he's one of the few politicians on either side whom I instinctive...

Continue reading →

Political thought can be classified in many different ways, having regard to ones attitudes to economic freedom, the environment, personal morality (abortion, gay rights etc), welfare, income inequality, inequality of opportunity, etc. Trying to build them all into a comprehen...

Continue reading →

Real Australians from the award-winning Sentence Management Unit at Wolston Correctional Centre Now that the issue of Haneef's incarceration has been resolved, attention has turned inevitably to how the issue will affect Australians' voting intentions. I was struck by this rem...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

This is the best op ed length informative article I've ever read. It's 713 words. It's by Freeman Dyson and every sentence is worth a book, every paragraph worth a sub-discipline. It explains how Darwinian evolution was (yes - 'was') a special period of the earth's history pre...

Continue reading →

Nicholas Gruen looks distinctly dubious about the tucker at this week's "grogblogging" function in Brisbane. 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad No intro, let's cut straight to the guts. This (late yet agai...

Continue reading →

Just print this page out and turn up at Borders before the 2nd of August and get 30% of any 'full priced' book. Or that's what they say. If you want to buy more than one book, print out the corresponding number of coupons and if they tell you it's one book only, make a separat...

Continue reading →

Many of the comments on my previous posting have been about the monetary effects of budgets. While not dismissing the significance of money supply, I prefer to look at inflation in real demand terms and hence I like to focus on the Budgets effects on aggregate demand pressures...

Continue reading →

On ABC Lateline yesterday evening (25/7/07), the Prime Minister sought to offload any blame for the ugly inflation figures in the June quarter (up 0.9% for the quarter and 2.7% over the year in underlying terms) by pointing out that his government (unlike State Governments) ha...

Continue reading →

This is Andrew Bartlett's speech in the Senate upon the second reading of the Migration Amendment (Detention Arrangements) 2005 bill. The amendment itself is littered with the appearance of oversight and consistent process but none of it is compellable and the process can be h...

Continue reading →

Once again we're late with today's edition of Missing Link, but we do have a good excuse! Due to work pressures, Jason Soon is going on an extended Missing Link hiatus, and we've had to scope out a replacement. Stepping into Jason's shoes will be Peter Black, a contender for O...

Continue reading →

I couldn't help noticing this Reuters story at Fairfax Digital: BERLIN - A mysterious blonde has set pulses racing in Germany after walking into a petrol station wearing nothing but a pair of golden stilettos and a thin gold bracelet. Unlike the oz MSM, one of the advantages o...

Continue reading →

You may talk o' bat and ball An say Warneys great an all, An' pay omage to The Don just like yer mean it; But about that funny thing On yer head ol Dunga Gin Did yer get it cleared by Customs when yer brung it? cause weve got standards ere yknow Were not yer alf-baked bloomin...

Continue reading →

the BBC website alerted me today to the linked paper by my ex - Free University colleague Richard Tol, who is still an environmental economist but has become somewhat famous since. The paper and the i nterview makes fascinating and sobering reading. Let me give you some highli...

Continue reading →

A reminder that there's a bit of a 'do' on tomorrow night in Brisbane. At Hotel Bravo, 455 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley at 8 pm. A couple of maps are below the fold. If you'd like to come mbahnisch (at) gmail (dot) com would appreciate an email. See you there!

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

One of the the many things that has been preoccupying me lately (and not leaving time for blogging) is that Jen and I have decided to make it legal and get married. It's the second time for both of us, so we're aiming for a comfortable rather than glitzy event. The wedding is...

Continue reading →

Those crazy westralians. Telling us t'othersiders we would starve without them . Plains of our pastures boundless, Seas of our rainbow'd pearl, Destiny is your breezes Liberty's flag unfurl! That they supported the eastern car manufacturing with tariffs on coal and iron ore! T...

Continue reading →

That graph is from the 2001 census . One of the problems in Australian politics is that everything is viewed from the national level. From Imagining Australia : If our Indigenous people comprised one tenth rather than one fiftieth of the population there would be widespread ou...

Continue reading →

Not such a fat issue this time - on this anniversary of the 1944 bomb plot - which is just as well - you'd all be read out otherwise. Still, there's been lots of goodness on the intertubes, and I'll pop a few recommendations up front before hopping into Missing Link proper. Fi...

Continue reading →

Here's a repeat of some stuff I've written here at least a couple of times - on each occasion provoking the usual Pavlovian responses of rent seeking. Crikey rang me and asked me for a comment on the Ford closure which is reproduced below. In the wake of the downsizing of Ford...

Continue reading →

I've posted over the fold a draft of a speech I'm delivering at a seminar being held tomorrow on indigenous policy in the wake of the recent Howard-Brough intervention in the Northern Territory. In part it's a more reflective version of the angry post I wrote here at Troppo on...

Continue reading →

I'll be in Brisbane next Wednesday night - so it would be nice to see anyone who wants to come along. Mark B has posted some suggestions on LP . I can make it from around 8 pm.

Continue reading →

I sometimes get into trouble for drawing sentences to the attention of Troppodillians that look too light to me. Well maybe someone can set me straight. I've not checked out the cases, but they look wrong to me. Case 1. An 11-year-old Canberra boy who sexually assaulted a 12-y...

Continue reading →

Below the fold is an example of Telstra making life easy. I don't know if you've ever heard Mike Nichols and Elaine May's great sketch from 1960 but that's what it's been like. I may keep you posted if there is further cause. The initial email was in response to being told tha...

Continue reading →

Well, Mohammed Haneef and the Bail Dance... or not, as the case may be. It certainly got Ozblogistan going in a big way, with lots of lively commentary and legal input. For my money, bloggers really showed where they can do a much better job than the MSM, simply by being able...

Continue reading →

I have just disonnected a phone/fax machine which I've used as the main phone on my desk for years. It's of no further (foreseeable) use for me. So if you want it - the first person to arrange to get round here (to Port Melbourne) to pick it up can have it. Price: $0 The catch...

Continue reading →

My apologies to all and sundry; the reason Missing Link is late is because yours truly got overconfident about getting over the dreaded lurgi, which I'm now paying for in spades. Missing Link will be up this afternoon, after I've been to the doctor (yes, me going to a doctor;...

Continue reading →

Killing a night in Sydney I went to see Knocked Up which I'd heard good things about. Thoroughly accurate things. It's terrific. I'm afraid I couldn't take my eyes of Katherine Heigl. These are the unfair things that Hollywood does to us little people out here. Anyway, go and...

Continue reading →

KERRY O'BRIEN : Okay. The Federal Police were also given every opportunity to convince the magistrate hearing the case against Dr Haneef that he should be held in custody, and the magistrate rejected their arguments. Have federal police given you information that they haven't...

Continue reading →

California contributes approximately 14% of of the US GDP. If it were a nation its economy would rank just behind China's and Italy's for size. New South Wales contributes 33.1% of Australian GDP. Victoria is next with 24.2%, Queensland with 18.9% and Western Australia with 12...

Continue reading →

I've just been to see Romulus my father. To the left is a picture of the actual Romulus. The filmic version is another story. I enjoyed the book a lot when it came out. Recently I heard Raimond Gaita reading some sections of the book on 'first person' on the great Radio Nation...

Continue reading →

A couple of highlights from Radio National from Troppo's resident insomniac. This ship and its sister ships were built in the first decade or two of the twentieth century in a last ditch attempt to match steam power. They eked out an existence until 1949 running grain between...

Continue reading →

A friend of mine - Stephen Rimmer has proposed an Aboriginal Rights and Responsibilities Commission. If you're wondering what that might be, you get a clue from the fact that Stephen is an old hand at the Productivity Commission (having spent a great deal of his time in regula...

Continue reading →

Housing and blogging, blogging and housing. Since we did some navel gazing in the last issue, I thought we'd better leave the blog v MSM stoush to the news and politics section, and bring housing affordability up to the top of this issue of Missing Link. This is such a juicy t...

Continue reading →

News today that Prime Minister John Howard is on the nose in New South Wales must surely be a big blow to the morale of the Committee to re-elect the PM , that has been trying desperately to claw its way back into the game at this point of the election cycle. Machine Rudds ste...

Continue reading →

As Christopher Hitchens puts it: Try this: Call a TV station and tell them that you know the Antichrist is already on earth and is an adult Jewish male. See how far you get. Then try the same thing and add that you are the Rev. Jim-Bob Vermin. "Why, Reverend, come right on the...

Continue reading →

A couple of months ago I wrote a newsletter for Peach Home Loans clients on the price of housing. Ever since being put on the 'drip' of Hugh Paveletich's daily broadcast emails I've been intrigued by the argument that the massive rise in housing prices has been driven by gover...

Continue reading →

A whip around a couple of sites commenting on the Adelaide Festival of Ideas and the issue of 'MSM v blogging' leads me to post this observation. I think Radio National is a fine thing, but I much prefer it when a program finds someone who's written something interesting, the...

Continue reading →

A bit of navel gazing never hurt anyone, and in this issue, various bloggers engage our (oftimes troubled) relationship with the MSM, along with the role of new communications tools. Particularly worthwhile in this context is Peter Black's ongoing examination of Facebook v oth...

Continue reading →

Today, in essential reading for all patriots, Ruperts Organ of Freedom throbs big time with big ideas and larger than life loftiness. Beginning at Planet Janet we find ourselves once again saving Western Civilisation as she goes suborbital around Muslim Terror. Its Good v Evil...

Continue reading →

There has been a media and blogger gotcha moment when Nelson mentioned that armed intervention in Iraq was related to securing energy supplies. We know that the Carter Doctrine from 1980 stated clearly that the US would use military might in the Gulf region if American nationa...

Continue reading →

Well maybe not, but this review of what sounds like a great book is a great read. The book is The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. The author of the book is Paul Collier and the author of the review of it is Niall Fergusson....

Continue reading →

Last weekend Bruce Chapman sent me another of his little bits of econometrics about Don Bradman. Bruce calcualted how much the Don increased gate takings and concluded that the ACB got a pretty good deal when he batted! In any event, with due acknowledgement, here is Bruce's l...

Continue reading →

In an obvious bid for some inter-thread Missing Link stoushing, Amanda has decided to do her arts review as a series of links (or, alternatively - and more likely - I have seriously screwed something up). We are also down on some personnel, with Ken Parish still snowed under a...

Continue reading →

It's a good question which the Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA) had the good sense to ask Lateral Economics. You can take in our answer to the question in under 700 words as they appear in the Fin Review today, or at much greater length in the report we did...

Continue reading →

Another fascinating insight into the current Iraq counter insurgency strategy by Lt. Col. David Kilcullen. Reading this you can't help thinking that maybe - finally- they've got the right people on the job.

Continue reading →

Here's an early review of the iPhone . I'm not actually a fan of the iPod though it's amazing how large its market share is in a market in which it doesn't have many strong natural monopoly advantages - just 'first mover' advantages. It doesn't record radio so I buy other mach...

Continue reading →

First up, some housekeeping. The Missing Link crew have added a new committee member, and we'd like y'all to welcome Legal Eagle to the fold. For those of you who've been following this illustrious publication, you'd know that Legal Eagle is a young mum, legal academic and (fo...

Continue reading →

Every picture tells a story ... As a former Northern Territory public servant who spent over 20 years dealing with policy development and program management in a range of fields relating to Indigenous people, I wont dwell on my anger at the way the Brough/Howard plan was annou...

Continue reading →

The graph is from the ABS' population statistics from June 2006 . Queensland and Tasmania are the only ones that people are migrating too on a positive basis and Tasmania barely so. The migration to Queensland is mainly Novacumbrians where 289,000 moved to Queensland between 2...

Continue reading →

This post is exclusively for anyone who saw The Lives of Others , which I finally got around to seeing. If you haven't seen it, you won't know what I'm talking about; and what you do understand will spoil it for you anyway. I enjoyed it enormously, for all the reasons other di...

Continue reading →

I am prepared to give John Howard the benefit of the doubt on his Northern Territory intervention. If, over time, it reduces alcohol and drugs and child abuse (whether as a direct result of the federal intervention or indirectly by stirring the States into more vigorous action...

Continue reading →

Holden reports a 120 million loss . Ouch: Despite the Commodore maintaining its position as the number one selling vehicle down under in 2006, total revenues were down 7.8% over the period, which meant that Holden ended up with a substantial $123.7 million loss. That is about...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →

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...

Continue reading →