I've thought this for yonks: Few mainstream therapists would contemplate trying to persuade a gay man or lesbian to "grow up, get real, and stop being gay." But most insist that long-term sexual monogamy is "normal". This doesn't mean I'm throwing the switch to polygamy or wif...
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I went to see this movie owing to a misunderstanding. I heard that the director had directed Love Serenade and having enjoyed that, and hearing that this movie was good, and wanting to see a movie, I went along. The premise is, well, dull. A woman and her uncle settle into a b...
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subito constitit ante eltum tegumentum ferreum corporis tam occupatus fuerat in effugiendo e biblioghecca ut non animadvertisset quo iret. fortisan quod tenedbrae erant, haudquaquam agnovit ubi esset sciebat tegumentum ferreum corporis esse prope culina, sed debebat eesse quin...
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Well I can complain about the media till I'm blue in the face, they're after ratings, entertainment and so on. Anyway, I said to one journalist that it was 'crazy' that public servants who I knew read Troppo didn't comment, not because I don't understand that they don't want t...
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Economist Paul Frijters discusses whether the Western world will try to stop China and India's rise as the next economic super powers.
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It's pretty obvious that if science involves standing on the shoulders of giants (and the odd pygmy) then exclusive rights to ideas can slow down innovation. Still it's quite hard to demonstrate this. Some econometric studies are persuasive that it does. But there are presumab...
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Vietnam is the site of a rapidly emerging and evolving capitalism, something we may as well date to the introduction of Doi Moi (fn1) in the mid 80s.. Given my own interests , and continuing exposure to discussions about Adam Smith's ideas on the marketplace and sympathy , it'...
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Iris Murdoch and her very literary husband John Bayley had a term for going to literary festivals and talking on panels with names like "whither the novel". They called it 'whithering'. The Sydney Morning Herald asked for 1,500 words of withering on the tax system, which I str...
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Yes Troppodillians, you know what I think about this. So you may want to skip it, but I thought it worth putting my oar in on the subject. It seems so sad, with all the elements in place to blow the idiocy of fiscal populism away - to the enduring advantage of the ALP Governme...
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I have it under control. I flatter myself I can judge a film from the trailer, but I got it wrong in this case. It looked like a bunch of fancy special effects strung together with some half-baked premise about hacking people's dreams. I expected tedious chase scenes, endless...
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Popper is often perceived as an eccentric kind of positivist who adopted a slightly different take on the demarcation of science with the criterion of falsification in place of verification. People like Habermas and the late Richard Rorty regarded Popper as a positivist for al...
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Dear editor I wonder how many of the 84% of NT News respondents who think NT courts are too soft on criminals are aware of any of the following indisputable facts: NT judges and magistrates are tougher on crime than other states and territories. The NT has an imprisonment rate...
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I have just returned from a two week holiday in Vietnam expectedly with a wide range of observations with which to tire friends and relatives. There are a few though that relate heavily to economics and the sociology of markets and capitalism which are probably more of interes...
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Evidence-based policy is a buzzword that conjures up images of responsible government: difficult decisions taken after a careful examination of the evidence, tailored local experiments, and then implemented using the best advice available. Sounds good, no? As a buzzword, it is...
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White to play A Volokitin vs Rublevsky 16. ? See game for solution. about our puzzles
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Shrinking suburbs in growing cities "Lunchtime midweek in Campbelltown's main street in the heart of western Sydney is a slow-moving affair", writes the Australian's Jennifer Hewet t. "Cars drive in and out of the one-way street at a leisurely pace. Business is not exactly boo...
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The centrist and left-leaning commentariat have unanimously condemned Julia Gillard's (non) stance on climate change policy, an exercise in groupthink that would be stunning if it wasn't so predictable. Ben Cubby , Peter Hartcher , Lenore Taylor and Shaun Carne y all think Gil...
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I knew Neil Bessell at Burgmann College in the 1970s though I was not a good friend. I was shocked to hear that he'd died and asked Hugh Borrowman who is a friend of mine and who was also a good friend of Neil to send me the speech he gave at Neil's funeral. For those who knew...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM No doubt some have already seen this vid. I only just discovered it. Pretty gripping I think you'll agree.
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A nice story available in this article. HT: Serge Soudoplatoff A tramp passes by a restaurant, but does not enter, as he has too little money. The cook is furious to see a tramp in front of his place, rushes him, starts fighting with him, and eventually asks him for some money...
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No time to say much right now, but I was intrigued to see the People's Chamber. Why wouldn't I be? And disappointed it was scorned so instantly by various operatives around the traps. Of course the atmospherics for its introduction might have been better - this is a rescue ope...
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The editorial in the Herald hit the nail on the head this morning. Julia Gillard's population comments are purely symbolic. She advocates a 'sustainable population' but won't say what she means by that, and in any case has ruled out both avenues by which population growth migh...
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Following the efforts of James Farrell as to the many different things meant by lay folk and professionals by the word ‘belief’, I wanted to try to tackle the question from an economics points of view. Given that the methods and mindsets of economists are an amalgam of other s...
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One of the things I'd like to do in this election campaign is to draw attention to all the (most egregious) cases where the press engage in the mindlessness of "he said - she said" journalism. That is where they report various sides accusations of the other as if that then fin...
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I got this email from someone with whom I've been having an enjoyable correspondence for the last few months (though I've never physically met him). He's an Australian, living overseas, in his twenties or perhaps early thirties (I'm guessing) and is ideologically predisposed r...
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Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey must be hoping that very few voters have any understanding of the basic principles of statutory interpretation. Any who did would instantly realise that the Coalition's promise to amend the Electoral Act to force unions to repay the Australian Electo...
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Economist Paul Frijters reflects on the controversial Super Profits tax and the lessons the public and the government can take from the circus that surrounded the issue.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0_avwKo4S0&feature=youtu.be&a
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I recall when on the Cutler Panel into innovation being presented with lots of 'sentiment analysis' on the content of submissions - all 700 of them! I was rather sceptical of what could be got out of them. But I expect this is a more legitimate use of such techniques - which i...
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An honours student approached me to interview me on an interesting thesis she is writing currently entitled "The conceptualization of political participation by advocates of Government 2.0". Naturally enough I agreed to what turned out to be an excellent interview (I do like i...
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HT Michael Neilsen Tweet via one of my favourite websites .
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Ghana's New Patriotic Party went to the 2008 presidential election with a new slogan : "Moving Forward". Christiana Love's song ' Moving forward ' was played at party events and there was a dance that might be oddly familiar to Australians: Look at the way the New Patriotic Pa...
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The publication of Peter Coleman's collection of essays with some memories and reflections is a reminder of his remarkably productive career as a public intellectual. Those who do not share his politics should note that his first book in 1974 was a scathing critique of Austral...
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Here's a chart that appeared recently on the net - so you may be able to go find it or have already seen it. If you haven't, can you figure out what it might be of? The prize for winning is the usual (a Mercedes Sports).
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Hi all, I'm occasionally after people to help me make diagrams look flasher or more compelling than I have the talent, tools or time to do. I have one such task right now. It's probably not more than an hour's work right now but if you can do a good job of it I'm bound to have...
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Having visited the OECD and observed the strange way in which views are arrived at and prosecuted, I read all OECD commentary with a grain of salt. The OECD staff spotted my stuff for the BCA on independent fiscal policy in 1999 and flew me to Paris to present to a Senior Fina...
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Pretty interesting . . . Going Soft: How the Rise of Software Based Innovation Led to the Decline of Japan's IT Industry and the Resurgence of Silicon Valle y by Ashish Arora, Lee G. Branstetter, Matej Drev - #16156 (ITI PR) Abstract: This paper documents a shift in the nature...
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I don't have time to make the point I want to make at any length, but Chris Berg reminds us that dynamic tension can be a good thing in government and is, I think absolutely necessary to really good government. He is optimistic about Clegg and Cameron in the UK and in their ab...
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Jorg Guido Hulsmann, professor of economics at the University of Angers in France has written a magesterial biography of Ludwig von Mises , running over 1100 pages. This allows sufficient space to permit generous coverage of the historical and intellectual background with clos...
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Ed Prescott's a very clever fellow. Far cleverer than me. Then again it's pretty clear, it has been pretty clear for a long, long time, that he's crazy. But don't take my word for it. Take our friend Paul Krugman's .
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Yes folks, it's on again! Well it's probably not on, but someone wants me to pontificate on tax reform as one of a range of issues in some 'vision' pieces. I get to paint my own picture. But I wanted to throw things out to the crowd. What things did Henry get right, what wrong...
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From the NBER digest. U.S. hospitals were excluded from collective bargaining laws for three decades longer than other sectors because of fears that strikes by nurses might imperil patients' health. Today, while unionization has been declining in general, it is growing rapidly...
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One of the exciting things about Web 2.0 is the many ways in which it can cut through the rigidities and plain dysfunctional aspects of existing institutions. In this post on the Kaggle website, Anthony Goldbloom draws attention to the many ways in which Web 2.0 'marketplaces'...
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Amazing picture. HT Alan Davies at The Melbourne Urbanist This photograph, via Paul Romer , shows students in Guinea who go to the airport to study for exams because they don’t have electricity at home. The BBC reports that petrol stations, airports and even spaces under secur...
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I wrote up my own views about the power of 'consensus politics' here . Specifically I suggested that three aspects of a leader's performance involve whether: unity or division is emphasised there is a cult of the strong leader as opposed to the leader being seen as an orchestr...
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With Gillard as our new PM, a compromise has been done on the RSPT, rewarding the big mining companies for their negative campaigning. In this first post-mortem, I have some mopping up to do regarding two as yet undiscussed ‘reports’ brought out on the old RSPT, one by Ernst a...
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At Foreign Policy's Passport blog , Joshua Keating writes: "In a too-good-to-check item , the Daily Mirror reports that rapper Snoop Dogg recently attempted to rent the entire nation of Liechtenstein for a music video". Anyone prepared to do a bit of Googling will find the ren...
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Ayn Rand denounced social work as "monstrously evil". In a letter to philosopher John Hospers she declared that to "choose social work as a profession is to choose to be a professional parasite ." Ed Kilgore of the Progressive Policy Institute sees a Rand-like hostility bubbli...
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In a delightful doco, "In the Hands of the Gods", Diego's injunction is to "Love the ball, love the game". I love the sentiment and its simplicity. And I love the fact that he can still say it after all the game has brought him, and wrought upon him. Now on the sidelines, he i...
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At Catallaxy , Rafe pings Club Troppo for getting "excited by a report from the US which suggested that a large proportion of Republican voters have really silly ideas, indeed they are practically insane. Interesting to read that this result came from a survey commissioned by...
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From my recent Fin Column. Recent articles in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age - sister publications of the AFR - told us that Warwick McKibbin has concerns about the Labor government’s stimulus programs. As those newspapers say, McKibbin is a prominent economist: he is t...
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I don't doubt Krugman's right to suggest we're in the early stages of a Third Depression . The last few years have been a first instalment in what will prove to be a drawnout, volatile and painful downturn. I also agree it's "primarily [about] a failure of policy". Where we di...
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The front page of today's Sydney Morning Herald: We have Phillip Corey describing the changes to the Rent Tax . Dwarfing this, and by far the largest story on the front page : How a $7m advertising campaign saved a fortune . Thank god that when it comes to a major issue we hav...
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Alekhine was one of the greatest chess players that ever lived (I guess this is as opposed to those who haven't lived, but I digress). In WWI in 1916 he was wounded. I don't know if he was blinded by the war, but he played this blindfold game of chess. With a comical start, it...
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