Surely the most spectacular and inspiring building of our lifetimes - and some others' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcDmloG3tXU

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Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time? by Pierre Azoulay, Christian Fons-Rosen, Joshua S. Graff Zivin Abstract: We study the extent to which eminent scientists shape the vitality of their fields by examining entry rates into the fields of 452 academic life scientists who...

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As I've argued elsewhere, most public debates on policy - and I suspect on pretty much everything else - tend to take place as culture wars. In a culture war the 'sides' are well defined - usually mapping pretty well onto 'left' and 'right' terrain. The identities of the vario...

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Among Australian economists, the reform years of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating (1983-1996) have achieved near mythical status. Their governments have been credited with opening up the country to foreign competition via reductions of the tariffs, freeing industry from the shackles...

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[caption id="attachment_28231" align="aligncenter" width="676"] From National Geographic[/caption] Julie Bishop is in strife with the left-leaning Twittersphere for making light of the plight of Pacific Islanders, who are seemingly in peril of sinking beneath the waves due to...

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Here for my sins is the text of another letter I have just submitted to the local Northern Territory News: Dear Editor The statement in your editorial of 2 December 2015 that "neither of the major political parties is in a position we would consider as ready to govern beyond 2...

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Here are a few gripes about really stupid things. I'm back to Android (the new LG built Nexus 5X) and much happier than with my iPhone. But why (oh why) when you press and hold the 'on/off' switch and the 'power off' option appears, does it appear as the only option? Why don't...

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When Adam Smith said that "people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public" I read that statement broadly. He clearly intended to refer to business people seeking to monopolise the ma...

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I can only assume that op-ed pundit/pop historian Peter FitzSimons must have been wrapping his trademark red vanity hijab too tightly around his head and cutting off the blood supply to the brain. It is the only plausible explanation for this idiotic piece: At the very same ti...

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With the Internet being a regular feature of our lives for about 20 years now, what have been the related developments that were hard to pick at the outset? What are the lessons? Five thoughts: Communication and personal expression is the main business of the Internet. That wa...

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If next Tuesday's Labor "no confidence" motion against the minority Giles Country Liberal government succeeds in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, it will mark the first real test of the 4 year fixed term election arrangements that have become increasingly common in...

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This article was published at UNSW's Gilbert & Tobin Centre for Public Law site Australian Public Law. However they seem to be having some virus/accessibility issues so I am parking the article here for the moment. Statehood for the Northern Territory is on the national politi...

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Many Troppo readers will know of Adele Horin who died just a few days ago. When I went to write a message of condolence on her blog I was surprised not to find a long list of people who'd come before me. After I wrote what I wrote I discovered why. The blog appears to be set t...

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The Twittersphere was abuzz with pointless debate a couple of weeks ago when Annabel Crabb had a televisual meal with Coalition hardman Scott Morrison on her perniciously vacuous program Kitchen Cabinet . My own views about that controversy are well encapsulated by Jennifer "N...

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I've created a categorised featured posts list to highlight the rich diversity of material posted here at Troppo. I intended to have it here on the front page but it takes up too much room. Please check it out over the fold. Politics INTERNATIONAL NATIONAL STATE/TERRITORY Open...

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When my niece Emma first told me the plot of the Hunger Games I was blown away. What a great story to reflect on our contemporary lives. A totalitarian state with media hype and reality TV at its cultural and political epicentre. A couple of kids - a boy and a girl - in the Hu...

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Today marks the end of a 20 year saga that has indelibly scarred my life and those of my daughter Bec and former wife Jenny. I've written partial accounts of it before here at Troppo. I hope you'll forgive another one, it's catharsis. On 27 July 1995 Jenny's mother Rene Chambe...

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I've written a few Northern Territory posts recently. This is another one, but it has some significant national implications (I think). Tuesday's announcement of Asian conglomerate Jemena as the preferred bidder to construct a gas pipeline connecting the Northern Territory to...

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There has been yet another failed political coup in Darwin overnight, with the minority CLP government failing to carry a motion to sack Independent (and erstwhile CLP) Speaker Kezia Purick. Keen watchers of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera known as Territory politics will...

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Could the High Court employ EU/UK/Canadian structured proportionality analysis recently embraced in McCloy v NSW to achieve a viable constitutional resolution of the dilemma posed by the need to protect secret national security information in anti-terrorism matters while at th...

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In an earlier post I argued the case for the 'middleware of democracy' arguing for the inculcation of the (largely social) skills that help constitute collective intelligence. Skills like having some small inkling of how ignorant we all are, listening to those with different o...

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Discretion in Hiring by Mitchell Hoffman, Lisa B. Kahn, Danielle Li - #21709 (LS) Who should make hiring decisions? We propose an empirical test for assessing whether firms should rely on hard metrics such as job test scores or grant managers discretion in making hiring decisi...

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At least according to our sleuthing, there are lots of films, but only six could reasonably be called Troppolicious, if indeed it is reasonable to call anything Troppolicious Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Dough Nat is an old Jewish baker who reluctantly hires A...

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Who knew that Alfred Marshall published an essay entitled "The Social Possibilities of Economic Chivalry" (1907) (pdf)? I didn't until I came upon it the other day. Having now read it, it's thoroughly Marshallian - very much of a piece with his dissenting meliorism which I dis...

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I examine the post-war economic development of two regions in southern Italy exposed to ma?a activity after the 1970s and apply synthetic control methods to estimate their economic performance in the absence of organised crime. The comparison of actual and counterfactual devel...

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The effective sacking of NT Corrective Services Commissioner Ken Middlebrook is sad but politically inevitable. It came in the wake of the escape and subsequent voluntary surrender of axe murder and rapist Edward Horrell from a Sentenced to a Job work gang near Nhulunbuy. Mini...

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Further to my post on Tuesday , the result in yesterday's High Court decision in NAAJA v NT [2015] HCA 41 will not have made either side completely happy. The Court upheld the validity of the NT government's "paperless arrest" law by a 6:1 majority i.e. the NT government won....

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When we know so little, it's incumbent on us all to show a little applied humility to interpreting the recent and much celebrated and punditised results about rising mortality amongst American whites. But I will at least say this. The results which Angus Deaton and his wife An...

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I understand that the High Court is likely to hand down its decision in North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency v Northern Territory of Australia (‘NAAJA v NT’) within the next week or so tomorrow. So what, you might say? The context – NT “paperless arrest’ law Well, the im...

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Who knows what's driving these graphs, but it's quite a piece of work for the latest Nobel laureate to drop into our consciousness. The paper's here .

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Sorry about this, but I managed to get this content up after the event was over. But thought I'd post it for the record as they say. As you were, as they say in the army. Festival Website | Films | Melbourne Schedule Top Picks What's the Time in Your World? Goli makes a snap d...

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There are just over 9 months until the 2016 Territory election next August, unless there’s a successful “no confidence” motion in the Legislative Assembly in the meantime, or next May’s Budget is rejected. Both those possibilities presently look fairly unlikely despite endless...

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Postscript photo of the event Yes folks you read that right. Erwin Fabian who came to Australia on the same prison ship as my Dad is having another exhibition and it's a special one. He's turning 100 and the sculptures are a revelation. The most expansive and expressive I've s...

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Curtesy of reading Susan Johnson's fine and latest novel The Landing and then following her on Twitter, I came to read this review . It's an interesting read, but I was intensely irritated with its preoccupation with the category of 'middlebrow'. It's not a question completely...

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Festival Website | Films | Melbourne Schedule Top Picks Youth (Opening Night) Two old friends vacation at a prestigious hotel in the Swiss Alps. Fred is a suave socialite and retired composer who the British royal family is pestering to play again. Mick is a film director rush...

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Last week I participated in a panel discussion that kicked off Melbourne Knowledge Week. MKW is a Good Thing that has been running for a few years. It was initiated by Melbourne City Council against the background thought that knowledge is becoming progressively more important...

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Better late than never - but this is definitely late - owing to some imaginary mechanical problems with the Troppo chopper Bronnie which was recently recovered from deep within a mine shaft near a golf course in Geelong. Festival Website | Films | Melbourne Schedule Top Picks...

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Sentenced to a Job is a prison-based program in the NT first planned under Labor but implemented and developed under the current Country Liberal government. It seems like a good idea but is it working? Crime and punishment are subjects that have fascinated me ever since I move...

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One of the great truisms of Australian politics is that federal/state relations are unavoidably bedevilled by "vertical fiscal imbalance", a phenomenon whereby the Commonwealth controls the great bulk of revenue-raising powers while the States bear the burden of providing many...

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NT Chief Minister Adam Giles announced yesterday that his government had signed a deal to lease the Darwin Port to the Chinese-owned Landbridge Group for 99 years for $506 million. The deal involves the NTG/Australian interests retaining a 20% interest in the ongoing port busi...

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Statehood for the Northern Territory is in the air again, with COAG having recently voted to support a statehood process (albeit with no assurances as to the outcome). Whether it was any more than a distraction tactic for both then PM Tony Abbott and the equally beleaguered NT...

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It's cute the way interventions in policy to influence people's behaviour is called "using behavioural insights". You could also call it commonsensically influencing people's behaviour based on the idea that they are not instantly, omnisciently optimising robots. Anyway, there...

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Discrimination and Worker Evaluation by Costas Cavounidis, Kevin Lang - #21612 (LS) Abstract: We develop a model of self-sustaining discrimination in wages, coupled with higher unemployment and shorter employment duration among blacks. While white workers are hired and retaine...

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https://youtu.be/4cAHL4LMNlY This observation is hardly a blindingly new insight, but it struck me that the video above is a kind of landmark. Google was the company that was information focused, engineering focused - and pretty good at user experience (UX) and all that stuff...

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Last weekend I flew down to Sydney partly to attend the 50th anniversary party for the Class of '65 from Harbord Primary School on the northern beaches. Many old school photos were exchanged, including the one above showing me (circled in red) at the age of seven. The function...

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I recall when I heard one of Australia's senior economists - a Good Guy IMO - observed that Aboriginal people very rarely drive taxis. It would be easy to portray this as racist. It is racist in the sense that it's making distinctions between people and generalisations about t...

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Education Research and Administrative Data by David N. Figlio, Krzysztof Karbownik, Kjell G. Salvanes Thanks to extraordinary and exponential improvements in data storage and computing capacities, it is now possible to collect, manage, and analyze data in magnitudes and in man...

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The great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy . . . A 'character,' as J.S. Mill says, "is a completely fashioned will". William James, The Laws of Habit "Taste" is a word and an idea that comes from another time. But I think it's...

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The Northern Territory Country Liberals’ early start to election campaigning looks to be just as chaotic as the rest of its term of government. The last month of taxpayer-funded blatantly party political advertising doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact on voters, except...

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I have a reminder from a dentist to go see him so he can check his handiwork putting a cap on one of my teeth. From memory this took four visits and cost several thousand dollars. He seems like a good dentist. Anyway, I'm sure he's following good practice in sending me the rem...

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As ever, here are the highlights of the Italian Film Festibule showing in a city near you with Melbourne times in the timetable below. There are even some five star movies. That's right five out of five, which is ten out of ten when you think about it in a sufficiently abstrac...

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Superstitions, Street Traffic, and Subjective Well-Being by Michael L. Anderson, Fangwen Lu, Yiran Zhang, Jun Yang, Ping Qin - #21551 (DEV EEE PE) Congestion plays a central role in urban and transportation economics. Existing estimates of congestion costs rely on stated or re...

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Henry Ergas offers let's say a bracing perspective on our increased refugee intake which is to say that we should profile refugees to try to screen out those with odious views - many of whom will be Muslims. It's quite compelling. Then again doing so opens a Pandora's box of c...

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https://youtu.be/QZAn7ZEvwek I know nothing of Jeremy Corbyn other than that he's reported to be about to win the leadership of the British Labour Party. The video above was literally the first I'd seen of him. But on looking at it I was struck by the similarity of his intervi...

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Nicholas Gruen recently posted about the high cost of civil court proceedings in Australia (and for that matter throughout the common law world): A more promising kind of imperialism would be the application of simple economic principles to the way various social systems are m...

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It's hardly a surprise, but somehow we put too much faith in competition, and not enough in all the other things like building capability not to mention a bunch of other things - not covered in the study below - like getting market architecture right, improving information flo...

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The Germans have surprised me by eagerly welcoming a million migrants originating from Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Africa and elsewhere. They seem to invite many more to join them in years to come. Why are they doing this? From the perspective of my Dutch upbringing, the Ger...

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One vice of academic discourse is the compulsion to cite authorities for the simplest, most commonsensical banalities ( Gruen, 2010 ). Anyway, for my own notes, I record a good example of this in the opening of a paper on vocational education and training. Teaching and innovat...

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Yes, folks flying high above the Pacific Ocean (which as Woody Allen's father concedes to his mother is a worse ocean than the Atlantic Ocean) I took in the final episode of the History Chanel's "Sons of Liberty" a mini-series about the American Revolution. I go for historical...

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Robert Waldman has a fantastic critique of Paul Romer's recent missives on economic science. He's commenting ultimately on why Lucas's work isn't such a breakthrough. In it he highlights something of immense importance. It's hard to think of many developments in economic theor...

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This is the second of two posts musing about Labor's failure to deal with the full implications of the neoliberal revolution that the Hawke-Keating government unleashed from 1985. That revolution was significantly easier for the Coalition to embrace, because extreme classical...

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The furore of the last few days over the Trade Union Royal Commission and revelations about serious and illegal underpayment of workers (especially foreign students) by 7-Eleven, Australia Post and others have brought into sharp focus a wider political question. This article d...

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The Impact of R&D Subsidy on Innovation: a Study of New Zealand Firms by Adam B. Jaffe, Trinh Le - #21479 (PR) Abstract: This paper examines the impact of government assistance through R&D grants on innovation output for firms in New Zealand. Using a large database that links...

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[caption id="attachment_27688" align="aligncenter" width="865"] The diagram is here [/caption]

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https://vimeo.com/136778702 Above is a panel discussion on the sharing economy with Jim Minifie, Ian Harper and me. There was a lot of good feedback on it after the event, so I was pleased to see it up on the Grattan website.

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I think I am in favour of gay marriage, on balance, with some reservations. I would not wave placards in the street, or even change my vote on this issue. Yet it seems that this moderate position is not considered ethical. There is almost zero tolerance among some people for a...

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One does not go about identifying the weaknesses of what another person says in order to prove that one is always right, but one seeks instead as far as possible to strengthen the other's viewpoint so that what the other person has to say becomes illuminating. Such an attitude...

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This article explains the idea being explored in Victoria for a 'victims redress' scheme for victims of institutional child abuse. It's clearly yet another scheme for cutting the dysfunctional legal system largely out of the action of providing redress for abuse and handing it...

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[caption id="attachment_27634" align="aligncenter" width="865"] Tips: The two most important things about a play - seriously really the most most important - are the quality of the play itself - the script - and the acting. Direction is also important. Lighting, sets, costumes...

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https://youtu.be/zs7XEEbQl_s In July last year I gave a talk to a Bitcoin conference and was whisked away (as one sometimes is) to give an interview that would be chopped up into 'grabs' for a doco on bitcoin. The 'uncut' interview (it's lightly cut, not uncut, but it's the fe...

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Vint Cerf is a serious guy or so I thought I was entitled to believe - he's one of the early architects of the internet. Anyway, with David Nordfors he's disrupting unemployment . How? He's got this amazing idea for an internet platform to match people who want to work with pe...

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John Pinder , "Economic Growth, Social Justice and Political Reform," in Richard Mayne (ed.), Europe Tomorrow: Sixteen Europeans Look Ahead (1972): "... the European Community appears to be moving towards a repetition of the old centralizing errors of the nation-states, by mak...

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My friend Martin Stewart-Weeks points me to this piece by Simon Griffiths which argues that "an engagement with Hayek does not mean a capitulation to the market". Quite. Indeed it's always struck me that it's a pity that Hayek pursued his ideas in such a tendentious way. He ha...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcsg-KIdDX4 The video above is a recording of the speeches at a funeral for my mother who died at around 10.15 am on Sunday 7th June. Sadly she was far gone - not with it for several years. As her mind gradually failed her, even when she didn't...

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Here's something I only noticed while writing a short piece for INTHEBLACK magazine : the rise of globalisation is not only slowing down almost to a halt, but in some places (like the Netherlands) may have been slowing down since around the turn of the century. That's well bef...

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Someone sent me this article by Keynes celebrating the Arts Council in the Listener shortly after World War II had been won in Europe. A world away, and worth a read. JMKeynes_Listener1945

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I followed a link on the site of a complexity theorist I know to this story by Ben Allen on this interesting site (which is mostly about complexity theory). Anyway, this story is not about complexity theory. It's about innocently dropping some kids off in a black neighbourhood...

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Everyone is charging into print on the smoking ruin that the Europeans will be leaving Greece after the latest barely believable debacle in which the newly elected government Syriza, after receiving the overwhelming support of its electorate to reject the punitive terms of the...

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[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="620"] Intriguingly there are two substantial permanent monuments to Magna Carta at Runnymede. Both are American. This one was erected by the US Bar Association in 1957.[/caption] I was recently asked to participate in a panel discussion...

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When I hear very serious people talk about confidence I often smell a rat. It's such an amorphous thing and impossible to observe directly. Clearly there are times when it matters a lot, but I suspect it matters most at points of extremity, not most of the time. We've had the...

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The Iranian Revolution of the late 1970s meant a huge shift in Middle-East politics and the relation between Islam and the rest. Within a period of just a few months, the ancient civilisation of Persia went from a strong ally of the West, to a committed enemy of Western intere...

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The deal yesterday morning between the Greek PM and the Eurozone Finance ministers is an agreement to reform before talks. By tomorrow evening, the Greek parliament has to accept 4 pieces of legislation on a large range of issues (pensions, labour markets, taxation), after whi...

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Despite the fact that Federal Labor has consistently led in opinion polls over the last year or so by between four and six percentage points, most pundits (including the writer) have very little confidence that Labor will win the next election. In fact I expect they will more...

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I've had a request that … people put a break in their posts further up - ie with less of the whole article on show. Seems like a fair suggestion, so I'm 'putting it out there' as my daughter sometimes says.

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As Greece's situation has gone in recent days from bad to worse to worser to even-worserer-than-that, I've seen a lot of claims that the European authorities treated Greece's private creditors too generously back in 2010-2012. My natural tendency was to accept those claims, pa...

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Click here for updated version

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The Greek referendum and the hype leading up to it have gone exactly according to my script of 8 days ago , where I predicted a resounding ‘no’ vote and a Grexit to stop the bank-run, with the other European politicians too offended and belittled by Tsipras and Varoufakis to o...

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I don't have much time to offer anything very considered but want to just say how bemused I am at the carryings on of Syriza. The whole sorry business has been horrible to watch with creditors showing no interest in their own self-interest let alone a little enlightenment in t...

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Greece owes the IMF 1.6 billion euro that it doesn’t have but is supposed to pay by tomorrow. Unless the ECB lends it to the Greeks, effectively converting the IMF debt into an ECB debt, Greece is bankrupt tomorrow. In months to come, much bigger debt repayments are scheduled...

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The chorus of public concern over the constitutionality of the Abbott government’s citizenship-stripping proposal is growing. Malcolm Turnbull has again been emboldened to break ranks with his Prime Minister while denying he is doing any such thing. It will be ironically appro...

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[caption id="attachment_27447" align="aligncenter" width="865"] Source: OECD. More here .[/caption] Wealth distribution is typically more unequal than income distribution - as inequality is cumulatively causative to some extent. I was alerted to the relatively equitable distri...

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Summary of the March Quarter [caption id="attachment_27434" align="alignright" width="350"] Above: NNI, GDP and HALE ($ bil) from Jun 2005 to the present (Q1 20015). The changes during the most recent quarter are contained inside the two vertical red lines at the right hand ma...

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In an earlier post I've talked about how 'performing' government drives a range of pathologies - in the case of the post I was suggesting it generates a kind of soft-secrecy. But it drives other pathologies - like bullshit. I put it thus : Imagine you’re a journalist who has t...

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Human rights lawyer Kerry Murphy has a very useful explanation of the weakness of judicial review as a safeguard against new laws foreshadowed by the Abbott government which would permit arbitrary ministerial stripping of Australians’ citizenship from those accused/suspected o...

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Abstract: Sesame Street is one of the largest early childhood interventions ever to take place. It was introduced in 1969 as an educational, early childhood program with the explicit goal of preparing preschool age children for school entry. Millions of children watched a typi...

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The supreme vice is shallowness Oscar Wilde to Bosie I went to see Love, Love, Love by the terrific actor's ensemble theatre company Red Stitch tonight. I'd previously seen Grounded which I thought was an Arthur Milleresque masterpiece which was very well delivered by the sing...

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The HALE index got a bit of attention this weekend owing to the way in which it highlights the cost of long-term unemployment. It's certainly a graphic illustration of the way in which GDP hides important developments from us. Mostly what people like about the HALE is the way...

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I met Adam Goodes very briefly in a restaurant in Randwick in 2000. He was then not well known but my sports-mad son Oliver noticed him and pestered me to let him request an autograph. I eventually relented and, when he trotted over, I signalled to Adam my apology at interrupt...

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Hold the presses - Coal may not be good for humanity. OK that was a cheap ideological shot - the kind you might see on our rival ideologically aligned blogs but surely not here at Club Pony. In any event, the graphic above is a remarkable illustration of the long lived effect...

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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="336"] This is the framework all Troppo authors use in their online reputation management (ORM). KPIs are reported monthly. If you notice any Troppo authors going off track, please shoot an email to reputationnaughties@clubtroppo.com.au[/...

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Paul Krugman has an interesting blog post on the extent to which there might be contagion from one area of social capital (or lack thereof) to another. He's responding to the claim CEOs made to him that they only started arcing up their pay demands when they saw sportspeople d...

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Festival Website | Films | Melbourne Schedule Top Picks Who Am I-No System is Safe Benjamin is a socially inept nobody. Max is handsome and charismatic. What these strangers have in common is computer hacking. After proving his skill, Benjamin is invited to join Max and his fr...

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by Shamena Anwar, Patrick Bayer, Randi Hjalmarsson. Publication is available here . This paper uses data from the Gothenburg District Court in Sweden and a research design that exploits the random assignment of politically appointed jurors (termed naemndemaen) to make three co...

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Queensland's judicial system looks to be in quite a bit of strife at present. The former Newman LNP government's ill-advised appointment of an utterly unsuitable Supreme Court Chief Justice in Tim Carmody is continuing to cause serious problems. Mercifully, at least Carmody CJ...

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I've written about what I call irreducibility at least twice before . Then along comes this nice article in the excellent new publication The Mandarin on the " 19 reasons why agencies find it hard to hire technologists ". It's a classic case of how top down systems don't manag...

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I've written about the phenomenon of discursive collapse several times on Troppo. The engine behind the phenomenon is the desire of the discipline to get on with what it's been doing - filling out some well recognised and somehow aesthetically pleasing research program. So whe...

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="334"] Warning, this diagram came up in a Google image search and is not to be taken too seriously. It's a jungle out there![/caption] With parts one and two here and here . . . in which I conclude the previous two posts with a column fo...

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Continued from Part One yesterday. [caption id="attachment_22531" align="alignright" width="404"] Well folks, when I put "Overton Window - Overton Juggernaut" into Google and looked for an image, this came up naturally enough. If the cap fits . . .[/caption] Over the last few...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVAmGArS0tU The Overton Window is a quite well known expression describing the demarcation between political/policy discussion that is and is not acceptable in mainstream discussion. Sometimes what removes your idea from the window is that, what...

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Adam Smith put it memorably above. I'll be forever grateful for my time at the Australian Centre for Social Innovation because it has shown me the generality of that statement. Whether Smith intended it or not, it applies not just to business people of the same trade, but to p...

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https://youtu.be/lUF6klWuB38 Yes, folks, every now and again you hear yourself talking in sound-bytes - well I do anyway. It's kind of fun - like when you look at those 3D pictures that were in vogue in the 1980s - I think there was one every week in the Good Weekend - and you...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqoXrjQQ9x8 This is a re-post of a post I did on Testament of Youth last December when the lead actress and I sat down to watch it for the first time (as you do). My excuse for reposting it is that the film has now been released in Australia and...

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https://youtu.be/n3AeM3Q9mU4 On a difficult subject, let's throw the conversation over to some people who know nothing about it, but who have flawless makeup on and vigorously assert mutually inconsistent propositions. If you think the first 90% of the video is exemplary, wait...

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I sent the passage below to my friend Alex Coram noting "I like this post from Brad Delong - though you may not". Alex, you see, has a deeper understanding than me of these things. I was right - he wasn't that impressed - but for reasons that I also agreed with and might have...

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https://youtu.be/sXlmF3eI9R0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcEfKovFzf0 The earlier ad was removed from YouTube. It was even schlockier than the second one I've put up here, but until I can find the other one again, it will now have to do. So are we here at Troppo - not to me...

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https://youtu.be/e3e2nNNJ7-4 Regular readers will know of my enthusiasm for the recent movie adaptation of Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth about the disaster that was WWI and how it blighted the lives of a generation. It's opening in Australia today - read my review on the...

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Delia Lawrie's announcement today that she was resigning as NT Labor Opposition Leader isn't really surprising in light of yesterday's news that Attorney-General John Elferink had referred her conduct over the Stella Maris controversy to both NT Police and the Director of Publ...

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Woolies and its marketers plumb the depths of vileness. Apparently they've taken it down with a delicious non-apology. It "regretted" it had caused offence. File next to corporate pedophilia under "The banality of corporate exploitation". Anyway, it's a worthy subject for a co...

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https://youtu.be/I4dglIt77Tc I expect l ots of Troppodillians will know of Stewart Lee - the guy in the video above - given how good I reckon he is, but I'd never heard of him until, at the beginning of the Easter weekend YouTube noticed I'd been checking comedians out to deci...

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( NB See my previous post on this important NT Supreme Court decision ). News that CLP Attorney-General John Elferink has referred the Delia Lawrie matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions is hardly a surprise, given adverse comments about her behaviour in a Supreme Court...

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[caption id="attachment_27165" align="alignright" width="300"] The old, heritage-listed Stella Maris Seamen's Mission in Darwin's CBD[/caption] Northern Territory Labor Opposition Leader Delia Lawrie is a fearsome political warrior, a divisive figure who seldom compromises or...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hN6HfGUGQBc If you think TroppoLabs is mainly about keeping the Merc Sports and Rooter in basic working order, think again!

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[caption id="attachment_27129" align="aligncenter" width="865"] From this link [/caption] [caption id="attachment_27128" align="aligncenter" width="865"] From this link [/caption]

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Grossly offensive political ads about the alleged dangers of Chinese purchase of electricity “poles and wires” during the last week of the New South Wales election campaign say much more about the Labor-affiliated unions who placed them than they do about the Baird government’...

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https://youtu.be/lGn8ZLMU1-Q Something that’s fun for chess patzers like me is watching really good players play blitz and seeing how much further their chess intuition goes. This is normally savoured at live tournaments but I just discovered Banter Blitz which pits grandmaste...

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In answer to my post earlier today about the data retention bill, frequent commenter Patrick Fitzgerald made a rather important point about the data retention zeitgeist: Embrace the panopticon Ken, buy yourself a webcam, attach it to your head and stream live 24×7. Plus for go...

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Data security and retention are very much in the news at the moment. Indeed the Abbott government’s data retention bill is currently being debated by the Senate and will inevitably be passed given that the Coalition did a deal with Labor whereby the latter will support it in r...

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I remember being excited when Barack Obama was elected, but largely because he was such a fine orator and black and reasonable. I didn't hold out very much expectation that this 'change' that we were supposed to be believing in would be all that exciting, though of course poli...

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Joe Hockey has received a lot of flack after his ‘thought bubble’ that first home buyers could be permitted to withdraw from their superannuation accounts to fund their home purchase. From the housing perspective, many have warned that faced with a fixed supply of housing, an...

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That Tony Abbott should have been forced this week to concede defeat on fiscal reform by declaring partial victory over “debt and deficit” (“the glass is half full”) is both ironic and fitting. As I discussed in a fairly recent post , Abbott was responsible for bringing to des...

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I drove for the best part of 11 hours over the last few days giving a Do Lecture (would you believe?) which was fun. In any event I listened to some seriously great radio. Inside the drug court I was riveted by three 50 minute docos on the NSW Drug Court. It really is a traged...

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Fellow Troppodilians, especially those resident in Canberra, may I commend this production of Black Diggers to you. I saw it last year in Sydney at a packed out matinee (only tickets available) at the Opera House on Australia Day! It was electrifying: great script drawing on e...

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[caption id="attachment_27054" align="aligncenter" width="865"] Source: OECD: Skills for social progress, Click on image to be taken to the publication[/caption]

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Oh well I guess snark can be justified as necessary to keeping standards above some rock bottom. Anyway, I did wonder whether this article on the Renaissance and innovation was the silliest thing written on either. Even ignoring the fact that he is about half a millennium out...

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We've gone from the assumption that there's a necessary tradeoff between efficiency and equity to a state in which it's almost de rigueur to point out the ways in which inequity can harm efficiency with quite some speed. Why even the OECD, while it hands homilies about how 're...

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Just as happens with dividend imputation in Australia , corporate structures are remarkably robust to seeing things from the shareholder perspective, leading Troppo's self-appointed Chief Economist and Joint Pontificator In-Chief to conclude that tax cuts to dividends offer th...

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From the latest Journal of Economic Perspectives Fair trade coffee is a cup half full, according to Raluca Dragusanu, Daniele Giovannucci, and Nathan Nunn in “The Economics of Fair Trade” (Summer 2014, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 217–36). We are not persuaded. The authors barely menti...

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Monday's column in the Fin published as "Debate should be on best-use, not ownership of public data" Data is in the news but we’re still working out how to think about it. Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ve got the Wrong Metaphor. Let me explain. There’s endless argy-bargy about who...

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Here's another post highlighting a film festival. It derives from my frustration at being able to actually work out what's worth seeing and when from festival propaganda which is mainly directed at trying to get you to go, not helping you work out what you'd like to see. Regul...

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[caption id="attachment_22531" align="alignleft" width="404"] My one remaining lobster cartoon saved from the flames[/caption] I once drew a whole book of cartoons featuring lobsters in various socially awkward situations. One of my favourites was of a lobster trying to get in...

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Some readers of this blog with know my preoccupation with the shortcomings of Vox Pop Democracy . Here are some aphorisms from David Van Reybrouck who's book Against elections does not appear to have been translated out of Dutch at this stage. They offer some interesting ways...

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HT Paul Monk who cites this as one of his favourite passages. It's now one of mine. And a nice explanation of how easy it is - whether within an organisation or the caverns of one's own riotous psyche - to slip into the pathologies of groupthink and self-deception. Somehow thi...

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The Dunera Boys' views of their own treatment separated very broadly into two camps which also had something of a geographic dimension. Some regarded their treatment - by a sadistic captain on board the Dunera and his not much better deputy - as a scandal and their incarcerati...

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Well folks, my bright idea of a link isn't working. We need 50 subscribers to qualify for the lowest price subscription to Crikey and so far only 30 people have made their way to the link and subscribed. And here's the crisis. For everyone to get the lowest price, we need 50 s...

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Here's yesterday's op ed for the Fin published as Technology education is about more than funding : STEM is all the rage in education – that’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. Part culture war against Australian mediocrity, part cargo cult, a principal goal is more...

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The people at Abbotsford Convent asked me to pen a 'shout' for their fundraising campaign. I'd recently been on a tour of the place, and though I'd been there before and wandered around curiously, on the tour I was transported by a Big Idea, though those who've read my stuff h...

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After two weeks of a new government in Greece, a Greek exit from the Euro (termed a ‘Grexit’) looks more and more likely. The betting markets give it about 30% to happen this year, and Greece is the out and out market favourite to exit the Euro before any other country. Though...

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Amidst all the depressing events of last week's failed leadership coup in the Northern Territory, there was at least one redeeming feature, at least for constitutional lawyers. Adam Giles' refusal to resign as Chief Minister, despite losing the confidence of the majority of hi...

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I've occasionally raised the issue of the class people travel on planes on this blog - and business class as conspicuous consumption. Anyway, I have just been made aware that Yanis Varoufakis's shuttle diplomacy is being done economy class. Good on him. (I'm naturally disposed...

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I saw The Imitation Game last night and enjoyed it very much. Engaging and really well paced. Go see it if you can. Keira Knightley was a disappointment. Her fate is a little like Helena Bonham Carter's. Spectacular looking Young Thing HBC ended up parlaying her prim young ing...

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*First published as "Abolish NT self-government". Last section now significantly rewritten. Political chaos continues in the Northern Territory in the wake of last Monday’s failed leadership coup against incumbent Chief Minister Adam Giles. Today’s Northern Territory News repo...

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Well folks, you heard the news late last week . The Troppo Crikey Subscription is on again. I've negotiated a rock bottom deal for Troppodillians. Again. Frankly the people at PrivateMedia never had a chance. But this year it was embarrassing. In fact they rolled over and inst...

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NB This post makes extensive use of the footnote plugin. The footnote numbers are very small, but they are hyperlinks so you can jump to them by clicking. NBB The fact that I argue below that a major reason for the demise of the Newman government was the standard template oppo...

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https://youtu.be/Zw3XfwyWU14 (If this video doesn't work try this one ) When the French and Russian Revolutions occurred, the existing order asserted itself through the intervention of foreign nations. Recognising this, and decrying it is not to endorse either revolution, but...

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Yes folks it's on again. The Annual Crikey Group Subscription. It's from this modest beginning that we funded Troppo's now world renowned garage of vehicles from the famed "Dave Sorenson" Mercedes Benz Sports which seems to spend more time at the panel beaters than on the road...

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Domestic violence is constantly in the news these days which can lead to the impression that the problem is increasing. To the extent that scrutiny and public discussion shines light in dark places, we might have expected the real underlying rates to be tapering. So I was more...

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As readers will know, I've been a fan of the way in which the internet generates reputational information which greatly improves the efficiency of markets. Still it's surprising how tricky these things are, something I've been pondering while using Airbnb for quite a few stays...

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When The Australian published Gary Johns' opinion piece ' No contraception, no dole ' nobody should have been surprised by what happened next. On 7's Sunrise program commentators described Johns' proposal as "off the planet" and "outrageous and backwards" while One Nation foun...

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On any trip one takes in a bunch of movies, at least on the plane. I've seen two that I heartily recommend. Belle dramatises (meladramatises?) the true story of a girl who was the product of a British military seaman in the 18th century and a black west indian woman. Before he...

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I meant to put this up earlier, but it's sat in 'drafts' for a month or more. Now it can be a new year's present to yourself. If you missed it last year, make this Four Corners doco on transgender kids the first doco you watch this year. The kids, and one adult interviewed are...

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