Since some episodes are good and others bad, I could never see the point of being either a declared friend or enemy of Q&A. But the bad have so thoroughly outnumbered the good this year that I'm about ready to concede it's not worth watching. It hit rock bottom last night with...
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Peter Roebuck, the Fairfax cricket writer, has joined Mike Atherton in suggesting a boycott of Sri Lanka . For England that means next year; for Australia, next month. It's good to see that someone outside the cloisters of human rights activism is prepared to make a stand agai...
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'You go with the information you had...' I'm probably almost the last person to have seen Charles Ferguson's documentary Inside Job . But the film is still showing in a few cinemas in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, so it's worth making a belated recommendation. If only for th...
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Three things emerged from qanda last night . The first was that Malcolm Turnbull is out of control, and thinks he can undermine Tony Abbott at will. So there's some fun in store. The other two are closely related. One is that, whatever Bill Shorten learned in his MBA at the Me...
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Orpheus and Eurydice by Carlo Cignani (1628-1719) O everlasting gods! I see your lovely eyes and your beautiful face, and yet I cannot believe my own eyes! These are the sentiments of Orpheus on being reunited with Eurydice in Hades, but they are also the standard reaction to...
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A fertile collaboration A brief reflection, albeit belated, on the passing of Henryk Górecki won't be out of place in such a hive as ours of classical music enthusiasts. The Polish composer secured immortality with his Third Symphony. It's a shame the expression 'achingly beau...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh0jOiz7pXk Joan Sutherland has passed on. Inevitably, obituarians are taking the opportunity to contend that she was the greatest soprano, or even the greatest singer, of the post war period, or even of the 20th Century. Others are content just...
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This is a belated report on a debate on Islam versus Atheism at my campus. It was part of Islamic Awareness Week , orgainsed by the Muslim Students' Association. The official question for debate was 'Should God have a place in the 21st Century?', and the format was pretty stan...
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According to the logic of my last post on the political situation, when Andrew Wilkie declared his intention to support Labor, the other three independents should have followed suit after a dignified interval. I think the analysis was mostly right, except that, as Ken predicte...
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The world's most inscrutable man? I'm probably completely wrong about this, so please help me improve on the analysis. 1. Windsor, Oakeshott and Katter do not want another election. They mean to enjoy the leverage the election outcome has given them. 2. They have consistently...
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It's easier to declare a film a work of genius than to figure out its secret. But I think in the case of Boy , it's balance. This film tempts you at the start to expect a feel-good movie, but ends up steering clear of sentimentality. There's menace and heartbreak, but it doesn...
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In The New Republic this week Richard Just shines the spotlight on Barack Obama's hopelessly contradictory position on gay marriage. He compares it to Woodrow Wilson's pathetic attempts to dodge the issue of women's suffrage by claiming it was an issue for the states. The issu...
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When the boss wins the Christmas raffle it's customary to draw again, and I wish I could think of an excuse to offer the prize in the election tipping contest to someone else. But you have to hand it to Nicholas for getting the House of Representatives result spot on . Even if...
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I have no doubt about it. Labor will be returned with an increased majority. With one week to go, the election campaign has descended to a level of debate at which rational argument is irrelevant. There's little point in having a reasoned position on greenhouse policy, offshor...
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The floods in Pakistan have resulted in about 1,600 deaths, with many more expected (even disregarding the possibility of a cholera outbreak), and have stranded or displaced about 12 million people. The worst aspect seems to be that this is just a taste of what's to come, if t...
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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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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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I won't shed any tears for Kevin Rudd. He was an irritating smooth talker, incapable of commanding much personal affection. Julia Gillard seems a nicer person, conveys a deeper sense of commitment to social democratic values in contrast to Rudd's technocratic rhetoric, and is...
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This film won both the Palme D'Or and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film last year. Paul Martin endorsed it a couple of months ago, but since it's approaching the end of its run in Australian cinemas, I thought one last recommendation wouldn't hurt. I find myself in comple...
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Sinclair Davidson has extracted a concession from David Gruen at the Treasury regarding some purported evidence for the efficacy of recent fiscal policy, that appeared in the Budget Papers. But before we consider the specifics, it's worth thinking through how one would discove...
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So asks Don of Ed . It's sufficiently off-topic to warrant its own thread. Here's my own first stab at the question, but it's doubtless very unsophisticated, and sure to be substantially revised after a robust discussion. Belief has a wide variety of meanings connected by fami...
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Evolutionary psychologists have been busy proposing explanations for religiosity . Belief in transcendent conscious beings might promote survival, they argue, by instilling hope and optimism. Or it might be a by-product of other naturally selected susceptibilities, such as inf...
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Budget Week should in principle be a great opportunity for an educated national discussion about issues of public finance and macroeconomic management. But unfortunately the budget debate is always shrouded in such a thick fog of political rhetoric and misinformation that it t...
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“I’ve just felt I was living and breathing a George Orwell novel..." Update: JQ lists the pros (several) and cons (none). The reporting of the resource rent tax plan has been poor, and last night's ABC television coverage was a good example. In his 'Finance' segment of the New...
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Salman Khan's Khan Academy is an amazing labour of love, if you haven't come across it. Over a thousand video tutorials, each around ten minutes long, on subjects ranging from calculus and statistics, through biology, to modern history. But this is what's really mindboggling:...
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President Obama's 'Wall Street' speech on Thursday was good news for the future of capitalism and for civilisation as we know it. He seems to mean business, urging finance leaders and their Republican servants to accept the main elements of the bill now being prepared for the...
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I confess to not having read a proper biography of Leo Tolstoy. My conception of Tolstoy the man is based, unfortunately, on the relevant chapter of Paul Johnson's notorious Intellectuals . If you haven't come across this book, it's a series of case studies (or hatchet jobs) a...
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News stories about the current population debate tend to be prefaced with the factoid that 'on current trends Australia's population will reach 35 million in 2050'. We are supposed to find this startling, either because we've only just adjusted to the idea of our millions bein...
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Evelyn De Morgan, The Worship of Mammon (1909) An embarrassingly bad story on PM about economics versus Christianity spoiled my drive home on Good Friday. I suppose they need to present something about religion at Easter, but can't they do better than this? The hook for the st...
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Last year I asked what broader social purpose is served by schools competing for position on NAPLAN league tables . I emphasised both the meaninglessnesss of the information (reiterated recently by David Hardie in Crikey ) and the lack of any aggregate benefit from inducing fa...
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So Obama got his modest and compromised health care bill through Congress. For those who are more interested in policy than process, there's a pretty helpful summary of the legislation here . However, I hold the desirabilty of the reforms to be self-evident. The only serious i...
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Most of the initial reactions to Tony Abbott's maternity leave proposal have focussed on its political motivation , on how it squares with his personal ideology , and on reactions of the business lobby . As far as the politics are concerned, it looks like standard Howard era p...
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Regarding the Australian government's attitude to the war in Afghanistan, Hugh White had this to say on Lateline last night: I think they understand perfectly well that continuing to support the United States there is fairly important for our alliance management, but I don't d...
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While we're waiting for Ken's dissertation on the ethics of forcing minors to watch the Prime Minister's appearance on qanda , here are a few comments on the program itself. [Update: more from Mark Bahnisch ] Kevin Rudd and Tony Jones looked like twins, both prematurely white,...
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The February edition of The Monthly is out, including Robert Manne's eagerly-awaited 'Comment' on Windschuttle . Windschuttle attacked Manne in January's Quadrant , saying that he should stand down from his position at La Trobe, then on Monday went on ABC radio's Counterpoint...
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Serving it up to the hyperconnected generation I read The Dumbest Generation over Christmas, though it came out in 2008. It's a very satisfying polemic, as well as thoroughly researched -- to the extent that I'm competent to judge -- and its author Mark Bauerlein is a cut abov...
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Jumping the shark Untill Tuesday night Ian Plimer was the respectable face of climate scepticism in Australia. Plimer looks the part of the distinguished professor, and as a geologist gives the impression of understanding the long run forces affecting the earth's climate, as o...
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As usual I'm a year behind the publicity machine, so I missed the original reviews of this book , as well as the fanfare during the Sydney Writers' Festival, which the author Mark Rowlands attended. This post is for any reader who might have encountered The Philosopher and the...
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Every December since 2002 Sydney's Pinchgut Opera has produced an obscure baroque opera at the City Recital Hall. The company employs top-notch instrumentalists wth period instruments that produce an incredibly haunting and evocative blend of sounds; they gather outstanding so...
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''Hang on, woah woah woah woah!" If you believe Paul Sheehan we can thank Alan Jones for the demise of Malcolm Turnbull and the derailment of the CPRS. Every time a Liberal backbencher is asked why he or she withdrew their support for Ian MacFarlane's deal, the answer is the s...
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Mike Steketee was one of several commentators echoing Turnbull's point that the ETS is basically the policy that the Howard Government took to the 2007 election. He infers from this that the poor old Liberal Party has been captured by a rump of reactionaries who have taken adv...
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From the State Government that brings car racing to our most idyllic park, turns nature reserves over to shooters, refuses to cap political donations, reneges on public transport promises faster than it makes them, and philanders while its health system burns, it's nice to see...
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Julia Gillard has announced that the new national website for schools will include average NAPLAN scores. Principals hate the idea, as do some education academics . The Minister has responded to the criticisms by being uncharacteristically evasive . She invokes 'transparency',...
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Richard Ronald Brautigam:'What's really remarkable is not so much that he could compose something like this, but that he could play it.' I've only just managed to see In Search of Beethoven , and it's probably nearing the end of its inevitably short season. But it's still show...
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This is best viewed with its pair . Twenty years on, where do East Germans stand in economic terms? The Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft has reportedly published a study estimating that GDP per capita has risen in the east from 30 percent of that in the west in 1991 to 70 per...
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Tomorrow evening, as I've done on this date for the last two years, I'll put this sign on the front door: Trick-or-treaters: If you've come in a scary costume, please ring the bell. Otherwise, try again next year! It worked last year and the year before. In the preceding years...
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This is how Anke Hoeppner appeared when she played Leonore in Opera Queensland's production of Fidelio in July. On Saturday night she sang the same role in the Sydney Opera House in a cocktail dress (or some such thing) from the corner of the stage while Nicole Youl, in costum...
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At John P. Boerschig Ranches , they 'do have an organized Black Buck hunting package. This hunt is available at our Brackettville Ranch, which has excellent accommodations with all the comforts of home.' Is it ethical to hunt feral pigs for fun? James Valentine thinks so. He d...
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I attended the third and final session in the public forum series Getting to Grips with the Economy , organised by the Whitlam Institute at the Riverside Theatre in glorious Parramatta. This one featured John Quiggin , Steve Keen and the confessed non-blogger Guy Debelle from...
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I read Disgrace before seeing the film; thanks to that, once again , the film didn't have much impact in its own right. It was well made, as expected, and faithful to the novel. So the principal interest was in judging its merits as an adaptation, discovering small points of d...
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British Airways chair Willie Walsh has asked the company's 40,000 employees to work unpaid for a month to save the company and their jobs. The airline made a £401 million loss for the year ending in March. This seems to be due primarily to higher fuel prices, but partly to dec...
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From Usury Condemned (1643) by John Blaxton At a seminar yesterday the speaker described his project as one of discovering the conditions for an economy without interest on loans. In other words, what would the financial system of the ideal Islamic state be like? This raised a...
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The speakers were taking questions, and a member of the audience asked whether mandatory superannuation contributions had helped to insulate Australia from the GFC, by promoting saving and reducing borrowing. The keynote speaker, one David Gruen from the Treasury, replied that...
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Penélope Cruz? You decide. I saw Elegy last night. It's been around for a while but hadn't caught my attention, mainly because I haven't been paying much. These comments will be of interest only to readers who have seen the film, and might spoil it for someone who still intend...
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The definitive experiment, February 2008 Here's the picture to accompany my comment on Nicholas's post about big things. My point is just that, as a design dictum, 'bigger is better' does not supplant 'all things in proportion'. Malcolm Oliver, no doubt the undisputed authorit...
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I attended a graduation last week, and submitted to my usual ritual of explaining, to everyone who asked, why I sat in the stalls in mufti rather than on the dais in academic regalia. Some of my colleagues inform me that they hate graduations, either because they are bored by...
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New Page 1 I finally got around to seeing The Reader , and for once I'd read the book first (it helps that it's short). The film was well made. The acting was impressive, especially by young David Kross -- I was confirmed in my hypothesis that Kate Winslett deserved her Oscar...
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Regarding last night's Four Corners about Marcus Einfeld's disgrace , there are exactly two things to be said. The first is that it's a complete mystery why he approached the interview, made with Sarah Ferguson just before sentencing, in the way that he did. It would have been...
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In the February issue of Quadrant , Steven Kates laments the resurrection of Keynes , and warns his readers not to fall for the doctrines of a man who denied one of the key laws of economics. According to Kates, Say's Law is a proposition that since 1936 every economist has be...
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Last Sunday, on the same opinion page where John Hewson excoriated Peter Costello, Kerry-Anne Walsh wrote a piece defending Julie Bishop , and accusing her detractors of double standards. Bishop wasn't a bad performer. Yes, she made a few stumbles but the one that was most oft...
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Apologies to Nicholas, who I've just discovered has already reviewed this film . But I know he'll be consoled by the knowledge that readers will appreciate his wisdom and sobriety all the more when contrasted with my naive gushings. ----------------------------------- I saw An...
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For the third year running, On Line Opinion and Club Troppo are collaborating to collect an anthology of Australian blog posts from the previous year. The first handful have now been published at OLO ; by the end of the month the collection will grow to about forty articles. F...
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Qinghua Pei is being investigated by ICAC for allegedly trying to bribe a Year 5 teacher to write a favourable report on his son, and improve the boy's prospects of getting into a selective high school. What is the appropriate reaction to this? Here are a few to choose from: 1...
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UPDATE, 24 December: Many thanks for the nominations so far. We have enough to get started on, but would love to double the number. Therefore, we're extending the deadline to 10 January! But please post your nominations sooner rather than later, so we can get on with the judgi...
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Sara Macliver ....the best Pinchgut ever! I didn't really expect it to be. Though I admired their courage in picking such an obscure and, at first blush unsuitable, work, it seemd inconceivable that it would be as rapturously beautiful as, say, L'Orfeo or The Fairy Queen . But...
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"La Somme le roy", circa 1300, via Wikipedia I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women. 2 Samuel 1:26 (English Standard Version) What better definition could you ask for of '...
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Richard Hickox, 1948-2008 Another case of not appreciating something fully until you've lost it . I never met him, but spent many happy hours within metres of him, from my usual vantage point in Row B (the best value for money in the House), so I feel a certain bond. This was...
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Peter Beinart sees the rejection of Sarah Palin as the death knell of ratbag right-wing ideology as the Republicans' key to success in US politics. I hope he's right, and I'm going to propose a dialectical explanation for the demise of the Karl Rove Era. I was struck at the ti...
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The spirit of 1974: Man on Wire This is the most enjoyable documentary I ever watched. Andrew Denton's program on Philippe Petit contained quite a bit of the footage, but even if you saw that, you should still see the film. (And, whether or not you've seen or intend seeing the...
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This interview from The Daily Show is a few days old, and probably nothing new to Troppo's tuned-in readers. But it's too delightful to let anyone miss. John Stewart: Are you concerned, in some respects, that you may go in the voting booth, and your white half will suddenly de...
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Though it's late the day, I want to recommend Opera Australia's production of Billy Budd . There are only two performances left -- tonight (Monday 13 October) and Thursday. This is indeed short notice for tonight but, for the spontaneous among you, tickets are only $60 if you...
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Nicholas disapproved of Charlie Gibson's 'trick question' to Sarah Palin about the Bush Doctrine. He was especially struck that the question 'was asked by an interviewer who then went on to demonstrate that he didnt know what it was'. The question was only a trick insofar as i...
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George Kahn, 1948-2008 In late 1987, a group of 30 Australians traveled to Nicaragua to pick coffee in solidarity with the Sandinista revolution. On Christmas Day, as we waited at the airport in Mexico for our flight to Managua, we were joined by a tall, easy-going, laconic, 3...
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Am I the only newspaper reader who expects an opinion column to develop a coherent thread of argumentation, as distinct from a series of provocative comments stuck together precariously with specious howevers and therefores? The editors who approve these pieces evidently think...
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Catherine Carby, Rachelle Durkin and Gábor Bretz If one wants uniformity to be the basic rule for an opera, it is easy to see that a more perfect subject ... than 'Don Giovanni' is simply not to be contemplated. (Source) Was Kierkegaard right about this opera being the greates...
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The Herald's transport correspondent Linton Besser reinforces standard confused thinking about motorway tolls in yesterday's edition. He reports that the NSW Government's 'Cashback' scheme, whereby private motorists can claim reimbursement for the tolls they pay on the M4 and...
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'One of my closest friends is Turkish, and she won't have anything to do with Muslims, OK?' Camden Council has finally voted on the Quranic Society's development application, and has unanimously voted against it . We now have to wait and see whether the applicants will appeal,...
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It's not long since Paul Frijters raised the subject of paid maternity leave here, inspiring a long and stimulating discussion in the comments. The topic is in the air again, largely because the Productivity Commission has been looking into the issue. Unfortunately I stll have...
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Many thanks to the readers who responded to our joint Burma campaign with John Quiggin by donating to aid agencies assisting the victims of Cyclone Nargis. They include: Dylan Nicholson (100), John Warburton (100), Kim Weatherall (150), Stephen Luntz (350), Robert Merkel (100)...
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The Archibald Prize Exhibition at the NSW Art Gallery winds up on Sunday. That doesn't leave much time, but, having seen it myself now, I strongly endorse Nicholas's advice from two months ago -- see it if you can. And if you have children between seven and twenty, take them....
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Several readers have sent money to Burma's monks, via Avaaz . This is a progress report on Club Troppo's joint campain with John Quiggin to inspire reader donations to organisations assisting the victims of Cyclone Nargis in Burma. As John announced in an update yesterday, 'do...
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With tens of thousands dead ( possibly a hundred thousand ) and hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed, the disaster in Myanmar is approaching the scale of the December 2004 tsunami. The difference is that it's confined to one extremely poor country with particularly poor in...
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John Cargher is one of a handful of people who have been part of my consciousness for as long as I can I remember, and who are still doing their thing -- at least, he'll be in this category until tomorrow. There won't be many of these great constants left after that: a quick m...
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That's David Marr's verdict on the national song, and he asserts that many of his fellow best and brightest agree: EXTENSIVE soundings among delegates confirm I was not the only one who suddenly realised on Saturday morning as I was singing Advance Australia Fair that among th...
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Ructions in Boganville: the first Camden protest, back in November A keen follower of events in Camden, I didn't overlook the news that the Camden/Macarthur Residents' Group, led by that great community bridge builder Emil Sremchevich, has announced plans to hold more protests...
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Today's Herald reports that the NSW Treasury has done its own estimates of the costs of achieving various targets for carbon emissions. The NSW Treasurer, Michael Costa, said it would cost $430 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 per cent as outlined by Ross...
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So the cash rate has gone up to 7.25%, and the banks will probably raise their lending rates by more than 0.25%. We all understand the official reasons why the RBA has done this. The inflation rate is too high and shows no immediate signs of falling. It's too high because tota...
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Odnyam Odsuren as the young Temudjin So Mongol has lost out to The Counterfeiters in the Oscars and I'm aggrieved. Mind you, Mongo l was the only nominee in the Best Foreign Film category that I'd seen or indeed knew the first thing about, so I'm slightly biased. But I loved i...
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Can anyone explain why inflation rates are conventionally reported on a 'year-ended' basis, despite the fact that we have quarterly price indices? The Reserve Bank Governer's press release of 5 February said that CPI inflation on a year ended basis picked up to 3 per cent in t...
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The reaction to Nelson's speech The most interesting and puzzling thing about the Apology Day events was undoubtedly Brendan Nelson's speech . Having agreed to support the motion after a process of uninspiring vacillation, he might have been expected either to say something sh...
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There now seems to be majority, if not overwhelming, support for the Apology along the ideological spectrum. But it's clear from comments by several parliamentarians , as well as the resurfacing of an infamous email letter that Hansonism is alive and well. It's no great surpri...
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Coming out in March 2008 I've just finished reading American Fascists , in which the famous American war correspondent Chris Hedges presents a deeply unpleasant portrait of the Christian Right. Much of the story will be unsurprising to readers who've been paying attention to t...
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This week the Twentieth Century's seventh greatest mass murderer died a dignified death in his bed, amidst tributes from Western leaders. According to The Washington Post , President Bush sent his regrets over Suharto's death. "President Bush expresses his condolences to the p...
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As I took my seat to watch Atonement last night, I was thinking that I should have read the book first, and the feeling was even stronger by the time I walked out. It was beautifully filmed, and mostly very well acted. The chemistry between Keira Knightly and James McAvoy was...
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My friend George has been traveling in East Africa since October, starting in Ethiopia. He happened to be in Kenya for the elections, and his first-hand account of that fiasco, which he emailed to a few friends, deserves a wider audience. He wrote some illuminating notes on Et...
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I hereby announce 'Best Blog Posts of 2007', an anthology of writing from Australian independent blogs over the past year, which began appearing at On Line Opinion on 2 January. The selection and republication of the blog posts in this series is a collaboration between On Line...
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Fiona Campbell For the sake of completeness, here's a brief and belated reaction to Juditha Triumphans , which I previewed last week. The production surpassed even my very high expectations. As commenter John Greenfield noted, the sets were not lavish, but I thought the use of...
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Christophano Allori, Judith with the Head of Halophernes Every December Pinchgut Opera puts on on an opera at The City Recital Hall in Angel Place. Juditha Triumphans is their sixth production, following Semele , The Fairy Queen , L'Orfeo , Dardanus and Idomeneo . As usual the...
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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...
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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...
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"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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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I'll be interested to see what fallout there is from last night's Media Watch story on Alan Kohler . The topic for the week was the outsourcing of expert financial news and commentary on TV. In the case of commercial networks, it seems they have actually been paying getting pa...
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Mr Howard's new plan for NT indigenous communities, announced on Thursday, has overwhelmed other topics of debate on Australian political blogs. The question: has the PM finally summoned up the New Tampa his opponents have been expecting? tigtog thinks so , except that: Unlike...
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It's probably not worth responding to Tony Abbott's 'column' in yesterday's Herald , except to critcise the newspaper itself. Plenty of people have commented on how completely inappropriate it is to publish these thoroughly partisan polemics as opinion. It's one thing to repro...
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Quentin McDermott's Four Corners report on Telstra's management practices and their effect on employees was powerful and polished. I found it useful for several reasons. First, it revealed the secret of a large part of the productivity miracle of the 1990s. Of course this is n...
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In an earlier post I listed the main contentions of the happiness research program , and invited readers to contribute to the critique. The response was gratifying, and the student found them very helpful -- in the comments here, in further posts by John Quiggin and Don Arthur...
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The papers are reporting that Cardinal Pell is considering denying the Eucharist to politicians who vote for the stem cell bill currently before the NSW Parliament. The use by Catholic bishops of this particular sanction has caused a lot of acrimonious debate in the US, mostly...
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What if I go to Italy and my mother comes here looking for me? How will she find me? So asks Vanya, a six-year-old boy in a depressing orphanage in the middle of Russian nowhere. A nice Italian couple have applied to adopt him. This ought to be a profitable transaction for eve...
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According to Ross Gittins in the weekend Herald , There's been a lot of debate - and confusion - over the right way to assess the degree of stimulus the budget will impart to the economy and how this may affect interest rates. Well, he's dead right about the confusion. But unf...
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A few quick comments on Kevin Rudd's Budget Reply speech. 1. The text was very well crafted, full of clear undertakings and strong metaphors, and Rudd delivered it with a nice balance between enthusiasm and calm authority. There was none of Beazley's verbosity or Latham's tran...
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This is a film with lavish sets and costumes, set in Vienna , about the last years in the life of history's greatest composer. We see his life and work through the eyes of a fellow composer who, though less talented, uniquely comprehends the extent of the composer's genius. Th...
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Media ethics and psychology experts have been in great demand for their opinions on whether the American TV network NBC should have shown the video they received from Cho Seung-Hui, justifying his planned rampage. If you google 'Cho video public interest', the first page of hi...
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At last, a topic I can pontificate about off the top of my head. The case against PowerPoint, starting with yesterday's piece in the SMH by Anna Patty , and followed up by Dr Faustus (courtesy of today's Missing Link), is a textbook example of reasonable arguments leading to u...
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Astonishing revelations Nicholas has already alerted readers to John Quiggin's call for sponsors in The Great Shave. But apparently the wind has gone out of the sails , so he's asking for a bit more help. He will throw in $1000 of his own if the $2000 target is reached by Mond...
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Paul Frijtersâ inaugural post last week raised several interlocking issues around the theme of growth fetish. Iâd like to revisit one of them, namely the contribution of income to happiness. The timing is good, because one of our honours students is doing a dissertation on the...
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Peter Martinâs take: 'Where's the power, where's the passion?' In my fitful hours of semi-sleep, the Google Reader has become the Google Rider, a monstrous amusement park feature that looks like a jolly good challenge, but reduces you to a disoriented and quivering jelly. With...
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How John Quiggin sees the climate debate Soon this process will be automated. Someone will program the Google Reader to choose the best posts of the week and string them together with hilarious banter. But in the meantime I'll persevere with the manual method. News and politic...
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Something to hate I had hoped that Helen would set a mediocre standard for the new crop of Missing Link debutants, but was severely disappointed. Hers will be a hard act to follow. News and politics stuff Howard haters were on the march this weekend. Hater-in-Chief Tim Dunlop...
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Martyn Indyk put it like this: If the surge strategy is Plan A, we need to start thinking now about what the United States needs to do if it doesn't work. Indyk (who grew up in Australia) was United States Ambassador to Israel in 1995-97 and 2000-2001, and now directs the Saba...
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There hasnât been much discussion of the Iraq war on Club Troppo lately. But Iâm impatient to form an opinion about what the Coalition of the Willing should do in general, and what the Labor Party should advocate in particular. Since Australia is part of that Coalition, with a...
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Thanks to Nicholas for drawing my attention to this 2006 paper from Dani Rodrik , Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government (at Harvard University) and one of the current high priests of development economics. The paper is a revie...
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German police prosecutors have finally taken action in the case of Khaled Masri . Masri was the German citizen who was kidnapped by CIA agents in January 2004 and flown to a base in Afghanistan where he was held, interrogated and beaten for five months. The agency had apparent...
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These are detainees held in Santiago's National Studium after the coup, awaiting an uncertain, and in some cases hideous, fate. Thinking about them, should we be sorry that Pinochet managed in the end to evade a trial and sentence? Or should we rejoice that at least he lived l...
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Pursuant to Ken's ambition to make CT Australia's premium soccer and opera blog, it's my duty to announce that Opera Australia's production of Giulio Cesare launched its Melbourne season tonight. This is probably the best known of Handel's fifty or so operas, and, if that were...
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According to a story in today's Herald, plagiarism is rife at universities . Harriet Alexander reports that It is difficult to establish a total number of plagiarism cases across all universities because collection methods vary. But a conservative estimate is 3336 cases betwee...
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Adding to Don's observations below , here's a partial list of Friedman's achievements, with a score out of ten for each. The permanent income hypothesis. This was advanced in A Theory of The Consumption Function (1957). Keynes had argued that household consumption varies with...
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This is Imre Nagy speaking, the President of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic. Today at daybreak Soviet troops attacked our capital with the obvious intention of overthrowing the legal Hungarian democratic Government. Our troops are in combat. The Go...
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Fred's last post prompted several commenters to mention subsidies for private schools. It's worth taking a closer look at this issue in isolation. As Harry Clarke reminded us some time ago in a related discussion, subsidising private education is efficient if it reduces the bu...
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Edmund Phelps is a good choice for this year's Sviriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences . He's best known as the joint inventor, with Milton Friedman, of the concept of the natural rate of unemployment, in the late 1960s. The NRU essentially means full employment - or labo...
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Phillip Coorey in today's Herald praises the Opposition Leader for showing leadership in the debate over values. (In response to Howard's critique of Muslims who won't assimilate, Beazley proposed that vistors, including tourists, should sign a declaration on their visa form t...
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Via ex-coblogger Jason Soon , in case any Troppo readers haven't found it yet: Andrew's new blog . Andrew is an articulate and elegant writer, backs up his claims with facts and figures, avoids hyperbole, responds thoughtfully to reasoned criticism, and graciously concedes a p...
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Michael Duffy never wanted the soccer World Cup here. Now he has solid grounds for his dread. He was evidently grazing in the archives of the Library of Economics and Liberty, an indispensable resource for rightwing culture warriors, when he came upon t his anti-soccer polemic...
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'Unbelievable Win for the Socceroos' was how Michael Lynch of the SMH expressed it, and unbelievable was the exact word on my lips too when Tim Cahill's shot crashed off the post and back into the net, making the score 2-1. We couldn't find the game on any of our 35 TV chanels...
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When Ken Parish blogged on remote Aboriginal communities last week, prompting John Quiggin to blog more specifically on employment subsidies , I was reminded of the visit I paid last year with my family to Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park , twenty km north of Cairns. On that...
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Rafe Champion asks, apropos of nothing in particular, whether 'well-meaning socialists and big government interventionists learned anything from the failures of local policy and foreign aid to the poor states of the world?' Of course, it's a rhetorical question, because - as a...
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