Troppo readers may be wondering why I haven’t been blogging lately, after making a comeback several months ago after a long absence. The reason is that my wife Jen is in hospital dying from ovarian cancer. It’s very distressing, both for me and our daughter Jessica (not to men...

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Valiant attempts have been made to measure happiness and wellbeing. People much smarter than me have developed fancy indices, and people even smarter than that, such as our own Nicholas Gruen, has called bullshit on many of them . What I propose is something far simpler: make...

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One of the more curious phenomena of the last 18 months has been the fatalism on display on both sides of the lockdown divide. In the anti-lockdown brigade fatalism props up in the guise of "this was the inevitable outcome of decades of planning", a view of humanity wherein on...

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A major theme in our book " the Great Covid Panic " (now also on Kindle !) is how a whole layer of politicians, medical advisers, and opportunistic business people grabbed the opportunity for more power and money during the lockdowns of 2020-2021. We detail how they did it and...

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It's here, the booklet I am sure you have all been waiting for. The one which Gigi Foster and Michael Baker slaved over for 10 months . It is also on Kindle . It is dedicated to all the victims of the Panic, in poor countries and rich countries. They include our children, the...

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I visited Afghanistan only once, on a brief visit in 2014. I fell off a donkey to great hilarity of the local villagers, slept in a compound with the armed owner keeping watch the whole night, heard stories of how life was in Soviet times, and got a glimpse of why the Afghan p...

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I have been a utilitarian for about 30 years now and am seen in my academic work as an extreme version of the genre. I did my Phd on the topic . I do not merely say that governments should make policy for the benefit of the wellbeing of the population, but have spent years in...

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Wellbeing & Policy Making Book Launch Event on 1st July 5-6.30pm London Time. Attending the Launch is Free, the book is not! [blurb from Nancy Hey, director of the WW Centre for Wellbeing]: The What Works Centre for Wellbeing , and our commissioning partners at the ESRC: Econo...

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Now and then one should look up and see if there are any trends that are not usually talked about in the media but that say something big about how humanity is going. I here want to briefly discuss the latest data on four big trends: war, food, (hunger?) deaths, and inequality...

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Ed Diener , one of the best-known scholars of happiness died this week at the age of 76. He was known as Dr Happiness in the United States, well-known for his 7-item scale on wellbeing and his constant refrain that the secret to happiness is in warm social relations. I met Ed...

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Compared to the trends on January 2020, has Australia or Sweden lost more wellbeing in 2020? And which has seen the greater damage to expected future wellbeing years for after 2020? The Table below summarizes the answers to this. For the first calculation, let us only count th...

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As one the best illustrations of the way our minds deal with uncertainty, consider the following video. Please listen and watch at least 30 seconds so you can experience the three sequences of spoken words. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWGeUztTkRA[/embed] Pretty much...

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The animosity between the Chinese and Australian authorities is heating up, so we Westerners need to understand some of Chinese culture and politics. I do not have all the answers, but some 10 years of working and teaching on China have taught me about three traits that I hope...

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How will Western historians in 2050 remember 2020? In scenario 1, "The Great Panic, a lost generation", I sketch my best guess. Scenario 2, "A job well done" is the one I imagine many current Western governments hope is told. Scenario 3, "The dark path of the Great Panic", is...

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Dr. Joffe just posted a new article on the many negative effects of lockdowns in Canada and in the world as a whole. He really has put in a fantastic effort to source the evidence on the negative effects of the covid-related policies, digging up and critically evaluating nearl...

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A group of senior medical scientists have gotten together to pen an open petition to governments and society, calling for a herd immunity approach to the coronavirus. Signatories already include over 3000 "Medical & Public Health Scientists", 4000 "Medical Practitioners", and...

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One can tell many stories of how current times resemble some earlier historical period. The conflict between nationalism and internationalism, as personified by the controversies surrounding Brexit and Trump, has been seen as somewhat of a re-run of the conflict between fascis...

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[message: the "stay at home" firms will see their bored and lonely good young staff jump ship to the hip, drunk, snorting, and cavorting hard-work hard-play offices everyone loves to complain about.] The estimate from Transport for London is that 72% of workers are still not b...

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For months now, demographers and other social scientists have been predicting a covid baby bust because marriages were postponed , pubs were closed, anxiety levels were up, measured fertility intentions were down, sexual activity went down (in some reports), and economic uncer...

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Suppose you agree with me that containment and elimination strategies pursued regarding Covid-19 do far more harm than good. Suppose you also believe that having an open economy and a vibrant close-contact social life is vital for the long-run health of the country. You want t...

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The UK Office of National Statistics data on the wellbeing of the British population shows a unprecedented drop of about 10% in average wellbeing in the UK since March 2020. Anxiety levels almost doubled, slowly returning to normal, but wellbeing remains low as people are prev...

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There have long been scientists who were celebrities in their own time. Galileo, Keppler, Goodall, Linneus, Cousteau, Darwin, Smith, Leeuwenhoek, Da Vinci, Ibn Khaldhun, Curie, and many others in the last 800 years were followed and admired. They in many ways performed their s...

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There are 5 aspects of the covid-19 pandemic I really did not see coming, all pointing to a phenomenon that European sociologists of a century ago spent their whole lives describing, coming up with theories about crowds and their behaviour - theories now largely forgotten. Sch...

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If you, like me, believe our collective hysteria is needlessly causing the world tens of millions of deaths and enormous unhappiness , you surely need a bit of humour to keep going. So let’s view the whole crisis via a different lens and share the brilliance of UK government c...

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Let’s talk about some of the covid policy options facing Australia in the coming months and years. It seems to me we can either grasp the nettle and accept we will get a wave of highly visible covid-19 deaths before life returns to normal, or we can try and defend ourselves ag...

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[in progress: will add more references, links and latest numbers when I get the time] In this note, I want to deal with three related issues: the main lessons on the corona virus from the reported deaths across countries with different policies; the feasibility of different “e...

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The mass hysteria of the corona crisis is raging, with the resulting self-isolation of whole economies and populations. The loss seems greater with every new forecast on the economic collapse than I initially though t, and the benefit of imprisoning and terrorizing the populat...

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People shuffling in the street, afraid to look others in the eye, get close, and be accused. Fear as a silent ghost hovering above the city, watching us, like drones. The panic in the eye of the mother as her little toddler cycles by an older woman on the street, too close. Th...

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Consider the shown picture where you are the decision maker who can pull the lever of the train tracks to avoid the coming train from going straight. If you do not divert the train, one person, John, will get run over. He is elderly and suffering from many diseases. You know h...

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For almost a century the royal road to becoming a top politician in Anglo-Land was to study law and/or a bit of economics. In Australia that was the ticket for Keating, Hawke, Gillard, Howard, and Turnbull. In the US, that mold fit Obama (law), Clinton (law), and both GHW and...

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Yesterday I was chatting online about Wednesday evening's dreadful shooting massacre in Darwin (like many shocked people here). I posted a comment listing the various murder scenes, saying: "A fourth was murdered at 18 Gardens Hill Crescent (or Gardens Rd, not sure which)." A...

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Episode 5 of the final season of Game of Thrones showed us a vengeful fallen angle, Daenerys Targaryen, after whom thousands of children in the real world have been named. Even though her enemies had been defeated and surrendered, she nevertheless used her massive weapon, a fi...

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[I just read a self-help book and, like Don Quixote, need to vent...] My 10 rules for becoming a successful guru: Appear popular at the start : humans are just like dogs that follow other dogs. So have a legion of disciples and followers. Make them up when you start out. Don’t...

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The probability of a massive nuclear war the next 10 years between any of the 8 current nuclear powers (US, UK, France, Russia, India, Pakistan, NK, Israel) seems low. The bluster of the leaders is supposed to make the threat look a bit bigger than it is in order to get negoti...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Y3YOo7G3M&t=3096s Well, Happy New Year all. Here's a post introducing you to two people I admire. At least from the little I know of each, they lead lives that exemplify the virtues I believe in. They're common virtues, lots of people have the...

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Grandparents, Moms, or Dads? Why Children of Teen Mothers Do Worse in Life by Anna Aizer, Paul J. Devereux, Kjell G. Salvanes - #25165 (CH ED HE LS) Abstract: Women who give birth as teens have worse subsequent educational and labor market outcomes than women who have first bi...

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Like the world today, Europe in the 19 th century witnessed major shifts in the balance of power, with new technologies changing how life was lived. Otto von Bismarck, a Prussian, saw opportunities in that chaos. He unified the warring German principalities in 1870 via an unex...

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I saw this post by previous Troppo regular Richard 塚正 , the Troppo author previously known as Richard Green and tweeted a suggestion that he republish it here. To which I got the reply : "I long since lost my password and was too lazy to try and recover it. You can repost your...

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In all ways that we measure these things, physical violence has reduced in Western countries in the last 70 years, particularly mainland Western Europe. What about psychological violence though? Psychological violence, ie the inflicting of mental pain, takes many forms. It inc...

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Humanity is at a high point. What our ancestors dreamed of is slowly becoming a reality: a world without hunger in which the vast majority of mankind live peaceful and long lives. We are not there yet, but in Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and even in Africa (our cradle), m...

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National history is the story that binds ‘us who make up the nation’ into a single entity with a collective memory . It has a purpose and as such we can choose what historical events and realities to put into that story, whilst forgetting the rest. Of the four main current con...

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The #MeToo flood of stories of women who feel abused by men – ranging from lurid stares to straightforward rape – seems like a disaster to me for the Democrats. Not because of the stories themselves, but because of how the progressive media and commentators have reacted to it....

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Here at Troppo, we're not that big on inspirational videos. But, to use the immortal words of Groucho Marx, in this case the entire Troppo collective (which in this case includes me) is making an exception. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoNfszh7NxU

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[cross-posted, slightly updated, from Pearls and Limitations] Observations: About 40% of the population of Catalonia and its capital Barcelona was not born there, but largely comes from the rest of Spain. Internal migration is high , with about 0.4% of the population moving fr...

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https://youtu.be/FX_JF8o7ca8 https://youtu.be/aILtCv_T9vI We hurtle along the conveyor belt of life just hoping not to start hearing Frank Sinatra's "I did it my way" ringing in our ears too soon. So it was with some trepidation that I arranged a 60th birthday party. I'd not h...

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Let me indulge, purely for entertainment value, in some fan-speculation on what we will see on-screen after the Long Night is over and the final 6 episodes Of Game of Thrones are run in 2019. Let me first talk about the end-game aspects I think the books and the tv-series seem...

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[vimeo 224904259 w=500 h=328] Helen Parish Funeral 7Jul17 (1) from Ken Parish on Vimeo . As the first of the four offspring of Helen and Cecil Parish, my job is to deliver the first section of a two part eulogy, commemorating but most of all celebrating the life of our mother...

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John Clark died yesterday, a very sad day, he will be greatly missed RIP. This is my all time favorite piece of satire. Am sure that troppo can come up with more. https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM

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In part 1, I looked at whether it made sense to have random individuals inserted into parliament, or to let policies be decided by juries full of randomly chosen individuals. Both were argued to be unworkable and likely to lead to more corruption, rather than less: policies th...

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOvEwtDycs] Here at Troppo we have referred to the 'Yes Minister series' many times because of its brilliant commentary on the timeless issues of government, exemplified in the skit above. I have gone through three phases with the serie...

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I am seeking a lawyer to run an Adverse Action case connected to the recent Fair Work Commission verdict that found systematic breaches of procedures and procedural fairness in the University of Queensland's actions against me following my research on racial attitudes in Brisb...

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Political parties and institutions in Australia and the US are increasingly dominated by interest groups representing the few, leading to a large policy-induced increase in inequality in recent decades and a long raft of new policies favouring the few by giving them the tax re...

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I went to see The Secret River last night - and returned from the experience underwhelmed. It tries to be a truthful depiction of one aspect of the 'frontier wars' and so it presents a bunch of Europeans setting up shop in an area that the local indigenes (surprise, surprise)...

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Queensland boy Julian Assange seems set to walk out of the Ecuadorian embassy soon, hoping that the announcement by the UN human rights panel on the arbitrariness of his detention will protect him from being arrested. The baseline scenario is that he walks out, is quickly arre...

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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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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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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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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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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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Geo-engineering is increasingly looking like the only politically viable way of averting temperature rises above 2 degrees in the coming century. This is for three interlocking reasons: i) Any mayor country can try geo-engineering on its own without permission from anyone else...

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[caption id="attachment_26386" align="alignright" width="300"] Rosie Batty (insert son Luke)[/caption] I commend to you an article about homicide survivor, mother and crusader Rosie Batty by Martin McKenzie-Murray in the relatively new publication The Saturday Paper . I was pa...

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Today the people residing in Scotland can decide whether they want to see an independent Scotland or to have Scotland remain in the UK. The betting markets concur with the opinion polls and favour the status quo: the markets give roughly 20% chance that the ‘yes’ vote will win...

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Just a note to let people know of the unveiling of a magnificent portrait of my father , discovered some years after he died. It's in Canberra on Tuesday afternoon. Here's the invitation. Perhaps I'll see you there. Professor Rabee Tourky Professor Bruce Chapman Emeritus Profe...

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This doco is worth watching for its own sake. (Why are media organisations so dumb and unprepared to allow embedding of their videos - given that the vids themselves come with ads that are hard to avoid - but I digress …) What struck me is how different it would be today. The...

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“This hand is not the color of yours. But if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be the same color as yours. I am a man.” Standing Bear to a Nebraska court, May 1879. More here . HT Three Quarks

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I know I took the notion of optimising to heart as I learned it - implicitly - from my economist Dad. And there are those who might argue that the idea in economics came from the society around economists as the discipline came into being. But now it seems optimising as the he...

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In the last 5 years, I have made a point of giving clear predictions on complex socio-economic issues. I give predictions partially to improve my own understanding of humanity: nothing sharpens the thoughts as much as having to actually predict something. Another reason is as...

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Do countries that are already rich become even happier when they become yet richer? This was the essential question on which I entered a gentleman’s bet in 2004 with Andrew Leigh and which just recently got settled. The reason for the bet was a famous hypothesis in happiness r...

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This piece is inspired by Paul Frijters' post titled The Benefits of Being Dumb in Politics . I don't actually think it is possible meaningfully/reliably to distinguish between politicians who are "really smart and great actors as well, who thus have no problems with telling o...

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Some memories fade too slowly. I was reminded of one such memory by the TV advertisement being aired in the lead up to White Ribbon Day tomorrow (Monday 25 November). It was late morning on Friday, 20 September and I was at the local Magistrate’s Court on a court visit for the...

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How do health and wellbeing correlate, and how do they correlate across countries? No problem, check out this interesting graph which I found in this OECD report on wellbeing through the crisis. I wonder how New Zealand does it - all that equity of health outcomes? Perhaps it'...

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I love accents. I love pretty much everything about them. I love the way in which they actually convey things - sincerity, guile, sneering, superiority and their opposites and complements - all surreptitiously; all in a way that is at the same time so compelling to our intuiti...

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It was around six thirty on a cold wet Melbourne Day. A long day for me, including a mid-morning appointment with a new psychologist. First appointments are all about background – what your condition is, personal and family history and all that other stuff that they need to kn...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaqpoeVgr8U One of the numerous downsides of the rise of feminism is the demise of righteous masculine anger. For the record I'm strongly supportive of the great achievements of first and second wave feminism. But just as with other great changes...

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One type of news item I notice often – because it confirms a belief that I like to maintain – reports that a recent psychological study has found that the most effective way to give yourself a quick happiness fix is to do someone else a favour. The most recent I remember repor...

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http://youtu.be/ge7i60GuNRg

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http://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water-1 http://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water-2 HT Brainpickings from a while ago. [H]ere's something . . . that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is a...

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Prelude: Lento It's after midnight and the other members of the household are either asleep or pursuing their own consolations in the silence of their own rooms. So, much as I might desire the consolation of recorded orchestral music played at concert hall volume, it just woul...

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http://youtu.be/nuIiqKytvnU I saw a preview tonight. Incredible, fabulous stuff. Go if you can.

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Stepping out in her new role for the Guardian, Katharine Murphy contacted me and asked me for an economic question to put to the PM. It was nice of her to ask, and I thought it a worthy challenge, but couldn't really come up with much for a day or so. I didn't want it to be a...

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http://youtu.be/C8IlMYeS23w

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Imagine yourself to be in the mythical Land of Beyond where you need minions to do a dirty job that men with honour would refuse to do. A classic trick in this situation is to pick people despised by the rest of society who are thus dependent on protection and will simply do w...

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People of Groupon, After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today. If you're wondering why ... you haven't been paying attention. From controversial metrics in...

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We empirically test the relationship between hiring discrimination and labour market tightness at the level of the occupation. To this end, we conduct a correspondence test in the youth labour market. In line with theoretical expectations, we find that, compared to natives, ca...

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I had the good fortune to see this remarkable thing recently. And I thought as I was in the Sistine Chapel something I've thought before and have probably pontificated about here at pontification central. (Checking I find this post for instance). Why are there not more facsimi...

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When a tennis player decides if and when to use their rights to 'video review' of points they are trying to solve cognitive and tactical problems. When a cricket captain decides to review an umpire's decision there's an additional problem. Challenges have been rationed by desi...

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I think my mother once told me that there was a Jewish proverb that when a child dies before it's parent, even God weeps. (She isn't Jewish by the way). Anyway, here's the data . (pdf) The death of a child is one of the most traumatic experiences that a parent can experience....

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Looking at the newspapers you’d think Catholicism is having a hard time with philandering priests and cover-ups of their doings being found out on a weekly basis. Dutch and German newspapers kept track for a while of the regional frequencies of new cases of sexual misconduct a...

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I couldn’t resist buying a copy of Daniel Kahneman’s best-seller when returning from holidays. Several friends and colleagues told me it was a great book; it got great reviews; and Kahneman’s journal articles are invariably a good read, so I was curious. Its general message is...

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[caption id="attachment_20927" align="alignright" width="300"] Father Frank Flynn (left)[/caption] I was deeply disturbed by Monday's Four Corners program on child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, not because it's any news as such but because very little seems to have changed...

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It's a pity Twitter doesn't allow slightly longer threads. Otherwise I'd post this there. I just ran across it in a John Kay book and I think it's delightful. It's the introduction to a section on Advertising. My uncle was a Scottish pharmacist of scrupulous integrity. When as...

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I've offered Troppodillians several of Constantine Cavafy's poems. They're magnificent. I haven't actually managed to elicit a comment on any of them, but perhaps they're being enjoyed anyway. I'm told they're of a different order in the original. But I wouldn't know. Here's o...

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The more they change Here are two facts about the world which won't return any time soon. Good facts. The first is that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a paraplegic. Now of course you knew that, but the fact associated with it is that noone knew. The mores of the time were the o...

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Regular readers will be familiar with my dismay at the kind of bumph that passes for strategic planning . I recall as 'thinker in residence' at a one of the major departments in Canberra having a discussion with senior management about Web 2.0 and innovation in government. The...

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Human beings only play when they are in the full sense of the word human and they are only fully human when they play. Friedrich Shiller Games seem frivolous. They can stand as metaphors for life, but typically, the outcome of games doesn't really matter. I wanted Collingwood...

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Yesterday I followed this mellifluously titled article on why the author hadn't been able to write a best selling 'ideas book'. This is what I had to do. First, I needed to have a platform. A platform is something you stand on. It makes you taller than you are. In trade publis...

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I've been struggling to articulate my objection to little strategic set pieces which appear before policy proposals. They typically take the salient challenges from conventional wisdom - for instance right now that we're facing potential environmental catastrophe, sovereign de...

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="470" caption="Manning and and Dymphna on the veranda of their house at Wapengo on the NSW South Coast"] [/caption] Inside Story has just published an essay by me in which I try to figure out Manning Clark. I was working on this within t...

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The reported death of old-time Sydney crim ''Nervous'' Norm Beves has provoked my nostalgia gland. According to the SMH : Nervous Norm's criminal ineptitude was so legendary that for years ''Norm's form'' was used as the case study on recidivism for police officers studying to...

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How persistent are cultural traits? This paper uses data on anti-Semitism in Germany and finds continuity at the local level over more than half a millennium. When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was un...

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Someone in the ABC recommended the Foreign Correspondent of a couple of weeks ago which can be seen on iView - amazing scenes of the Japanese tsunami. Watch it if you can - pretty spellbinding I'd say. And I've been listening to ' First Person ' on weekday mornings, which is a...

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This story triggered a bit of childhood reminiscence, not to mention reflection on how times have changed: A West Australian teacher who allegedly tied a five-year-old boy to a chair to punish him for misbehaving has been stood aside while the case is investigated. When I was...

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As you may know, the Dunera brought a bunch of people out to Australia who settled in very nicely and added to the place. A coach of olympic runners, numerous professors, some rich entrepreneurs. I don't know if Fred Lowen and Ernst Roedeck got rich but they founded FLER and w...

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Well it's an overused word right now but have a look at this if you've not seen it before - it's lovely. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkGeOWYOFoA

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Happiness is a recurrent topic in the blogosphere, not least at Troppo where several of us have posted abou t it more than once. There's even a strand of economics that focuses on studying happiness. In part that's why it struck me as a bit strange that Australian writer David...

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See over page for Troppo's exclusive revelations. The other day I discovered a new expression: "click-bait". It was used on ABC Media Watch in connection with a concocted story repeatedly published on News Ltd websites about a German bloke allegedly killed and eaten by his own...

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I was browsing in borders and came upon American Essays of the Century (ie the last one) edited by Joyce Carol Oates. Which was very tempting. I would have bought it if it wasn't $45 too. But I read the essay below - full as it is of what are now cliches of the civil rights mo...

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This post began as a response to Julia Thornton's brief comment on a previous post in which I outed myself as a fan of the philosopher Hegel, directing me to a site where Hegelians roamed free. It's an interesting thing what we make of what we learn at uni - and to some extent...

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Envy and Altruism in Children Date: 2010-09-17 By: Kirsten Häger (School of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich Schiller University Jena) URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2010-063&r=exp Envy and altruism have been studied extensively in adults. Here, w...

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By: Li King King (Strategic Interaction Group, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena) This paper investigates whether language priming activates different cultural identities and norms associated with the language communicated; bilingual subjects are given Chinese instructio...

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Urban legend has it that the hemline is correlated with the economy. In times of decline, the hemline moves towards the floor (decreases), and when the economy is booming, skirts get shorter and the hemline increases. We collected monthly data on the hemline, for 1921-2009, an...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMxz7rzwee8 Paddy McGuinness once opined about the chasm between consultant and academic speak in the realm of economics. I think it was in the context of the battle between the mush served up by the consultants which became BCG in Australia in t...

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Well it kept me in suspense until the last few pages. The speech is well worth reading and is here (pdf).

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I've thought this for yonks: Few mainstream therapists would contemplate trying to persuade a gay man or lesbian to "grow up, get real, and stop being gay." But most insist that long-term sexual monogamy is "normal". This doesn't mean I'm throwing the switch to polygamy or wif...

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Thoughts on reading this psychologist's write up of the Gulf of Mexico disaster: A long time ago I stopped calling my Mum a Labor supporter and called her a Labor barracker. She's disdainful of my interest in football - a thoroughly trivial activity which is arresting for thos...

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Warren Buffett when asked to sum up the basic point of life went for this formulation. The purpose of life is to be loved by as many people as possible among those you want to have love you. Remarkably similar to Adam Smith's formulation actually - that what we crave most is d...

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And why not? I wonder what his golf handicap is.

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By Maggie Koerth-Baker . HT: Peter Martin

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I'm occasionally asked by local ABC Morning Show host Leon Compton to be a panellist on a Friday segment titled "3 Big Questions". It involves three local media or superannuated political luminaries musing about political and sometimes more general issues of the day. I was on...

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Ever since I read his marvellous The Truth about Markets I've been a fan of John Kay - an economist who doesn't like to get too far away from reality. He's also not a zealot for any particular view of the world, except that pathetic kind of vagueness and pluralism to which I a...

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Down here in Victoria (well I'm not there right now but will return in late Jan) things have turned nasty as the Indian Government keeps pointing out when we kill another Indian. I'm not as concerned as some other people as to whether it's racially based violence. It's violenc...

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Today Artworks is replaying a program from May on Erwin Fabian - possibly the oldest surviving Dunera boy who continues to sculpt every day in his studio in North Melbourne. I have posted on him a few times before . I teed up an oral history project to record Erwin's recollect...

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The Atlantic Monthly writes up Facebook's happiness index - they call it Gross National Happiness, but it's not - it's net of unhappiness - at least as measured. I'm a sceptic as to what conclusions one can draw from this, but one can see that killing some pirates rates as the...

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A bit of holiday trivia for you. I came upon a form of tourism I didn't quite believe. "Travelling Gentlemen" accompanied their countrymen to the Crimean War, and set up out of cannon range from the battlefields with their wives and hounds and had a jolly good time of it. Thei...

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Balmain is not just the city of basket weavers it is also a place to find thinking drinkers and binge thinkers. Put this in your list of favorites. Shaken and Stirred , the brainchild of Parnell McGuinness and Leonie Phillips, is a space for the free exchange of opinions witho...

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A few of my posts dotted about celebrate events like what seemed to be the truly contrite reaction of Allan McAlister on discovering how badly he'd handled the Nicky Winmar incident at Victoria Park all those years ago. This video is about a now famous event in which a truly e...

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As someone once said (was it TS Elliot?) human beings cant stand very much reality. Every now and again communities, and sometimes whole nations go potty - psychotic. Jonestown is perhaps one of the best examples, although it was a kind of concentrated community a cult which a...

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Karl Rove charges 7K, Sarah Palin 25K. Not to mention some of our own politicians. I think this is a terrific idea and I'm open for bids.

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I'm sitting in a queue waiting for a Tiger plane from Melbourne to Perth. There's a good chance you'll not get on the plane if you don't arrive 45 minutes early. They're a budget airline you see. Well this is all very well, but in a thin market like ours when they often have f...

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My family is staunchly lower class English on my dad's side (his mother emigrated from England as a lady's maid and then started a chicken farm in Greenacre in Sydney's western suburbs) and bog Irish/Scottish Catholic on my mum's side. However, not much is known about my mater...

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I think the Dave Beeton Special, hereafter known as the DBS was the greatest concession Dave ever made to how things actually are in the world. Consequences were not his strong point which meant that every moment came to him as a sort of surprise. This genuine innocence and de...

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Last days in the sanctuary of a loving family Body still and quiet now the great loving generous funny-if-infuriating spirit has left it behind ... When the doctor telling Dave he was about to die started crying, he placed his hand gently on her shoulder saying "Don't worry Do...

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Cross Posted from Gov2.net.au . Its a truism that the public sector is risk averse and that thats one of the things holding up the adoption of Web 2.0 approaches and indeed quite a few Web 1.0 approaches. I dont think this is inaccurate, but its also too general a statement to...

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I can't think of a single song of his that is a really big favourite of mine. But has there ever been any big star who was more of a genius as a dancer? Surely not. Not even Fred Astair comes close.

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Yum. My favourite. I just got sent this by email from in inimitable Tim Harkowitz. Others please feel free to add to Troppo's stock of Jewish jokes in comments. There is a very pious Jew named Goldberg who attends synagogue every Sabbath. Every Sabbath, he prays: God, I have b...

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Shit Box Cardboard crapper Click to enlarge Little Jack - Blue Little Jack - Pink In Stock £14.99 Shit Box In Stock £15.99 Show prices in Euros and US Dollars Next Day Delivery is available. Order by 4pm > Poos. We all do them (except Her Maj, of course). The trouble is, dropp...

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Ken: G'day Tab. Tab: G'day Ken. What are ya doin'? Ken: Just sitting here reading the Sunday paper and eating these squid satays ... Tab: Mind if I join you? Ken: Not at all. Pull up a chair ... Tab: What are you doing these days? (I represented him at one stage in one of his...

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I had a knee operated on last Thursday. Having had almost exactly the same thing done on the other knee a couple of years ago, I told my doctor I wasn't that happy with the way I was treated, and asked if he could suggest anyone else. Though it's a very minor procedure, it's s...

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HT Michael Neilson

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When Ross Gittins asked me to write a couple of columns in his place as he went on leave I agreed and realised shortly afterwards that they would coincide more or less with the 250th anniversary of the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments . So I decided I'd try to wri...

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Reclaiming Americas Soul, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times : Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. So declared President Obama, after his commendable decision to release the legal memos that his predecessor used to justify tortu...

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This man is Dave Bloustien. Why should you be interested? Because you will always remember this man's face as the first sign that being a reader of Club Troppo made you an insider , somone in the know and on the money . Yes, folks, due to our extraordinary buying power, our pu...

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From Today's Crikey Trashing Pauline Hanson was a class act Jeff Sparrow, editor of Overland writes: Yesterday, Jonathan Green asked the excellent question: if photos of a youthful Peter Costello mugging in his Speedos found their way to a newspaper editor, would the images tu...

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Perhaps as long as twenty five years ago certainly more than twenty years ago I was in Venice, on a trip to touristy Murano and I bought a little statuette of an eighteenth century fellow sitting at his desk, wig atop his head, quiver in hand writing on a scroll, a vase of ink...

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If you go to this page on the BBC's website in the next few days, or if you arrive in the next month or so if you download this file (mp3), you will hear an extraordinary interview. It is with a softly spoken Canadian farmer. He euthanased his 12 year old daughter who suffered...

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Like Australians generally, bloggers are donating generously to the Victorian bushfires relief appeal, over at John Quiggin's place and LP . And this morning news here in Darwin praised the old diggers at Darwin RSL for raising $20,000 over the weekend, while earlier news reve...

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A feed on US road accidents summer vs winter etc . A feed from Organizations and Markets. Does the inclement weather have you worried about sliding off the road to an icy death? If so, Ive got some good news for you. On a per-mile driven basis (or per-trip or per-minute travel...

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A rather amusing ranking of jobs in the US . The rationale is explained, if you really want to know, with a mix of remuneration and working conditions. To quantify the many facets of the 200 jobs included in our report, we determined and reviewed various critical aspects of al...

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It always seemed to me that it was hard to think of anything more Australian than having a long weekend for Anzac Day, or not putting one's hand on one's heart during the playing of the national anthem. But it's all changing and not only are the odd hands going on hearts, but...

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I mentioned an art exhibition by a 'second generation Dunera Boy' in an earlier post and I went along on Sunday. I found it very affecting and bought a painting - they're very cheap! I'm afraid the Jewish Museum gives the complete shudders every time I go. Upstairs one walks i...

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A nice essay linked to from Crooked Timber. Here it is as edited on CT - but for the original go here . Via Cosma , Canadian historian Rob MacDougall on a characteristic American tendency to see radical social change as the inevitable expression of values expressed and promise...

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In one of my interesting adventures in the markets, over ten years ago, I discovered a little fund being run out of Crows Nest in Sydney. It was called Grinham Managed Futures. I was looking to invest a bit of money in alternative investments that didn't correlate with other m...

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The Myer Foundation's 'Cranlana' Program is named after Sidney Myer's magnificent Toorak home where the program holds a range of functions. I attended one of these when I was working at the BCA. I remember doing the reading for it before hand and thinking it was going to be aw...

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Whatever that is. Anyway, John Quiggin is salivating at the implications of the current schemozzle for 'neoliberalism'. It's finished he reckons. So too the 'Washington Consensus'. I have my doubts. I guess some of the worst excesses of this time around will be a cause for les...

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Blogger Beth Hamburger at the convention reports the comments of the Ambassador to Israel "Do we want to be more like France, Sweden, Denmark and the rest of Europe, with a hands-off policy when it comes to the Middle East, with a neutral love of life ?" Damn those Europeans....

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Congratulations to Mathew Mitcham - I think I'm right in saying the only out gay guy in the Olympics. Congratulations for his coming through depression, and burnout and coming back and doing so well. Mathew was stoked to be getting silver. Then the guy coming first dived not s...

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When Margaret Thatcher said that there was no such thing as society , her enemies were delighted . Here, in a single phrase, was her heartless philosophy of individualism -- a philosophy which abandoned vulnerable people to the competitive violence of the marketplace and celeb...

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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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This article by Stephen Bartos first appeared in the Public Sector Informant magazine, published with the Canberra Times today. This version has been slightly edited, primarily to include links. Government Information It was two steps forward, one back for access to government...

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This semester I'm teaching an elective unit in Cyberspace Law at CDU. Research and preparation for it has been another of the reasons for the delayed reappearance of Missing Link. However, it's also involved a certain amount of fun. In the first online tutorial last week, we h...

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From this site , via Kathy G , regarding Charlie Chaplin. They were dreadfully poor. Charlie's parents were third-string strolling players. His father died early of alcoholism; his mother was often in asylums, whether through drink or because of periodic mental illness. Whenev...

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About a year ago Joshua Gans showed me some draft chapters for a book on parenting at which he'd been working away. To use an expression from the AFL, Joshua has a high 'work rate' and he writes blog posts in the morning over breakfast - and perhaps at some other times. Anyway...

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Check out this Blogging Heads . Its interesting to watch people you read as it adds a whole new dimension. Anyway, check out Tyler Cowen. Some politicians have the skill of speaking in perfect paragraphs. John Howard, Margaret Thatcher and Gough Whitlam spoke in perfect paragr...

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..Looks like a quiet night. I need to get something off my chest. I have just received a notice from the Juries Commission in Victoria that I am wanted for jury service. It's one of the letters a busy person dreads. You cannot get out of it, even by paying a fine. And they are...

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Cyclists are an oppressed minority. Car drivers resent cyclists on the road, and pedestrians resent us on the footpaths, even when they're designated cycleways as well. On the same ride I've been told aggressively to get off the road and use the footpath by a car driver, and t...

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There are two kids' games that are very gendered not so much in their gendered content as we understand the genders, but in their appeal to boys and girls. The first I observed in my daughter when she was in early primary school. It's routines that involve the mutual clapping...

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As I've said before, I'm a big admirer of Herbert Gintis - at least as part of the duo of Gintis and Bowles who wrote the marvellous essay " Is equality passe " and has a string of books and great articles to his name. His project is to develop the implications of what Gintis...

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Last Thursday I rang a phone number to book a taxi. It isn't the normal number. It's the mobile number of Neil the taxi driver. Neil is a good fellow and many years ago - when I was at the Productivity Commission - I became aware of Neil's service. He runs a 'ring' of taxi dri...

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Here's a column I've just written published today in the AFR. The Gruen Transfer Those with an unusual surname have to get used to spelling it. No its not Gluner. Not Glueball or Grewbie its Gruen G-R-U-E-N. The compensation is, your name identifies you or a family member pret...

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ABC news story this afternoon: Northern Territory Police believe a woman found dead at Mindil Beach last night may have been assaulted in the hours before her death. Police received a report at 11pm that a woman was lying on the beach unconscious and bleeding from the mouth. P...

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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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I have about three draft posts, all unfinished on a particular theme which I have touched on once before here . The general theme is the growing viability of doing well by doing good. One of the posts was called Googlenomics and referred to the massive amount of <jargon>consum...

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In writing this article , it occured to me that one way to describe my own approach to economics is the search for the $100 bill on the pavement. That is, if you can find ways of bringing new ideas into some well developed framework (well new-ish ideas or just ideas that are c...

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A few years ago I sponsored a bunch of Afghani kids on a soccer playing tour of Queensland and NSW. It was a privilege to meet some of the kids. I expected to find kids who'd grown up in a peasant culture, who would not be particularly interested in education. One tends to thi...

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A fascinating review of Craig Venter's autobiography . Naturally I'm sympathetic to this guy who looks like he values scientific creativity and achievement above other things, and will improvise through the miasma of institutions that exist to further science to get what he's...

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I'm pleased to see that the apparent suicide death of the hideously disfigured and terminally ill Chantal Sebire seems to have reopened the debate about euthanasia in Europe. Pity the same isn't true here in Australia. Apparently her pain couldn't be reduced even with morphine...

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Clive Crook defends Obama's oratory from accusations that it's vapid and empty. "Of course it is" he insists. And when you think about it, he has a point. The great speeches, however uniquely crafted are usually simple exhortations. "We shall fight them on the beaches and all...

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HT: Henry Ergas for the picture

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( posted for Jessica by a proud and biased step-parent who thinks it shows a fine clarity of observation and expression for a 13 year old ) First I would paint a dark grey sky that looked like it was about to cry. Then there would be cracked and old red stairs that led up to a...

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I hope Nicholas keeps writing here at Troppo now that he's rightly famous and important . Then again, I don't necessarily envy someone who must respond with grace and patience if their advice, like that of Ross Garnaut, is relegated to "input" status when it's politically inco...

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I've just been asked by the Department of PM&C to nominate someone to go to the 202o Summit. Who should I nominate - and why? This post will be moderated strictly. Suggestions should be serious and I hope you'll provide good reasons. Of course there will be people who want to...

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[caption id="attachment_30539" align="alignleft" width="317"] These types of tram-poles still exist at three Three Sites: Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda Peel Street, North Melbourne Victoria Parade, East Melbourne. [1. As explained on the Victorian Heritage Website "These three set...

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A while back I posted a brief endorsement of a Guy Rundle piece, which brought forth a reference to another essay by Rundle . I disagree - sometimes to the point of strong irritation with some of the things he says, especially in the last half of the piece, but I recommend it...

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What a wonderful guy. Might we all have such quiet modesty, magnanimity and achievement written on our face when we're getting on a little. Heartfelt congratulations to David Bussau on his long overdue recognition - he has just been made Senior Australian of the Year. He is a...

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Things have been a little dull over the holiday period. So dull, in fact, that I've been picking through my receptionist's collection of novels. First there was that book everyone's been chattering about recently -- Ian McEwan's Atonement . The second book in her pile was Jona...

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I heard Debra Dickerson for the first time on a summer replay of a Counterpoint program I'd not heard during the year. She wrote a book published in 2004 or thereabouts entitled The end of blackness. I wondered if Noel Pearson might have forgotten to acknowledge her in an essa...

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Next year, you really should consider volunteering to help out with BB08 - that is the Best Blogs for the year series that James Farrell is currently editing with the help of a few of us. There's some dross of course - which gets most of us grumpy! And then there are some marv...

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In reading for Best Blog Posts 07 there are several first rate posts on the aboriginal intervention. And one of them linked to this fascinating piece by one of our great journalists - Jack Waterford - of a more clearly well motivated exercise in the mid to late 70s. Then the i...

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Yesterday evening was one of those nights that remind Jen and I why we still live in Darwin despite its many drawbacks. The warm wet breeze blowing as the sun set over the harbour, silhouetting a huge gas tanker leaving for Japan, sitting under the palm trees at the Ski Club l...

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Can't say I've ever been remotely tempted to get involved with "social networking" sites like MySpace or Facebook. It's probably something to do with being fundamentally anti-social, sometimes even bordering on misanthropic. But it's also an instinctive aesthetic aversion; it...

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While absent-mindedly sauntering home the other night from a little Melbourne city gathering , I was shaken from my reverie by a fellow who adopted a strange stance as I approached. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that he had lifted one leg from the sidewalk, and swung i...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Having blogged for a couple of months now, I am conscious of the lure of writing 'why dont the people in charge do as I say' pieces. As an antidote I'd like to offer 5 observations which strike a European like myself on why Australia is a great country, some of which are likel...

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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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From Colin Wicking I'm not sure what's happened to Colin Wicking's excellent Ned the Bear cartoon series. Maybe Ned's gone into hibernation for the dry season, which just hit Darwin belatedly this morning. For readers (including me) suffering Wicking withdrawals, here's a rece...

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In the age of the network computer, it seems crazy for school kids to be lugging round heavy backpacks. Backpacks are much better for the health of their backs than the big canvas/vinyl sports bags that we used in our days - which may have played some role in the scoliosis in...

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There've been a few departures today but amongst them is Paul Wolfowitz . I often wonder why righties think that post modernity is some conspiracy of the left. Well I don't really - I guess it's because so many of the philosophers and cultural commentators who are regarded as...

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Well I keep promising to explain the neurological foundations of homo dialecticus in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments but then there keep being things that the previous post requires as a follow up. A couple of posts ago in this series I discussed feedback within the fi...

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I'm reading an interesting book at the moment called He'll be right OK . It's by a NZ woman who has been working with men in prison for twenty odd years. She got caught up in something called "The Good Man Project" run by some NZ boys only schools and it's a memoire of her tim...

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Margaret Simmons had a lead article in Crikey recently in which she quoted Mark Day bemoaning the way in which, in his view Packers gaming interests were tearing apart the corporate culture of Channel Nine. As Day put it I believe media is a positive force in society while gam...

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In the newly dumbed down and still decending A2 Supplement in The Age comes a nicely written review of a bad book about a great actress. My all time fave I think. From the review: " How, one wonders, could she not have wanted to give more sense of Bergman's career highlights?...

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When I first saw that there was a musical called "Keating!" I avoided it like the plague. Keating had his strong points - namely his mastery of the language. But I feared lame nostagia for this Great Land that Keating was going to build. The same Great Land that we heard almos...

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Crikey has taken it upon itself to run a competition in which people get the same number of words Lincoln used in the Gettysburg address to get their rocks off about this great nation. The entries have been uniformly execrable - well execrable, but perhaps not uniformly. Even...

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The teachers were becoming concerned. Week by week, the kids at the Hilltop Children's Center were building a city out of LEGO . And as the city emerged, so too did the children's assumptions about private property and power -- assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based...

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I picked up The Age A2 supplement grabbing some lunch earlier today and read this sweet story . It's nothing that special but I liked its blend of surprise and ordinariness. It's about George Harrison's Mum and the daughter of a Mills and Boon author! It's Troppo category is '...

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I vividly remember wandering round the town of Nimes in the south of France about fifteen years ago and being completely blown away by the amphitheatre there (pictured above). What blew me away was the way in which this magnificent object had gone on a two millennium journey o...

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I've written briefly about my Uncle Dick once before, in the course of a rather sentimental piece about my family. This is another in similar vein. Most of my memories of Dick revolve around motor vehicles. When I was a small boy, before my mum and dad bought their first car w...

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On the 24th August 1987 the last volume of Manning Clark's A History of Australia was launched by David Malouf. Peter Ryan was Clarkâs publisher at Melbourne University Press and Manning thanked him generously at the launch. "Peter Ryan was an is a great publisher. . . . Thank...

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Chris Young didn't feel cared about . The food was good, the service was better than usual but it wasn't enough -- he wanted more from his waitress: I didn't feel like she really cared. Sure, she was attentive, but I didn't feel cared about. And I didn't feel like she was bein...

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I'm strongly inclined to liberality of laws when it comes to lending. That is not just because as a lenders' agent I have a conflict of interest. I actually detest the paternalistic idea that lenders trying to lend money at a profit is something bad. We have a ridiculous situa...

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One of the fundamental intuitions of economists is that there are difficult trade-offs to everything you do â in life and in policy. I think this is overblown often â that often there are âvirtuous circles;â full of mostly good things and vicious ones. As Fred Argyâs been at p...

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Dove, no doubt for its own good commercial reasons are running a (cough) Campaign For Real Beauty which has been picked up by my daughter's school. Check out this striking video of the passage from the modelling studio to the unblemished looks of a poster.

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I was talking with my nine year old Alexander this evening. I asked him through the pleasure of having him sprawled over my lap and telling me about school whether he fancied growing up or whether he had it too good the way it was. (I remember at that age thinking that the res...

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Since Troppo has recently become 'Happiness Central' I thought I'd share this snippet from the indefatigable Andrew Oswald and his collaborator David Blanchflower (nice names these guys have got). A modern statistical literature argues that countries such as Denmark are partic...

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Euthanasia is back in the news, albeit in a fairly low key way. Last Sunday The Peaceful Pill Handbook , by longtime Darwin-based euthanasia campaigner Dr Phillip Nitschke and Dr Fiona Stewart, was banned by the Classification Review Board of the Australian Office of Film and...

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The poster If anyone's been wondering why I've been AWOL from Club Troppo recently (notably from last week's Missing Link posts), well, apart from the usual pre-semester university administrative panic, I've also been moonlighting as a web designer, publicist and general dogsb...

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Setting out my response to Don Arthur's great post below sent me scurrying to a book I read a few years ago. I thought someone had thrown it out but fortunately no. The book is The Silent Woman and it's about Sylvia Plath and the biographical writings she inspired. The author,...

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To rule is to look ahead, it has been said. Let us therefore cast our eyes at the virtually universal wish of nations and their population to achieve economic growth. Jared Diamond argues in his latest book âCatastropheâ that this âgrowth fetishâ (as Clive Hamilton calls it) m...

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Darwin's skyline before its latest development surge Darwin correspondent for The Australian Nicholas Rothwell had a fascinating long article in yesterday's edition, about what he argues is the crass over-development of our most northerly capital. As a resident of Australia's...

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The Fin has published my Australia Day column and as a matter of record it's published over the fold though Troppodillians have already discussed it and proposed improvements to it in its earlier form . I wasn't able to fit in many of the very worthy thoughts of Troppodillians...

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Comets have been one of the disappointments of my life. We keep hearing of comets that are going to be huge - HUGE. This is when they're discovered or not long afterwards when the astronomers do their calculations on how big they could be. I don't know if the astronomers actua...

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In the last few days two articles caught my attention: one about a raid on a presumed illegal brothel and one about a Sydney city council using private detectives to gather evidence against presumed illegal brothels (as an aside, private agents employed by government agencies/...

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You're a sensible person. I can tell. You're smart, well informed and decent . When you take a stand on an issue you've got good reasons. If only everyone was like you . But sadly, no matter how patiently you explain yourself, some people can't or won't see the light. It's lik...

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The usual clich© routinely trotted out on Australia Day goes like this. We're always been great at sport. Not to put too fine a point, we've err . . . punched above our weight. We've more recently been congratulating ourselves on the end of our 'cultural cringe'. In fact our c...

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I've just been on hols with my kids to (aaahhh!) the Gold Coast. We visited Dreamworld, Sea World and, in the middle of the renamed 'Steve Irwin Way', the Australia Zoo where Terry Irwin impersonated the late Steve in a croc show and Bindi Irwin sang with the Crocmen and other...

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I meant to post a note saying that the ABC are re-running a fantastic series "Prisoners under Nippon" at 11.00 am on weekdays. Made (I think over a year or more) in the early-mid 1980s it's a remarkable piece of radio. Go check it out.

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Lennon and McCartney, Lerner and Lowe, Rogers and Hammerstein, Gilbert and Sullivan, John and Taupin, Lloyd-Webber and Rice. Were any of these guys quite as good on their own as they were with their partner? Are these gains from trade? Well in some cases one of the partners co...

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Big business lobbyists and greedy foreigners are turning Sydney into an overcrowded hell hole, says Clive Hamilton . In Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald Hamilton draws on John Calhoun's famous rat experiments to argue that Sydney risks becoming a ' behavioural sink ' -- a city...

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Last night I happened upon a chapter by Murray Rothbard in a book called " Dissent on Keynes: A Critical Appraisal of Keynesian Economics . It was published in 1992 and the web version was published in 2003 and available here. The brief? Well roughly the brief Junie Morosi int...

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I was watching Rage while polishing off a bedtime snack and saw a video that I though was going to annoy me - but turned out to amuse me - and indeed to make me smile and feel good. And of course it's on You Tube. The city it's filmed in turns out to be Sydney as I realised wh...

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For only a few more days the podcast of Richard Dawkins reading from his book is up at the ABC website . I listened to this when it was first broadcast, and while it didn't change my mind about Dawkins and his enterprise regarding religion and though he didn't really discus th...

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A friend Alex sent me this op ed by Polly Toynbee of the Guardian . I confess to being a bit irritated with the way it started off. "Fat is a class issue, but few like to admit that most of the seriously obese are poor." This actually gets to the nub of a crucial issue, but I...

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I was recently talking to Dennis Glover who told me of his October op ed equating the right commentariat with old style Marxists, making the pretty obvious point that most of them began as Marxists. I'd missed it when it appeared. It's makes a large number of good points so it...

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I've known that George Bernard Shaw had a thing or two to say about conflicts of interest in the medical profession, about how doctors have a direct pecuniary interest in providing you with services (for which they charge a fee) rather than in keeping you well (in which case t...

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I was alerted to this funny story on Late Night Live. When the London Review of Books began taking personal ads, the content was quirkily British - as for instance in the ad from which I took the heading. ""Bastard. Complete and utter. Whatever you do, don't reply - you'll onl...

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When I went from year 10 to year 11 at high school, I also moved cities and schools. I moved from a private boys school - Haileybury College in Keysborough (Vic) - to a co-ed High School in Canberra - Campbell High. I remember arriving at Campbell and spending lunchtime during...

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Well he was on Seinfeld anyway. Some people may have seen this before but, having heard about it on the radio recently I looked it up on YouTube. Truly shocking. Nice to see the audience filing out as he sank deeper into the mire.

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I posted on this last year and it's worth mentioning it yearly. A lot of stuff gets exchanged each year that's pretty useless when we could give gifts to each other of donations to causes that could really do with the money. This would have had the assent of most economists be...

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Last time I raised this subject Richard Phillipps hopped into me suggesting that I wasn't being helpful. In any event I'm at it again. I've not researched this case in any detail, but it sure looks strange on its face and the report from The Age does not appear to be sensation...

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Here is the last post on primate sentiments - and as I said at the end of the last post, it's really a postscript. It doesn't further develop the points made in the last two posts, but tidies up some loose ends. Smith himself cooked up a theory of the evolution of language at...

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To start of what may (or may not) be a semi-regular post (whatever happened to Dr Troppo?) here is my quote of the week - from rookie Troppodillian DW Griffiths. Jagger seems a disciplined bloke, but he plays dissolute superbly - and it seems to be what the world reacts to mos...

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Erwin Fabian was a friend of my father's from the time he came to Australia on the same refugee boat as Dad. He was a few years older than most of the younger ones. They were in their late teens. He was 25. He painted a fantastic portrait of Dad when he was in the camp which h...

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A clever bit of econometrics seems to confirm something that Mark Latham argued in his tome Civilizing Global Capital. That the tele undermines social capital. It seemed a plausible argument, but what was the evidence other than the historical concurrence of the rise of tele a...

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Get a load of this! Curtesy of Brad DeLong's site . Brad lets us know this. After some viewing I think that this isn't just a series of pretty pictures. This is a real story. What we're watching is the innards of helper T-cell activation. The lymphocyte crawling along the arte...

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I'm reading up for a two day workshop at an fine institution I discovered a few years ago called Cranlana . Named after the Myer Family's mansion in Toorak where it is housed it's a (small 'l') liberal talk shop which holds 'colloquiums' at which various topics are discussed....

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So it happened again. No Melbourne team in the grand final. In fact, none of the top four teams in the AFL competition were from Melbourne. We will go through the motions of pretending that grand final week still means something. And at 5.30 on Saturday there will be a quiet e...

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I've admired Paul Monk's writing for a while now and have linked to a particularly good essay of his in the past. In any event, he's agreed for me to post essays of his on Troppo. Over the fold is an review essay of John Armstrong's recent book on Goethe and happiness. From th...

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I once heard the late Lin Onus a teriffic aboriginal artist give a lecture to somewhere like the press club. He told a story of hearing his son singing the national anthem, which his son had picked up orally, to write out the words. They were truly hilarious when compared with...

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I spotted a comment in the last week that I thought would be a good starter for our weekend open thread. If I do so again in the future, there'll be another commenter of the week. The comment was from Cam in the thread on history education - which was itself a pretty high qual...

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I. I enjoyed myself at The Boy from Oz last Friday night. I'd have loved to see one of Peter Allen's big Broadway shows and was curious as to what all the fuss was about The Boy's great success in New York. Mind you, the reason for its success seems pretty obvious. Peter Allen...

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"Mammon calls!" Thus spake me one day in Florence about fourteen years ago to Eva as we spent more and more time snapping up the cool, cheap clothes and other goods, and less and less time in the galleries. We finally got home with 80 Kgs of the stuff to somewhat alarmed airp...

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This is what it looks like. Only it's bigger - even bigger.

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Curtesy of a piece in Crikey today I discovered a terrific writer. I guess it won't be news to many Troppodillians but in the course of making some 'what is the world coming to' comments about the media (to which I can only respond 'what indeed, and what did you expect?') she...

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A month or so ago I watched a video of an excellent and terrifying report on 4 Corners on youth suicide focusing on the story of one young boy who was good at everything, loved by all, with lots of friends. He got prodigious scores. Then at the age of about 16 he discovered th...

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Looking at the debate on my earlier thread on 'moral rights' I reached for a column I wrote early last year on counterfeit goods. I thought it was posted here previously, but couldn't find it. So here it is. I think it's relevance to Ken's comment on my post is clear. I can't...

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(Well not really). I heard an excellent talk by him on ABC radio perspective last Friday and emailed him requesting the text - since the ABC only had the audio when I looked. (It's there now) He indicated that it was from his book and sent me the link . It's a good short peice...

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New Matilda is running a fairly standard piece [subscription required] about the inadequacies of GDP as a measure of wellbeing. It all goes off in the predictable directions - we're getting richer but no happier, we're getting more selfish, less community minded, we're running...

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It seems that happiness research, which I wrote about recently , has been going on for a very long time. I discovered this while blog browsing late yesterday. At the excellent new arts group blog Sarsaparilla I came across a reference to an anecdote at theatre critic Alison Cr...

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You aim too please. Iintroducing the latest in gaming technology. And who said my subscription to slashdot was a waste of time.

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The Third Battle of Ypres/Passchendaele in 1917 One of the advantages of blogging for almost 4 years (as I have done for my sins), is that you can occasionally get away with brazenly recycling old posts that have become lost in the dim recesses of the blog archive files. This...

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I recently commented on John Hirst's compelling portrait "The distinctiveness of Australian Democracy". I've since gone out and bought the book Sense and Nonsense in Australian History which is a very interesting read. Robert Manne, having been ejected from Quadrant seems to b...

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[photopress:jevons1.jpg,full,alignleft] As a practiced poster, I now find myself spinning inane puns for my headlines, like any good subbie. Be that as it may, I happened upon an interesting post by our Troppodillian friend and sometime colleague Rafe Champion over at Catallax...

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Having read Morag Fraser's review of John Hirst's collection of essays I went hunting for the essays mentioned in the review. I found only " The Distinctiveness of Australian Democracy " which I'd put on my 'must read' list. A really interesting and in various respects contrar...

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There's a certain nastiness about a certain cadre of Australian expats. The big four are Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Clive James and Robert Hughes. They didn't like the Australia of the fifties and early sixties, and a lot of them think we're still the same. This was the...

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A weekly wrap of what's been happening across the Top End news-wise, which might be handy for former residents who really miss reading about this sort of thing. May contain cane toads and/or crocodiles. DING DONG Darwin military police are hunting for a serial flasher who is t...

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A couple of weeks after my Christmas column appeared I received an email from Germany and I reproduce the contents of the exchance that ensued. 1. Subject: Regarding Erwin Fabian, the artist Hello Dr. Nicholas Gruen, I've found an article of yours on the web, mentioning Erwin...

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The blogosphere is a useful source of word of mouth information or word of keyboard and screen as the case may be. Without some blog or other (I can't remember now) I would never have gone to see Spiderman 2. And though I didn't think it was a great movie, it was a good one an...

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This week's column - with the answer to the question about the picture below. And I hope Troppodillians had an enjoyable Christmas. Some Christmas reflections ________________________________________________________________ I'm afraid (but not ashamed) to say that I'm an abste...

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Jen often wants me to tell her a story. But it isn't that easy. I'm not one of those blokes who can spin a yarn at the drop of a hat or even talk the legs off an iron pot (how's that for a mixed metaphor?). The mood has to be right and the muse suitably inspired. The Harbord D...

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Families surround us with symmetry. Echoes. Half-understood parallels. You realise it more and more as you get older. Like when you rebuke your child for some appalling piece of behaviour, and suddenly realise you're using the same words and tone your own parents employed when...

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It's lucky I'm feeling positive about life generally, or this would be an unbearably depressing Friday night. Not only does Jen insist on watching some mind-numbingly dreadful Walt Disney telemovie starring Julie Andrews, but it's "Territory Night". The NT is the only part of...

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An amazing story was reported today, about another kidnapping crisis ending happily, and a captive rescued from cruel kidnappers: you can find it at At first I thought there'd maybe been a bit of a linguistic or cultural misunderstanding, and that maybe 'lions' was really a me...

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Do yourself a favour and read this superb post by guest contributor Kate at Mark Bahnisch's Larva tus Rodeo (can't help calling it that - I blame Nabakov). My sister Lynne has an intellectually handicapped daughter in her mid-twenties. She and her husband Ray have been through...

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" Ya know what the time is, mate ?" asks an Aboriginal "long grasser" sitting under the trees as we walk along the beach towards Rapid Creek footbridge on our evening constitutional. " Five past six ," I reply, ploughing onward to forestall any possibility of the usual follow-...

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Having an 11 year old daughter, I watch a lot more reality TV talent shows than I otherwise would. (My seven year old son prefers to use the TV to study the footy a figure of quiet pathos as he clutches a black and white striped 'Beanie Baby'). Herewith a review of one of the...

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..to cheer us all up--or not, as the case may be! There's this game doing the rounds in the blogosphere, which goes under the unofficial moniker of 'Ten things I've never done.' The whole point is they're supposed to be reasonably ordinary things--no point writing you've never...

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The Atlantic and Australia's new magazine The Monthly discuss the art of the interview In the Atlantic Stephen Budiansky unearths a World War II document on how to interrogate Japanese POWs while in The Monthly Kerryn Goldsworthy looks at how the ABC's Andrew Denton "lures his...

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The Imagining Australia quartet look Anzac legend through the eyes of young Australians and see a new cosmopolitanism: It is the tragedy of the event that moves young Australians. We weep for the memory of wasted young lives because in the Anzac spirit young Australians see th...

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One of the lesser known marital pressures on Australian couples is the North-South football divide. Hailing from Sydney as I do, I occasionally have an urge to watch rugby union or league (and sometimes even to play the former). But it's almost impossible to watch a rugby game...

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Never get caught between Rex and a tram seat .

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Endurance athletes are risking death by drinking excessive amounts of a substance that causes brain cells to swell. According to the Mayo Clinic , drinking excessive amounts of the substance dilutes the sodium content of the athlete's blood. This can lead to rapid and dangerou...

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If you think YOUR job is bad, check this site , stop whining, and get back to work.

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Phil Gomes kindly suggested on another thread that I should stop blogging for the evening and go fishing or go to the pub. At least I think he was being kind. But I had to decline his suggestion. I detest fishing with a passion. Yes, I know it's utterly un-Territorian to confe...

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I'm really not good at putting sorrow into words but there was something really depressing about the Sea King crash that killed nine Australian servicemen and women on the weekend. They brought the bodies back home . I'm glad the Governor General put a sprig of wattle on the c...

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Sophie's Masson's compares the terrorism of 19th anarchists with that of Al-Qaeda today. Many of those sympathetic to anarchism object to this kind of comparison and I can understand why. But if you read her post carefully you'll see that Sophie is also making a more interesti...

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Indonesia can't take a trick at the moment. The Prime Minister is sending medical teams back to Sumatra; hell, they only got home this month from the last earthquake. I mean, its just terrible. Two in three months...

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A light and tasty post to leave you for Easter..and a happy Easter to all! Chez nous, it's ducks, ducks, ducks at the moment, as the 14-strong regiment of Muscovy ducklings we've reared have become big enough to well, become dinner. We've had duck 'a toutes les sauces', you mi...

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The Good Professor weighs in on the Schiavo case : Well pardon a Bunyip being frank, but this business isn't about compassion. It's about control -- control of both the individual and society's direction. As so many advocates of slow starvation are now demonstrating, they beli...

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A case of the Dreaded Lurgi hasn't prevented me from reading the papers, as per usual. As I was wiping snot off the monitor, I came across this article , describing the controversy about these 'do it yourself' DNA kits. It is not quite at the 'do it yourself' stage, but it is...

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I must confess I hadn't taken much notice of the Terri Schiavo case until now. Schiavo is a severely brain-damaged (vegetative?) American woman currently being effectively starved to death through cutting off her intravenous feeding tubes. Perhaps partly because of instinctive...

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Australian citizenship is a valuable thing - too valuable to be wasted on people who don't understand our fundamental values, beliefs, and traditions. In Britain they've been working on a new ' Britishness test ' for would-be citizens. Their Labour party says that it wants to...

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You tend to get a bit complacent about cyclones after a while. We get one or two cyclone watches most years, but they seldom come close enough to do any damage. Fortunately, large ones have a very tight centre, so that really destructive winds don't extend over all that large...

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Feeling generally overtired, a bit ill, and reeling from all sorts of things that are stressing me, I was delighted to be asked out by a good friend of mine for a Corona or two tonight (a very good rule of thumb is that any drink that can reasonably have a lime in it is a good...

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In light of events at Troppo over the last couple of days, now might be an opportune moment to post an extract from a post by the wise but currently absent Don Arthur at his now-moribund blog: A deeper form of civility asks us to make an effort to treat other people with respe...

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At the very welcome recommendation of a friend, I reread the second "Lightness and Weight" chapter in Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being on Saturday. Kundera reminded me of the truth of a metaphor Maurice Merleau-Ponty used for how our lives are shaped by remembered...

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Frequent Troppo commenter and proprietrix of her own blog, yellowvinyl , who's a friend of mine, rang me today to let me know that she has cancer. She asked me to pass on her apologies for being testy in comments threads, which I'm sure are wholly unnecessary in any case. She'...

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John Quiggin's full black beard is probably the most famous in Australian blogdom . Prominently displayed on his blog 's masthead, the beard attracts regular comment - not all of it favorable . Recently two postgraduate researchers at the University of London reported that, am...

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Or, The Art of the Academic Jobsearch I spent part of my morning finalising my application for a Research Fellowship in Griffith Uni's Socio-legal Research Centre . All the advice that's been around for years in HR is that cvs and selection criteria responses should be succinc...

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I've been a regular net user since 1997, and first discovered the thing in 92, when we were delighted to find we could access the Village Voice sitting in the Semper Floreat offices at UQ. A feature in the Fin magazine on Friday made the point that many of the utopian claims m...

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I thoroughly enjoyed the Inaugural Brisvegas bloggers' meetup on Friday night. My first post-grogblog comment was at Mel Gregg's place and a round up of other attendees' posts can be found at the Meetup message board .

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Norm Geras has a post up on Normblog about a survey which asked people in various occupations whether or not they liked their work. There was no occupation which claimed a majority of people liking their work--it seems most people who responded don't like their job! But the oc...

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Or, Tres Catholique [After Umberto Eco] I had the very great pleasure tonight of showing a couple of friends from Melbourne the wonders of the Valley - or at least that we do good Jazz band (Kafka) and good bar (The Bowery) here in Brisvegas. Or at least, that being a regular...

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Quick pitstop from the Toowong net cafe closest to Thesis land. Just wanted to remind people in Brizvegas of the grogblog at Ric's Bar tomorrow night - Troppo readers and commenters are most welcome. Also a plug for Funk for Tsunami at No. 12 in the Valley tonight - which a fr...

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Back in December, Scott wrote about internet dating . I'm single again, and as I'm hardly likely to meet anyone sitting in an office in Toowong by myself writing a thesis, I'm giving cyberdating a go . I don't want to write about my experiences, as I don't want to invade anyon...

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I was on campus on Monday to borrow some books for my PhD. It's the first time in nine years that I'm not gearing up for the teaching semester, so I'm feeling fairly relaxed at the moment. I'm evidently so out of touch that I didn't realise til I got there that it was O Week....

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I've been doing some rearrangement of my life and working arrangements to reduce the time taken on my PhD to manageable proportions, without driving me crazy. I've now got til March 31st to submit the thing, and what I'm also doing is hiring an office in a suburban location wh...

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"You know you really dated yourself, Jen, by that comment about Matlock Police . Even I can hardly remember that one. Now who did it star again? Michael what's-his-name?" "Pate." "That's right, Michael Pate . He carved out an entire career playing a red indian in Hollywood mov...

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There've been some interesting discussions developing on the thread about Andrew Bolt's demonisation of Desperate Housewives . If I'm reading it correctly, commenters are having difficulty agreeing to a definition of what constitutes "quality" in television, and the issue of t...

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It was my little sister's birthday yesterday - she's 34. As Lucy Harker said in Nosferatu "time is an abyss, a thousand nights deep". I will also be having a birthday soon - on the 13th of Feb (which wasn't a good High School birthday at all - the day before Valentine's...). I...

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My name's Mark and I'm a blogoholic. Well, I'm not drinking any grog, have just decided to change the "go out once a week" rule to "don't go anywhere except to Coles or the Uni library", and progress is happening on finalising my PhD thesis for submission . But not enough, and...

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My grandmother died on 16 November 2004 and I, along with her other three grandsons, was a pallbearer at her funeral. One thing that was moving was a photo of her as a young woman on her coffin. The Catholic Church is now moving to restrict such personal touches : Placing meme...

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The weather's horrible at the moment here in Brisbane. Sticky, humid, and it's hard to sleep. The other day I was talking about the political climate in the Joh era , and suggesting a bit of a link (other tropical cities - like New Orleans - have shared loopy, extravagant and...

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Back in December Scott wrote about Internet dating . Yellowvinyl has been a participant in the cyberdating game, and has some interesting (and sharp!) reflections on the vicissitudes of finding a partner online . Unfortunately Livejournal doesn't support trackback, but Troppo...

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It was Joh's 94th birthday today . Time to revisit the Dispatches from Johburg and share some random memories of my teenage years under the reign of Bjelke: - as a young public service clerk, going up to the third floor of the Treasury Building with some friends and sitting in...

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Mark at his Doctoral Graduation I'm slowly finding my way around the Brisbane blogosphere. It's very random - we don't appear to have the same sort of community that exists in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. Or at least if there is one, I can't find it. As I reported earlier , I...

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Mark at Sydney Uni in 99 (Skiving off from a Conference at UWS Parramatta, captured just before wine consumption in Glebe) The Emerald City? At last, a musing on life from me. I quit my job at QUT today. I've worked there for eight years, which is long enough. I'm applying for...

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In the comments to this post , Geoff Honnor got a bit cranky, and it provoked the following exchange: At this time of year, I think the probable deaths of upwards of 50,000 people in an horrific natural disaster might rank higher than what Gerald Henderson - or even someone ot...

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Revellers on a Hot Hill End Night That's me in the middle. I don't normally wear Hawaiian shirts but it's a good troppo look. Well, all the presents are bought and only the grog remains (though I made a start on the bubbles on my partner's back deck last night relaxing with a...

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Head down in heavy revisions of a forthcoming novel of mine (Malvolio's Revenge, a supernatural/mystery/melodrama of a story, set in 1910's New Orleans, with a cameo appearance by one of my favourite artists and cultural heroes, the great Louis Armstrong) I'm afraid blogging's...

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It's been an amazing spring here in New England. There's been a lot of good rain followed by warm weather, so the countryside looks fantastic--green and lush, with flowers everywhere and lots of budding fruit (and sadly, lots of flies, too--the sheep farmers must be having a d...

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We seem to be returning to Ancient Greece for our film plots. The latest entry in this genre, Alexander , being an Oliver Stone film, has stirred up some controversy . And it's not just about Colin Farrell's silly wig, or Angelina Jolie's portraying his mum when she's only a y...

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As the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a new BBC Channel 4 reality tv series will show footage of couples having sex (in a tasteful way and for educational purposes, of course), news.com.au brings us the tantalising tidbit that Gretel Killeen has dumped Saxon . The wonderfu...

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Troppo is gaining a decidedly genteel, cerebral flavour of late. Nothing wrong with that, but for this Scots-Irish member of the oz trailer-trash class there's a need for an occasional leavening of down-market physicality. And what better way to do it than muse about Brigid De...

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Today is the second anniversary of the terrible tragedy in Bali, where 202 people were killed. I was watching Sky News this morning when I noticed an old familiar face- Damian Squire and his girlfriend have returned to Bali to commemorate those that died. Damian Squire is a st...

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It's not likely that I'll ever emulate Gummo Trotsky and base my blogging on cooking recipes. Not that I'm all that bad a cook, mind you. But being in a solo domestic phase, I usually can't be bothered cooking unless my daughter Rebecca is coming around for dinner. Even then,...

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Given the slow and painful journey of middle-aged twice-bitten love, I was a bit disconcerted to read today's quotable quote in the NT News. It was by Bertrand Russell , and said: Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. I personall...

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Signposts is another new blog I've just found and will link. It's a group blog that looks at politics from a Christian perspective. And I see that Chris Fryer , whose blog I also mentioned below, suffers from muscular distrophy . Jen is always asking me to tell her stories, an...

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Queuing at the CDU cafeteria bain marie. Takeaway lasagne and apple juice for lunch. " Hello, Mr Parish ," says the woman at the counter, plump, middle-aged with a pleasant face. I look puzzled. " I really know your face from somewhere ," she explains. " Were you an Anglicare...

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The Peter Principle holds that employees in any organisation are promoted up to their level of incompetence, and then cling relentlessly to a job they're incapable of performing. It's a phenomenon especially evident in the Northern Territory. Much of the population is so mobil...

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Future developments in this story from ABC Online will bear watching. I've heard such stories from several separate sources over the years, so I can't say I'm utterly astounded. Nevertheless, it's quite a weird feeling, watching a story of this sort unfold about someone you've...

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Strolling along the foreshore near Rapid Creek with "B" last evening. A mob of mildly agitated Aboriginal women approaches. One of them comes up to Jenny. " Dat thing dangerous, you know ," she says, gesturing towards the gleaming new high-tech aluminium automated ablution fac...

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Darwin in the dry season has the best climate on earth in my unbiased opinion. This morning when I popped into Casuarina Shopping Square (to pick up my spectacles from being repaired) it was actually warmer inside the air-conditioned centre than the open air outside. Sixteen d...

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"Good evening Fele". I nodded politely to 'Lady' Fele Mann, President of the Darwin Philippine community association, as we arrived at their annual beauty pageant and charity fund-raiser along with a squirming army of local politicians. "Good evening, Mr Mann", I said, acknowl...

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I forgot to mention that we went to hear John Butler Trio on Friday night. Freeloading on the beach adjacent to the Casino Lawns, along with several thousand others. I had a great time; in fact it would have been almost perfect if "B" hadn't locked her keys in the car at Mindi...

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Up early this morning to buy a second-hand washing machine for Casa Armadillo. Had to leave the last one at the Nightcliff Road house when Jenny P rented it fully furnished. Drove out to a newly-opened reconditioned whitegoods warehouse at Berrimah. Middle-aged bloke, crewcut....

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I'm pleased to see that John Quiggin has debunked a recent article by that pathetic parody of Sixties radicalism Richard Neville , about the imagined political apathy and disengagement of "Generation X" compared with Neville's "Baby Boomer" generation. As John remarks: Of cour...

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Yay! The dry season's here; cool nights and crisp, windy mornings. After a few months of sauna-like Darwin weather you tend to forget how pleasant it is not to be always bathed in sweat. Friday was officially the last day of the wet season and, as if to commemorate its passing...

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Feeling Warm and Fuzzy "Bang" "No!" "bang" "Stop" "bangbang" I roll up, curl up and laugh - with relief - because she did stop - and we are in a state of grace You see her ability to torment can can exactly match my objection to it. So. Now I'm awake. - well and truly. Maxwell...

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In an October 1999 article in the New Statesman , published before the new generation of Web logs, Andrew Brown described the anarchic nature of blogs as "the disorganized record of the voyagings of an intelligent mind," somewhat resembling "the captain's log on a voyage of di...

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Let me tell you about my Mr Parish. The one you have here in what you call the blogosphere is stunningly sane. Mr Parish has hit hard times and is so tired of reading his own posts, he is not quite begging passersby to contribute - but almost. So almost, that this piece of tri...

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I've never been much impressed by Mel Gibson, either as an actor or a man. Moreover, the manufactured controversy over his Passion of the Christ didn't exactly fill me with joyful anticipation at the prospect of going to see it. So it was almost a shock to discover that the mo...

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One of the many things I like about Professor Bunyip is his utter contempt for anything remotely resembling politically correct sentiments. His latest post is a typical example: The Professor gave up on the disadvantaged some years ago, having finally accepted Jesus' admonitio...

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The day started badly. I'd forgotten I had a "share accommodation" ad in today's paper, until the phone rang at 7.20. "Randall here. When can I come round and look at the room you've got for rent?" "Aaaaah, why don't you just give me your phone number and I'll ring you back la...

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Heath Gibson at Catallaxy posts about a bloke in the US who has conducted research into the health effects of McDonalds food by eating there exclusively 3 times per day for a prolonged period. As Heath puts it: Predictably, Spurlock put on weight and suffered a range of health...

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Professor Bunyip blogs on the vexations of marital bliss, and quotes from Kev Gillet (a blogger whose work I confess I only monitor occasionally): Thousands of years of experience in all cultures of the world has left us with one basic tenet for marriage - committment. The sev...

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Mona, partner of Meika the Dolebludger , has had her 21 year old Subaru (named Henka) stolen and burned . I'm envious. I've got a 20 year old Mazda 323 hatchback that's fairly generously insured. Despite frequently parking it around town with windows carelessly left open, Darw...

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As a male who (by choice) spends the vast majority of his time surrounded by women, who uniformly share an unshakeable conviction that the world would be a much better place if run by their sex rather than blokes, I can't resist sharing this passage from Kundera's Immortality...

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I've just now finished unavoidable university work prior to flying out to Sydney on the "red eye" flight just after midnight tonight. In my case it really will be red eyes, because I've had about an hour's sleep in the last 2 days while completing urgent tasks. We had the offi...

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Suzy Kruhse's son Dan and his wife Tarun are presently backpacking in South America. Their timing might have been improved, because right now they're in Bolivia, which hasn't been the most peaceful country in recent weeks. Here's an email from Dan and Tarun that might interest...

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My passing mention of the Anzac myth in a post earlier today has triggered a train of thought I can only quench (derail?) by writing. It's perhaps the most powerful aspect of Australian heritage and tradition, its effects flowing down through Australian society to the present...

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Soaking rain last night. Good for garden, bad for cycling. Steep downhill pinch to Lee Point, loose damp gravel and wet leaves. Front brakes grab, sail spectacularly over handlebars then graceful forward roll on impact. Armadillo unhurt, bike completely cactus. Carry bike back...

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Nobel Prize winner JM Coetzee's novel Disgrace is, as its title hints, about an ageing humanities academic forced to resign in disgrace after his callous seduction of a female student is uncovered. As the Amazon.com review encapsulates: David Lurie is hardly the hero of his ow...

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This story is worth reproducing in full: People who want to live longer and stay healthier were urged by an expert on ageing to have more sex and earn more money. Dr Ronald Klatz, president of the American Academy of Anti-Ageing Medicine Inc, said on Thursday that a British st...

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I had a terrible shock a few minutes ago. As I walked out of my bedroom about to leave for the office (after a morning of updating the NTU website from home), I came face to face with a Catholic nun standing at the front door. Lord forgive me! I instantly thought. They always...

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(Via Tim Blair ) For us execrated boomers it's a black day. Warren Zevon's dead after a "long illness". I thought you only got mesothelioma from asbestos.

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Carita Kazakoff asks about spring in Darwin in a comment to Geoff Honnor's slightly sardonic Sydney spring soliloquy Christopher Sheil's poem of earlier today. As an habitue of East Timor I thought she'd realise there's no such thing in the monsoonal tropics, at least if you j...

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Chapter 3 of Suzy's autobiography Close to the Bone is now formatted and uploaded. I've broken each of the three chapters to date into smaller, bite-sized chunks so they're much more manageable for Internet reading. I suspect I won't be blogging much myself until I finish load...

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There are few things I find more deliciously enjoyable than a story in which every single character is thoroughly detestable with no redeeming personal qualities whatsoever .

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Blogger Paul Watson , whose work I greatly admire, has a chip on his shoulder. He sees himself as a "Generation Xer" whose opportunities in life have been circumscribed by the self-centred hedonism of the babyboomer generation that preceded him. It's a repetive theme on Paul's...

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Long lunch at Law School expense, thanking Law Librarians for their efforts in running e-tutorials under stress. Good food, fine wine, gazing out across the bay from the terrace of the restaurant at Darwin Museum, listening to Yothu Yindi playing their entire repertoire in reh...

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Bite the bullet . Why is it easier to expose emotions and vulnerabilities to hundreds of strangers on a blog than to just one on a tram? The evolution of a trend towards blending of the personal and political in the blogosphere, arguably initially orchestrated by Gianna , is a...

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Living adjacent to a beautiful waterfront park is a mixed blessing. On Cracker Night (1 July) it's like being in the middle of the shock and awe bombing of Baghdad. It's made even worse by a mob of casino workers who rent the big house opposite and regularly have parties start...

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Suzy Kruhse cultivates female friends even more eccentric than herself. I suspect she finds the comparison reassuring. Billie-Jean is a prime example. Middle-aged grand-daughter of a well-known pioneering pastoral family, Billie-Jean has a torrid relationship with her long-tim...

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We all know that talking on a mobile phone while driving (except with a hands-free setup) is an offence. However, having sex while driving apparently isn't , at least in Germany. Can anyone offer an opinion on which kama sutra position would be most consistent with road safety?

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My sister Sue's husband Adam is a knockabout sort of bloke. A carpenter by trade, mostly doing heritage-style renovations around Sydney's north shore and inner west. Great husband and father, likes a few beers and the occasional joint. Loves nothing better than a good chin-wag...

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Further to my previous post Leadership Renewal , I felt I should make a centrist endeavour to maintain blogging balance in sexuality as well as political terms. Accordingly, here's a thumbnail of Geoff Honnor's nominee for Liberal Party deputy leader - gay icon, NIDA drama stu...

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Blogging and coughing and postponing starting the day's renovations. I see from a comment by Tex that he's from Darwin. He probably won't thank me for this, but the penny's finally dropped. Tex is the brother of Mark Textor, senior federal Liberal Party pollster and John Howar...

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Raging flu ... bad back ... aching all over ... God I feel crook ... renovation frenzy ... must finish this weekend ... God I feel crook ... no energy for blogging ... co-bloggers hold the fort ... over and out!

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Darwin has more than its fair share of halfwitted revhead dickheads whose idea of fun is spending all Friday and Saturday nights doing donuts, wheelies and burnouts around otherwise quiet suburban streets. The cops are never in evidence. As I lie awake for hours listening to t...

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The Tories certainly don't have a monopoly on humourless killjoy politicians. With Simon Crean in the news, however, you don't really need reminding of this. Nevertheless this Reuters story about the WA Labor government provides further confirmation: An Australian state has pu...

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