You may notice that I have changed the masthead motto, which until now read "the suppository of centrist wisdom since 2012". It was a somewhat snide and gratuitous reference to a Tony Abbott malapropism uttered in the leadup to the 2013 federal election (and pretty much on a p...
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I'm a big, though not uncritical admirer of Paul Krugman - of his straightforwardness and his aggression in what is almost always a worthy cause. And yet, reading Martin Wolf's magnificent book rather inauspiciously titled The Shifts and the Shocks: What We've Learned-and Have...
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The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. Wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of f...
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This paper is pretty interesting. The last generation has seen the triumph of the baby boomers in attracting resources to themselves, at the cost of other generations, most obviously illustrated in throwing off the shackles of university fees (so other generations and the uned...
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Contractual Freedom and the Evolution of Corporate Control in Britain, 1862 to 1929 by Timothy W. Guinnane, Ron Harris, Naomi R. Lamoreaux - #20481 (DAE) Abstract: British general incorporation law granted companies an extraordinary degree of contractual freedom to craft their...
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Below the fold is the Ockham's Razor lecture that went to air yesterday. Since the trolls have already come out in force on the ABC thread (The ABC's illustration doesn't help!), I've reproduced it for your delectation below. Nicholas Gruen: Both popular commonsense and econom...
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As a council member of the National Library I had the privilege of not only going to this lecture last Friday night but of having dinner with Ray, the benefactors of the lecture (John Seymour - whom I taught Legal Writing and Research alongside in 1990 or thereabouts - and his...
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Films Marina True story of beloved singer, songwriter and accordionist, Rocco Granata, from his early life as an immigrant in Belgium to his emergence as a worldwide musical phenomenon with his 1959 song Marina, one of the biggest international hits of that era.1948 Calabria,...
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‘Nor is wisdom only concerned with universals: to be wise, one must also be familiar with the particular, since wisdom has to do with action, and the sphere of action is constituted by particulars’. Aristotle [caption id="attachment_31744" align="alignright" width="387"] Looki...
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By the time economic reform matured as a political project – let’s date it from Paul Keating’s announcement about its popularity with the resident galah in every pet shop – it was already on the slide into the kind of ideological formula of mercantilism that Ken Henry so power...
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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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As we head back to Iraq, I'm struck by the way in which those making the case both for and against are avoiding certain ideas which seem to me to be true: This is not 2003 all over again . At least on a moral level, and at least as far as action in Iraq goes. We have been invi...
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Well gentle readers, it's come to this. Scottish independence is going down to the wire. It is hanging by a thread, though if you are concerned that I am mixing my metaphors, I think you're flogging a dead horse after it's bolted. In any event, in the question of Scottish inde...
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Miles Kimball, for the uninitiated a sensible centrist commentator on economic policy is also an admirer of John Stuart Mill and has supported the case for decriminalising drugs . At the same time, since he thinks drugs - certainly recreational drugs or the new ones - are bad...
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Creative Destruction: Barriers to Urban Growth and the Great Boston Fire of 1872 by Richard Hornbeck, Daniel Keniston - #20467 (DAE DEV EEE EFG LE PE) Abstract: Historical city growth, in the United States and worldwide, has required remarkable transformation of outdated durab...
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Ross Douthat in the New York Times presents a compelling theory about the waves of sexual abuse scandals , from Roman Catholicism to Rolf Harris to Rotherham. Remember that these scandals are scandalous precisely because their perpetrators all got away with rape and abuse for...
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I recently visited the National Gallery of Victoria's exhibition of 1950s furniture . I went to see Fred Lowen's furniture. Fred was a Dunera Boy - who I became aware of towards the end of his life when he had an exhibition of drawings at Australia Galleries in Collingwood. Th...
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On Tuesday I gave a talk to a Queensland Public Service Conference. The Conference is quite a production. It's a regular annual fixture and makes a good profit. Over 500 people attend and they take the opportunity to fund some excellent speakers. Dominic Campbell who founded F...
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Delivered for your amusement - if not necessarily mine: :) This conversation took around 15 minutes as I was working on other things. Thank you for choosing Optus. Please wait for a site operator to respond. Optus has a privacy policy, please let your consultant know if you wo...
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Oh aren’t they so tough our current leaders? Beating their hairy chests over the ISIS threat to Western civilization. Here’s Cigar chompin’ Joe Hockey Wenesday morning We will not be intimidated by the threats of murderers; we will never be intimidated as a nation or a people...
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Busy Troppovians have no-one other than Troppo to let them know when something serious has happened in the chess world. If Troppo had been going at the time, Troppovians would have been the first non-chess aficionados in the world to hear of Bobby Fischer's extraordinary explo...
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