Club Troppo

I posted a while back about my pet theory that the South of the US was a psychotic society, which psychosis was brought about by the politics which arose in a slave society. Anyway, I just came upon this article which looks interesting, and in the same vein. Slaves as capital...

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Missing link is taking a vacation. See you next year! The destruction of the tea: What did the original tea party patriots stand for? Alfred F. Young looks at the history behind the Boston Tea Party . Are Slaves Growing Your Fair Trade Cotton? Matthew Yglesias links to a story...

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Here are two talks I've given in the last year. One was a couple of weeks ago at a Melbourne Conversation on Big Data . I talk about the serendipity of big data and the relevance for privacy regulation. And tell a story about Kaggle. I recommend the talk before mine by David M...

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I ran into James O'Loghlin at the Innovation Awards in Brisbane last week. He MCed the awards and in introducing the evening with a 10-15 minute monologue that was sufficiently funny that I the dim dark recesses of my brain reminded me that he was a stand up comedian before he...

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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="460" caption="Tilda and her Very Nasty Offspring wait for expert assistance"] [/caption] I went to see We need to talk about Kevin on Saturday night. It may not be universally well reviewed, but that's how it's seemed to me having spent...

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I was in a conference in Tokyo last week on the topic of advancing the use of well-being indices throughout the world, hosted by the very generous, civil, and well-organised Japanese. One of the great things about such conferences is that you get to exchange views with smart p...

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As Theodore Roosevelt finished his address to the people of Osawatomie his speechwriter leaped up and cried : "Citizens of Kansas, you have just listened to one of the greatest pronouncements made by any man. Its effect will be felt in the nation and the world for years to com...

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Brian Bahnisch over at Larvatus Prodeo has a useful summary of the state of play (such as it is) at the current Durban climate change talkfest: China, it seems, wants the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol for the developed countries, and wants them legally bound to deeper cut...

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The comment of the month award goes to Andrew Norton on Richard's latest post (which is excellent by the way). "The 1980s reform period was very controversial until about 10 years ago, when the argument that free markets aren’t working w[as] ere replaced with the argument that...

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Struggling Australians breathed a sign of relief today, when they read that the 'relentless pressure ' applied by Melbourne's Herald Sun has forced a humiliating climb-down by the big banks and delivered the full interest rate reduction passed down from on high. The paper repo...

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Ken has already linked to Possum's post on Australian Exceptionalism, but I have a distinct point I want to make about it. In a great part I agree with the sentiment, although I'd espouse most of the past 220 years rather than just the past three decades. It's far less the "Th...

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The Humbling of a Pretty Girl: When model and fashion writer Lauren Scruggs walked into a plane propeller the paramedics didn't think she'd survive . "With the lacerations on her head and the skull fracture, we thought there would be significant brain damage", said one. At Zer...

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I don't imagine we'll be running Best Blog Posts this year. Certainly I won't have time to be involved. Moreover, we never actually anointed an annual winner in any event, just an undifferentiated group of 30 or 40 of the best from the non-MSM blogosphere. However, if I WAS se...

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Herewith my op ed from the Herald and Age today. What is the good life and are we living it? Assessing and measuring wellbeing has vexed us since ancient times. But a funny thing happened on the modern world’s way to the answer. The metric that economists used to dampen down t...

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Both Judith Sloan and Ian Harper argue that Newstart Allowance is too low , particularly for recipients who are long-term unemployed. In the late 1980s, the Social Security Review also argued for an increase in unemployment payments. The review's authors wrote: ... immediate p...

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http://youtu.be/WAvf1lVbjUA

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New article by me at CDU Law and Business Online (I've written on this topic before at Troppo but this one is aimed at law students and is therefore a bit more academic though hopefully still accessible and interesting for a general audience - feedback in that regard is invited).

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Introducing Ellen Broad: Hello Troppodillians. As some of you know, I am the patron of the Australian Digital Alliance which, broadly speaking, represents users of copyright protected products. Its members include Google, Yahoo!, each of the national cultural institutions, lib...

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http://youtu.be/PEwf8e5jHTg

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A friend of mine, and a great contributor to Australian public policy, Mike Waller, a man who sketched out Australian competition policy on a single page and fed it up the line as an FAS in PM&C in the late 80s (or perhaps it was 1990), has wrenched himself from the policy sce...

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