Club Troppo

Here is a guest post by Avi Waksberg. NG Should we pay teachers performance bonuses for teachers based on standardised testing of their pupils? The teachers I’ve spoken to about this have invariably argued that it encourages them to 'teach to the test' whilst neglecting hard t...

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After reading this Australian article , I looked for the relevant US diplomatic cable , largely because the paper cannot be assumed to quote things accurately or in context. I found something else that worried me though. Here's two excerpts, with my emphasis. Although the Boar...

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On any view yesterday's High Court decision holding the Malaysia Solution to be unlawful is a smashing blow to the Gillard government and an equally smashing win for asylum seekers and the people smugglers who capitalise on their desperation. In the slightly longer term it als...

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The ABC has made a documentary about David Hicks and screened it in an double episode of Australian Story. It's still on iView and I suggest you go check it out if you've not seen it. It went to some lengths to be 'balanced' but somehow the balance seems to me to tilt too far...

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What with the sheer number of journalistic political pundits churning out daily "footie commentary" columns to fill the voracious maw of the media cycle, you'd imagine that no possible play would be left unanalysed. Instead we get a curious brand of groupthink where they all w...

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I am about to make a trans-Pacific flight. Moreover I am doing this on a third world American Airlines plane that I am reliably informed does not have individual movies on demand. This is a fairly serious problem but of course to any Troppodillian it is more of an opportunity...

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I'm doing a few presentations in the next week or so and have been hit by an avalanche of bureaucracy. I try to minimise costs for my clients and book the cheapest airfares possible (usually booking them late in the piece to preserve some flexibility). One of my government cli...

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Women are "working fewer hours, in lower-paid industries and in lower-status jobs" than men, writes Jessica Irvine . Despite decades of feminism, women are still doing most of the unpaid cooking, cleaning and caring for children. They are still struggling to break into senior,...

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Since a recent visit to San Francisco catching up with a cousin of mine I'd last met forty years ago, I've been receiving an email once a week. It is written by Raymond (using a French pronunciation of the word long before Stephen Colbert took to this trick). It is sent to any...

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Steven Jobs is perhaps the best CEO of the last hundred years. This may reflect my ignorance of other CEOs - which is bordering on the comprehensive - but my reasoning goes like this this: In identifying extraordinary talent, one has to guard against luck. How do we decide bet...

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Why "shouldn’t we look forward to a freer, more egalitarian world of tomorrow in which people are allowed to live where they want?" asks Matt Yglesias . If neoliberalism is about removing all barriers to market transactions then removing restrictions to migration should be top...

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Beer: Who has the best beer? Chris Bertram isn't sure ... but it's not the Welsh. The fatosphere: Fat acceptance blogs can improve health outcomes according to a recent study. Sunanda Creagh reports . Why inequality is like cholesterol: Matt Cowgill and Mark Bahnisch discuss a...

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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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Mick Malthouse, " latter optionist " and coach of Collingwood Football Club had some insights to share with club tragics such as me in his latest video . Regarding the Brisbane Lions he feels that The more they become less reliant on thinking about people who aren't in the sid...

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="220" caption=" Prize-winning nature and wildlife photographer, paleontological impressario, molecular gourmet and Dark Lord of IP trolling: Nathan Myhrvold, Founder of Intellectual Ventures"] [/caption] The Economist blog 'Democracy in...

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="360" caption="Courtesy of the RBA"] [/caption] In my first year of university, in one of the earliest classes, we were shown a graph Australia's terms of trade in the 1950s. This is something I doubt would happen in economics education...

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(note to self) Just a week ago, the betting markets still gave Gaddafi a 40% chance of remaining in charge till the end of the year but now the markets have given him up for a lost cause. The Arab Spring can hence boast another regime change, and this time one that is quite co...

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Paul Krugman has lamented the lack of incentives in US political life to make sense. There are no sanctions, he argues , against politicians saying and standing for completely crazy things - like that tax cuts generate more revenue. Anyway, I thought about this looking at this...

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Following from Ken's post the other day I spent some time in idle thought. For the moment I'll disregard my problems with aggregate productivity statistics (many of which are covered in this Grattan Inst paper). I'll also disregard my feeling that ultimately productivity growt...

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Paul Lockyer & quality journalism: Paul Lockyer's "documentary on the Queensland floods this year was just simply outstanding", said Laura Tingle last month . The veteran ABC journalist was part of her top 10 quality journalism sources in Australia. In April Alan Knight wrote...

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