Club Troppo

For economists and other social scientists who read this blog but don't pop over to the Government 2.0 Taskforce website, you should - there's m oney to be made serving the public interest - never a bad thing.

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Cross posted from www.gov2.net.au At a roundtable in Sydney, Miriam Lyons of the Centre for Policy Development (CPD) mentioned the idea of inquiries 2.0. As I said to her at the roundtable, Ive been giving a fair bit of thought to that question myself. Having spent some time o...

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One of the things that surprises me is that - with Google providing cloud competitors for Microsoft's other products, they don't provide a database, or what is the same thing only tailored, a simple small business accounting package. OK putting Microsoft in there is a bit of a...

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just thought Id drop in here and offer a heads-up for Troppo readers that ABC will be re-broadcasting the first three series of The Wire on ABC2 at 9:30.

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This is how Anke Hoeppner appeared when she played Leonore in Opera Queensland's production of Fidelio in July. On Saturday night she sang the same role in the Sydney Opera House in a cocktail dress (or some such thing) from the corner of the stage while Nicole Youl, in costum...

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Does anyone else have the problem that their Google reader occasionally just loads up a little more than the Google reader logo and then, while it proudly dispalays a sign against a dull yellow background saying "loading" it does anything but. It just sits there. This has happ...

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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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What is the probability your vote will make a difference? Andrew Gelman , Nate Silver , Aaron Edlin NBER Working Paper No. 15220 Issued in August 2009 NBER Program(s): LE PE Abstract One of the motivations for voting is that one vote can make a difference. In a presidential el...

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It seems opportune to revisit my 2006 paper, Equal Opportunity in Australia: myths and reality1. I wrote this brief up-date for NewCritic (put out by the University of Western Australia). Ones life chances depend in good part on ones innate qualities and character, but are dep...

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This question is posed by Bruce Bartlett in Economists View . The answer depends on how you define a conservative. Is it someone who believes in small government? Is it someone with an antiquated, minority philosophical stance - such as on Says Law relative to Keynesianism? Do...

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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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Republican Death Trip By PAUL KRUGMAN I am in this race because I dont want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990s. I dont want to pit Blue America against Red America; I want to lead a United States of America. So declared Barack Obama i...

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A couple of interesting pieces, courtesy of Michael Warby, a tireless provider of hot links . This is an interview with a Somali pirate , feel free to take it with a pinch of pirate salt! How are the pirates organized? (Are there pirate leaders, financiers, and specialists?) T...

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Independent MLA and "kingmaker" Gerry Wood has just about made up his mind how he'll vote on Friday's Legislative Assembly no confidence motion, and is delivering tantalising cryptic hints: Mr Wood says he has almost made up his mind and will tell the leaders of his decision b...

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White to play Schlechter vs Meitner 25. ? See game for solution.

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So far during the current recession, the drop in employment hours has been much greater than the drop in employment. Some have described this as evidence that firms are seeking to hang onto their skilled workforce by reducing work hours rather than laying people off. Julia Gil...

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Friday's NT Legislative Assembly debate will probably be more peaceful than proceedings in Taiwan's parliament, but you never know ... This Friday 14 August will witness the NT Legislative Assembly debating a "no confidence" motion in the current Henderson Labor government (se...

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Yes, it's true folks. But there is a catch. You have to be between 18-28. And you have to be 'progressive'. Me? I cover the field , so I can do progressive, but I can't do 28 anymore. So I'm out. But you - you may be in. So get those skates on and get over to the Australian Fa...

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HT HomePageDaily.

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As Charles Darwin University's designated "expert" political commentator, I've been doing lots of media interviews in the last week or so for both national and local media. As many Troppo readers will have noticed, the Henderson Labor government seems to be in the process of s...

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