Club Troppo

An earlier version of this story in the Fairfax press seemed to be trying to beat up a spurious Aussie versus Kiwi stoush by highlighting some obscure survey purporting to show that Auckland was in the world's top 10 most liveable cities whereas Sydney and Melbourne both misse...

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Why is it do you think that jurors playing Sudoku during a criminal trial amounts to a miscarriage of justice sufficient to abort a trial but it's perfectly OK for a judge to fall asleep and snore?

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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian We should be thankful for the small mercy that Tim Blair at least doesn't seem to belie...

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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Should we be worried? (via Boing Boing ) Lauredhel and Fiona Reynolds discuss the absur...

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I recently bought an ultra-portable computer which seems pretty good. It's an ASUS U2E. The installation of Windows Vista has given me new reasons to hate Microsoft, but I won't go on about that here. (I have uninstalled Office 2007 as 2003 is better and I'm seriously consider...

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I've long regarded writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper as a rather sad and futile exercise. Far better to post on your own blog, where at least you're only inflicting your opinions on genuinely consenting adults with similar obsessions. However, I couldn't resist sen...

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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Luvvies, but not Albert Finney playing Hamlet ( via Laura ) The inaugural downunder fem...

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One particularly lamentable aspect of 'he said - she said' reporting (and this is in an all lamentable range of phenomena) is that things don't exist for the media until they've been mentioned by someone sufficiently senior in a mainstream political hierarchy. Thus journalists...

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The YouTube service for slides has just been launched . I'm not entirely sure of the point of it, since one can post a powerpoint slide show on a web in ppt and it will be indexed by Google for the words (and for all I know the images) in it. So it can be found and viewed - in...

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It's a little surprising that, outside the RWDB blogs, virtually no attention has so far been paid to the current trial of Canadian right wing pundit Mark Steyn on (effectively) religious vilification proceedings by the British Columbia Human Rights Commission. Admittedly it's...

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On my way through page three of Gintis's reviews I came across a fascinating and disgruntled review of Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal . What's interesting is that as Gintis subsequently makes clear in comments, he's an ideological friend of Krugman's who nevertheless thinks...

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The more assiduous of those in the Tropposphere may have noticed Fred Argy by his absence in the last few weeks on this blog. Fred went to hospital for an operation and is recovering well. I've just spoken to him and wished him well. I hope he'll be back to his usual thoughtfu...

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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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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Terry Sedgwick notes the loaded language in this headline announcing the predictable le...

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The Elite Diner in Urbana, Illinois just before it closed down ( via Flickr ) Some readers might have noticed that I occasionally add sidenotes to Missing Link querying why elitism seems to be such a dirty word for Australians (and probably Americans as well). I haven't to dat...

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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian One for nostalgic codgers like me (KP) - Paul McCartney performing "A Day in the Life"...

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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian via Larvatus Prodeo Tim Blair has been doing some sleuthing on the rumours that Kevin R...

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In a post I wish I'd written, Robin Hanson lists a series of unjustified presumptions readers of political opinion pieces (especially blog posts) often make. In my fairly long experience of attempting to discuss issues in the blogosphere and trying to make my meaning as clear...

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A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill Politics Australian Apathetic Sarah imagines John Macarthur as a supporter of Camden's charming Kate McCull...

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