Club Troppo

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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 Paul Norton looks at the current cult of global cooling and lessons unlearnt from South...

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It's not long since Paul Frijters raised the subject of paid maternity leave here, inspiring a long and stimulating discussion in the comments. The topic is in the air again, largely because the Productivity Commission has been looking into the issue. Unfortunately I stll have...

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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 Threats from certain Missing Link colleagues have resulted in a penis photo theme in to...

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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 Robert Rauschenberg's Skyway (1964)(he died this time last week, but better late than n...

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Below the fold is Crikey's ruminations on Bob Brown's story that he was offered $1 mil in coverage if he would support a particular media proprietor get stuff through the Senate. The thing that bugged me about Brown's story was that he said that he didn't disclose it at the ti...

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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 Reason 's Jesse Walker on the fate of the Spaghetti Monster (originally a comment on th...

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John Quiggin and Dan Hunter have written a very interesting survey article on Web 2.0 . They characterise the new innovation on the web as the innovation of the amateur. Their choice of word is deliberately provocative, and also rehabilitative. As they note, at least in the wa...

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Three quarters of America's wealth is invested in its people, writes Gary Becker . He argues that while physical capital is still matters, human capital now matters more. Where once a nation's wealth lay in the fertility of its soil, today it lies in the knowledge, skills and...

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Nicholas Gruen's post a couple of days ago on American RWDB shockjock Bill O'Reilly's dummy spit has got me thinking. Why haven't local TV programmers inflicted similar current affairs "personality" commentators on Australian audiences? After all, we've had their radio equival...

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I've added a new Australian sports blogs category to TroppoSphere , with lots of great feeds kindly identified by Guido (whose new blog is one of those featured). I've also split the arts blogs category into two - "theatre, film, TV and visual arts" and "books, music and gener...

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Many thanks to the readers who responded to our joint Burma campaign with John Quiggin by donating to aid agencies assisting the victims of Cyclone Nargis. They include: Dylan Nicholson (100), John Warburton (100), Kim Weatherall (150), Stephen Luntz (350), Robert Merkel (100)...

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You've heard of the tragedy of the commons and if not you can look it up here . But as the public commons burgeons on the internet and in the headlong rush of at least a substantial portion of the corporate sector towards open innovation (or more open innovation) there's anoth...

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A friend of mine's partner and her son are setting up a cafe/bakery in an old Church in Perth, Tasmania . So, in the true style of financial markets of the eighteenth century (my chosen favourite century to be part of - so long as I got one of the good parts) I've invested wit...

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How's this for commentary as news? The opening sentence of the lead story in The Age today . OPPOSITION Leader Brendan Nelson has sought to revive his ailing leadership with pledges to cut petrol excise and block a 70% tax hike on pre-mixed alcoholic drinks. How absolutely dis...

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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 The California State Constitution protects gay marriage! See today's ML "law" section ....

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The Archibald Prize Exhibition at the NSW Art Gallery winds up on Sunday. That doesn't leave much time, but, having seen it myself now, I strongly endorse Nicholas's advice from two months ago -- see it if you can. And if you have children between seven and twenty, take them....

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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 A t-shirt every blogger should have, courtesy Will Wilkinson who argues (compellingly)...

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Heather Ridout was asked to give the Budget a mark out of ten on the radio today. She gave it 8/10. As I said to some colleagues today, I'd like to have been in her class. The two most long-standing governments since Menzies absolutely ripped into outlays in their first budget...

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