Club Troppo

Christmas isn't quite the same in the southern hemisphere, is it? (via Darryl Mason ) 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad We've been operating short-staffed here at Missing Link over the last 2 or 3 weeks,...

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I've been writhing around writing a column on greenhouse. I find columns on greenhouse hard as I complained here . But rewarding when you get what you wanted to say said in the exacting form of an op ed. I've just finished writing an op ed for the Oz on Bali and was contemplat...

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Yesterday's op ed in the Fin is a first for me. It's the first time in scores of op eds I've written, that a paper has picked up my proposed headline. Below the fold is the piece as originally written before it was chopped back from 700 to 500 words. It's a direct development...

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Yea verily. Just click through to Phylotaxis and have a look around. Remember to move your mouse through the logo when you first arrive at the site and then have a play around inside.

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Here's an informative set of graphs from a column by Martin Wolf on climate change. Australia's failure against it's emissions is unexplained in the diagram - since we're much closer to our Kyoto target then the graph has us - but I presume the reason is that the emissions cou...

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This is a diagram of a game that was played nearly 150 years ago. White castles long (on the Queen's side) and is completely lost, something that's clear within two more moves. See if you can suggest what black's two next moves are.

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Courtesy Tanja " Poligoths " Stark 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad This weekend edition of Missing Link has been produced by a reduced complement of James Farrell, Gilmae, Jim Belshaw and Ken Parish, wi...

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In part 1 of this post I attempted to outline some of the main principles that should underpin good policy in the indigenous affairs area, drawing especially on the work of the Productivity Commission and indigenous academics Toni Bauman and Marcia Langton. In this second part...

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Here's an article for Crikey called 'Remaking Australia' - on the theme of broadening economic reform. Economic reform had become fairly formulaic by the early 1990s though a lot of things that were announced in the late 80s or early 1990s took another ten years to get impleme...

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Courtesy of Greg Mankiw

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From Crikey! linking to the NYT. Unnoticed and unappreciated for five decades, a large female turtle with a stained, leathery shell is now a precious commodity in this citys decaying zoo. She is fed a special diet of raw meat. Her small pool has been encased with bulletproof g...

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In today's Crikey! Glen Dyer tell us that the RBA has been "caught badly short". In the statement accompanying today's decision to hold rates at 6.75%, the RBA recognised the worsening in global conditions. In fact the sharp increase in turbulence and volatility was why intere...

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"With the Howard era over, we are about to engage a new family that we know little about, except that Theresa Rein is very rich and dresses like Count Duckula. In fact the entire family, with the exception of Ruddstar, likes to dress LOUD." (lifted from the Daily Telegraph) 1....

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I've just received an email from Liberty Victoria. It says this: In 1999 the Howard Government amended the Migration Act to permit the Minister for Immigration to deport non-citizens on character grounds irrespective of how long they had lived in Australia. Previously, permane...

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A few years ago, some members of the ALP's Left faction were battling to change the entrenched practice whereby its ministerial nominees were always allocated the federal aboriginal affairs and immigration portfolios. One anonymous Left Caucus member referred to these portfoli...

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Christophano Allori, Judith with the Head of Halophernes Every December Pinchgut Opera puts on on an opera at The City Recital Hall in Angel Place. Juditha Triumphans is their sixth production, following Semele , The Fairy Queen , L'Orfeo , Dardanus and Idomeneo . As usual the...

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This guy has to be the most talented politician I've ever seen. That's not to say he was a great president - sadly he was just a quite good one - at least comparing him to some others. If I were a politician I'd just watch footage of this guy and try to figure out the lessons...

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We've been having a behind-the-scenes debate at Troppo for some time regarding the copyright claims for material published here. The site has had a standard copyright notice since its inception way back in 2002. However, I have intended for ages to move to a Creative Commons l...

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Cross-posted from Peter Gallagher's site , with Peter's permission in light of Nicholas Gruen's post here at Troppo on the same topic. Sir Nicholas Stern argues , ahead of the Bali meeting of the UNFCCC, for binding, differentiated emission targets and international trading. I...

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From this weekend's Financial Review Friday Review. "Labor will grapple with those choices, just as all those who triumph in the battles of politics and of power struggle with the balance between continuity and change. It is difficult to win those battles without demonising op...

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