Club Troppo

What could be more appropriate on election day than to reproduce the last two of Jon Kudelka's epic series 101 uses for a John Howard ? Moreover, they're even ideologically balanced (well, almost). Speaking for myself, the best use I can think of for John Winston is as a crotc...

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What do Nicholas Stern and Peter Brent have in common with me?

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I liked the Ross Gittins speech that I posted on Troppo a week or so ago . I didn't join in comments, but had a nagging doubt. While I'm sympathetic to Ross's idea that self control is a big thing in an age of plenty, I guess I felt a little uneasy at a certain intimation in t...

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Australia is blessed with great cartoonists. John Kudelka is one such. There are some terrific cartoons on his website - which I've reproduced below the fold. In the meantime, he's doodled away to produce a book of cartoons and light commentary on the theme of 101 Uses For A J...

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John Clarke rose to new heights on tonight's 7.30 report. Definitely a case of LOL. Go check it out .

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If the government changes hands on Saturday, the pundits will make an immediate beeline for their retrospectoscope. Within a few short months and a few columns by Paul Kelly and Hugh Mackay we'll have an official version of what went wrong. The Liberals will be trashed - as we...

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The idea that Hillary Clinton is the most likely person to win the presidency for the Democrats beggars belief. It's certainly possible she could win - but then look at the position from which she'll start. But how a Republican could beat Obama or Edwards beats me. Another cas...

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"My wife was absolutely outraged when she heard about the incident." Let her convince us. "We, I hope, live in a society where we treat husbands and wives - although we respect the closeness of their relationship - we treat them as individuals and we shouldn't automatically tr...

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Last weekend I read Melanie Oppenheimers article in the most recent Australian Literary Review entitled Women missing in action , I was struck by the use of the word "misogynist" to describe retellings of Australia's World War One which did not give serious attention to women....

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Most economists like myself have come to believe that monetary policy now carries so much punch because a reduction in interest rates has a compound impact on borrowing costs, on exchange rates and on asset prices that it is unthinkable that we will have a serious recession ev...

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I saw Kevin Rudds National Press Conference address. At the start, there was a technical disconnection between his mouth and the words that came out which was distracting but it was soon corrected. The speech also seemed a little too long and repetitive (Rudd still lacks Howar...

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Joshua Gans draws our attention to Amazon's attempt to create the iPod for text. Kindle . Joshua's quite keen though unimpressed by Kindle's inability to display pdfs. I'm more seriously unimpressed by that, and don't reckon it will be a goer. At $400 US it's expensive . And I...

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Warney dressed as his mum for a new TV beer ad. What is it about beefy Aussie sporting blokes that makes them want to dress up in drag in front of the cameras? The boofheads at the AFL and NRL Footie Shows seem to think it's funny too. Courtesy Will at The Corridor (cricket bl...

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Election campaigns are fascinating events for a social scientist. In a poor country with lots of tensions, the issues would be about survival and bitter divisions, whilst in some sedate countries with no problems election campaigns are about the length of socks. Hence the issu...

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Courtesy of Crikey!, here's a list of five things to like about JWH. I completely disagree with the fourth point, and the first is at best half a thing to like about Howard - I'd argue that a great weakness of his reign is a basic lack of interest in policy (as opposed to the...

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Yes Troppodillians, a new Troppo competition - hopefully you'll just keep coming back till 24th November when you will have weightier concerns on your mind. Please record in comments, the stupidist bit of punditry you've seen in the campaign so far. I confess I'm convening thi...

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Details below the fold. Optional fanfare. This time last year, regular readers may remember, Club Troppo sponsored a showcase of Australian independent blogging, which we called 'Best Blog Posts of 2006' . From a large pool of nominations drawn from a multitude of Australian b...

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I've long harboured the idea that economic journalists are a special breed because they have an actual subject. There are plenty of them about juxtaposed against political commentators, but the political commentators spend their time blathering - they're engaged in what I call...

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As linked to by Paul Krugman , here's a bunch of pundits smothering the claims of Rudi Juliani with punditry not on whether the claims are true or not (they're not) but on whether they'll work or not. And of course as the link points out with punditry of that kind, they improv...

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