Club Troppo

From PC Pro: He's already endured five months in prison. But now a Linux user convicted of piracy is facing the ultimate punishment - he's being forced to run Windows. Scott McCausland was the one time administrator of the Elite Torrents, until the FBI shut it down and he was...

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Politics is all about compromise and trade-offs. Sensible politicians target the median voter not the extremists on either side. On that test, Labors IR package seems to get it about right. Moreover the proposed changes are transparent for all to see and contain a lot more det...

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We'll start with a community service announcement: The Australian Blogging Conference is to be held at the Queensland University of Technology on September 28 this year. Peter Black, one of the Missing Link crew, has put a considerable amount of time into getting it off the gr...

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On behalf of all Troppodillians I had lunch with Joshua Gans today. Actually it wasn't on behalf of anyone. I just felt like writing something pompous. Anyway, we spoke about many things including writing columns. Joshua writes all or many of his blog posts in the morning whil...

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"Michael Gerson never wrote a single speech by himself for President Bush", writes former colleague Matthew Scully . Along with Gerson and John McConnell, Scully was part of the team that crafted some of George W Bush's best known speeches. In a bitchy article for the Atlantic...

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Tomorrow sees the publication of a Lateral Economics report commissioned by the Victorian Government on Regulation and Innovation. It argues that our current approach to 'regulation review', though laudable in intent, is having at best modest success and that the reason for th...

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If you've ever wanted to make a burger with 100% pure bacon or you need a recipe for caramelized bacon then I've got links for you. Welcome to the baconsphere! "Bacon is totally meat candy," says bacon enthusiast Heather Lauer. Heather blogs at Bacon Unwrapped . See Heather's...

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Forget about strippers, the greatest menace on the campaign trail is food. Birthday cakes, pizza, cheesesteak sandwiches, or pork chops -- they can all stop a campaign dead in its tracks. Remember the unlosable election of 1993? Everything was going well for John Hewson until...

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I refer to my earlier posting ("well done Murdoch shame on business") regarding the current business advertisements and Steketee's critique of them. Peter Hendy, Chief Executive of ACCI, has a letter in the Weekend Australian claiming that Steketees criticisms were wide of the...

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First up, an apology for the lateness of this issue. I've been overdoing things at the Edinburgh Festival, with the result that Missing Link has suffered. Still, there's plenty of goodies here for your weekend delectation, so sit back with something drinkable and enjoy. I'll k...

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On Monday Media Watch castigated The Australian for refusing to correct its misrepresentation of the opinions of Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC. Anyone who hasn't followed this story can get all background from the Media Watch story itself, from Tim Lambert , who was on...

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According to Patricia Karvelas in the Australian yesterday (accompanied by the picture below) , it will be up to John Howard to decide whether or not same-sex couples will be granted equal status with heterosexual couples under Commonwealth law, since the Cabinet could not agr...

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Megan McArdle asks : "Did John Quiggin just write that it doesn't matter whether the New Republic ran a false story?" The short answer is 'no'. The long answer is over the fold. The whole thing starts with a story about dogs dying in Baghdad. What false story? Last month The N...

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While not retreating from my earlier accusations of systematic bias in the main Murdoch press, let me now strongly commend The Australians Mike Steketee for his column in todays edition of the paper. He takes on the business lobby for telling big fibs in their advertisements o...

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I'm sure that when we look back in twenty years, we'll see that some of our declining media were actually sitting on Web 2.0 gold mines that they failed to realise or tried to realise in ways that they completely bolloxed up . Here are some great ideas proposed for the New Yor...

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Who wrote this telegram? "1. Hang (hang without fail so the people see ) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. 2. Publish their names. 3. Take from them all the grain. 4. Designate hostages -- as per yesterday's telegram. Do it in such a way that for...

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Some of the true believers of the blogosphere are getting nervous about Labor's prospects of victory at the almost-imminent federal election. Fred Argy here at Troppo attributes his doubts to the evil and biased Murdoch press, while Mark Bahnisch over at LP blames the "me too-...

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I believe that the media will play a significant role in deciding the outcome of the next federal election. In particular, the role played by the Murdoch press- which controls some 2/3 of Australias national and capital city news market will be crucial. At this stage, Murdoch...

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See, this Kevin bloke walked into a bar... Ozblogistan (like the MSM, but somewhat more cynically) got into Kevin's Komedy Kapers at a New York strip club big time, and spent (a fair bit of) time concluding it was a storm in a teacup, albeit a highly entertaining one. Some of...

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