Club Troppo

Terry Sedgwick has the definitive word on the Paris Hilton in prison affair 1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad A return to the Missing Link editing chair for me while Helen D does her judge's associate thi...

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July 24, 1959 , the American National Exhibition, Moscow. Vice President Richard Nixon gently steered Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev towards the model kitchen . He wanted to show him a brand new washing machine . We want to make the lives of our housewives easier, said Nixon...

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The War of Jenkin's Ear between Britain and Spain has a bizarre origin. Robert Jenkin's ship was boarded by the Spanish to determine if he was complying with the Treaty of Seville. Jenkin's claimed the Spanish cut his ear off - he pickled it, and took it to Parliament. War was...

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To free the market classical liberals need to help break the nexus between income and status. The more strongly the two are connected, the more the left will try to regulate the economy to prevent the growth of income inequality. This is because the left's concern over income...

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Over the fold, a screenshot of Windows' Vista advanced search interface. What the hell were they thinking? It is a confused and cluttered mess. Unfortunately I am trapped on the Windows platform for the moment due to commercial reasons. The best pairing of hardware and softwar...

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Background Briefing's latest effort is a lecture to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco by the journalist, academic and practicing surgeon Atul Gawande. He's the author of Complications which is a popular book on the science and art of surgery - well worth a squiz if you ge...

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Well, I couldn't round up a theme this time, although - as usual - there have been some memorable bits of bloggy goodness. My personal post of the week is from Legal Eagle, who has a superb piece on Nick Cohen's What's Left? (A book meme that appears to have been started by Ia...

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Just when Tony Abbott thought he had found his adopted son, Hunter S Thompson put a gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. Perhaps Thompson burned his way into Abbott's mind that day -- the emotion of the time made everything that happened then seem more intense and signi...

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The military coup which suspended the Thai constitution occurred in September 2006 - which is eight months ago now. Since then Thailand has been run by a military junta that is operating under a state of emergency. Australia signed a Free Trade Agreement with Thailand in Janua...

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The papers are reporting that Cardinal Pell is considering denying the Eucharist to politicians who vote for the stem cell bill currently before the NSW Parliament. The use by Catholic bishops of this particular sanction has caused a lot of acrimonious debate in the US, mostly...

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Here's an op ed just published in today's Fin. John Howard has form on cutting red tape like Paul Keating had on making tax cuts the L.A.W. Having won government promising to cut red tape by 50 per cent, Howard then introduced a new tax which, as Treasurer in 1981, hed rejecte...

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On Saturday the Prime Minister was Wile E Coyote -- the hungry predator whose cunning plans are never quite cunning enough to catch the Roadrunner. But with the results of the latest Galaxy poll , commentators might wonder whether the campaign is going to become a tortoise and...

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1. News and Politics Stuff 2. Life and Other Serious Stuff 3. The Yartz 4. T.S.S 5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad Well, it's not often we get Culture Wars, inter-blog stoushing, religion and grievous bodily harm all rolled into one, but today's issue of Missing Link highlights a memo...

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Every 2 weeks at QUT, we set up an economic policy discussion evening. We pick a topic for debate, have someone knowledgeable introduce it, and then let 2 students argue for or against particular policy reform proposals. We go out of our way to make the policy proposals realis...

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Well, thanks to some shilly-shallying about by your humble correspondent, it's been delayed. Admittedly there are a couple of outstanding bloggy conversations that I want to summarize (and they're still maturing tastily), but for the most part it's because both I and some of t...

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Deutscher-Menzies have a great auction coming up. I love, totally love, this Arthur Boyd. But do not alas have a spare 200K. If you are a Troppodillian who does you should high-tail it down there. While you're there, I reckon you should buy this Charles Blackman - a steal at a...

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John Howard introduces his strategy for the future.

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(another one of the Lost Files following the Great Server Crash) "Exempting any group of people from criticism is not a blessing but a curse. Thomas Sowell " It was reconciliation week once more last week, a good opportunity to debate some of the more thorny issues surrounding...

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Re-posted following the great server crash. Originally posted by Nicholas Gruen on Sunday, May 27, 2007 When I read the first paragraph of Noel Pearson's latest op ed my heart sank. I have watched with awe how the progressive lobby turned al-Qaeda recruit David Hicks into a re...

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If human behaviour is about maximising utility from a stable set of preferences, why assume that a rational actor will accumulate true beliefs? What if the most efficient way of satisfying an individual's preferences involves false beliefs? If theorists like Gary Becker are ri...

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