Club Troppo

In 1806, the Bowman's of Richmond, NSW flew a flag to celebrate the English victory at Trafalgar. The amazing thing about this was, the Bowman flag looks very similar to the modern coat of arms. It has a Kangaroo and Emu holding up a shield adorned with heraldry. Kangaroos hav...

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="168"] No job's too small for Mickey[/caption] Today I got a message from the Victorian Government. I had to get a new drivers licence but . . . the good news was that as part of their arrive alive! strategy I was getting back one third...

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Libertarianism is in crisis because it refuses to accept big government, says Tyler Cowen . As governments turn away from central planning and embrace free markets, their societies grow wealthier. And wealthier societies can afford bigger governments. According to Cowen, it's...

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On the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war, Prime Minister John Howard has been forced to clarify his position on the existence of a plan to cut and run . The Opposition asked John Howard whether he was aware of reports the United States (US) has prepared a plan for a phased wi...

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UNCLE KEN NEEDS YOU Missing Link needs a new volunteer. Darlene Taylor has been forced to withdraw from the "Troppo Cabal" due to pressure of other commitments, so we need someone to review and compile the ML arts-related blog category. The arts category currently consists of...

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A cute account of one of our favorite tribes . The Econ tribe occupies a vast territory in the far North. Their land appears bleak and dismal to the outsider, and travelling through it makes for rough sledding; but the Econ, through a long period of adaptation, have learned to...

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He lost his father to a car accident and his mother retrained as a nurse so that she could earn a living and support her family. It was a narrative that told voters who he was and why they should trust him to lead the country. Scenes from his childhood were woven into a video...

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Another one from Daily Flute Monday's Missing Link is an eclectic mix of political and broader posts, as well as a couple of rugby league posts from Shaun Cronin. No dominant theme, but a wealth of good reading. Editors again are myself, James Farrell, Patrick Garson, Darlene...

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A little post in last weeks' science news said that the South Korean government was thinking about the 'golden rules' of robot-human inter-relations. They are doing this because they sincerely believe that the technology of neural networks and miniature chips will pretty soon...

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American conservatism is as much about rhetoric as it is about policy, says Sam Tanenhaus . Few conservative leaders are as revered as Ronald Reagan, but his supporters often forget that he made government bigger rather than smaller. They forgive him because he believed what t...

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Last week, a fellow by the name of Patrick West, TV columnist for the UK based internet-magazine Spiked ( Yes, the one of dubious provenance ) , published an entirely stereotypical and quite unenlightening piece about we marvellous Australians. Because despite all of their pro...

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Crikey's Christian Kerr wants to know . . . . Here's his guest post calling for input. Power â with and without glory Who are the people in politics and the media who will really decide the outcome of this yearâs election? There are the obvious big names of the Gallery and the...

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Is John Howard a strong father or just an annoying older brother? Voters see their nation as a family and its leaders as parents, says cognitive linguist George Lakoff . In the US, voters often see their leaders as the world's parents -- as if it was their job to protect small...

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Not my words, but all the more amusing for that. They were the description -- by the friend of a friend -- of the two participants in Thursday's extended LNL interview . A sufficiently decent interval has now passed, I think, for me to once again risk such a promo. Phillip spe...

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When I saw that Paul's post was about chicks and tuna, I had an overwhelming urge to Google "naked women + fish" ... hmmm[KP] There was a very interesting talk yesterday by prof. Sean Pascoe of CSIRO on 'chicks and chuncks: a story of tuna and birds'. It raised an unusual ethi...

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Michelle Grattan was speculating this morning on Fran's Chat n' Chew , that the fulsome confession out of Gitmo resident and terror mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed might turn the tables in Australian politics. Ms Grattan's theory was along the lines that having a real proven...

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Courtesy of the great Daily Flute This is the second edition of Missing Link created by the collaborative method Jason Soon has christened the "hive mind" with a sly nod to hackneyed anti-feminist labelling. Using a wiki to compile a post like Missing Link certainly seems to m...

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If John Howard could beat Mark Latham , then Gordon Brown can beat David Cameron , says Third Way architect Anthony Giddens . In a recent piece for the Guardian , Giddens writes: Look what happened in Australia. The prime minister, John Howard, is ageing, and he does not exact...

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This post began as a comment on James Farrell comment on a recent thread in which I linked to a bit of dirt on Chomsky. James pulled me up twice, in each case in ways that I appreciate. He (and Paul F) suggested in his first comment that a slip-up in a quote ainât no crime and...

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Have a look at this video . It's pretty damning. Please comment below if you know of any come-back that Chomsky might have.

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