Club Troppo

A few weeks ago, Ken wrote an excellent post on the hue and cry over what many viewed as Peter Garrett's craven about face on US bases. It produced a long and lively discussion on hypocrisy, on cabinet solidarity, on what room there is within the party political system for pub...

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One thing everyone can agree on: people, media and politicians: is that elections are important. Democracy is the moral under-pinning of our political system. I remember watching the HBO documentary on Diebold and when it was shown that the electronic voting machines could be...

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Dove, no doubt for its own good commercial reasons are running a (cough) Campaign For Real Beauty which has been picked up by my daughter's school. Check out this striking video of the passage from the modelling studio to the unblemished looks of a poster.

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Once again, this isn't skepticlawyer's ML - it's Darlene Taylor's. Enjoy. Welcome to Missing Link 2: The Darlene Edition . Almost as good as Basic Instinct 2 , but without the aged sex symbol. This time I have busyness rather than technophobia to use as an excuse for lateness....

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Courtesy of Ross Gittins.

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Elections are surprisingly poor determinants on whether a Prime Minister will change in the federal government. The following graph has a post-1942 pie chart of Prime Ministers removed by general election (orange) vs those removed by just about everything else (maroon); includ...

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Well folks - do you want this feature or not? We had it up and it got quite a few comments for a while, and then they dwindled. I then stopped posting it without attracting howls of protest. Let me know if you want it to stay and I'll hoist it up at a time of general choosing...

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Every year I scan the Melbourne Comedy Festival catalogue which appears in just about every form imaginable from March onward. This year's festival starts on April 4th. I often go along to a session or two keen to check out developments in what people think is funny. I'm usual...

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By way of background, a few words on how I view the relevant players. I lost what regard I'd had for Howard during the Tampa standoff and the children overboard affair. His readiness to ruthlessly exploit vital issues for party political ends finished him for me. I could still...

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I've always thought that when my kids get to drive I want to buy some system to install in the car's computer that will give me a readout of how they drove when I ask it. How fast they accelerated, revved the engine etc. I've been surprised not to see anything like this market...

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I was talking with my nine year old Alexander this evening. I asked him through the pleasure of having him sprawled over my lap and telling me about school whether he fancied growing up or whether he had it too good the way it was. (I remember at that age thinking that the res...

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If you like your crime stories to be littered with corpses. To feature brutal crims who live in a world of paranoia,deceit and ego, whoâll stop and nothing to be the last man standing, then youâll love this tale of true crime Melbourne style. And today the mystery body was als...

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This is a question I've asked myself for a long while - with particular regard to Whitlam's outrageous behaviour on a matter that turned out to have importance which vastly overshadowed any domestic events during his Prime Ministership. Here's Former Australian Timor diplomat...

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Since Troppo has recently become 'Happiness Central' I thought I'd share this snippet from the indefatigable Andrew Oswald and his collaborator David Blanchflower (nice names these guys have got). A modern statistical literature argues that countries such as Denmark are partic...

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One of the joys of moving from Canberra to Melbourne many years ago is the access to art auction houses. A new one started up a few years ago which is much better run than the international houses of Southerby's and Christies (Imagine having a name like Christies and not being...

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If you want to know why Senator Barack Obama excites so many US Democrats, take a look at the video below. Speaking in late 2002 (when he was still an Illinois state senator), Obama lays out the major risks of an Iraq invasion, all the time looking both reasoned and tough on S...

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Euthanasia is back in the news, albeit in a fairly low key way. Last Sunday The Peaceful Pill Handbook , by longtime Darwin-based euthanasia campaigner Dr Phillip Nitschke and Dr Fiona Stewart, was banned by the Classification Review Board of the Australian Office of Film and...

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This diagram is in a presentation by Tony Blair about Britain. So who knows if the sources are chosen conveniently. But, providing the stats aren't shonky in some way it makes a telling point. Similar points could be made about job security and no doubt other social phenomena...

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Oh my gawd, itâs my first edition of Missing Link : Lighter, sillier and undoubtedly ridiculous. A bigger edition of Missing Link will appear later this week for your reading pleasure or otherwise. Thanks to Ms S Lawyer for her brilliant effort over the weekend. 'Oh I wish I w...

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The interesting piece by Paul Frijters on utilitarianism as a policy guide prompts me to draw attention to a recent piece I did for New Matilda and is now available on Policy Online. It tries to compare Howardâs Work Choices and welfare to work reforms with an alternative âsoc...

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