Club Troppo

Big business lobbyists and greedy foreigners are turning Sydney into an overcrowded hell hole, says Clive Hamilton . In Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald Hamilton draws on John Calhoun's famous rat experiments to argue that Sydney risks becoming a ' behavioural sink ' -- a city...

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[photopress:Rand_Window3_1_2.jpg,thumb,alignleft] Ayn Rand despised Friedrich Hayek. In a letter to Rose Wilder Lane she described him as "an example of our most pernicious enemy". At Thoughts on Freedom, Andrew Russell takes issue with some of my earlier comments on the Rand/...

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I took Alexander (my son) to the Australian Chess Championships being held in Canberra the other day. There on the top boards were four Grandmasters playing (I think Australia only has two - and both were there - Ian Rogers and Darryl Johansen.) Now I wouldn't be telling Tropp...

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Earlier this week I downloaded Mozilla Firefox and started using it as my default browser. However its inbuilt version of Google is much more primitive than the Google Toolbar I've been accustomed to using with Internet Explorer. Accordingly I tried to install the new Google T...

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Some weeks ago, Tim Blair, in his ongoing quest to ridicule Global Warming out of existence, decided to take a swipe at influential UK columnist George Monbiot. If you don't know of Mr. Monbiot he appears to be a very impressive fellow . He has led a very exciting life, having...

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Last night I happened upon a chapter by Murray Rothbard in a book called " Dissent on Keynes: A Critical Appraisal of Keynesian Economics . It was published in 1992 and the web version was published in 2003 and available here. The brief? Well roughly the brief Junie Morosi int...

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Not content with continually revealing his true identity to the world, one of his seemingly numerous enemies has now gone and stolen Anonymous Lefty's blogs !! I hope for his sake Lefty backed up the contents regularly. I also hope Blogspot proprietors Google take the matter s...

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For those members of the Barmy Army who are over here and overawed. Spiked columnist Ethan Greenhart had some advice for you , which apparently you ignored. Flying to Australia is never acceptable.

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I was watching Rage while polishing off a bedtime snack and saw a video that I though was going to annoy me - but turned out to amuse me - and indeed to make me smile and feel good. And of course it's on You Tube. The city it's filmed in turns out to be Sydney as I realised wh...

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For only a few more days the podcast of Richard Dawkins reading from his book is up at the ABC website . I listened to this when it was first broadcast, and while it didn't change my mind about Dawkins and his enterprise regarding religion and though he didn't really discus th...

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According to ex-Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, there is no reason to disbelieve in the existence of Santa. Please pass this message on to sceptical children. Dear Mr Rumsfeld, I am 8 years old. Some of my liberal friends say there is no Santa Claus. Daddy says "If Donal...

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From yesterday's AFR. It is the week before Christmas. Political programs such as the ABC's Insiders have ended and John Clarke and Brian Dawe have retired for the year to join an audience distracted by the summer. But this inattentive season is also the time for ministers to...

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What I should be avoiding at Christmas (but won't) It's getting increasingly difficult to compile Missing Link , what with so many bloggers announcing a Christmas hiatus. And it's been even harder this morning, because Google's Blogger service seems to have been playing up, ma...

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A friend Alex sent me this op ed by Polly Toynbee of the Guardian . I confess to being a bit irritated with the way it started off. "Fat is a class issue, but few like to admit that most of the seriously obese are poor." This actually gets to the nub of a crucial issue, but I...

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Op edders that is. Anyway, below the fold is an op ed of mine the Age published today ostensibly on Kevin, which was foreshadowed to Troppodillians here . In it I try to argue that all this stuff about the importance of projecting values in politics can be turned to good effec...

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After watching a replay of a Geraldine Doogue interview with Heavy Kevy on Compass last night, I find it increasingly difficult to credit Amanda's and Chris Sheil's hypothesis (developed on this thread here at Club Troppo) that he has already endeared himself to the general po...

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(via Sarsaparilla ) If you haven't checked out "Sublimely Gothic Cowgirl" and her blog Poligoths , now's the time. This cowgirl is a black belt Photoshopper. Probably my favourite is Amanda Vanstone (right) as Mistress of the Dark, followed closely by Phil Ruddock as Lord of t...

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Following its mooting on Troppo a few days ago, we're planning to (hastily) compile a Best Blog Posts for 2006. Online Opinion has indicated an interest in hosting the collection (and we can cross post it with links on other blogs). We're e-mailing a bunch of bloggers inviting...

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I was recently talking to Dennis Glover who told me of his October op ed equating the right commentariat with old style Marxists, making the pretty obvious point that most of them began as Marxists. I'd missed it when it appeared. It's makes a large number of good points so it...

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Andrew Leigh has a post on an ANU award for great teachers . This is a Good Thing. While I'm in full cry about the forth arm of government - the 'suasional' arm of government - I wondered why the ALP didn't give out awards like that. Couldn't do them much harm. Could do them s...

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