Club Troppo

Nothing's easier to understand than a story. It's as if human beings were hardwired for narrative -- stories with beginnings, middles and ends populated by people doing things. According to cognitive scientists Roger Schank and Robert Abelson that's not far from the truth. Bac...

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Peter Saunders likes to call himself a classical liberal . Leftist commentators prefer to call him a neoconservative . But what is neoconservatism and how does it differ from ordinary versions of conservatism? And what has he done to earn the label? Andrew Norton says that "no...

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It completely beats me what Topalov is playing at. He is known for his swashbuckling attacking style, and is being slowly ground down by the very hard to beat Kramnik. His response? Get your manager to make all sorts of allegations that you're cheating and play quite aggressiv...

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Extreme anger is as good a reason as any to come out of blogging retirement temporarily. The ABC's Andrew Denton has demanded that Channel Nein apologise to Joanne Lees for publishing a poll on yesterday's Today program asking viewers if they felt Ms Lees was innocent of Peter...

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Alan Kohler has a piece on T3 in Wednesday's Herald that, as you would expect, does a pretty decent job of unpacking what's going on. He notes the huge commissions being offered to the stock salesmen, and concludes that: ...you can't believe anything most brokers say about Tel...

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RMIT's Rob Watts attempts to save the welfare state by attacking liberalism Neoconservatives are winning the welfare debate because they take values seriously, says RMIT's Rob Watts . In a recent paper on the welfare-to-work debate ( pdf ) he rejects the idea that the left is...

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Guest Post by James Wheeldon of http://www.jameswheeldon.net/ The Commonwealth Government is about to embark on a $20 million advertising campaign to encourage retail investors to pick up Telstra shares in the "T3" third tranche of its privatization. It is generally accepted...

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From the pre-game commentary Slater was well held by the Dragons. He is probably due for a blinder. King could be ready to explode as well, his best work was done in defence the other night when he practically closed down Gasnier. The biggest danger for the Storm will be the p...

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A mate of mine made this tongue in cheek comment the other day to a Canadian fellow; Why do you hate America so much that you decided to be born somewhere else? Which is an appeal to the absurd in nationalism and the arbitrary nature with which it deals with individuals, citiz...

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I vaguely remember - at about the time of the September 11 attack as part of the 'everything has changed' meme, a lot of invitations to the left to apologise for all the things they'd done wrong. All their naivite, all the things they stuffed up, all the things they didn't und...

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Chess players are nothing if not temperamental. The story so far - at least as I could be bothered learning about it is that: Topalov's camp protested about the frequency with which Kramnik was going to the toilet(!) The officials seem to have required Kramnik and Topalov to u...

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It all started on the 10th of March with the Dragons and Tigers and will end about 8:45 Sunday night with either the Broncos or the Storm being the 2006 NRL Premiers. It has been an interesting season but the post mortem will come later. The immediate concern is who will win S...

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Two weeks ago Ken wondered aloud on 'weekend reflections' that it might not work all that well on Troppo. It had only attracted between four and ten comments in the past. Anyway, the very thread he wrote this on attracted some interesting comments. Last week's weekend reflecti...

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In 1963 the Australian Government ordered the F111 at the then astronomical cost of $112 million with the final cost a decade later being 324 million. It has been the best bang for the buck purchase Australian has made in defence. Like all good deterrents it will be retired wi...

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There is nothing, I'm sure you'd agree, more fascinating, more delightful to observe, or more satisfying to the soul, than to see two grown men poke their tongues out at each other, fully extend to the other, the middle digit of both hands and for good measure unbuckle the bel...

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It is generally accepted that Popper did not give a thorough account of the way that science actually works, and that is supposed to indicate that by the 1960s he was a bit out of things. Perhaps he did some interesting work back in the 1930s that challenged the logical positi...

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I've been doing some (fairly idle) thinking but not much reading about globalisation and the extent to which large amounts of 'offshoring' of labour will be good and who it will be good for. I can't say I've got far but was interested to read this post which was pointed to by...

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I'll be giving a presentation with the above title at the University of Canberra tomorrow - Wednesday 27th of Sept in Room B34, Building 6 University of Canberra at 12:30 pm. This is a repeat of a seminar I did at the ANU last year, but if you missed it and the title or abstra...

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The shelves in American bookstores relating to politics over the last few years have become dominated by titles such "How to kill a liberal and get away with it", or "How to dice a conservative and serve them for dinner without wasting pepper". I often think when faced with al...

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