Club Troppo

Susan Polgar - one of the best women players in the world on the second game between Topalov and Kramnik. Looks like the same story, as last game but different format. Topalov bounced out of the blocks with white and mounted a ferocious attack on Kramnik's king. Kramnik held o...

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So it happened again. No Melbourne team in the grand final. In fact, none of the top four teams in the AFL competition were from Melbourne. We will go through the motions of pretending that grand final week still means something. And at 5.30 on Saturday there will be a quiet e...

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Those many of you who don't follow chess will not know that the first game in a unification bout for the World Anyweight Champion of Chess took place last night - our time. The players? Topalov whose extraordinary swashbuckling style - never mind that rooks are supposed to be...

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This open thread last weekend started off with a whimper, but turned into an interesting discussion about why nothing was happening on the thread! How's that for naval gazing! Anyway, a long time ago when I put on a sketch as an undergraduate at Burgmann College Robin Bell the...

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Today's Crikey has a brief piece by me in reaction to a piece by Christian Kerr on Wednesday. I've written about this a couple of times on Troppo before. Here's my reprise for Crikey. What makes Australia's social security system great The memes are out in force again, I see....

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I've admired Paul Monk's writing for a while now and have linked to a particularly good essay of his in the past. In any event, he's agreed for me to post essays of his on Troppo. Over the fold is an review essay of John Armstrong's recent book on Goethe and happiness. From th...

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I'm not much chop at reading poetry, but I was listening to a podcast of the Book Program and heard this discussion about Elizabeth Bishop. There was a marvellous reading of a poem about a Moose (would you believe). I reproduce it over the fold, though I expect I wouldn't have...

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Even Pope Benedict now agrees that some of the words in his recent speech at the University of Regensburg were just a tad ill-chosen. His regrets, however, may not be as acute as those of the friends and family of the nun apparently murdered by Muslim thugs as a result, or eve...

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Researchers say we've never been happier -- so where's the problem? According to economist Andrew Leigh only a handful of nations outrank Australian on measures of happiness and life satisfaction. Looking back over survey data collected since the 1940s, Leigh finds that our "o...

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That's the headline of the Washington Post's editorial on the subject. (Courtesy of Brad DeLong's Blog .) Of course, Mr. Bush didn't come out and say he's lobbying for torture. Instead he refers to "an alternative set of procedures" for interrogation. But the administration no...

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The IPA's article on Australia's 13 biggest mistakes (pdf) is a good conversation starter. I'm not very good at exercises like that, so I don't have a list of my own. Certainly the 'mistake' of publishing J S Mill's On Liberty is an odd one - I guess kind of tongue in cheek it...

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There's a delicious game going on in the regulation of financial advisors. 'Financial advising' grew out of insurance salesmanship. That was simple. Insurers paid good money to salespeople who could sell insurance. They got large quantities of the policies they wrote with the...

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Last week I spent some time collecting some data from various sources that summarise the differences and relationships between various crude measures of national performance, mostly for an introductory class on regression (which according to Rafe is the most fun that you can h...

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Is the childhood obesity epidemic caused by irresponsible fast food chains or by lax parenting and lazy kids ? Is poverty caused by a lack of opportunity or by the behaviour of poor people ? Is global warming caused by suburban energy gluttons or is the sun to blame ? The war...

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Imagine super-nanny on crystal meth. That's how Lawrence Mead 's ideal case manager deals with recalcitrant welfare recipients: One man I know in Milwaukee, who works for a private employment program ... summarized his message to his male clients this way: “I’ll do anything to...

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[photopress:robson.jpg,full,pp_empty] TodayTonight host Naomi Robson was trying to get to Papua to save the life of a young boy earmarked to be eaten by a tribe of cannibals, an industry source claims. They're kidding, right?

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Phillip Coorey in today's Herald praises the Opposition Leader for showing leadership in the debate over values. (In response to Howard's critique of Muslims who won't assimilate, Beazley proposed that vistors, including tourists, should sign a declaration on their visa form t...

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Via ex-coblogger Jason Soon , in case any Troppo readers haven't found it yet: Andrew's new blog . Andrew is an articulate and elegant writer, backs up his claims with facts and figures, avoids hyperbole, responds thoughtfully to reasoned criticism, and graciously concedes a p...

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