Club Troppo

Spam email is the bane of my life. At one time a few years ago I was naive enough to leave my real CDU email address when commenting on blogs. Of course, it was harvested by the spammers and the number of spam emails I get in my work inbox has been spiralling upwards ever sinc...

Continue reading →

Looking at the debate on my earlier thread on 'moral rights' I reached for a column I wrote early last year on counterfeit goods. I thought it was posted here previously, but couldn't find it. So here it is. I think it's relevance to Ken's comment on my post is clear. I can't...

Continue reading →

Magnificent n'est pas? From Cassini. Explanation: Soft hues, partially lit orbs, a thin trace of the ring, and slight shadows highlight this understated view of the majestic surroundings of the giant planet Saturn. Looking nearly back toward the Sun, the robot Cassini spacecra...

Continue reading →

Who is this man and what is he up to? The French have a doctrine of the 'moral rights' of an artist. I don't know many of the details but it protects them against certain kinds of bowdlerisation of their works and (I think) is also the platform on which artists generates some...

Continue reading →

I remember an email which Rory Robertson sent out to his mailing list a short while after the Great Event when everything changed and it became appropriate to torture and detain people for years without trial in that war we're fighting against the Geneva Conventions - sorry -...

Continue reading →

Those sixties were fun! A while back I posted on Rolf Harris's amazing song Sun Arise. Well in the process of doing so I downloaded a couple of additional files which intrigued me. One was called "Rolf Harris with The Beatles - Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport.mp3" and I've appende...

Continue reading →

Big Brother is unquestionably garbage. It adds nothing to our understanding of a complex world. Nor does it enrich our lives with stories of timeless quality. By all accounts, it is an excruciating blancmange of meaningless banter, Benny Hill-style ribaldry and, now, low-level...

Continue reading →

From the 'obvious when pointed out' department comes this idea for powering ships. I've thought about this myself for ages, and wondered why sails were not put on ships as a matter of course. I presume they wouldn't add a lot of power, but surely modest sails would pay for the...

Continue reading →

I remember being at the national press club at about the time that Paul Keating had announced a further sell-down of the Commonwealth Bank. The trajectory was virtually the same as Telstra. From memory C1 was an initial float of 30% of the equity (ostensibly to 'pay for' the t...

Continue reading →

Given the failure of Dr Troppo to become a regular on this site, (he always seemed a bit dodgy) I thought I'd ask a question for light relief. Why are those shoes with canvas tops and rubber sole called Plimsolls (in Britain anyway)? The answer, and an interesting story from t...

Continue reading →

With federalism hotting up as an issue below the fold and here is Rory Robertson's piece from the Oz on how the states have not had the revenue windfall that they're supposed to have had from the GST. While I agree with Rory's argument, one thing that should be mentioned is th...

Continue reading →

Well, although for family reasons I am obliged to say that the soccer world cup is far from over, nothing stops me from pointing out that a) it is stating the obvious to say that the refereeing in that game is an absurd relic of the pre-television age, b) I would rather watch...

Continue reading →

Yes folks! Guusball is over and back to the real thing. Melbourne hosts the third State of Origin with the series at one game a piece. Will we be marvelling the mighty magic of the Maroons? Or will be saying bravo as the Blues return to their belligerent best? The beer is cold...

Continue reading →

(Well not really). I heard an excellent talk by him on ABC radio perspective last Friday and emailed him requesting the text - since the ABC only had the audio when I looked. (It's there now) He indicated that it was from his book and sent me the link . It's a good short peice...

Continue reading →

Peter Botsman who runs Australian Prospect sent subscribers an email a day or so ago inviting people to check out and buy aboriginal paintings. Some of them looked good to me so I offered to post them up on Troppo for him - if you're interested please click on the relevant lin...

Continue reading →

Paul Monk's essays have been gracing the pages of the AFR friday review for a while now. I read them when I see them and am rarely disappointed. But I particularly liked this review essay on the biography of Bertrand Russell by Ray Monk (I don't konw if he's any relation). It'...

Continue reading →

Here's a fascinating abstract from the National Bureau of Economic Research (US) Working Paper. Investor expropriation¢â¬âalso known as self-dealing or tunneling¢â¬âtakes such forms as excessive executive compensation and perquisites, transfer pricing, insider trading, self-...

Continue reading →

In what can become a regular feature with your help, welcome to the first 'pun watch'. Please feel free to put some of your favourite puns in the comments section below. Meanwhile, Chris Caton takes out the inaugural award. Not necessarily a truly great pun, but it tickled my...

Continue reading →

Courtesy of Slashdot (I think) I came across this interesting article reporting arguments that string theory has been the death of physics, or rather that it has basically taken it down a blind alley. Though many disciplines have suffered from 'physics envy', none less than ec...

Continue reading →

Last night was Cracker Night in Darwin, when every bogan fucktard blasts the hell out of their neighbourhood until 3 or 4 in the morning. It's also V8 Supercars weekend, when the self-same fucktards spend all day watching gas-guzzling hotted-up family cars circling round and r...

Continue reading →