Club Troppo

Stephen Bounds who helped us our hugely in setting up the new site has a business to run and can't help us in day to day tasks. If anyone has the skill to help us out - in doing things like installing plugins and so on we'd be very grateful if they would let us know. Please em...

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"There are none so blind as those who will not see." So said Goldie Hawn in the 1972 film, "Butterflies are Free." That sentiment can describe those federal ministers claiming they had no reason to investigate corruption by the Australian Wheat Board. John Howard defended th...

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[photopress:Ricki lee_1.jpg,thumb,pp_empty] I realise this is not core Troppo business, and perhaps better put as a question to Dr Troppo, but I was running along the Port Melbourne beach, as is my wont when I saw some filming going on. I jogged around the line of vision so I...

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[photopress:Dr_Tropp___SuperId.jpg,full,pp_empty] Every Sunday evening I take time out of my busy schedule to help readers with their problems . As this is the internet, many of my most troubled readers are sock puppets and characters from fiction . This week a character from...

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'FUD' is the computer world's cute term for incumbent's habit of seeking to plant 'fear, uncertainty and doubt" into the heads of their customers mere thoughts of going with competitors. "Noone ever got sacked for buying IBM" was the catch-cry until sometime in the 1980s. Micr...

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That's right. These prices are just C-R-A-Z-Y. Following initiatives here , at LP and Catallaxy , we look certain to get at least ten subscriptions, cutting the subscription price by 50% to $50. I'll try to get this sorted out in the middle of next week. So here's your L-A-S-T...

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An e-mail from Mark Bahnisch reminded me a few days ago that this week is the seventieth anniversary of the publication of Keynes' General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. Keynes is a magnetic character perhaps as much to read about as to know personally. That's becaus...

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I have the right to fart in a crowded lift, or cultivate halitosis by failing to brush my teeth regularly. And, even if my neighbour is a Hindu, I would be entitled (health regulations permitting) to slaughter and barbecue a cow down by her back fence just to give her the shit...

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Deakin Law School's self-promoting funster double-act James McConvill and Mirko Bagaric is at it again. Following up on his previous effort advocating the legalising of torture, Bagaric has posted an article at Online Opinion in which he advocates a reversion to the pre-1975 c...

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Like Steve Jobs says "you can't connect the dots of your life looking forward "you can only connect them looking backwards." So after I'd got myself obsessed with Australian policy supporting the manufacture of cars, I realised that when I was an adolescent I had cut cars out...

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[photopress:Dr_Troppo_3.jpg,full,pp_empty] Mr Joker is a character in a Bob Dylan song . He has contacted me because he is unhappy with the circumstances of his existence: "Can you please tell Bob to rewrite my life?" he pleads, "It sucks". No whimpering Mr Joker. It's time to...

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We've been musing for some time about introducing a regular "open forum" post where readers can discuss whatever they like (subject to usual legal and basic civility constraints). It's hardly an original idea, but we've decided to try a slight innovation that we hope might bec...

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Along with its habit of sucking remorselessly on the federal fiscal teat, Darwin may soon have another sin to answer for if my wors fears are confirmed. The Wallabies' new coach John "Knuckles" Connolly began his coaching career just across the creek from where I'm writing thi...

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[photopress:Ask_Dr_Troppo_2.jpg,full,pp_empty] Good evening. After another hectic Sunday experimenting on my rats and persuading undergraduates to deliver painful electric shocks to each other I checked my virtual waiting room and found it full of Troppo readers with fascinati...

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A couple of weeks after my Christmas column appeared I received an email from Germany and I reproduce the contents of the exchance that ensued. 1. Subject: Regarding Erwin Fabian, the artist Hello Dr. Nicholas Gruen, I've found an article of yours on the web, mentioning Erwin...

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Like a good humanist and liberal I have always been opposed to censorship, however in the 1980s I stirred up a debate in the Humanist literature, pointing out that there was a newer wave of pornography about and it was very different from the kind of harmless stuff that prompt...

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It's fun having a few people read what you write because you can get a few irritations off your chest from time to time. Here is an article about criminal Mark Chopper Reid's forthcoming art exhibition. He's gone naive. I'm not a fan of Chopper's past or present deeds, and wou...

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[photopress:Graffiti.jpg,full,pp_empty] A civilized society is one whose members do not humiliate each other... Avishai Margalit The Centre for Independent Studies is arguing for incivility. In a recent paper Nicole Billante and Peter Saunders say: Excessive civility threatens...

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[photopress:Dr_Troppo.jpg,full,pp_empty] Hello. I am Dr Troppo. It has come to my attention that many of you have problems that you haven't managed to solve by reading magazines or watching Dr Phil on TV. Well, you're in luck. I can help you deal with these problems in person,...

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[photopress:St_Evil.jpg,full,pp_empty] " Help! Help! I'm being repressed !" squealed LP commenter Evil Pundit . That was September last year. Before long Evil found himself banned from the purple blog . Appealing the ban one commenter said : Maybe we should do a democracy thin...

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