Club Troppo

[photopress:Tocqueville.jpg,full,pp_empty] "I would like to leave behind a legacy or a think-tank", says President Bush , "a place for people to talk about freedom and liberty, and the de Tocqueville model -- what de Tocqueville saw in America." For once I agree with the Presi...

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With our usual flair for lobbing grenades back and forth between well dug trenches, lots of energy in the greenhouse debate goes into grenade lobbing between supporters of Kyoto and greenhouse denialism of various kinds. I'm pretty cynical about Kyoto, and particularly cynical...

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Well, Massachusetts seems to be still going for mandated open standards despite the hicough of a month or so ago . Courtesy of Slashdot, this source reports that the CIO for Massachusetts who left or was sacked in the aftermath of the announcement of the policy is being replac...

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[photopress:Crikey logo.jpg,full,pp_empty] Crikey is a wonderful Australian institution - not least because it nominated Troppo as their blog of 2005 ! A sucker for good quality, independent media and flattery like that to boot I was just filling out the on line form inviting...

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I'm not mucy of an afficionado of sports journalism, but Brian Bahnisch sent me this write up of the big match and David Williamson had a quite nice piece speculating on why Roger cried.

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[photopress:Matt_Welch.jpg,full,pp_empty] I ain't gonna piss in no jar. Them evil peckerheads they done gone too far (Mojo Nixon) It was early 1987 when I touched down in LA. Evidence of the Reagan administration's war on drugs was everywhere -- on the walls, on billboards and...

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There's quite a lot that went into this column and then had to be taken out for lack of space. The first draft began "The memes are out in force again I see", because it seems to me that the tax debate, like so many public debates develop more like an infection than a decent c...

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[photopress:Stoddard.jpg,full,pp_empty] Political correctness is a kind of covert censorship which silences ideas which are unacceptable to the ruling elite. But if this is true, then the ideas which are being suppressed can't be the ones we're reading in newspapers like the T...

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[photopress:volcanoaurora2_shs.jpg,full,centered] A volcano and Aurora Borealis

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The blogosphere is a useful source of word of mouth information or word of keyboard and screen as the case may be. Without some blog or other (I can't remember now) I would never have gone to see Spiderman 2. And though I didn't think it was a great movie, it was a good one an...

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[photopress:Grogblogging.jpg,full,pp_empty] In case you missed it, bloggers from around Australia met up on Saturday night for Grogblogging III. And yes, they're just as opinionated in person as they are on screen. Flashman from Electron Soup was chatting with Jozef Imrich of...

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I was expecting to be safely ensconced in Melbourne by the 28th but no. I'll still be in Canberra, so I'm going to do my best to attend the Grogblogging event at 7.30 pm at the City RSL (565 George St). Why it's at the City RSL beats me. Perhaps I'll find out on attending. Mor...

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Good news everybody! Israel Kirzner, the leading current exponent of the Austrian school of social and economic thought has won a gong in Sweden . Sweden has an interesting mix of policies, combing free trade and a dynamic, export-oriented private sector with cradle to grave w...

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My editor asked for a column on the changing of the guard from Alan Greenspan to Ben Bernanke. So that's what he got. Bernanke Handover: So far so good. It's a tried, tested and trusted truism that generals fight the last war. But some generals have the insight and courage to...

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Progressivity of transfers, around 2000 : Ratio of benefits received by poorest quintile to benefits received by richest quintile, total population [photopress:Progressivity_of_Transfers.gif,full,pp_empty] There's a new crusade on against tax churning - that's the state taking...

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All governments keep a sensitive eye on what is happening to inequality of incomes and inequality of opportunity because they want to be seen to be fair and because sharing the nation's incremental prosperity helps bind the community together. But governments are also concerne...

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The papers have recently been reporting Macquarie Bank's hunger for assets most of which share certain characteristics. Macquarie is on a buying spree that has made a splash around the world . Recently they have been either buying or bidding for a global company that leases ou...

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Jason Soon linked to an hilarious attack on Thomas Friedman on Catallaxy some months ago, and my brother just sent me a link to an interesting John Kay column on entitled "The scam of those who see the future in today" which takes a casual and amusing sideswipe at Friedman. A...

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There are some interesting comments in response to the posting of my column on the household division of labour on online opinion .

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Greens risk being seen as 'watermelons' -- green on the outside but red on the inside -- says David McKnight . By attaching themselves to the struggle for trade union rights and radical egalitarianism they are playing into the hands of critics who see them as just another bran...

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