Club Troppo

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself. Daniel Patrick Moynihan In one of my favourite quotes for me a kind of credo R...

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I had every good intention of picking up on a reader's suggestion that I create a Frequently Asked Questions section of Troppo, to which new-ish commenters could be referred whenever they raised topics that had already been debated ad nauseum , either here or in the blogospher...

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As Andrew Leigh is reminding us on his blog, The Monthly , a new magazine of ideas, is being started up by Morry Schwartz, the man who brought us the Quarterly Essay. Better yet, you can sign up for a free issue by going to their website before April 27. Its probably old news...

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Otto de Voogd is a Netherlander who has considered the ethical dilemma of traveling in Myanmar. It is impossible to travel to Myanmar without being confronted by the current travel boycott against the country. Specifically the Campaign for Human Rights and Democracy in Burma w...

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I'm enjoying writing my column for the Courier Mail . One of the things I am trying to do is sketch out ways in which very ordinary things and things that people don't associate with economics have economic dimensions - or rather have dimensions which economic thinking can hel...

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The only good thing about the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI is that it will put an end to the interminable prattling on current affairs programs , where a motley collection of logacious loquacious priests and self-appointed Vatican experts discuss a Papal e...

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High academic salaries and low teaching loads are pricing working class kids out of university says David Horowitz . In a talk at Ohio's Bowling Green State University Horowitz told academics that if they really as concerned about the working class as they pretended to be they...

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So I have spent the last three hours trying to get WordPress to work on my server. It works okay, but when I did a dummy run install, it didn't remember who had posted what, and there is a bug in it that means that I can not get comments to work. This is due to something that...

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I've penned - well actually I've pecked - an article on open source software. Its not yet been accepted, so I thought I'd see if anyone wanted to read my draft and offer comments before its too late. I should have thought of this before - but there you are - I didn't. When I f...

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Not long ago I blogged about a CIS paper by Helen Hughes and Jenness Warin which canvassed a range of options in relation to Aboriginal affairs. Most notably, they advocated amendments to native title and legislated aboriginal freehold to enhance individual ownership and alien...

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Never get caught between Rex and a tram seat .

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An interesting speech by Rupert Murdoch discussing the mainstream media's shortcomings (as he sees it) in embracing the Internet age in an effective manner: What is happening is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don't want to rely on the...

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AustLII (the Australasian Legal Information Institute) has just released a new facility called the Point-in-time Legislation Project . It allows users instantly to view legislation at any given historical date. You simply select the desired date in relation to any law and it i...

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Endurance athletes are risking death by drinking excessive amounts of a substance that causes brain cells to swell. According to the Mayo Clinic , drinking excessive amounts of the substance dilutes the sodium content of the athlete's blood. This can lead to rapid and dangerou...

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George Williams has emailed me and advised that his detailed opinion on the constitutionality of a Tasmanian Greens Bill aimed at allowing same-sex marriage is available on the Tasmanian Greens website . Melbourne University public law academic Simon Evans (whose blog I've jus...

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The States look like caving in to Federal Treasurer Peter Costello's demands that they abolish seven taxes that they agreed to "review" in 2005 as part of the GST agreement with the Commonwealth. This development is certainly part of the crisis in federalism about which I've b...

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A Tasmanian Greens bill to legalise gay marriage is attracting significant attention in the national media. UNSW constitutional lawyer George Williams is being touted by supporters of the bill as advising that it may well survive constitutional challenge (somewhat ironically)...

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Sometimes events happen in our lives that are so horrible that they scar us permanently. Educationalist Kevin Donnelly , a sometime guest blogger here at Troppo, and his family have had just such an experience. Kevin's son James was killed in a hit-and-run road accident some 3...

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With the British election campaign underway, the Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights (LCLGR) worries that gay men might vote Liberal Democrat instead of Labour. So to help Tony out, the LCLGR has distributed beer mats ( pdf ) to gay venues across the country -- the mats...

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If you think YOUR job is bad, check this site , stop whining, and get back to work.

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