Club Troppo

What astonishes the contemporary reader is, first of all, that a genuine, independent intellectual like Galbraith was permitted to serve in government, let alone become the confidant of presidents. Facile anti-intellectualism is the order of the day now... Thomas Frank, author...

Continue reading →

I watched Denton tonight and needed a shower on conclusion. He interviewed Frederick and Mary Glucksburg. A couple who might have been a mid-ranked corporate duo anywhere in the western world really - perhaps a double -diamond Amway family or goodlooking Scientologists maybe....

Continue reading →

The Academy Awards ceremony was just dedicated to US military forces serving overseas.

Continue reading →

In a typically sarcastic comment to my earlier post about John Howard and Straussian neoconservatism, my partner jen sardonically questioned why I hadn't included a reference to Derrida in a post that fearlessly embraced rambling irrelevance in just about every other way. Well...

Continue reading →

Or, The Art of the Academic Jobsearch I spent part of my morning finalising my application for a Research Fellowship in Griffith Uni's Socio-legal Research Centre . All the advice that's been around for years in HR is that cvs and selection criteria responses should be succinc...

Continue reading →

I've been a regular net user since 1997, and first discovered the thing in 92, when we were delighted to find we could access the Village Voice sitting in the Semper Floreat offices at UQ. A feature in the Fin magazine on Friday made the point that many of the utopian claims m...

Continue reading →

I don't know quite what to make of John Howard's decision to almost double Australia's commitment of troops to Iraq by sending 450 Darwin-based soldiers to protect Japanese engineers around Basra. Is it, as Tim Dunlop seems to imply , just another example of Howardian deceit a...

Continue reading →

I thoroughly enjoyed the Inaugural Brisvegas bloggers' meetup on Friday night. My first post-grogblog comment was at Mel Gregg's place and a round up of other attendees' posts can be found at the Meetup message board .

Continue reading →

First good news on the election front since Premier Pete won 63 of the 89 Legislative Assembly seats in Qld a year ago - Labor continues its clean sweep of the states and is re-elected in WA . Discussion Question : Given that the Howardians are so dominant federally, why are t...

Continue reading →

When American academic Stephen Duncombe discovered zines he was awestruck. "Somehow these little smudged pamphlets carried within them the honesty, kindness, anger, the beautiful inarticulate articulateness ... the uncompromising life that I had discovered (and lost) in music,...

Continue reading →

Norm Geras has a post up on Normblog about a survey which asked people in various occupations whether or not they liked their work. There was no occupation which claimed a majority of people liking their work--it seems most people who responded don't like their job! But the oc...

Continue reading →

Sunbeam's Personal Groomer ($14.95) removes the unsightly hair that grows from a man's nostrils when he reaches a certain age. It appears along with Remington's Precision Dual-Head Nose , Ear , and Eyebrow trimmer ($22.95) on page 71 of this week's Bulletin . That just about s...

Continue reading →

I'm looking forward to my parents coming to Darwin next week. That is if my Dad is up to it; he fainted at the pub last week and has been in hospital until today. In any case, I suspect that Mum will come anyway, regardless of Dad's health, she want's to celebrate her 80th wit...

Continue reading →

The WA election is tomorrow. I haven't been following it, so will make no predictions. However, there are certainly national implications - the rise of the Beazer was said to be essential to Labor's prospects for re-election, and if the Coalition are elected, it might be inter...

Continue reading →

Or, Tres Catholique [After Umberto Eco] I had the very great pleasure tonight of showing a couple of friends from Melbourne the wonders of the Valley - or at least that we do good Jazz band (Kafka) and good bar (The Bowery) here in Brisvegas. Or at least, that being a regular...

Continue reading →

Quick pitstop from the Toowong net cafe closest to Thesis land. Just wanted to remind people in Brizvegas of the grogblog at Ric's Bar tomorrow night - Troppo readers and commenters are most welcome. Also a plug for Funk for Tsunami at No. 12 in the Valley tonight - which a fr...

Continue reading →

"A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work." In his recent post on postmodernism and history , Chris Sheil discussed Umberto Eco's great novel The Name of the Rose . I've just dug out my copy of his Reflections on the Name of the Rose . What he writes in the fir...

Continue reading →

Or, the Return of the Political While I remain disinclined to engage with the contention of some Troppo commenters that anyone who identifies with the Left or admires Eric Hobsbawm must immediately don sackcloth and walk towards the scaffold on the Place de Greve with a lighte...

Continue reading →

Back in December, Scott wrote about internet dating . I'm single again, and as I'm hardly likely to meet anyone sitting in an office in Toowong by myself writing a thesis, I'm giving cyberdating a go . I don't want to write about my experiences, as I don't want to invade anyon...

Continue reading →

I was on campus on Monday to borrow some books for my PhD. It's the first time in nine years that I'm not gearing up for the teaching semester, so I'm feeling fairly relaxed at the moment. I'm evidently so out of touch that I didn't realise til I got there that it was O Week....

Continue reading →