Club Troppo

At the half-way mark of the Twentieth Century, in 1950, the French Annales historian Fernand Braudel wrote, "what an endless century it has been, indeed, leaving its bloody mark on Europe and on the whole world". Eric Hobsbawm describes this murderous century now past into his...

Continue reading →

With a bit of encouragement from her friends , frequent Troppo commenter yellowvinyl has turned blogger. Her blog, also called yellowvinyl , should be one to watch. Good luck, Kim!

Continue reading →

The intellectual heirs of Adam Smith have two battles to fight. The first is to rescue the free market from mercantilism and central planning and the second is to rescue our moral sentiments from intellectuals who think they are inefficient and overly sentimental. Catallaxy's...

Continue reading →

The case against Bush's foreign policy is often diminished by attack style books such as Michael Moore's or tired and repetitive critiques such as Noam Chomsky's. It's refreshing then to come across in my reading for my PhD thesis a well-argued, brilliantly documented and coge...

Continue reading →

The Courier-Mail reports , "State Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg has labelled Prime Minister John Howard unhelpful and " idealistic "..."

Continue reading →

Incorporating the Shorter Hendo (TM) In the late 70s and early 80s, Joh Bjelke-Petersen used to get awfully frustrated with a group of small l Liberal backbenchers known as the "ginger group". They had a habit of speaking out against government policy and occasionally crossing...

Continue reading →

Do governments put too much emphasis on economic growth? Winton Bates pumps his own moral intuitions and satisfies himself that the answer is no In the latest edition of Policy , economic consultant Winton Bates takes on Clive Hamilton's anti-growth arguments ( pdf ). After ag...

Continue reading →

Mark at his Doctoral Graduation I'm slowly finding my way around the Brisbane blogosphere. It's very random - we don't appear to have the same sort of community that exists in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. Or at least if there is one, I can't find it. As I reported earlier , I...

Continue reading →

Miss Piss at piss'n'vinegar is rightly horrified by a proposed law in Virginia requiring women who have a miscarriage to report it to the police within 12 hours - on pain of a fine or gaol term. In a discussion on Michael's post on Pentecostalism , Irant expressed some sceptic...

Continue reading →

A while back I criticised dogmatism among atheists as well as an excess of certainty in belief. The question of theodicy , as I noted a few days ago , is popping up again and again in the wake of the Tsunami tragedy. To some degree, I think this debate now has a momentum of it...

Continue reading →

A Guest Post by Michael Carden Pentecostalism was much discussed in the leadup to and aftermath of the Australian election, with much debate around the link between churches such as Hillsong and the Liberal Party and the politics of Family First. For a lot of commentators and...

Continue reading →

A recent trip to the Myer Centre convinced me that the latter day Leninist sects like the GreenLeft mob are on the wrong track with the protesting (and the infiltration of community groups, etc etc). The quickest and easiest way to destroy capitalism would be to convince teena...

Continue reading →

The debate on theodicy continues. In the SMH , Linda Morris elicits "qualified opinions" . This has to rank as a cheap shot, surely: After all, why is it, ponders Alan Nichols, acting director of Public Theology for the Evangelical Alliance of Australia, that religious organis...

Continue reading →

The SMH has the now traditional daily report on Latho's leadership. With the exception of the references to Latham's illness, the same story could have run any time since the election. Same leadership non-contenders (Rudd, the Beazer, the Glimmer Twins) and same notion that Pr...

Continue reading →

In the wake of news that Mark Latham's pancreatitis has recurred , only announced after he was criticised for his lack of comment on the Tsunami tragedy, reports are already appearing about his leadership being called into question . This is not a good start for Labor's new ye...

Continue reading →

Mark at Sydney Uni in 99 (Skiving off from a Conference at UWS Parramatta, captured just before wine consumption in Glebe) The Emerald City? At last, a musing on life from me. I quit my job at QUT today. I've worked there for eight years, which is long enough. I'm applying for...

Continue reading →

"Paul Keating is the greatest Australian Prime Minister since Federation". Discuss.

Continue reading →

Labor's Craig Emerson has found the path to economic enlightenment .

Continue reading →

The Evil Pundit, baiter of left-wing bloggers everywhere, writes This applies to people using Norton Internet Security, Norton Personal Firewall , or similar software firewall products. For people who use this, the default privacy settings on the firewall will prevent posting...

Continue reading →

Some commenters have reported that it's not possible currently to post comments. I'm extremely grateful to Evil Pundit for a possible diagnosis of what's gone wrong. Please read the comments on this thread if you're having any difficulties. Unfortunately, I'm no technical guru...

Continue reading →