Club Troppo

I am shocked and horrified. Clover Moore is not Scrooge, the Howard Government is! The parliamentary Christmas tree is no more. It's been sold to the ACT government and is now somewhere in Civic (alert Canberra readers, please tell us where!). It seems it was too expensive to...

Continue reading →

I wasn't going to bother with Hendo this week . In any case, Rowen at Sailing Close to the Wind has already posted 'The Smaller Hendo'. The Currency Lad has been on the case , or maybe at the awards ceremony, as well... But basically, Hendo was right about everything and all o...

Continue reading →

Having given up on wrestling with Leo Strauss' esoteric and exoteric meditations on the question of What is Political Philosophy? for the night and having exhausted the pleasures available from Letterman , it's a relief for this tired sociologist to read something in the paper...

Continue reading →

Andrew Norton has always been cynical about public displays of compassion. He can't bring himself to accept that the ' luvvies ' and ' worthies ' are motivated by empathic concern or moral principle. Like many classical liberals he's convinced it must be some kind of self-inte...

Continue reading →

Troppo Contest of the Week! Continuing the TV theme , I think I watched the worst ever American reality tv show set in Australia last night. Outback Jack . The host is called J. D. Roberto. The premise is that twelve "uptown girls" think they're going to a mansion to pick a ba...

Continue reading →

I caught SBS' Movie Show last night. I've only occasionally watched it since the departure of David and Margaret to ABC. I was half curious because the distinguished Mr Stratton has attracted some negative press in the right wing corners of the blogosphere of late . But the Da...

Continue reading →

Via Kick & Scream , I've just learned that the home-grown 2005 Australian Blog Awards have called for nominations. Interesting to note that Evil Pundit has already been nominated... I'm still wondering why he hates Sweden so much...

Continue reading →

Lately, we've heard an enormous amount about elites, (aka latte sippers) . A project for the future might be a post to put to rest this tenacious fallacy forever (I live in hope generally...). Often these dreaded elites are associated with universities. As the news breaks that...

Continue reading →

Rob Corr continues his excellent coverage of Indigenous issues at Kick & Scream . Rob picks up on Pat Dodson and Noel Pearson's critique of the Mulan 'agreement' : The Government had a role to play in increasing expectations in indigenous communities, but "more careful thought...

Continue reading →

Long before I started blogging, most of my online interaction with people was through chat-rooms. The first room that I made myself home in was a room dedicated to cricket fans, and through that room I met a lot of interesting people. It was great- we even did a get-together i...

Continue reading →

Writing in the SMH today , Edith Cowan Uni politics lecturer Peter Van Onselen and consultant Phil Senior call for Labor to focus on the bush. There are more rural/regional seats than outer metropolitan seats and Labor holds fewer of them. But Labor can't do that while the par...

Continue reading →

It's almost trite to point out that if you read the Latin poets of classical Rome, one thing you will come across again and again are laments about the moral standards of youth... and any readers of Robert Graves should be equally aware of Augustus' concern that sexual morals...

Continue reading →

Banning Santa is a great way to attract publicity With only 13 days left to Christmas it's time for newspapers and TV stations to track down politically correct kill-joys who want to ban Santa . If you're getting impatient for your 15 minutes of fame it's time to make your mov...

Continue reading →

In The Weekend Australian Magazine , Paul Kelly interviews the Prime Minister, in an interesting portrait of the very ordinary/extraordinary man who has dominated the political landscape of Australia since 1996. There is a online preview that can be read here . Left-wing reade...

Continue reading →

As promised, here are the awards for Mark's movie homage contest and my micro-story competition . Mark has passed me 3 envelopes. Here are the awards and the winners: Phil K. Dick Award (First Prize): Tie between Big Bob and Alan Dr Bloodmoney Award for the Commenter Who Alway...

Continue reading →

by commyxtion and mellyng, furst with Danes and afterward with Normans, in menye the contray longage ys apeyred, and som useth strange wlaffying, chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbittyng. That's Ranulph Higden, writing in 1352, and complaining in his Polychronicon about the...

Continue reading →

For as long as I can remember, I've been an aficionado of the spooky and supernatural in literature and film. Note, not horror exactly, or not as it's been interpreted in modern times, with altogether too much grue and gore, but the kind of spooky that evokes the strangeness o...

Continue reading →

It has been a long time since I wrote a serious post; many troubles have beset me, both in keeping this blog empire functioning, and away from the screen as well. Be that as it may, a serious post is in order lest this blog become known as the Daily Mark Bahnisch . The Left mi...

Continue reading →

Proponents claim that the precautionary principle is harmless but introducing it into public policy making may have dangerous unforeseen consequences Where an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if som...

Continue reading →

Internet quizzes are always fun. Except for those pesky iq tests... Via internet quizzes, I first found out that I was 47% slutty , and that there was an 80% probability that I was a woman. Courtesy of Alex in a comment on a Catallaxy thread , here's a more serious internet qu...

Continue reading →