Club Troppo

On the way home the other evening I was stopped at the round-about near home when a beautifully restored canary-yellow LJ Torana accelerated out of the corner and, with a delightful burble of the tweaked RED 273 cu inch six, carried it's pasengers off to enjoy life. Why does t...

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Coming up for air after an exhausting week in Sydney.. I was asked earlier if I had a list of recommended books for Christmas, so I thought I'd just talk about a few books I've enjoyed recently, suggest also some lesser-known classics, --and also note some books I hope I might...

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I told the story of Second Lieutenant Melissa Stockwell who lost her leg in Iraq because her Humvee had no doors. US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld was yesterday subjected to unexpected and critical questioning on a visit to US soldiers in Kuwait. One key point was that...

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Bloggers, of course! Commenter harry wrote a while back , in answer to my question, "To what degree do blogs represent a source of news or commentary on politics for you?": Great source of useful links to news. Good for breaking news but often this is surrounded by a lot of sp...

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Or, Yet Another Troppo Contest At Fafblog , the Medium Lobster has a post which begins: You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when you look down and see a tortoise. This is standard procedure, designed and developed to protect you and the homeland. Do not be alarmed:...

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Since his death on the 8th of October, I've been planning to write something about Jacques Derrida . In particular, I want to write on his thought on politics, which has been key to my own work for some years now. But the time has not yet arrived. For the moment, The Nation ha...

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Geoff Clark, still Chair of ATSIC, asks today with reference to a new mutual obligation plan at the forefront of the Government's approach to Indigenous policy (aka the 'fuel for hygeine' plan ): "Who is going to stand at the gate and see whose kid has the cleanest face?" he s...

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Courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald's new blog, Radar (note to SMH: if you're going to have a blog, please link to it on the front page!), some thoughts about why younger Australians are often working a 70 hour week. In Australia, contrary to a long secular trend (and in def...

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Posh and Becks feature in a nativity scene at Madame Tussaud's. Photo: Reuters. Continuing my musings on fame and its contemporary cultural significance, what's going on when our Nic is named UN Citizen of the World alongside Hans Blix and Lakhdar Brahimi, Angelina Jolie saves...

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Ross Gittins asks : Which do you think is more common: murder or suicide? If you think it's murder, congratulations - most people agree with you. But you - and they - are quite mistaken. Suicide outnumbers murder by far. That question is a cognitive psychologists' party trick....

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Brett Whiteley's ghost haunts BackPages In the week that a ghost fetched $65000 on Ebay , something spooky is also happening in the Australian blogosphere. It's not quite the face of ET in a piece of breakfast cereal, or the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast, but it's definitely...

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I agree with Hendo! Well, at least in part! Maybe it's because Hendo is trying to ward Chris Sheil off from a potential move back into the blogosphere by learning from Chris' frequent demolition of his logic to actually supply some, but last week I felt that Hendo made a bit o...

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Comments boxes not working? You might be using crap software. Thanks to ace technical consultant boynton , I learn that the cause of the comments box thing being forbidden is that users are using Internet Explorer! Oh, the shame! Get Real. Get Firefox! Of course, if you MUST u...

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I was chuffed today to discover that there is a tribute show to Leonard Cohen in Sydney headlined by Nick Cave and my absolute favourite songstress of all times, the wonderful Beth Orton . It's on over Australia Day weekend next year. I am so there. ESSENTIAL READING : Reading...

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Poor old Latho. In the wake of weeks of overwhelmingly negative press coverage , he's slumped in the polls and the party's slumped to lows not seen since Simon's leadership began to enter its terminal phase. But I don't think Ruddy's cause is going to be helped by an endorseme...

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Louise Dodson, writing in today's SMH , claims that the battle for the Catholic vote is not over. Bishop Kevin Manning, Catholic Bishop of Parramatta , had some acerbic and pointed remarks to make about the possibility of changes to the Industrial Relations laws by a coalition...

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Dresden after its WWII bombing. Thus, nuclear physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer after witnessing a nuclear explosion. In Ken's post on literature and world events, Stephen astutely cited the work of W. G. Sebald . A novelist, academic and critic, Sebald was born in Wertach im Al...

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"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible." - George Orwell. Ken poses the question of why there seem to be so few writers tackling big issues of the stature of George Orwell . Maybe Orwell himself had the answer in his 1946 essay P...

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Where are the great popular novels, plays and films that grapple with today's major political and ideological issues? It's a question that occurred to me while watching a talkfest on ABC TV last night, where assorted pundits mused about a list of the ten most influential books...

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Is history really about psychological profiling? According to John Quiggin "There is only one real instance of political correctness in Australia today and that is that you are never, ever allowed to call anyone a racist." Why is this? For many people racism is a kind of psych...

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