Club Troppo

I received an email today entitled; DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN...? All the girls had ugly gym uniforms? It took five minutes for the TV warm up? Nearly everyone's Mum was at home when the kids got home from school? Nobody owned a purebred dog? When a a shilling was good pocketmoney?...

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Paul Watson sometimes irritates me intensely (mostly in his repetitive and silly GenX whinges), but he's also frequently an incisive observer. Paul's take on the current furore over whether/when the Howard government knew about allegations of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghrai...

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For any readers who've been following the legal issues surrounding the suppression of reporting of identification evidence in the Falconio/Bradley Murdoch murder committal hearing, and the Nine Network's unsuccessful challenge to the magistrate's suppression order (about which...

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A couple of commenters have asked what is going on with the beastiality links in various comment boxes. Presumably they haven't been paying attention to the fact that (apparently) most blogs running on a Moveable Type or similar platform are now subject to periodic attack by b...

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Another Falconio/intrusive media rant that I understand is to be submitted for publication under my name. Actual authorship is another question, but it certainly reflects my views very closely: There is nothing more dangerous than the wrath of the media scorned. So now it's re...

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As you may have deduced from earlier blogs about global warming I don't believe we'll have time to worry about the gradual increase in temperatures leading to asphyxiation from carbon dioxide, world's end will be due to a well-overdue Dansgaard Oescher event. Reading the weeke...

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I got some more emails from Tarun and Dan today, if you want to read about their adventures click here.

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Any masochistic readers interested in hearing this armadillo raving on at leangth about the Falconio murder committal (and related legal and policy issues) can listen to the Real Audio recording of today's ABC Radio National Media Report by clicking here . There are also extra...

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Not only is global warming scepticism dangerous, but so too is blogging. News Online reports on yet another blogger dismissed from her employment for exposing her personal life in the blogosphere. However, in this case it's very personal indeed. Jessica Cutler, whose nom de bl...

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Don't you hate the way advertisers treat you like a moron. UP TO 99% OFF screams the ad. What a waste of money !! Does the advertising guru really believe that the average consumer watches/listens to/notices garbage like that; or has (s)he used so much nose cleaner that connec...

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The life of a global warming sceptic is a dangerous one, it seems. Well-known sceptic John Daly died suddenly of a heart attack earlier this year, and now one of his frequently-published colleagues (on the Daly website at least) Theodor Landscheidt has also shuffled off a few...

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The Basement website (live Internet radio, jazz/blues concerts etc), beamed out of Sydney's longstanding Basement venue at Reiby Place, Circular Quay, is about to close, according to this story on News Online. It was one of the few Internet music sites that I actually used to...

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Sam "Yobbo" Ward has put in a blatantly self-serving bid to win this week's Blog Bile Award by republishing substantial extracts from his previous anti-West Coast Eagles rant under the guise of a new rant against just retired Weagles player Glen Jakovich . Despite the arguably...

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The Falconio murder committal hearing remains "on hold" this afternoon, as barristers for the Nine Network, Murdoch Group, DPP and defendant Bradley John Murdoch (no relation to Rupert as far as I know) continue to argue before a Full Bench of the Supreme Court about whether M...

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The review of Fallen Order: A History (Karen Liebreich) by Miranda France in The Guardian Unlimited tells us that Catholic priests have been sexually abusing children for 400 years and still nothing has been done to punish the perpetrators. The web is full of reasons, excuses...

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"Good evening Fele". I nodded politely to 'Lady' Fele Mann, President of the Darwin Philippine community association, as we arrived at their annual beauty pageant and charity fund-raiser along with a squirming army of local politicians. "Good evening, Mr Mann", I said, acknowl...

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The Troppo Armadillo, posing as a legal academic, was overshadowed by Roger Maynard, correspondent for the London Times in a discussion of the Falconio case in Territory stateline on Friday night. TA blogreaders would have been amazed at how quietly Ken sat while the Times goo...

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A recently-retired friend of my wife applied to a local volunteer organisation to assist immigrants in learning English. She was informed that she would have to acquire an accreditation involving three hour sessions, two nights a week for eight weeks, two assignments and a thr...

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I'm thinking about instituting a "Blog Bile of the Week" award for the most impassioned, hate-filled blog rant, where the author makes no attempt whatever at balance or objectivity. After all, blogging isn't academic writing, so why even try to maintain a semblance of detachme...

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Watching Red Kerry on the box the other night I got a bit prickly over a report that the World Health Organisation was concentrating on obesity at the Health 2004 conference, "attended by representatives of the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, health ministers fr...

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