Club Troppo

I can tell a kind of story that no-one else can tell. Because I can move around I get to see the true nature of it .... like.....I was at a musician friend's house and 3 doors away - they were having a battle against American tanks. I was there the day the Red Cross was bombed...

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Your past life diagnosis: I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation. You were born somewhere in the territory of modern East Australia around the year 1800. Your profession was that of a map maker, astrologer, astronomer. Your brief...

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Francis Hopkinson - An Oration, Which Might Have Been Delivered to the Students in Anatomy: "No where's the difference? - to th' impartial eye A leg of mutton and a human thigh Are just the same - for surely all must own Flesh is but flesh, and bone is only bone." Why am I not...

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The blogspammers seem to have found a new and even more cunning way to post unsolicited advertising. They've found a way to post "comments" that aren't displayed in the Moveable Type editing screen, so that you can't easily delete them. See the "comment" by "Hospital" to Geoff...

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I thought about blogging on a particularly moronic bleeding heart leftie post by The Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony about the East Timor/Australia maritime boundary issue. And I contemplated discussing Michael Costello's excellent article about the US/Australia Free Trade Ag...

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(via Michael Jennings ) A fairly old paper titled The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School makes fascinating reading for those interested in the bizarre byways of history in the Land of the Free an...

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East Timor is a topic that has mostly been rendered invisible to mainstream media over the last couple of years, as Iraq and the War Against Terrorism have taken centre stage. But Timor Leste (as the new nation now prefers to be called) remains a fascinating subject deserving...

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A couple of years ago my brother left his Government job and was eligible to take his quite considerable superannuation benefit out of the fund. Like the smart lad he is, he contacted me to run my eye over the recommendations his financial planner had made for rolling over his...

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A piece of meaningless frippery after Wayne's powerful but harrowing post below. Feel free to add your own nominations in the comment box. Personalised number plates Opera Line-dancing Fat chicks "I fish and I vote" bumper stickers Australia's Funniest Home Videos Tripe and on...

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I have this terrible fear of spending my last years sitting in a nursing home with my dick hanging out of borrowed pajamas, dribbling studiously at the aquarium as the yellow Hurricane fish play rugby against the blue Waratah fish, waiting for a personal carer to spoon just en...

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Feeling Warm and Fuzzy "Bang" "No!" "bang" "Stop" "bangbang" I roll up, curl up and laugh - with relief - because she did stop - and we are in a state of grace You see her ability to torment can can exactly match my objection to it. So. Now I'm awake. - well and truly. Maxwell...

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(via Jason Soon ). Legendary leftie (and sometime linguistics scholar) Noam Chomsky now has a blog! Jason has also unearthed several other noteworthy blogs, including a leftie one titled Cyborg Democracy (can anyone tell me what a 'non-anthropocentric personhood theorist' is?)...

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On Sunday 14th March 2001, Spain played Romania at home in the first of the IRB Rugby World Cup European Zone preliminaries. Halfway through the first half the Spanish prop forward Iganez was sent off for stamping on the Romanian fly half Corin Abrazu. The Romanian was taken o...

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If you look to your right, you should notice that I've finally gotten around to updating the Troppo Armadillo blogroll for the first time in six months or so. As far as I know, I've updated the addresses of everyone who's moved premises in that time. I've also added quite a fe...

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To be blunt, I was bored rigid by recent blogosphere discussions about whether Iraq could validly be characterised as America's latter-day Vietnam. But Laurie Oakes' column in this week's Bulletin seems to me to sum up the situation as succinctly as anything I've seen. Here's...

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In an October 1999 article in the New Statesman , published before the new generation of Web logs, Andrew Brown described the anarchic nature of blogs as "the disorganized record of the voyagings of an intelligent mind," somewhat resembling "the captain's log on a voyage of di...

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I've spent the last six weeks or so trying to get enough information together to enable me to profitably day-trade the ASX. The reason it's taken me so long is because I'm innately conservative and pure speculation is contrary to what I spent a large slice of my life trying to...

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That renowned journal of record the Northern Territory News is justly world famous for its editors' ability to conjure tabloid "croc shock" page 1 stories from the flimsiest raw material. Indeed the weekend Sunday Territorian carried just such a story , about a 4 metre croc th...

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The news is that Easter church attendance is up on previous years. To my recollection Easter church attendances have reportedly been "up" every year for about the last 30 years, yet annual attendance rates seem to steadily fall. It's a Mystery of Faith as Mel might observe. Le...

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Another Baghdad report from the Guardian columnist confirms that being Robert Fisk just isn't enough. I particularly like his idiosyncratic style which could be termed "informed bemusement." A bit like the rest of us - only more lyrical.

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