Club Troppo

TA's "Most recently commented posts" list has mysteriously disappeared overnight. Buggered if I know why. The code is still there and intact in the main index template, as far as I can see, but the list itself isn't. When I try rebuilding the site, I get an error message when...

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George Bush, after months of hedging around the issue, finally declares his wholehearted support for amending the US Constitution to deny equal rights to a discrete group of his fellow citizens. Andrew Sullivan - with all the pain of the personally betrayed - puts it this way:...

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Until now I've been equivocal at best about Mark Latham as federal Labor leader. But the ultimate argument in Latham's favour is that Phillip Adams doesn't like him . Reckons he's too right wing! That's enough for me. Latham for PM.

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Gianna still hasn't dropped her sprog, but blogs a great little vignette about a nosey, attention-seeking neighbour. Paul Watson's last 3 posts don't mention Generation X even once!!! Could he be losing that chip on the shoulder, I wonder? Somehow I doubt it. Meika the Doleblu...

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This piece from the UK Telegraph considers the modern phenomenon of mass recreational grieving for celebrities and it's offshoot activity: the wearing of a variety of multihued "cause" ribbons to indicate one's enthusiasm to be identified as the sort of person who cares enough...

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One of the many ironies about the Redfern Block is the fact that the Block is only just in Redfern. It's just an LJ Hooker billboard or two away from much more real-estate friendly Darlington. Much of Redfern parts of which are but a 10 minute walk from the southern edge of th...

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I wonder what's happened to all the other armadillos?? No-one else has posted in yonks. I'm up to my eyeballs in uni administration work at CDU. It turns out we have 100 new first year external students where we had estimated 60!! It's a nice dilemma to have in the long run, b...

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Heath Gibson at Catallaxy posts about a bloke in the US who has conducted research into the health effects of McDonalds food by eating there exclusively 3 times per day for a prolonged period. As Heath puts it: Predictably, Spurlock put on weight and suffered a range of health...

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Professor Bunyip nails Philip Adams for what appears to be a particularly blatant combination of plagiarism and outright fraudulent journalism in his latest Weekend Oz column . Some of Stanley's previous exposes of "Phatty's" misdeeds have been a tad thin IMO, but this one loo...

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The US election-observing sector of the blogosphere is awash with speculation about rumours that Democrat Presidential frontrunner John Kerry has/had a Clinton-style dalliance with a young female intern. T1 is beating up the story for all it's worth (as you'd expect from a kne...

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Here's a link to an article in Christian Science Monitor proclaiming the demise of post-modernism in Eng Lit academia. Since this is a topic that has occasionally provoked useful discussion in the ozplogosphere, I thought it was worth drawing the article to readers' attention....

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Leaving aside painful distractions, I see (via Jason Soon ) that yesterday was Darwin Day. No, not a day honouring the heavily taxpayer-subsidised (and currently very wet) city where I live, but instead commemorating the father of evolutionary theory. As an employee of newly r...

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This article about increasingly diverse self-labels in the gay community caught my eye while browsing Arts & Letters Daily just now : First, there was the term "homosexual," then "gay" and "lesbian," then the once taboo "dyke" and "queer." Now, all bets are off. With the unive...

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It had to happen, I suppose. Someone's started up a Mark Latham blog. Well worth bookmarking IMO.

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The media pundit analyses of the Aus/US FTA are coming thick and fast now, and the picture is becoming a little clearer, although it won't be crystal clear until the text of the Agreement itself is available. Presumably the pundits, like bloggers, are relying on the material r...

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During the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th Century, Argentina (along with Australia) was considered by objective analysis amongst the richest (per capita) countries in the world. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Argentina was an affluent society, the most dyn...

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Kim Weatherall blogs further on the IP (intellectual property) aspects of the Aus/US FTA. Kim expresses concern that Australian negotiators appear to have agreed (though details are so far very vague) to a raft of concessions which, she argues, largely negate the detailed cons...

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Jason Soon blogs an excellent post on the Aus/US FTA: As Stephen Kirchner points out, a lot of the recent negativity over the US Free Trade Agreement has come from the view of trade as a zero sum game. Let's note that unilateral lifting of trade barriers is almost always a goo...

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John Quiggin blogs some further thoughts on the Australia/US FTA, observing: My understanding of the legal status of treaties is imperfect, to put it mildly. I know that, unlike the US, there is no requirement for Parliamentary ratification of treaties. And I recall from the F...

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Professor Bunyip blogs on the vexations of marital bliss, and quotes from Kev Gillet (a blogger whose work I confess I only monitor occasionally): Thousands of years of experience in all cultures of the world has left us with one basic tenet for marriage - committment. The sev...

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