Club Troppo

Permanently dyspeptic academic Professor Bunyip has stumbled upon an Australian perspective in the Hong Kong-based Asia Times which leaves Alison Broinowski's thesis - about Asians getting all the wrong messages about us - looking overly pessimistic. It's the most thoughtful a...

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My good friend Paul has very kindly forwarded me Malcolm Fraser's online petition seeking the release of kids from illegal entry-associated confinement. As Tim Dunlop observes , a spot of petition signing isn't a bad way for bleeding hearts to salve their consciences - and it...

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G ´day from Cusco in Peru, I write these words breathless from the high altitude and the grandeur of the Inca empire. Contrary to what Ken said about taking time to blog while on holiday I will post regularly if for no other reason than it helps me to remember the finer points...

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London's Daily Torygraph editorialises favourably on why gay couples should have equality under law. It's an eminently sensible - and very well-written - casebuild.

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Wendy James recently posted a piece called " Shlock Horror! ", about best-selling horror novelist Stephen King's being awarded a lifetime literary achievement award. By coincidence or otherwise, I'm currently reading Immortality , a work by Milan Kundera of Unbearable Lightnes...

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The Kennedy assassination bores me to tears. So, while I should be studying, I am instead reading some of the various assassination - related articles on wikipedia . I just wanted to know, is anyone aware of who coined the phrase " magic bullet "? The magic bullet is the one t...

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....is of course the name of an American drag queen in the ubermawkish Hollywood weepie, Torch Song Trilogy . It was only a matter of time before some enterprising blogger launched as Bertha Vablog but, perhaps surprisingly, Christopher Sheil chose not to. Instead, he's chosen...

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Young Brisbane poof, Daewi, guest snarks on noted Australian Arts and Letters blog, Spin Starts Here Darl , and delivers the definitive critique on Australian Idol - the Final. It's a brilliantly observed piece - kind of "National Enquirer meets Jerry Springer and does serious...

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Mild-mannered Ozblogger, Tim Blair, reports being driven to drink by Margo's latest revelation, which is: - " A growing proportion of the media are behaving as propagandists, not as journalists." "'And Margo would know," Amanda Meade pointed out succinctly, whilst inducting Ma...

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Rather than getting carried away and actually doing some substantive posting, I've tackled the rapidly shrinking index page of Troppo Armadillo by editing the preferences in Moveable Type to display 12 days of posts instead of only seven. Nevertheless, I'm rather hoping that G...

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From the New Yorker , some suggested questions for Bush's next press conference: Zen question: "Sir, if the ability of the Star Wars ABMs to hit a nuclear missile is imaginary and the nuclear missiles in Iraq are imaginary, does that mean a Star Wars ABM could hit an Iraqi nuc...

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I'm going to link to that rant by Kim du Toit [via pretty much every blog under the sun, but most recently Gummo's ]. Being a man whose only problem with Queer Eye is that weird thing they have against mono-brows, du Toit's so-called "essay" is the funniest thing I've read in...

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The DFAT site is supposed to alert travellers to any difficulties that are being experienced overseas.I suspect however that they don't really know what's going on outside the embassy, and in countries like Bolivia and Ecuador, outside the embassy means the streets of Santiago...

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Maybe it's because I should be in bed, having not slept for a while now. I spent all night and all of yesterday finishing an essay for uni, and my mind is a little addled at this point in time. But still, for some reason it feels a little unsettling to find myself in basic agr...

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It was certainly spectacular. Just as dusk fell in Brisbane last night, Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge walked free from their respective prisons, acquitted of the fraud charges that had incarcerated them 11 weeks previously. Hanson looked thinner, a bit vulnerable (not surp...

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Australian's let us rejoice, For we are young and free. For a start if it means me, that's ageist, I'm now chronologically superior and if it refers to the age of the country, when do we become grown up ? Apropos the debate about freedom to espouse a political ideology and fre...

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One of the few relatively sober sentient beings at Flemington Racecourse this arvo was a South Australian lady horse named Makybe Diva. Therefore, unencumbered by stilettos, a dickhead hat, attire like a hotel concierge or bottles of cheap methode champenoise, she galloped awa...

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The ABC's Australian Story has been steering a dangerous course, somewhere between the Shoals of New Idea and the Reef of Lowest Common Denominator Sentimentality. Who can recall that awful Oz story hagiography on Pan Pharmaceuticals founder Jim Selim without lunging for their...

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Democracy is dying , fascism is on the rise, the PM is laughing maniacally as he cruelly excludes War Widows from ceremonies at the Australian War Memorial - just to be a bastard -and guess what? The Newspoll punters have just given the Evil One his biggest single poll boost s...

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Just surfing the blogs and I came across this . Love the way s/he pays out on government , irishmen , looks at love , and gives a great example of the art of teaching . Go read, the whole blog is very refreshing.

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