Club Troppo

Fouad Ajami makes the case with the sort of elegant eloquence to which this armadillo can only ever aspire - unsuccessfully. In Foreign Policy magazine , Ajami, the Majid Khadduri professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, and a contribut...

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I might as well spread this one before some other smartarse does. How many lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb? "Such number as may be deemed necessary to perform the stated task in a timely and efficient manner within the strictures of the following agreement: Whereas...

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One of the difficult things for us non-expert lay observers of the ongoing global warming debate is that the zealots on both sides seem to have little hesitation in misusing climate statistics to "prove" their case. The website of global warming sceptic John Daly currently con...

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I had a terrible shock a few minutes ago. As I walked out of my bedroom about to leave for the office (after a morning of updating the NTU website from home), I came face to face with a Catholic nun standing at the front door. Lord forgive me! I instantly thought. They always...

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Former ARM President Greg Barns sallies forth into the History Wars today, but only to bemoan their pointless tedium in a way not dissimilar to most of us in the blogosphere (other than the committed ideologues on either side): When Melbourne University history department coll...

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It's not often that I agree wholeheartedly with flaming pink blogger Rob Schaap, but I have no hesitation in endorsing just about every word of his fine post on great Aussie blunders (responding to Gummo Trotsky's contest ). Does this mean I'm lurching to the left as I approac...

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Paddy McGuinness is enthusiastically (and no doubt mischievously) pushing the "Carr for Canberra" cart. He touts Leaping Leo McLeay as the bloke most likely to surrender his lucrative seat on the parliamentary exercise bike for the greater good. Leo is Geoff Honnor's local mem...

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John Quiggin answers the question "Are blogs chatrooms?" with the obvious response: NO. But he also inserts a throwaway asserton that: Political blogs like this one are intended as competion for mass media such as newspapers, and have had at least some success in this role. Sp...

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(Via Tim Blair ) For us execrated boomers it's a black day. Warren Zevon's dead after a "long illness". I thought you only got mesothelioma from asbestos.

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Carita Kazakoff asks about spring in Darwin in a comment to Geoff Honnor's slightly sardonic Sydney spring soliloquy Christopher Sheil's poem of earlier today. As an habitue of East Timor I thought she'd realise there's no such thing in the monsoonal tropics, at least if you j...

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Our house fronts on to the Cooks River, along which a public pathway gives access to a continuing parade of runners, power-walkers, dreamers, cyclists and The Old Greek Homeless Guy who sleeps in the facilities block in the park across the river and makes his way along the pat...

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I thought I should post a belated apology for the lack of bloggage from this armadillo over the last several days. I've just been flat out like a lizard/armadillo drinking. Fortunately the co-armadillos have maintained an admirable flow of challenging posts. I'll post a commen...

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It wasn't on the Road to Damascus - and he isn't St Paul - but colourful C-Filer Jack Strocchi has had a revelatory moment of truth about Iraq. It's an entertaining read and a rare and gracious moment of blogospherical concession.

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I hold relatively few politicians in high regard, but Bob Carr is an exception. He's an unlikely political success story in our culture: bookish, verging on teetotal, private to the point of suspected misanthropy, but still with that indefinable something that begins to build...

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Windschuttle fan Suzy assails mild-mannered centrist armadillo with Keith's most persuasive argument (click thumbnail image).

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In response to the question "I was wondering more whether the antipodean Aristotle might have a range of Op Ed commentators in mind whose prose might "make the heart skip a beat?" Whose legacy might be enduring?" posed by Geoff, in this blog Chris mentioned the name Charles Be...

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Yet another grand conspiracy, just a fortnight ago it was the firebrand from Ipswich who seemed to fail to recognise a political party is more than a cult of personality. This time its Outdoor Recreation Party 4WD-greenie-anti-grennie-friend of the worker-master of the mystica...

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Boris Johnson, Editor of The Spectator and Tory MP for Henley-on-Thames, offers a few thought-provoking musings on the great gulf between the discourse of the journalistic-politico class and those he terms the "civilians." Using the Kelly case as his example, he goes to the he...

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The responses to the blogs I've written about David have been, without exception, very supportive, and thank you one and all. I really expected that there would be one or two that said something like "wake up and get a life loser, stop wallowing in self pity and write somethin...

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Paul Keating ripped into it last night as he launched Stuart Macintyre's new book, The History Wars - upon which Chris Sheil blogs below. It was colourful, controversial and indeed ground-breaking as interesting words like "Tintookies" (puppets apparently) emerged from etymolo...

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