Club Troppo

In a hopefully minor aftermath to the Chris versus Norman flamewar of a week or so ago, Christopher Sheil is still upset that I accused him of being "wrong" about the spelling of the Aboriginal man "Mosquito". His name is spelled that way in the Oxford Companion to Australian...

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Niall Cook blogs an amusing (and surprisingly honest for a leftie) appraisal of the Public Service: The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed down from generation to generation, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to immedia...

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Sometimes I find the inspiration for a blog post in the most unlikely places. Earlier this evening I took Jenny out to the after hours medical clinic at Darwin Private Hospital for treatment for a persistent migraine. Being a rather expensive establishment, it doesn't get the...

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Here at the 'dillo we're more on to it than Marr - and much merrier with it. Especially when it comes to Mike Carlton. Weeks before David the Dilettante pointed out that the SMH's Saturday polemicist had elevated Senator Robert Byrd to the Moral Conscience of the Age, without...

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It's a gray day in the Emerald City. Rain is setting in and I'm a feeling just a bit hungover. What better restorative than to proceed to my local bookshop to purchase the just released Judith Brett opus - Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class - from Alfred Deakin to...

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You were Columbus! You were born in Corsica in 1451. As a child you caught rides on ships; you always loved the sea. You didn't get much formal education but you were very clever when it came to navigation and sailing. Your idea to sail west to Asia was not to prove that the w...

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Remember you read it here first ! Well, after you probably saw it here . Today's NT News reports that the local Army Reserve has begun training the ultimate deterant to invasion of the Top End. Major 'Sammy' Serambuka, project team leader told the News, "Crocs may appear stupi...

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Apropos Ken's article on the Evatt Foundation site (contributors to TA are required by our verbal contracts, you know the one's not worth the paper they're not written on, to shamelessly promote the chief Armadillo's work), it's pleasant to see the toothless revolutionary deli...

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Those of you planning Battle of Bosworth Field Memorial wakes today - hard to believe I know, but it's 518 years since Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field, time flies etc - will be gratified by this In Memoriam notice from todays SMH: PLANTAGENET, Richard...

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It all seemed so sudden. One moment she was photo-opping in time-honoured fashion, the next she was being sent down for three years. Shut away in the sort of seclusion that will be the stuff of a dozen New Idea covers - "Pauline's Prison Torment!" Indeed, it's already started...

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This month's Atlantic includes an interesting piece by Christopher Hitchens on Edward Said's Orientalism , which is being re-released with an updated introduction. As Hitchens points out Said's upbringing was ideal in allowing him to traduce the conceptions of several cultures...

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The concept of the rule of law is not one that most people readily associate with Indonesia. However, if this article by Ross Clarke in the Australian Journal of Asian Law is anything to go by, the assumption that judges of the new Indonesian Constitutional Court will be pliab...

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Years of bitter experience have taught me that if you don't blow your own trumpet, it's fairly rare that anyone else will do it on your behalf. As readers may recall, a couple of months ago Tim Dunlop wrote an excellent analytical article about blogging for the Evatt Foundatio...

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On the day after murderous terrorist suicide bomb attacks on the UN headquarters in Baghdad and a bus in Jerusalem, I can't think of anything more appropriate than to reproduce without comment (except the headline) the following extract from Andrew Denton's interview with form...

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Professor Bunyip has been notably AWOL from the blogosphere over the last week or so. However, his bile has obviously been quietly but ominously building up volcanic pressure during the hiatus, and today it burst forth in a spectacularly dazzling virtuoso spray against his fav...

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One knows not to question the wisdom of the Delphic seers , those voices of prescience whose cryptic counsels were so poorly interpreted by their clientele. Whether that be poor ole King Polydectes who was warned he would be killed by his foster-son or some other glutton for a...

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(Via Gummo Trotsky ) Big Western Benito is an Aussie ex-pat blogger who recently arrived in the Solomons, apparently on an extended stay. It's fortuitous given that his arrival coincided with that of the Australian-led peacekeeping contingent. Benito's blog is certainly one to...

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As Harry Belafonte might have put it: "Down the way where the nights are gay, And the sun shines daily on the mountain top. I took a trip on a sailing ship and when I reached Jamaica, my eyes just popped! For, just erected (if I might use that word) in Kingston's Redemption Pa...

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Catallaxy blogger and Centre for Independent Studies thinktank denizen Andrew Norton has a useful article in this morning's Australian about the distinction between neo-conservatism, ordinary conservatism, neo-liberalism, ordinary liberalism and so on. He suggests that the "ne...

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The Australian newspaper is obediently singing in harmony from the John Howard songbook in its editorial of this morning : JOHN Howard is being denied his right to govern by alliances of convenience between Labor and the motley collection of minor party and independent eccentr...

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