French Film Festibule (starts in Melbourne tonight)

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Rosalie Blum (Opening Night) Thirty-something Vincent Machot is a hairdresser, like his father before him. Life rotates around work, his overbearing mother who lives in the apartment upstairs, and a womanising cousin constantly try...

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Posted in Films and TV

Fracking off the gas drillers

This week's announcement by Pangaea Resources that it is suspending its NT onshore gas exploration drilling program and laying off 140 workers, following the Labor Opposition's indication that it will impose an indefinite moratorium on fracking, has provoked predictable respon...

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Posted in Environment, Politics - Northern Territory

File under "déformation professionnelle"

This is a note to myself. It's from the report of the NDIS Citizen's Jury Scorecard . However, in a way that speaks for itself, it may be of interest to Troppodillians. It's an illustration of professional obfuscation and indifference to those in their care. (Of course lots of...

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Posted in Economics and public policy, Health

Picking winners, industry policy and the Defence White Paper

Way back in the 1980s and 90s when I was a Labor "apparatchik" and then for a short time a local politician in the Northern Territory, the Opposition of which I was a part was for a time led by Brian Ede. He married Anne Walsh a daughter of arch neoliberal Federal Labor Minist...

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Posted in Politics - national, Economics and public policy

There's never been a more exciting time to be Captain Shorten

What strange times we live in! The Red Star Line's passenger cruise freighter SS Labor, despite a seemingly lacklustre captain with a mutinous history, is sailing full steam ahead for port carrying an impressive cargo of solid policies and fiscal measures to fund them. Meanwhi...

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Posted in Politics - national

Dennis Jensen and the 'noble savage' - a constructive perspective

Federal Liberal backbencher Dr Dennis Jensen is a right wing MP with views not unlike those of his colleague Corey Bernardi. He "distinguished" himself this week in Parliament with a diatribe about Indigenous communities supposedly living a ‘noble savage’ lifestyle: “I put it...

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Posted in Politics - national, Economics and public policy, Race and indigenous

My comments on the draft of the Shergold Review

Peter Shergold's report on learning from mistakes is out. It advises on how to avoid the mistakes of the Pink Batts fiasco (He was asked to do this by a government that, pretty obviously, wasn't the slightest bit interested in learning from its or anyone else's mistakes. I exp...

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Posted in Education, Economics and public policy, Innovation

Pssst! Malcolm. Steal Labor's tax policies and slash company tax

I don't understand why Prime Minister Turnbull and Treasurer ScoMo are busily demonising Labor's entirely sensible announced policies in relation to negative gearing and Capital Gains Tax for residential rental properties. I can only assume that the politician's instinct to co...

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Posted in Politics - national

Legal shockwaves following the dissection of the oath.

Following Nick and Rex's tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of the 'concept' and 'gravitational waves', news has just come in that the oath witnesses take in Australia has been sliced into its fundamental constituents: perjury, utopia, and blasphemy. 'It was quite easy to see once...

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Posted in Libertarian Musings, Geeky Musings, Competitions, bubble, Cultural Critique

Concept Split: Shockwaves!!!

If Rex can give us his guide to Gravitational Waves - a very impressive performance I have to say, then I can dust off an old document from my days at the ANU law school - in the late 1980s. Concept Split: Shockwaves Shock waves spread from the policy making community through...

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Posted in History, Humour, Science, Health, Space

Gravitational Waves – Your questions answered

Last Friday the world woke up to the announcement that scientists had made an extraordinary discovery concerning gravity waves. It received a great deal of press and interest on places as diverse as The Daily Mail and others. Ever since that bombshell I’ve had ordinary Austral...

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Posted in Uncategorized

Optional preferential voting in the Northern Territory

The Giles Country Liberal NT government managed to ram through legislation this week which not only implements optional preferential voting for Territory elections but also prohibits handing out of "how to vote" and other candidate materials to voters on polling day within 100...

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Posted in Politics - Northern Territory

Australia

https://vimeo.com/131071052 As an aficionado of DOC, someone sent me this article on young Italian immigration, which I've celebrated before . Anyway enjoy the vid. It makes you feel grateful to live in such a great place.

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Posted in History, Food, Immigration and refugees

Patents and Innovation in Economic History

This is commonsense, but fortunately less crude economic methodology than has been pursued hitherto seems to be uncovering it: Abstract : A strong tradition in economic history, which primarily relies on qualitative evidence and statistical correlations, has emphasized the imp...

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Posted in Economics and public policy, Innovation

Feet of clay weekend competition: Ray Kurzweil edition

https://youtu.be/JIw8CQB8prg People may know of Ray Kurzweil. I first saw him at a conference in Melbourne where he was introduced as the greatest thing since sliced bread (an introduction he'd clearly had a hand in writing or authorising) and kept talking about how great he w...

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Posted in History, Geeky Musings

SMSFs and red tape

Regulation has a special place in the heart of this blog and superannuation is a particular fave. I've offered some connoisseurship of Self Managed Super Fund regulation in the past . I could say that this takes the cake, but really it's just pretty par for the course. It's ce...

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Posted in Economics and public policy, regulation

Is Julian Assange about to get arrested? And what then?

Queensland boy Julian Assange seems set to walk out of the Ecuadorian embassy soon, hoping that the announcement by the UN human rights panel on the arbitrariness of his detention will protect him from being arrested. The baseline scenario is that he walks out, is quickly arre...

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Posted in Politics - international, Life, History, Society, Journalism, Media, Libertarian Musings, Law, Information, Ethics, Cultural Critique

Organising a stimulus ? Organising a ball: #TheInterview.

[caption id="attachment_31159" align="alignright" width="444"] A nice illustration of how the economy is for Dad. Google for images of "the economy" and see how many women turn up.[/caption] I haven't the time to write this up, right now, though I'd like to, but here's my firs...

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Posted in Economics and public policy

In poor communities disadvantaged boys do worse than girls: not to mention being a menace to the community (In the US)

Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Frina Lin, Jeremy Majerovitz, Benjamin Scuderi - #21936 (CH ED LS PE) We show that differences in childhood environments play an important role in shaping gender gaps in adulthood by documenti...

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Posted in Education, Economics and public policy, Gender

The internet of money wherefore art thou?

My forward to Deloitte's second report on digital money - The future of exchanging value: Cryptocurrencies and the trust economy. Exchanging value Ice becomes water when warmed. Only familiarity prevents us from marvelling at the mysteriousness of this ‘phase change’, as physi...

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Posted in IT and Internet, Economics and public policy, Innovation