Club Troppo

Greece owes the IMF 1.6 billion euro that it doesn’t have but is supposed to pay by tomorrow. Unless the ECB lends it to the Greeks, effectively converting the IMF debt into an ECB debt, Greece is bankrupt tomorrow. In months to come, much bigger debt repayments are scheduled...

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The chorus of public concern over the constitutionality of the Abbott government’s citizenship-stripping proposal is growing. Malcolm Turnbull has again been emboldened to break ranks with his Prime Minister while denying he is doing any such thing. It will be ironically appro...

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[caption id="attachment_27447" align="aligncenter" width="865"] Source: OECD. More here .[/caption] Wealth distribution is typically more unequal than income distribution - as inequality is cumulatively causative to some extent. I was alerted to the relatively equitable distri...

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Summary of the March Quarter [caption id="attachment_27434" align="alignright" width="350"] Above: NNI, GDP and HALE ($ bil) from Jun 2005 to the present (Q1 20015). The changes during the most recent quarter are contained inside the two vertical red lines at the right hand ma...

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In an earlier post I've talked about how 'performing' government drives a range of pathologies - in the case of the post I was suggesting it generates a kind of soft-secrecy. But it drives other pathologies - like bullshit. I put it thus : Imagine you’re a journalist who has t...

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Human rights lawyer Kerry Murphy has a very useful explanation of the weakness of judicial review as a safeguard against new laws foreshadowed by the Abbott government which would permit arbitrary ministerial stripping of Australians’ citizenship from those accused/suspected o...

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Abstract: Sesame Street is one of the largest early childhood interventions ever to take place. It was introduced in 1969 as an educational, early childhood program with the explicit goal of preparing preschool age children for school entry. Millions of children watched a typi...

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The supreme vice is shallowness Oscar Wilde to Bosie I went to see Love, Love, Love by the terrific actor's ensemble theatre company Red Stitch tonight. I'd previously seen Grounded which I thought was an Arthur Milleresque masterpiece which was very well delivered by the sing...

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The HALE index got a bit of attention this weekend owing to the way in which it highlights the cost of long-term unemployment. It's certainly a graphic illustration of the way in which GDP hides important developments from us. Mostly what people like about the HALE is the way...

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I met Adam Goodes very briefly in a restaurant in Randwick in 2000. He was then not well known but my sports-mad son Oliver noticed him and pestered me to let him request an autograph. I eventually relented and, when he trotted over, I signalled to Adam my apology at interrupt...

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Hold the presses - Coal may not be good for humanity. OK that was a cheap ideological shot - the kind you might see on our rival ideologically aligned blogs but surely not here at Club Pony. In any event, the graphic above is a remarkable illustration of the long lived effect...

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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="336"] This is the framework all Troppo authors use in their online reputation management (ORM). KPIs are reported monthly. If you notice any Troppo authors going off track, please shoot an email to reputationnaughties@clubtroppo.com.au[/...

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Paul Krugman has an interesting blog post on the extent to which there might be contagion from one area of social capital (or lack thereof) to another. He's responding to the claim CEOs made to him that they only started arcing up their pay demands when they saw sportspeople d...

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Festival Website | Films | Melbourne Schedule Top Picks Who Am I-No System is Safe Benjamin is a socially inept nobody. Max is handsome and charismatic. What these strangers have in common is computer hacking. After proving his skill, Benjamin is invited to join Max and his fr...

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by Shamena Anwar, Patrick Bayer, Randi Hjalmarsson. Publication is available here . This paper uses data from the Gothenburg District Court in Sweden and a research design that exploits the random assignment of politically appointed jurors (termed naemndemaen) to make three co...

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Queensland's judicial system looks to be in quite a bit of strife at present. The former Newman LNP government's ill-advised appointment of an utterly unsuitable Supreme Court Chief Justice in Tim Carmody is continuing to cause serious problems. Mercifully, at least Carmody CJ...

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I've written about what I call irreducibility at least twice before . Then along comes this nice article in the excellent new publication The Mandarin on the " 19 reasons why agencies find it hard to hire technologists ". It's a classic case of how top down systems don't manag...

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I've written about the phenomenon of discursive collapse several times on Troppo. The engine behind the phenomenon is the desire of the discipline to get on with what it's been doing - filling out some well recognised and somehow aesthetically pleasing research program. So whe...

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="334"] Warning, this diagram came up in a Google image search and is not to be taken too seriously. It's a jungle out there![/caption] With parts one and two here and here . . . in which I conclude the previous two posts with a column fo...

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Continued from Part One yesterday. [caption id="attachment_22531" align="alignright" width="404"] Well folks, when I put "Overton Window - Overton Juggernaut" into Google and looked for an image, this came up naturally enough. If the cap fits . . .[/caption] Over the last few...

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