I am about to break my indication that I am unlikely to post again until after Jen’s death. I am bored to death in this Regis joint filled with old codgers with assorted disabilities. How many I will write is another question. I have been thinking about Nicholas Gruen’s sortition proposal: a third house of […]| Club Troppo
Troppo readers may be wondering why I haven’t been blogging lately, after making a comeback several months ago after a long absence. The reason is that my wife Jen is in hospital dying from ovarian cancer. It’s very distressing, both for me and our daughter Jessica (not to mention Jen herself).Jen was first diagnosed with […]| Club Troppo
This is becoming a series. The point is that public figures now routinely refuse to engage with counter-arguments. I have another one not yet written about Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt who did not respond to three polite emails from me. The latest intellectual coward is Liz Allen, who is the go to pro-population growth demographer […]| Club Troppo
I posted something similar on Facebook a few days back, and thought I might get some useful feedback here. Iran is criticised for violating their obligations under the NNPT. But the NNPT was signed by The Shah, who was a US puppet deposed in 1979. I do not think this obliges the current Iranian regime […]| Club Troppo
Ian Leslie has released what looks to be a fascinating book about the Beatles and more specifically the relationship between Lennon and McCartney. I thought that I too might as well get in on the act and talk about the Beatles story and why it is so remarkable, mysterious and compelling. Most curiously, there are […]| Club Troppo
I try to replicate my more substantial posts on Substack here, but forgot this from a few weeks ago. So I’m now making amends. When it comes to Magna Carta clause 39 is the one hanging in the foyer. No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or […]| Club Troppo
Psychology Professor Michael Inzlicht has a confession to make. He’s been peddling shoddy wares – his words. And he’s feeling quite bad about the whole thing. The work wasn’t just intellectually weak. It did real harm. Though his own proposals to popularise his ideas were knocked back, the so-called “marshmallow effect” went viral. As you’ll […]| Club Troppo
I came upon this explanation for millennials’ lack of a work ethic. I don’t want this to seem censorious of millennials. In fact I have no such complaint about millennials – but if my comments seem a little censorious of the (presumably millennial) author, I guess I’ll have to wear it. Nor do I intend […]| Club Troppo
Most credible researchers believe immigration affects house prices. The questions are: how much, and at what cost? Peter Dutton’s Opposition has promised to cut Australian immigration by a quarter “to tackle the housing crisis“. Is migration is putting pressure on housing prices? And will a 25 per cent migration cut relieve that pressure? These seem […]| Club Troppo
Advice for homebuyers and citizens: home-deductibility and housing guarantee schemes both deserve your derisive laughter, whoever backs them. Introductory note: Things move fast in the race to sway the aspiring Australian homebuyer. A few minutes after publishing the first version of this post, I saw that the LNP is now promising to make mortgages tax-deductible […]| Club Troppo
Donald Trump is still trying to slash his nation’s trade deficit. Australians may recognise this task: we tackled it in the late 1980s, failed, and found that it mattered less than we thought. Video: Donald Trump has decried the “ripping off” of the US since at least the late 1980s. Hello, US readers! You’ve just […]| Club Troppo
This article deals with Federal Coalition Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s election promise to force gas producers to reduce the price of gas for Australian consumers to $10 per gigajoule. However, according to a debate on last night Q &A between Labor Climate Change Minister Ed Husic and his Coalition counterpart Ted Evans, Husic stated that […]| Club Troppo
There was an ostensible “news” article on the ABC news site about Trump’s executive order (EO) titled “DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL G…| Club Troppo
As part of a new policy, I’m going to post stuff I’ve published on my substack here where it’s substantial enough, or where I want to be able to link to it without the distraction of all the other stuff I pack into my weekly substack digest. You really should subscribe! In any event, this […]| Club Troppo
In the pretty likely event of a hung parliament after the next Australian election, the cross-bench becomes kingmaker. I’m hoping — and expecting — the crossbench to seek greater use of citizen assemblies in governing Australia. But what comes next is crucial. Some think it would be great if a citizen assembly was held […]| Club Troppo
What if we held an Australian broadband crisis and nobody came? That’s pretty much what happened in Australian broadband policy over the past decade. Governments, forecasters and the media can all learn lessons from this episode. Illustration: Fibre optic cable in a Telstra pit | Author: Bidgee on Wikimedia | Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share […]| Club Troppo
The Gregorian revolution gave rise to a form of organisation that was gradually stamped out all over the Western world and then to its followers. Constitutional monarchy: A pyramid with a chief executive at the top with the rest of the pyramid made up of checks and balances on the chief executive (whether explicit or implicit) […]| Club Troppo
I was reading some polemic from Bettina Arndt recently about women dominating the legal profession, especially in the Family Law sphere, so I thought I would the check the facts. This is my modus operandi. Read polar views on an issue (I also consult OurWatch and White Ribbon on issues like this) but then check […]| Club Troppo
If scientific fraud represents five per cent of scientific papers, we might well expect that we have a great deal of philosophic fraud as well. But in philosophy, how can we detect the fraudsters? Here’s a first attempt. For at least 60 years, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has been widely considered a very […]| Club Troppo
As the US presidential election count continues, it becomes increasingly likely that Donald Trump will win. It appears that the majority of Americans believe that Trump is more trustworthy than Kamala Harris on economic issues, and they say that the economy is their principal concern. The irony in this belief is that it is the […]| Club Troppo
The possibility of one or more Very Fast Train (VFT) lines for Australia has been debated for more than 40 years, most often being treated as a complete joke. However, perhaps that’s about to change. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has long been a supporter of VFT transport for Australia, and his government is now putting […]| Club Troppo
There’s a strong gerontocratic tinge to US politics of late — the youngest of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren and Mitch McConnel is Chuck at 73. Many a theory has been propounded to explain this phenomenon, but a simple one shall be put to the test in a […]| Club Troppo
As I argued in a recent article, the election of Donald Trump as President would be disastrous for climate change compared with the current Democrat administration of President Biden. The situation is quite different in Australia. The election of a Coalition government federally next year, even under Peter Dutton, would not be all that […]| Club Troppo
Cameron Murray’s The Great Housing Hijack is self-recommending. You certainly don’t need a review of any sort to tell you to go read it if you have any interest in the peculiar case of the housing market. Nevertheless, here I supply my own review of sorts and extrapolate on what I consider a couple of […]| Club Troppo
As you can see we’ve adopted a new WordPress theme. Many thanks to our web guru Tony Sarhanis. What do you think? I really like it, although I have one reservation.You can’t scroll down the main posts column until the cursor gets to the bottom of the comments column. I suspect that’s a deliberate feature […]| Club Troppo