Recent publications in IPA Review article
The 'mining boom' myth
Mining isn't the be-all and end-all of the Australian economy. If the ‘mining boom ends', as widely predicted by politicians and other interventionists, life will go on. Apparently, Australia is even luckier than we generally think. We have...
Imposing our preferences on whaling cultures
Few issues illustrate how subjective beliefs about morality distorts environmental debate more than the issue of whaling. Many environmentalists claim to be simply advocates for the sustainable use of resources; they claim that they are not in...
Hitler's grotesque economics
Sinclair Davidson reviews The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze(Allen Lane, 2007, 799 pages). In the acclaimed television series Band of Brothers the Webster character abuses a column of German...
The ideological baggage of old Europe
John Roskam reviews The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648 to 1815 by Tim Blanning (Penguin, 2007, 736 pages). On the television show Backyard Blitz, household gardens are designed and built in a couple of hours. In Britain in the eighteenth century...
Sporting prowess obscured by the history warriors
Richard Allsop reviews Tom Wills: His Spectacular Rise and Tragic Fall by Greg de Moore (Allen & Unwin, 2008, 336 pages). The 150th anniversary of the first game of Australian Football in 1858 has not passed without acrimony. Some historical...
The machinery of the 2007 federal election
John Shipp reviews Inside Kevin07: The People, The Plan, The Prize by Christine Jackman (Melbourne University Press, 2008, 320 pages). If you are looking for hard-hitting political analysis of the Kevin07 campaign in the 2007 federal election,...
Biotechnology is bioterrific, not bioterrifying
Near the beginning of Richard Hindmarsh's Edging Towards BioUtopia he provides, apparently un-selfconsciously, a persuasive illustration of the chasm between scientists using rDNA techniques (the creation of artificial DNA) and critics of...
The brave new world of lifestyle capitalism
Benjamin Hourigan reviews The 4-hour Workweek: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss (Vermillion, 2008, 308 pages). 'I believe that life exists to be enjoyed and that the most important thing is to feel good about...
Shorts
Over-regulation What's wrong with doing nothing? Richard Allsop In the United Kingdom since the 1997 election of New Labour, 3,605 new criminal offences have been placed on the statute book. One can understand that there is the occasional need to...
There are few easier stories to report than a change of government
Attraction is bound to wane if it is based on who you aren't, not who you are. And so it has been with the affair between Kevin Rudd and the Canberra Press Gallery. Former Liberal leader Brendan Nelson had a go at analysing it all when he appeared...