Alex Stewart has had his 15 minutes of fame, but may live to regret it. Earlier this week he posted a video on Youtube. It showed him smoking lawn-clipping cigarettes that were fashioned out of pages torn from the Bible and the Koran. He compared the taste “scientifically” and was statistically astute enough to regret not having smoked a page of Bertrand Russell’s complete works as a control.
In 1934 an Aussie school teacher wrote a little ditty about Kookaburras that was enjoyed and sung by school kids for decades. She made pretty much no money out of it all, as it was, and is, still legal for kids to sing a song at school without paying the composer, thank the lord. In 1980, Men at Work had a huge hit whose main hook was a catchy vocal melody and some parochial references to vegemite and chunder that, for one brief summer, somehow captured the imagination not only of we happy folks Downunder, but much of the world. Continue reading
I cannot really understand how such a talentless and unlikable person as Kyle Sandilands ends up earning m$4 per year. But then, I am not part of the Idol or 2dayfm demographic. I would rather listen to the ABC or watch the SciFi channel.
I am also the kind of person who likes to question the source of public outrage, especially when there is the kind of one-sided moralistic media frenzy that we have seen over the past week.
Several years ago I posted a graphic plotting countrys GDP per head against mean lifetime and drawing attention to the tragic loss of life in southern Africa, mainly due to AIDS. There is a fantastic data visualisation tool called GapMinder that tells this story and other stories- much more clearly. And it is really fun to play with.
..Looks like a quiet night. I need to get something off my chest. I have just received a notice from the Juries Commission in Victoria that I am wanted for jury service. It’s one of the letters a busy person dreads. You cannot get out of it, even by paying a fine. And they are relentless in their pursuit if you try to delay – like a dog with a bone. While jury service may be our civic duty, you would hope that the the courts would give some weight to the level of inconvenience they impose. They might also check their understanding of sampling principles. Let me tell you why.
Well, Gideon Haigh may be the embodiment of “self-loathing leftism”, but at least he’s been known to buckle on the pads – photo by Rae Allen on Flickr |
…goes to Gideon Haigh. Last Sunday was the first episode of Outsiders on ABC and of course the first topic of discussion was Monkey Business in cricket. You can listen to the segment HERE.
Gideon Haigh is usually a knowledgeable, articulate and entertaining journalist. Especially in the written form. But there is something about the ABC that prevents a balanced stance on anything that touches on race. On this occasion, his display of self-loathing leftism nearly made me choke on my muesli.
Gerard Whately began tangentially to the core issue (of racial vilification), by describing the whole debacle as a case of posturing from both sides, which morphed into an examination of how Australia play their cricket. He pointed out the contradiction of Indias rush to grab the moral high ground while simultaneously bullying and blackmailing CA with the threat of canceling the tour. And he finally commented that the ICC had been exposed as a failure in all aspects of the dispute.
The camera then swung to bespectacled Gideon, looking relaxed, slightly unshaven and even academic. The whole problem, according to him, was that the Australians didnt think the issue through. They accused Harbhajan of racism and it should have been obvious India were never going to wear that.
On the BCCIs behaviour, he advised us to to get used to their power and suggested that complaining about it is as pointless as those who complain about Australia being too good on field. Unless I am misunderstanding, he is condoning a system whereby economic power is exploited to sack and demonise umpires and have tribunal decisions reversed under duress. Using economic power to advantage is equated to using skill on the field to advantage.
Let’s start by admiting that a black man being banned for three matches for calling a dark brown Australian man a monkey is pretty peculiar. Next will be Ricky Ponting being banned for calling an English player a pommy bastard. Couldn’t John Howard, cricket tragic and implacable warrior against political correctness that he was, have spent more time trying to nobble these sillly rules rather than the ABC?
This post follows on from a discussion begun by Paul Fritjers and continued HERE. Most human activity has changed drastically over our lifetimes. And the rate of change is increasing see for instance the next generations user interface for computers. You would hope academics would live at the forefront of change. But the double refereed hard copy journal system has not changed for a century. I think it is a bad system. In fact, I wonder why we need journals at all.