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Un-Australia Day

January 26...Australia Day...whatever that means in 2006.  Whilst it is probably reasonable for me to suggest that today means bugger all else to many Australians than a Public Holiday, it is also fair to suggest that we think we know more about being "Un-Australian" than being Australian.  We certainly bandy the term around enough to suggest that we know what it means.

The term "Un-Australian" has become one of the most overused adjectives of the last twelve months, and will probably continue its rise to prominance throughout 2006.  Every one is using it; politicans, sports stars, police chiefs, journalists, commentators, people in the street, you name it.  All pedal it out to abuse opponents, or to personally taunt them. 

Here are some examples:

"I think associating with a terrorist organisation demonstrates that you are un-Australian"  Tasmanian MP Michael Ferguson.

" It is not Australian to adopt a mob mentality and assult women.  I have never seen anything as un-Australian"  NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney (on the Cronulla riots)

"Labor will fight every day until the Howard Government is brought down for these vicious, unnecessary and unAustralian laws." Opposition Leader Kim Beazley on the Federal Government's Idustrial Relations Laws

On a basic level it is just another in vogue weasel word.  But it has moved to another level now, to become a term that has a nasty, dark meaning.  Used to try and tarnish the character of people who you don't agree with backed up by the assumption that the rest of Australia agrees with them.  Make no mistake, it is a term of abuse.  An attack on character.

You don't hear people (at least I never have) being called un-American, or un-French, or un-British.  So why have we embraced un Australian so much?

I don't really know.  Probably because it reminds me of our cultural cringe and our anxieties and suspicions about globalisation and all things (people, ideas) foreign.

I do know that I squirm every time I hear it.

Happy Australia Day. 

When Internet Marketers Meet Internet Journo's

I know marketers get themselves into a frothy lather when they talk about the prospects of internet advertising.  I just laugh at them:

 

Who's to blame?  Fairfax or the Ad Agency?

 

Tact and Ethics aren't words usually associated with either group...

At least Serena's bum is here

January in Melbourne means it's time for the tennis.  And as usual the players have been arriving in Melbourne over the last week to much fanfare and speculation over their fitness.  I am not sure if Serena Williams' over sized backside arrived on the same plane as Serena, but it is most definitely here!.  In fact her full behind has dominated both the front and the back of the local papers during the week, with the former number 1's sporting prowess taking a back seat to heated debate about the proportions of her lycra-clad bum...

The balloon like rear end made the front page of Sydney's Daily Telegraph: "Serena is back – and she's bigger, if not better, than ever." And the Herald Sun wheeled out leading sports medico Dr Peter Larkins, who used a piece of paper across the waist to split the photo of her body in two. "If you look at the upper half, gee she looks in good shape," Larkins said. "If you put a sheet of paper over the top half and look at the bottom, you'd think that person couldn't be an athlete."

Given the number of top players that are not missing from the 2006 Aus Open (eg Rafael Nadal, defending champion Marat Safin, and the perennial favourite Andre Agassi) coupled with those that are hobbling about under injury clouds (Maria Sharapova, Kim Clisjters and Roger Federer) I guess we should be happy that Serena and her rear end are actually here and ready to play some tennis.

It's the same every year, a number of players pull out because of some sort of injury.  I don't know how this is allowed to happen- this is a Grand Slam event after all.  It would seem to be a case of too much tennis, too many tournaments.  The folks that put tennis calendar does not appear to place much importance on making sure that it's top players get to the starting line for its signature events.

So you end up having Grand Slams, in particular next week's Open, that remind us that tennis's overlong calendar of events is putting too much strain on its biggest draw cards.  It's not the players fault- they'll enter as many events as they can to maximise their earnings potential. 

The tennis authorities need to scale back the number of events they schedule each year.  Surely we as fans would we rather watch the very best less often?

Dakar Rally: The Worl'd Most Dangerous Sporting Event?

Being the motorsport junkie that I am, the annual Dakar Rally is an annual high-octane oasis at this time of year when not much else is happening.  And the nightly coverage on SBS is excellent.

I was excited last week to hear that Aussie rider Andy Caldecott had won a stage of this grueling event. I was shocked and saddened to hear about his death four days later.   Death is undoubtedly a high price to pay for racing across the dusty tracks of the African desert, but the Dakar Rally is a dangerous event.   As The Age reported , it has taken 23 lives in the last 28 years.

But is it the most dangerous sporting event in the world.  Well according some analysis by crikey.com's sporting writer Thomas Hunter the short answer is "yes":

"There is no other single sporting event that can be relied upon to kill contestants with the same regularity as the Dakar Rally. But when you look at a list of the world's most deadly sports, driving at high speed across rocks and dust barely even rates a mention.

50 years ago, track-based motorsport would have gone close to winning the title of the world's most dangerous sport, in part because it also endangered the crowd. In the 1955 Le Mans 24 hour event, a car left the track killing around 80 spectators. But with every horrific crash, safety measures were improved to the point where you could say motorsport today is relatively safe, with apologies to Ayrton Senna.

Sailing takes lives each year, but not all of those who die are competing in a single race. Freak weather killed six people in the 1998 Sydney to Hobart, but that was tragedy on an unimaginable scale for the event. In the 54 year history of the event prior to 1998, only two other deaths had been recorded.

BASE jumping, heli-skiing, diving, mountaineering, big wave surfing and bull riding also contribute to the annual tally of deaths in sport, but none of them donate lives as generously as boxing, a sport that may be the world's premier Very Deadly Sport. According to the Journal of Combative Sport, world boxing recorded approximately 58 deaths from January 2004 to May 2005 alone.

A mortality rate that high certainly gives the anti-boxing movement a leg-up. Similarly, there are those who argue the human cost of the Dakar Rally should prohibit the running of that event as well."

While organisers are already talking about how next year's Rally will have the strictest safety measures yet, those changes won't be enough to change the already horrific legacy of the event.  And it remains to be seen just how you can make such an event "safe", particularly for motorcyclists

Back on the blogging bike

It's been a long time since I updated my weblog. But I am not dead, and neither is my blog, but the thrust of my life during that last 3 or so months hasn't left me much time to blurt out random opinions and thoughts.

But as 2005 has (quickly but not so quietly) slipped into 2006 I intend to jump back onto the blogging bike with a bit more vigor than I was during the latter part of 05.  I might even give the site a bit of a freshen up to help fan the flames of my re-found enthusiasm.

That's probably not the best word to use; "enthusiasm"; I never really lost my enthusiasm; I read more weblogs now than I did a year ago, have discovered some cool podcasts and listen to a load of stuff from audible (almost two and half hours in the car each day = much time to listen).  So the enthusiasm hasn't waned, just the blogging manifestation of it has been on hiatus.

Funny though, although I haven't been blogging much over that last couple of months my visitor numbers have remained pretty constant.  I might have lost a few RSS subscribers, but that is OK.  I am always changing the feeds I read; tossing some and picking up others with regularity.