Todd Tyrtle recently posted a comment on Google Reader highligting what I think is the real problem with consistently idolising sporting achievements over other fields. It’s not "cool" to take this position, particularly in a place like Australia, but I’m going to side with the egghead.
The footy buckling spring keyboard episode!
Getting hate messages a sign of honour; maturity by being able to laugh at yourself; news still being news if its not new; IRC and Twitter mudslinging whatnot; people getting snippy at me quoting David Letterman’s comments on Aussie Rules football; scoring points if you miss; making fun sounds with buckling spring keyboards; the awesomeness of Unicomp in the US of A and this thing called a sense of humour!
Download MP3 to listen 21:16 9.9MiB
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I just can’t begin to explain what’s wrong with this.
I guess I should disclose that I intensely dislike AFL and the religious following it seems to generate, but even if I liked it comparing a victory or loss to the fallen Australian and New Zealand diggers of war is just… it’s like comparing a ritualistic bonfire to war. Sheesh.
Furious Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse says the Magpies let the Anzacs down after Essendon booted three late goals to snatch a thrilling five-point victory in the annual AFL blockbuster at the MCG.
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Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in New York, 25th Septemter 2008
Photo from The Australian
With all the gloom and doom reports coming from across the Pacific in the United States with regards to the Subprime Mortgage Crisis and the string of unavoidable but nonetheless nauseating bailouts we’ve all heard about by now, it’s good to know that our own banking system and financial institutions in Australia are weathering the storm just fine. According to the Business section of The Australian paper and a recent report from the Reserve Bank, we’re actually in a relatively sound position:
“[Australia's] banking system is soundly capitalised, it has only limited exposure to sub-prime related assets, and it continues to record strong profitability and has low levels of problem loans,” it said.
The mostly upbeat report came a day after the International Monetary Fund issued a similar glowing assessment of Australia’s economy, fiscal settings and the resilience of its banks.
The RBA indicated that it, like many others, has been surprised by the extent of the financial crisis now sweeping global markets, but Australia’s banks were set to ride out the worst of it thanks to strong loan books and limited offshore exposures.
Unfortunately as I had suspected the global distrust and fear of banks is having an impact on Australian banks despite solid domestic performance. It’s another example of panic eclipsing common sense and actually doing research into companies you’re sinking money into.
For all the talk of lax regulations in the United States causing problems, I can’t help but think it has to do more with greed and general slackness. Again from the article:
[...] the central bank highlighted a few areas of the financial system hurt by the global turmoil.
“Australian Bank share prices are down considerably and banks’ funding costs have increased significantly,” the RBA said.
Bank bad debt provisioning has risen, but the ratio of banks’ problem loans to total assets remains below the average since the mid-1990s, “a period of unusually low credit losses”, it said.
In line with its recent comments on the economy, the central bank said that household balance sheets were entering a period of consolidation due to tighter financial conditions, but households were still drawing benefits from low unemployment rates and solid incomes growth.
Some stress signals are emerging for the mortgage belt, although these are minor compared to those in the United States.
This of course prompted the relaxing of interest rates from 7.25% to 7.00% earlier this month.
And to end this post, as if I needed an excuse to show something cool from my iPhone, here’s a screenshot of the Stocks application showing common indexes:
The first 14 pages of The Australian broadsheet newspaper today are either about the swimming in the Olympics or the latest AFL, despite the humanitarian disaster going on in Georgia right now. And if you think I’m just disappointed with Australian newspapers, I’ve been told by my dad that Singapore’s Straits Times is just as lacking, though decidedly less AFL coverage for some reason.
ASIDE: Don’t visit The Australian website if you use Camino on Mac and have Flash disabled, it crashes! Don’t pour maple syrup or Vegemite on your laptop either, I’m pretty sure that’ll crash Camino too, amongst other things.
The sympathetic part of me appreciates the fact that most of us have disaster fatigue, and it’s nice to take a break from all the bad things going on in the world by reading about how someone managed to swim a certain speed or managed to lift a certain amount of weight instead of another bomb somewhere. The hippie in me though (an inheritance from my beautiful late mum!) sees hypocrisy and the glorification of drugged up athletes when so many people are doing so much more for the world right now, and conversely so many others are getting away with cold blooded murder on a national scale and their victims get virtually no attention at all. The rational part of me says "what’s new?".
ASIDE: → Kaname doesn’t look terribly impressed at my insinuation that somehow swimmers in the Olympics don’t contribute as much to humanity as, say, a medical researcher.
I think much of this just stems from my own frustration at how much media attention and praise athletes receive compared to people who are actually making a real positive difference in the world. I wouldn’t say it makes me sick, but it does make me sad.
While I’m on my preaching high tall horse poppy soapbox (talk about a collusion of cliche metaphors!), it’s a similar situation with music: people somehow think that most Top 40 singers (if you can call them that!) are somehow capable of being excellent role models and deserve even more of our money and attention, when there are these people called singer/songwriters who think of their art as more than just a job, and who you’ll probably never see reviewed in a traditional newspaper. Just like computer software where giant corporations rake in billions of dollars for software that could easily be replaced by free (as in speech) software but can’t because users are locked into closed, proprietary file formats and pseudo-standards. Do I sound like I’m in my 80’s yet?
Dave Winer will be very proud of me if not for this post but for the following line (if he were ever to read it): thank (insert deity here) I have weblogs and more independent media now to read instead of just relying on traditional newspapers! Save me Slashdot!
Buy Marian Call’s Vanilla on CDBaby
In other news, Marian Call (WWR) has moved up to my fifth top played artist on iTunes, just ahead of Greg Brown (WWR), and just behind The Renovators (WWR), Jack Johnson, John Lennon and Michael Franks. I think mummy would approve, and Jimbob would 50% approve :-).
ASIDE: Michael Franks is your most played artist Ruben? What a surprise!
A sign of things to come? Consider all these articles which were published within an hour of each other this afternoon Singapore time:
I’ll certainly not be watching the 2008 Olympics. That’s not to say I’ve ever watched any of the other Olympic games in the past… and not because they’re dull and uninteresting. Is uninteresting a word?
Cranky Geeks is one of the best video podcasts I watch… probably because it’s one of the only video podcasts I watch. No but seriously it’s a fantastic show, I encourage you to check it out especially if you enjoy lighthearted and cranky discussion of tech trends and the well-deserved ridiculing of stupid news stories.
This was my review Episode 080 dated the 04th of September 2007.
“Yeah well the Zune phone STARTS in the toilet!” Guy Kawasaki definitely seemed like he was having a great time, I wish I could have been there… unless that would mean I have to use one of those Vista microphones
he mentioned!
Adam Curry dragged on a tad (as I seem to always do) a bit with some of the points he was making, but he was definitely an interesting guest and a great guy to have on considering the discussion points. He made a great point about crime in the US versus the Netherlands, which I think could easily apply to many, many places. And I hadn’t thought about not being able to drive away in a flying vehicle after landing at an airport. That would be a real bummer.
Sebastian and Adam’s point that the “green” label is being used to sell things is increasingly true in so many consumer products, but as with both of them I can’t help but feeling skeptical at the same time. Woolworths in my birth country of Australia was recently busted because they claimed their tissue products were from sustainable forests when actually they were from endangered rainforests in Indonesia. If a company is sincere in it’s efforts to be greener that’s great, but if they’re just using it as a marketing ploy without much real substance its a bit of a worry.
Sebastian was really sharp this episode, he really looked as though he knew what he was taking about. Not that he usually doesn’t, that didn’t come out right! I thought his comments about blog linking, spamming and Wifi were right on the mark.
What’s with the “paper” newspapers though? Do they still make those stone-tablet-era things? And does anyone still use Yahoo Messenger anymore? Or ActiveX? Or Monster? Or flying cars?
I was in Malaysia when the DVD sniffing dogs were there and it really seems like their authorities are finally starting to crack down on piracy. Its much easier to find them there still than most places, but many of the shopping centres that used to be full of discs are being boarded up. Whether this is just a token move like the Russians shutting down AllOfMp3 to appease American copyright owners or whether its a genuine effort (pun intended) remains to be seen.
I couldn’t care less about American football (I’m a nerd at university and jocks are my sworn enemies) but perhaps not wearing the suit jacket allowed John to be a bit less formal. Hookers. He certainly looked better this episode too because I watched this episode on my laptop instead of my iPod. That didn’t come out right either.
I just heard from Channel 10 on the news that game attendance at Australian National Rugby League (NRL) games are averging 11,000 less people than last year.
Perhaps the sight of grown men in tiny shorts groping each other… sorry tackling each other just doesn’t have the same appeal that it used to. Or maybe people are actually doing constructive things with their time now. Hey, maybe they’re listening to the Rubenerd Show instead. Yeah, that’s it.
AFL (Australian Football League) and NRL (National Rugby League) here in Australia are the lamest excuses for sport I have ever witnessed. If I wanted to watch barbaric testosterone overcharged jocks in tiny shorts lunging at each other and groping I’ll watch wrestling thanks. And its all anyone can talk about here!
Fortunately I’m not alone:
The Anti-Football League is an Australian organisation that pokes fun at the obsession with Australian rules football. It was founded by Melbourne journalist Keith Dunstan in 1967.
The movement still has a strong band of loyal sympathisers and supporters, and since June 2006, a website. The chief qualification for membership is not an active dislike but a disinterest in football, a desire to spend one’s time and conversation on other things.
afl, vfl, nrl, lame, stupid, jocks, anti-football league, sport, australia, keith dunstan
The New SwiMP3 underwater MP3 player is an incredible audio experience. Imagine listening to hours of your own music during your swim workout. The SwiMP3?s innovative sound transfer technology offers exception underwater sound quality. Standard players rely on the transmission of sound through air or water causing the swimmer to perceive only muffled noise. The SwiMP3 uses bone conduction ? the direct transfer of sound vibrations from the cheek bone to the inner ear ? to provide the swimmer with exceptional sound clarity. The SwiMP3 is fully waterproof and can be used with all the competitive swim strokes.
Includes a USB cable to connect the player to your computer and charge the batteries, 128 MB of RAM for music storage, Music Match software (not required to download music on the player), one pair of Lane 4 OxyGen 2 Goggles (although the player will work with other goggles), 90 day warranty.
I have three thoughts on the subject: by having something strapped to your head would that affect your performance, hydrodynamically or through distraction? I guess we wouldn’t see these in the Commonwealth Games any time soon. Would you be able to listen to podcasts and audio magazines, such as… oh I don’t know, say… the Rubenerd Show? And even for a self confessed nerd who doesn’t like to swim, even this seems too much ;).
I'm Ruben Schade, welcome to my labour of love mix of tech, anime, thoughts and nonsense from Singapore and Australia. Thanks for stopping by.
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