Such differing views on whether racism is present in Oz in the latest Q&A TV program. To Todd Sampson, an outsider who moved to Oz about 10 years ago it is plain to see. Those born here and seem to not see it even if they are ethnics like the young Asian from Sutherland Shire. Germaine Greer’s description of the subtle racism of the educated British matches my experience in Oz. An inherent belief in their own superiority (and others’ inferiority) allows Australians to be be very ‘nice’ to people and that is supposed to demonstrate that they are not racist. This does not apply to the redneck racists who just hate ethnics of any flavour- these are the people who were drawn out of the woodwork by Pauline Hanson and co-opted by John Howard’s dog-whistle politics. See the program here.

Prospect Magazine: Issue 154, January 2009

Mumbai’s bloodied elite
The Mumbai attacks hit India’s rich the hardest. They may now take democracy more seriously

Elegant apartment blocks stand tall above the gardens of Malabar Hill, the most exclusive district in south Mumbai. The area juts out on the far side of a bay, like the thumb of a hand stretching for the sea, as if trying to keep at arm’s length from the body behind. Property prices here rival downtown Manhattan. When the smog isn’t too thick, residents can gaze east across Back Bay, to see the city’s seething downtown fingertip. Few places would have given a better view of the smoke rising from…
—————
You can see the entire article here

As one who refused to take up Australian citizenship until there was an option to pledge allegiance to the people of Australia instead of the queen (sorry, no capital ‘Q’ here), I am supremely ambivalent about the constitutional monarchy we have in Australia.

To me, it is a back door way for retaining the exclusionary ‘Australia’s heritage’ arguments for the diehard old school (mainly, it seems) Anglicans who see themselves as arbiters of what is and is not ‘Australian’. They are a vocal and extremely influential minority though, and are going to have to be dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming.

Face it, the monarchy is irrelevant in Australia; apart from a few archaic constitutional conventions, it exists but in name. But it does have a symbolic significance and should be turfed out if for no other reason than to acknowledge the lack of its relevance to our lives.

It’s a sign of the times that we see the monarchy being mocked in the public domain these days. Here is a billboard advertisement for a South Australian brewery:

The monarchist rump (now that’s a useful term!) is actually expending energy to protest about this sort of stuff. A link to this story is here.

Someone should tell them to get a life or move and live it in Old Blighty.

Jonathan Holmes seems to be settling in well as the new presenter of Media Watch on ABC TV. Here is a recent story that I really liked…. Can’t he do a mean impression of an airhead?

Link.

A link to the transcript is here.

This from the Sydney Morning Herald:

$10 chip puts Australia on the fast track

A new silicon chip developed in Melbourne is predicted to revolutionise the way household gadgets like televisions, phones and DVD players talk to each other. The tiny five-millimetre-a-side chip can transmit data through a wireless connection at a breakthrough five gigabits per second over distances of up to 10 metres. An entire high-definition movie from a video shop kiosk could be transmitted to a mobile phone in a few seconds, and the phone could then upload the movie to a home computer or screen at the same speed. The “GiFi” was unveiled today at the Melbourne University-based laboratories of NICTA, the national information and communications technology research centre. “I believe in the longer term every consumer device will have this technology,” said project leader, Professor Stan Skafidas, who with his team spent almost a decade developing the chip.

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Continuing on from previous years, Sam Kekovich has offered his annual dose of advice on how to be Austraaalian on Austraaalia Day.

Have a look here.

Also, there have been these tongue-in-cheek ads in the Financial Review and other papers, over the last week that had me a bit puzzled.

I knew there’s a government organisation that works to publicise Australia Day trying to build up a sense of history and belonging among us for this day. These ads, however, have a sly sense of humour to them and I was quite sure that it was a spoof of some government ads. But no, it appears that these ads are from the government.

Now we really know that the politically correct reign of the Howard government has ended and Australians can truly be relaxed and comfortable about themselves without getting involved in all sorts of anal and nationalistic chest thumping.

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Every two years the World Solar Challenge is held- this is an

event based on a competitive field of solar cars crossing the Australian continent powered by nothing but the sun. Teams are required to research, build and design vehicles capable of completing the 3000km journey from tropical Darwin in the Northern Territory, to cosmopolitan Adelaide in South Australia. [link]

This year the race was won- for the 4th consecutive time- by the Dutch team from Delft University, Nuon, with their car the Nuna 4

The car traversed the 3010 km distance from Darwin to Adelaide purely on solar power. previous years competitions have established that these solar cars can travel as fast as normal cars so this year the requirements were changed to make the specifications closer to a normal family car.But this is not the real inspiration for this note on races; this is being written on the eve of the Melbourne Cup horse race- the race that stops a nation. One of the few countries that actually has a public holiday (in Melbourne, where the race is held) for a horse race. Sport and gambling come together in this race with bets being placed by almost every grown person in the country. Offices run their own pools and even in places where the day is not a holiday, all work comes to a standstill for the 3 and a half minutes or so that the race runs.

For the not so serious races, consider these:

The Henley-On-Todd Regatta, held in the town of Alice Springs in the red centre of Oz- is held on the banks of the Todd River to raise funds for charity. It’s been held annually since 1962, making the one to be held on 30 August this year the 46th race.

In 1962, Reg Smith and his compatriots at the Alice Springs Meteorological Bureau proposed they hold an actual regatta along the lines of the famous Henley-on-Thames, a race between Cambridge and Oxford Universities. The idea was taken up by the Rotary club of Alice Springs, and the fact that the town was 1,500 km’s from the nearest large body of water was never seen as a problem.

Yes, you read that correctly- the regatta is held on land on the very dry bed of the river Todd! Reading on, at their site:

Watching seemingly sane people race in bottomless “eights”, “oxford tubs”, “bath tubs” and yachts through the deep coarse sand of the Todd River provides an unique spectacle amongst world sporting events. The multi-event program attracts many local and international participants from the audience who often finish up on world TV news paddling canoes with sand shovels and in “land lubber” events like filling empty 44 gallon drums with sand.There are crazy bathtub races too and whole naval battles by, among
others, “Vikings” and “Pirates” crewing battle boats on truck’s
chassis, bristling with mortars and high pressure coloured water
cannons hurling flour bombs at their opponents. But if it rains and
there is water in the river, the boat race has to be cancelled.

Pictures of some participants in past years, here.

And then there are reports of annual goat races and wheelie bin races at a Lightning Ridge, an opal mining town in New South Wales!

It used to be a joke among those observing the rapid development of the Middle-East in the seventies and eighties that the oil states there had gone from camels to Rolls Royces in one generation.

In another conversation just last weekend, we were talking about how some things in India were far more modern than in some Western countries- the Delhi metro and mobile phones being examples- and that this was because of the leapfrogging effect of a later adoption of a technology. So, there’s often been a revolution rather than the evolution that the Western nations went through in their adoption.

So this, in an article by Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times, did strike a chord:

So what should India do? It should leapfrog us, not copy us. Just as India went from no phones to 250 million cellphones — skipping costly land lines and ending up with, in many ways, a better and cheaper phone system than we have — it should try the same with mass transit.

His question in the first sentence relates to how India can reconcile its new found passion for the car with the congestion it already has on its roads.

He goes on to say that

India has become a giant platform for inventing cheap scale solutions
to big problems. If it applied itself to green mass transit solutions
for countries with exploding middle classes, it would be a gift for
itself and the world.

Now isn’t that a major shift in how India is perceived! She is seen now to have the ability to fix at least one of the worlds bigger problems using the ingenuity of its people. I think this is something that is only now becoming apparent to the world. I mean, think about it: China is usually heralded in the area of manufacturing technologies as being the low cost, efficient producer- largely on the basis of low labour costs. But already India is seen to be capable of making a difference not because of a labour cost arbitrage but by the use of its brainpower. I think this is a major milestone in how India is perceived in the world.

…love their you beaut utes.

If that’s all gibberish to you, you may need a crash course in Australian expressions and slang.

After his beer, and his footy, the love of the Aussie bloke apparently is…his ute. And Deniliquin-a town in country new South Wales state- is capitalising on this with the annual Deni Ute Muster to boost tourism to the city. Last year’s record showing of 6211 utes is expected to be overtaken this year. It’s also set a record for the largest number of blue singlets  worn in a place.

Enjoy more details of this very Australian yarn here.

Here’s something from the electronics trade rag, SmartHouseNews:

The Story Behind The New DECA Range

Mendelson Tiu – Tuesday, 18 September 2007
DECA (Digital Electronics Corporation Australia Pty Ltd) was founded in 2005 by Nihal Gupta, who saw a new direction in design and style emerging in the Australian market place during that year. Now, two years down the road, DECA is now offering a new line of electronic furniture that will blend into one’s home with ease.

According to DECA’s Managing Director, Nihal Gupta, the new range of products was both created and inspired by iconic designer Marcel Wanders. “I was very focused on the key principals of design and style. Using this as my benchmark, I traveled around the world seeking products that would fulfill that criteria and was thrilled to discover that an accomplished designer such as Marcel Wanders had designed a home electronics range. Technology and functionality were also important prerequisites of my inspiration. I am
pleased that this new range introduces technology and features ahead of their time, and being beautifully crafted with design and style, they are simply unparalleled in the marketplace.”Nihal also mentioned that Marcel Wanders was chosen to design the new DECA range as the products released in Europe was a huge success. “Marcel Wanders believes we should live with passion and style. It’s all about a combination of beauty and technology that harmonises with people’s lifestyles. Today’s consumers accept and expect technology but the new wave of consumer electronics will offer an aesthetic solution as well.

Our range answers all those ‘what if’ questions – ‘what if my iPod could communicate wirelessly with my speakers?’, ‘what if my side table was also a home theatre system?,” Nihal added.

As you might have gathered, all this high falutin’ language essentially means that you are going to have to part with serious bikkies to buy the stuff in the range.

Which brings me to another desi- one Raaj Menon who has quite a well established offering of wireless routers, ADSL modems and also a quite interesting Network DVD Media Player- which is a DVD player cum wireless audio/video streaming device. There are others like it, but these guys had one a few years ago when they were not so common.