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Archive for August, 2007

The Death of Gregarious Australia

By Rana Ensor ⋅ August 24, 2007 ⋅ One comment

A member of the armed forces once told me that there were two reasons Australians had a much lower casualty rate than Americans in war/peace-keeping scenarios. The first is that we didn’t arrogantly telegraph our arrival into a potentially dangerous situation with loud, often culturally offensive music, making it much harder to ambush us. The second was our reputation for gregariousness. Australians have long been known as the blokes who would talk to and have a drink with just about anyone. We were famous for our happy-go-lucky drinking exploits and were welcome pretty much anywhere because of it. Is this really something to be ashamed of? In a combat situation, it translated into troops who spoke to everyone they encountered, if for no other reason than to find out where the nearest pub was. The “digger” stereotype rang true as we were seen as friendly, hard working, thirsty folk, with a history of being used as canon folder by the British.This reputation has suited me just fine throughout my international travels as I heartily did my best to reinforce it, making a good many friends in the process.

Failure of an Arts Education?

By Jason Ensor ⋅ August 23, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

I’m doing this because I think there are problems for research when education becomes tied to “keeping the economy strong” at universities and I was prompted to respond to Richard Nile’s article posted at the Australian blog website (address below) on the same theme. My reply on this page is repeated there too. I confess I feel a little uncomfortable relating my experience. It is something that happened a good number of years ago and I’m not sure if the parties involved are still employed nor do I wish them problems. But the event did stay with me, provoked serious changes in my own professional life for half a decade, and it suggested to me that the future of education, while populated with lots of good and remarkable things, is also infected with a malaise of sorts when it comes to the arts and humanities.

New York and Reading Comics …

By Drew Whitehead ⋅ August 23, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Inspired by insideout’s post of Everything I Know About Diversity, I Learned from Superhero Comics, this is everything I have learned about New York from reading comics and without ever having been there: In New York all taxi fares are $6.50 regardless of the distance travelled. All taxi drivers are of ethnic origin. With the [...]

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