Looking at: the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games 50 cent coin

I just happened to glance at a 50 cent coin that was sitting on my desk last night and I was transfixed by what appeared to an image of a woman whipping a bird.

There is a long (and proud, apparently) tradition of using our 50 cent coins in Australia to celebrate various significant events (uh - like the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana) - mainly because it's our largest coin and being twelve sided (a dodecagon, if you were wondering) I guess it's not distinctive enough already.

(Click on the image for a full size view)



At first I thought it was a nice (if not slightly random) collage of sporting images mixed up with images of native fauna - only after a bit of looking did I realise that it actually represents traditional Victorian events revived for the games.

Obviously, there is our most proud tradition, the bird whipping event. It is an event based on free expression and with roots to the earliest days of European occupation of this country - originating in farmer frustration with drought. Points are given for speed and accuracy but primarily for "making the whip sing".

This shouldn't be confused with a similar event - the bird teasing event. A gentler event in many ways, this consists of tying a small piece of bread to the end of a piece of string at the end of a stick and using it to lure a bird to walk around the "teaser" in delicate patterns. Points again for speed, time before the bird gets bored and flies away and how high up you can make the bird stretch.

(To be honest, I'm not entirely sure which of these two events is depicted on the coin so I thought I should cover both)

Directly above this is the "Chase an emu while walking like an Egyptian) event. This is relatively new sporting event in Australia, designed to celebrate a proud tradition of multiculturalism in Victoria and acknowledge our indigenous history. (It serves a secondary purpose of winding up Howardists in the federal government how want to abolish multiculturalism and wish that Aborigines would just go away).

To the right of this is a complicated event - the "Frog pretend". You will notice that it is the job of the athlete at the top to put themselves in a position judged by a panel of frog scientists to be the most similar to a frog hanging onto a stick. The origins of this sport are shrouded in mystery and it is assumed, clouds of smoke.

Below this is a depiction of basic kangaroo safety. If you are sitting and sense that a kangaroo is jumping on you from the sky, assume the crash position by leaning forwards and resting your arms on the seat in front of you.

Finally, we come to the swimming event. This is essentially the same as competitive swimming around the world but in Australia, we add an element of nature to the programme by having each swimmer compete with a platypus. Games and world record times are only validated if the swimmer is also able to best the platypus - only fair considering that humans are much larger than them.

Curiously, there is as yet no information about any of these sports to be found on Wikipedia (or even Conservapedia). This is disappointing but perhaps just serves to highlight how truly unique these events are to Melbourne.

Another distinctly Australian quality to the games is that (particularly in the Frog pretend and Chase an Emu events) some of the athletes portrayed are actually doing a fairly mediocre job of it. Heroic failure is a cornerstone of Australian history (Burke and Wills, Gallipoli) and something celebrated to this day. (Australian Idol)

Discussing: David Hicks

We were watching SBS News last night (Australia's best - and therefore most important and depressing - source of world news) and Jelena asked why there is such an obsession with David Hicks in Australian news. (There had also been an update on Dateline preceding it)

Her overall point was certainly a valid one - that this is just one guy but because he is Australian, hours and hours and hours of airtime and miles of print are dedicated to him but at the same time, who knows half of anything at all that is going on in South America. (Apart from Hugo Chavez perhaps.)

I had to think about this for a bit but I think that there are a few main reasons for this.

It's easier and more engaging to hang a story on a person than a set of ideas

The war on terror and particularly the whole debacle that is the U.S "system" of military commissions and Guantanamo Bay AND the Howard government's subordination to U.S will is a pretty complex bunch of issues, ideas and problems that can be hard to focus a story on. Particularly a story that viewers/readers can necessarily connect to.

Having a person in the mix adds an essential human quality to a story - people are able to make more emotional connections to someone - whether it be "string the lousy traitor/terrorist up" or "well everyone deserves a fair trial regardless of what they may have done".

It brings our (Australia's) responsibilities in the issue to the fore

There are a lot of things going on in The War Against Terror (or TWAT as I like to call it) that are horrible but which we (Australia) don't have a lot of sway over.

Violence against the innocent (obviously), monsterous war profiteering by big well-connected corporations (e.g Dick Cheney's Halliburton and big oil), erosion of civil liberties, torture, militarism gone mad and divisive attempts to create fear in the name of greater power.

Australia, through our elected government, can jump up and down and stamp our feet about some of these things but in the grand scheme of things, our opinions won't get more than a diplomatic "I'll take that on board now smile for the cameras"

(And of course, that's assuming that the Prime Miniature is of a mind to object to anything in the first place, little neo-con that he seems to be)

The David Hicks matter however is another kettle of fish.

Australia is the only Western "Coalition of the Willing" nation to allow their nationals to be kept at Guantanamo Bay and put through the Military Commission system, a system which to all purposes appears to be highly dubious under any reasonable interpretation of international or American law. (I'm not a lawyer but it certainly doesn't appear to offer any sort of fair trial in any established sense)

This is one area where Australia (more specifically the government) is able to take a position and their (I guess our) refusal to do so is an important issue.

In an election year, this is particularly pressing.

It's like a frackin soap opera

Recent developments in the Hicks case have just gotten more and more out there, giving it a definite (though possibly legal trainspotterish) soap opera quality.

The sudden dismissal of two (out of three) members of Hick's defense team at the last minute and the gradual dropping of all charges but one suggest a lot of game playing and situation manipulating by an increasingly desparate (and seemingly highly politicised) system.

The fact that the outspoken military lawyer Major Michael Mori (thinking woman's crumpet to a number of women I know here) is also under threat of disciplinary charges for his actions in Hicks' defense is just another episode.

It's a wedge issue

Over the last few years the Howard Government has been very effective at using highly emotive and divisive issues to define itself and create a lot of froth and bubble in Australian society as a tool for holding on to power.

Australia's role in the war in Iraq - directly tied to our part of TWAT - has become one of the more substantial issues of our day and is one that is hard for people to be neutral about.

As opposition grows and it looks like this issue could be one of many that forces a change of government, interest grows - just as anything that changes existing power structures anywhere is interesting.

(Let's just hope that if a Rudd government gets in - please, please,please - that there is in fact a more enlightened approach to things. )

Watching: Cirque Du Soleil - Varekai

Wow, just wow.

Everything you expect from a modern circus; acrobatics, clowns, juggling, dazzling aerial work but with incredible costumes, music and overall spectacle.

I come back to the quote that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" and this seems to fit in this instance.

Here's the search results page for Varekai in YouTube but it's hard to do it justice on screen.

These are some of my personal highlights. (Interestingly some of the costumes for minor characters in the Australian tour are completely different - and in my opinion better)

Connecting: French fries and French food

I took my new girlfriend (tee hee) out for a birthday dinner last night to a French restaurant in town (Ardeche - pretty bloody tasty I might say too) and while browsing through the menu was struck by the inclusion of French fries in the description of the boeuf bourguignon. (Essentially a beef stew with big honking chunks of melt in your mouth beef)


(Let's not get into the failure of 4 years of high school French to get me through the pronunciation of bourguignon here either)

Looking through all the other items, everything seemed so refined and then these french fries just kind of leap off the page at you.

Of course, far be it from me to make the connection between the French in french fries and French food, surely it's just coincidence right? Fortunately my somewhat more worldly dining partner was able to set me straight and make the point that they are actually a common part of a number of dishes in France.

Playing: Trivial Pursuit (online)

Lightening things up a little because, oddly enough, not everyone is interested in educational/learning theory first thing on a Monday morning (actually, that would be Muntzday today - Happy birthday gorgeous), here's something else.

After getting back on the Trivial Pursuit horse on the weekend (with much fun), I thought it was time to share a very evil and disruptive website that I've been trying hard to avoid for a week or so now, in the spirit of offering a mental distraction from work that we all need once in a while. (Like when, oh, I don't know, blogging perhaps :)

There's quite a nifty online version of Triv available here - http://www.gamefools.com/onlinegames/free/TrivialPursuitBringonthe90s.html that offers a scaled down version of the game (playing for 3 pieces of pie) against the computer. It also allows you to jump in first on questions that the computer has to answer and steal the turn back, which is a nice work around to the problem of waiting for it to get through its go.

It's 90s themed, not too taxing and makes nice little chimey sounds when you get it right.

Enjoy.

Learning: about learning

And I thought I knew everything that was worth knowing ;)

I was doing a bit of reading the other day and came across the following tidbit that I thought was really interesting - it's all about how they (the mysterious they) believe our brain works in terms of learning and memory.

Two memory systems, working memory and long-term memory, shape human learning. Working memory is the center of all conscious thinking, including deliberate learning. However it is limited in memory capacity. The well-known limit of seven plus or minus two chunks of information first articulated by Miller (1956) applies to working memory.

In contrast, long-term memory is a permanent, large capacity repository of information consisting of organised structures called schemata. However, it has no processing capabilities. There is an interaction between working memory and long-term memory in that, the more related knowledge that is stored in long-term memory, the larger chunks working memory can absorb.

Therefore, novice learners with little related knowledge in long-term memory are much more susceptible to cognitive overload than are more experienced learners. This is why prior knowledge of the learner is an important individual difference characteristic that must be considered with designing instruction

So in essence, the more you know about something already, the easier it is to digest new information about it. (Maybe this is just common sense but it's exciting to me - I'd normally say I need to go out and get a life at this point but I'm pretty durned happy with the one I have at the moment)

(find out more about this in:

Colvin, Clark, R. & Mayer, R. E. (2007). Using rich media wisely. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (pp. 311-322). Upper Saddle Creek, NJ: Pearson Education.)