normblog

Christmas in Melbourne

Christmas Day for me arrives this year rather earlier than it does for many of you. No worries. Wherever you are and whatever time it is there, I wish you a very happy holiday.

From the WACA to the MCG

It's Christmas Eve and I'm in Australia to follow the cricket. So here are some odds and ends of a cricketing kind to take you into the holiday.

> A guy sitting behind me at Perth and talking to his daughter: 'I told you, Jane, Test cricket is war.' A bit later on: 'That [i.e. bodyline] was the English attempt to destroy Don Bradman.' Good to see the history being passed down from one generation to the next.

> On the last day at the WACA, behind the Lillee and Marsh stand, I saw Ian Chappell, Nasser Hussain, David Gower, Geoffrey Boycott, Alec Stewart, Michael Atherton and Michael Holding. I even said hello to Michael Atherton, and was pleased to find that, like me, he felt Ponting's declaration had given England a chance, if only a remote one. The required run rate was such that if they batted out the overs they would win the game. 'Impossible,' many people say, when they mean merely that it hasn't been done before. One day it will be. It was an unnecessary risk in the circumstances.

> There is a blogger I know who hasn't so far commented on England's loss of the Ashes. He seemed to take more of an interest back in 2005.

> After England had lost at Perth, the Barmy Army settled into the most annoying of its chants, the one that consists simply of shouting Barmy Army as loudly as possible over and over again. It wasn't difficult to pick up the message: England may have lost, but we're still here, never say die, etc. Which is fine. But for anyone who wanted to hear what was being said at the post-match presentations, the manner of this affirmation made it hard to do so. I stand by my previous.

> Great piece here by Simon Barnes.

> So far in this series, Michael Hussey has scores of 61, 74, 86, 91 and 103, two of these not out. Looks like he's due a score in the 50s or the 110s.

> After Warne, Glenn McGrath also calls time.

> A statue of Dennis Lillee is unveiled at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

> Gideon Haigh on the 100th Melbourne Test.

> On Friday I went on the MCG tour - as good a preamble as any I can think of to being at the Test come Boxing Day. The word may be overused but the MCG is awesome.

More mediocrity and decay

The next journalist to write a 'Blogs - aren't they awful?' feature might like to consider adding to the list of their woeful consequences the fact that blogs open the door to such dull repetitiveness on the part of journalists of this narrow outlook.

Ministry of truth

Tzvetan Todorov is the author of, among other works, Facing the Extreme, a book I have read and learned from. His is a voice to be taken seriously. Yet I find this recent piece by him rather one-sided. It concerns the way in which in the Western democracies - and the US in particular - public opinion, swayed by fear, can lose sight of 'the duty of truth', the importance of 'evaluating the news, arguing and reasoning'. All this in relation to the war in Iraq.

Todorov's article isn't one of those claiming, ridiculously, that the anti-war case was silenced. He allows that there were available 'plenty of lucid statements' on the matter of the war. Still, his view is that the 'question of the truth' got 'parenthesized'.

There is a conclusion to be drawn here which Todorov himself would doubtless find unwelcome. Those endangering the truth are, in his eyes, only others: political leaders, governments, citizens convinced by them 'that black is white', and so forth. But there was a debate about the Iraq war that swept across the Western democracies, occupying all the principal media, and engaging people passionately on both sides as well as in between. The issues were explored this way and that; they were gone over and gone over and then gone over again. The idea that reasoning and argument were somehow shunted aside and that truth wasn't on the minds of others than those aligned as Todorov himself was doesn't make a lot of sense - unless, that is, you merely assume that people sharing his alignment were in possession of the sole and the whole truth. It is, of course, a widespread assumption amongst those of Todorov's viewpoint. But it is an assumption notoriously uncongenial to what he calls the duty of truth.

The Old Dart 2 (updated)

Stan Denham emails from Sydney:

I know this relates to an old post on your blog, but I have stumbled upon it during an argument about the meaning of "The Old Dart", Aussie slang for England, whilst watching the cricket. It is, in fact, still in common usage in Australia - although perhaps not among the current generation of early 20-somethings, who seem to be leaving tradition behind in favour of terms like schoolyard, sidewalk and store. Anyway, I digress. It seems to me that in any hunt for the origin of a term or word, it's important to try to do some detective work.

So of course, I haven't, as in this case it seems impossible. But I don't believe it has anything to with "old dirt", and have always been suspicious of that explanation, as have many others. Our simple reasoning being, if it was "old dirt", it would have stayed "old dirt". And an English friend has a different idea, and he may well be on the right track.

I have no proof, but the term does date back to the late convict era, by all accounts, and it's worth noting that many of the convict ships - indeed many of the ships heading to Australia with passengers and cargo - departed from the Woolwich area. They all went through Dartford, the outskirts of London, as they headed down the reaches of the Thames to open sea, or arrived back there upon returning to England. I suspect that's a much more plausible explanation, as Australians even of that era seemed to take delight in shortening any word possible. I may well be wrong, of course, as I have plenty of times in the past, but it's possible.

Update: From reader T:

It is called "The Old Dart" because the river Dart at Dartmouth was the first land fall for sailing ships coming out of the Atlantic.

Images of the Shrine

I visited the Shrine of Remembrance today. It's an impressive memorial, and I wanted to get a postcard or two of it. Neither there nor walking back through the city could I find anything that did it justice. Odd, because there isn't any shortage of images.

Dissing the Canon

Pachelbel's, that is. The Geek has the link.

More Jews?

This may worry some people. It seems there may be more American Jews than there were thought to be:

Two major new demographic studies estimate the American Jewish population at well above 6 million people, indicating a growing Jewish community that contrasts sharply with popular images of Jewish decline. In particular, scholars say, the new studies appear to refute a widely publicized survey conducted in 2001, which counted 5.2 million American Jews and sparked widespread anxiety over American Jewry's future.

It's a matter of some controversy, however. Details here.

Sore throats common

If you're planning to do any sword swallowing during the festive season, it's best not to swallow 'multiple or unusual swords'. Also keep focused: complications are 'more likely when the swallower is distracted'. The abstract of the relevant study - 'Sword swallowing and its side effects' - is in the British Medical Journal. (Thanks: the KP.)

Invincibles

I met up with Fay yesterday, a friend of my sister Elise's, also normblog reader and - on that account - recent convert to cricket. We met in Federation Square and one of the places Fay took me was to the Ian Potter Centre to see The Indigenous Collection. It's a wonderful exhibition all round, but I was particularly struck by this painting, 'The Invincibles' by Julie Dowling. If you place your cursor over the smaller version of the picture here (scroll down), you'll get some information about it, including the sources for the two racist quotes:

'... these poor natives so hideous to look at...' 'and wherever the team went it was treated as a body of sportsmen and gentlemen for such is the kingdom of cricket'

Julie Dowling writes:

I wanted to demonstrate the invincibility of Aboriginal men and to provide a message of pride to their descendants and our community.