Thursday class

Hi all,

I've been getting messages that most of you will not be present in the class tomorrow. Since there is no real point in me giving a class to a handful of people (and I'd still have to catch up on all that with others), let's just do the class "virtually".

So:

1. You don't have to come to the classes tomorrow.
2. But please study the materials I will post later today, and I mean STUDY them - watch all clips and read linked articles.

Deal?

So, there we go:




1. Sport

"Australian sport deserves quality piss taking or none at all."

Australians are a nation of active people and they like to joke that they spend more on excercising than on education, but it doesn't mean that they are going to worship their sportsmen and sportswomen blindly. They always retain a healthy dose of irony and humour.

Asked about cricket, they would say something like that:

Cricket is a game that moves about as fast as a Jamaican on valium. It involves watching 11 men in white clothes stand around a field for a few hours, then break to have lunch, stand around, then break again to have a cup of tea, stand around, then go home. The same thing occurs for another 4 days, and then after all that effort, both teams call the whole thing a draw...

Remember, "Australian sport deserves quality piss taking or none at all." So true ;-)


Australians pride themselves on inventing football. That's correct. Football. (see the link under science). However "footy" may mean different games in different states. More on that here.

AFL



2. Talking about sport, we can't possibly forget about Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.















But the main point is to be able to have fun.

Have a listen to this commentary. Pay attention to how Polish audience react to Aussie scoring goals, and how the commentators react to the goal scored by Poland. A bit eye-opening, eh?




3. Science and the inventive Australian mind.

Have a look at the long list of Aussie inventions.

Here is the history of one of them:



4. Subcultures

This is a trailer of a film that not only started off the great career of Russell Crowe but at that time was a very important voice in the discussion about Australian youth.




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