Another week of interesting news items that have caught my eye. I’ve mixed it up a bit this week – there is one article I actually liked.
1) Transactional relationships.
I wish I had written this. I may be a little hypocritical in highlighting an article on the negative impacts of technology, given that the first action I take when pulling into a secluded camp site deep in the bush is to check the quality of the reception, but at least I’d never be accused of paying someone back for a coffee they’d bought for me.
2) The clever country.
I think I’ll need to have this one explained to me. We are now thinking of Importing gas, to make up for the lack of gas in Australia due to the amount of gas we are Exporting. Just do me one favour – don’t blame economists for this lunacy.
Can anyone else remember when, prompted by a ship about to leave Brazil with a load of ethanol that would’ve undercut the local producer, John Howard changed the law on imported ethanol, in order to benefit a local producer. So the same political party, with the same set of ideals, has an energy policy that sees another energy material, gas, imported to replace the volume being exported.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the buyer of our gas is literally turning the ship around and sending it back to Oz and charging us a higher price for what we have already sold them. But we wouldn’t fall for that would we?
3) Nobody is perfect
Now that the dust has settled on centre court, Flushing Meadows, we are seeing more reasoned responses to Serena’s behaviour during the US Open final. This from Konta. I’d always wondered how people could agree with Serena’s assertion that the umpire was sexist when he was umpiring a match between two women. The argument that a different interpretation of behaviour may have been made in some other match doesn’t hold.
There are two points I’d like to add. The first specific to Serena which is I can still remember how she reacted during the US Open final against Stosur (our Sammy).
The second, more important point, not specific to Serena but using this event as an example, is that we (well, more you than me) have a real problem with expecting our idols & role models to be perfect, to the extent that we have simply no way to deal with their imperfections. Serena is a case in point, sensational athlete, leader for women etc etc, but not perfect. Why must she be? Why do so many pretend that she is. Why can’t we accept that people have imperfections, but can still be incredible?