Good old Aussies

Good Old Aussies

I find that generally Australian culture treads a fine line between healthy self confidence and self-centered arrogance. My guess is that this is why they excel in so many areas and punch above their weight internationally in sport and politics.

We encountered a few good examples of this in Melbourne. On the third night of the open, instead of the top seeds playing on the Rod Laver Arena, two unseeded Australians got the prime time slots Jelena Dokic and Bernard Tomic.

After reaching the third round Jelena Dokic is now being re-embraced by the Australian public after years in the wilderness. It would appear the Aussies are quick to forgive winners! A column in the ‘Herald Sun’ mentioned that usually the Australian public a slow to forgive and mentions Australia never forgiving the Americans for Phar lap! It is very big of them to take on an offence regarding a New Zealand horse!!

16 year old Bernard Tomic is an exciting tennis prospect, but ranked 768 in the world and playing an unseeded opponent was also on centre court. The decision to put these two players on Rod Laver was all about Australia, not tennis, but good on them.

When Roger Federer won his second round game, playing in the heat of the day instead of on the evening slot (making way for the Australia show) he was interviewed by Jim Courier. All the questions were designed to promote the Australian playing in the evening. “Thanks for coming and being a warm up act for our 16 year old 768th ranked tennis boy Roger, you little ripper!”

I was reading the 128 page Herald Sun and managed to find 6 pages on world events (3 of them photos of President Obama’s inauguration). The rest of the paper – an all Australia affair!

Well, that’s enough of Australians talking up Australia, what do you love about Australia!?

I do however prefer this than much of the self-defeating cynicism of home. I am looking forward to Australia Day on Monday. I am pretty sure that it will be slightly more celebratory than good old Waitangi Day.

Tennis

Going to the Australian Open tomorrow I decided to have a look at the history of the game.

It's predecessor- Real Tennis, surprised me a bit. Here is a bit from the wikipedia.

Real tennis is the original racquet sport from which the modern game of lawn tennis, or tennis, is descended. It is also known as jeu de paume in France, "court tennis" in the United States.
Real tennis is still played by enthusiasts on 47 existing courts in the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, and France.

The term "tennis" derives from the French word tenez, which means "take heed" — a warning from the server to the receiver. Real tennis evolved over three centuries from an earlier ball game played around the 12th century in France. This had some similarities to handball, involving hitting a ball with a bare hand and later with a glove. One theory is that this game was played by monks in monastery cloisters based on the construction and appearance of early courts. By the 16th century, the glove had become a racquet, the game had moved to an enclosed playing area, and the rules had stabilized. Real tennis spread across Europe, with the Papal Legate reporting in 1596 that there were 250 courts in Paris alone, near the peak of its popularity in France.

In Victorian England real tennis had a revival but broad public interest shifted to the outdoor game of lawn tennis which quickly became the most popular form of the sport. Real tennis courts were built in Australia (1875) and in the United States starting in 1876 in Boston, followed by New York in 1890, and also at a few other athletic clubs.

The rules and scoring are similar to those of lawn tennis. Although in both sports game scoring is by fifteens (with the exception of 40, which was shortened from forty-five)), in real tennis six games wins a set, even if the opponent has five games. A match is typically best of five sets.
The balls are much less bouncy than a lawn tennis ball. The 27 inch (686 mm) long racquets are made of wood and use very tight strings to cope with the heavy ball. The racquet head is bent slightly to make it easier to strike balls close to the floor or in corners.

A real tennis court (jeu à dedans) is a very substantial building (a larger area than a lawn tennis court, with walls and a ceiling to contain all but the highest lob shots). It is enclosed by walls on all sides, three of which have sloping roofs (known as "penthouses") with various openings, and a buttress (tambour) off which shots may be played.. The courts are about 110 by 39 feet (33.5 × 11.9 m) including the penthouses, or about 96 by 32 feet (29.3 × 9.8 m) on the playing floor, varying by a foot or two per court. They are doubly asymmetric— not only is one end of the court different in the shape from the other, but the left and right sides of the court are also different.

The service happens from only one end of the court (the "service" end) and the ball must touch the penthouse above and to the left of the server once before touching the floor in the "hazard" (receiving) end of the court. There are numerous and widely differing styles of service, many with exotic names to distinguish them, such as "railroad", "bobble", "poop", "pique", "boomerang" and "giraffe".

The game has other complexities, including that when the ball bounces twice at the serving end the serving player does not generally lose the point outright. Instead a "chase" is called and the server gets the chance, later in the game currently being played, to replay the point from the other end, but under the obligation of ensuring every shot he plays has a second bounce further back from the net than the shot he failed to reach. A chase can also be called at the receiving ("hazard") end, but only on the half of that end nearest the net; this is called a "hazard" chase. Those areas of the court in which chases can be called are marked with lines running across the floor, from left to right, generally about 1-yard (0.91 m) apart - it is these lines that the chases are measured against. One result of this feature is that a player can gain the advantage of serving only through skillful play (viz. "laying" a "chase", which ensures a change of end). This is in marked contrast to lawn tennis where players alternately serve and receive entire games. It is thus not uncommon in real tennis to see a player serve for several consecutive games till a chase be made. Indeed, an entire match (theoretically) could be played with no change of service, the same player serving every point.

The heavy unbouncy balls take a great deal of spin, causing them to swerve when bounced off the walls, and a cutting stroke is often used to cause them to drop sharply off the back wall for the sake of a good chase.

Another twist to the game is the various windows below the penthouse roof that, in some cases, offer the player a chance to win the point instantly by hitting the ball into the opening. The largest window, located behind the server, is called the "Dedans" and must often be defended from hard hit shots (called "forces") coming from the receiving (called the "hazard") side of the court. The resulting strategy of long volleys and shots off the side walls and penthouse roof lead to many interesting shots not normally played in lawn tennis. However, because of the weight of the balls, the small racquets and the need to defend the rear of the court, lawn tennis strategies like serve and volley are rarely employed.

Bananas

There is a question that I have found perpelxing recently, so I conducted some research so you don't have to have restless nights pondering the same thing. The question - 'How do bananas reproduce?'

I know the answer to this will not chnage my world - I just wanted to know.

Anyway, my study has led me into a complex and sometimes contradictory web of half answers. I will attempt to give hyou the best explanation about our friend the banana.

There are close to 1,000 species of banana today. Most of them are inedible - they carry hard pea-sized seeds, and have only a small amount of bad-tasting flesh. Botanists think that 1000's of years ago, probably in South-East Asia, a random mutation produced a sterile banana with no seeds and lots of flesh that could be eaten uncooked. The internal dark lines and spots inside today's banana are the vestigial remnant of these seeds.

But the edible farmed banana has no seeds. So how do we get new bananas? They are grown from the cuttings of an existing banana plant. New banana "trees" are "born" in a new location when the shoots of cuttings are planted in the ground, and take root successfully.

Bananas are definitely a fruit, even though the fruit is sterile and has no seeds. And the banana does not grow on a tree. It grows on a plant. But it's not a tree, because it's made from leaves, not true woody tissue. So our poor banana is a sterile and mutant fruit that has not had sex for 1000's of years.

Check out Great Moments in Science for more info.

Yeah

I drove past this amended Tui billboard yesterday on the Southern motorway.

Charity:Water

More than 1 billion people living in the world are without something as basic as clean drinking water. Scott Harrison decided to do something about it and founded Charity:Water. Have a look at what they do, particularly the videos.

Justice (cont.)

Here are a couple of quotes from Relevant Magazine on this issue:

Brian McLaren: I believe these days it’s the economy, not the nation-state, that is driving the world. It would be good for people to consider the ways capitalism can become a form of idolatry, where markets are given godlike powers and people have an unwritten creed of salvation by consumption alone.One of the most powerful things the next generation of emerging Christians can do is be at the heart of a new global movement for ethical buying and fair trade. We can use the power of markets for good, just as they have been used for evil in so many ways—environmentally, socially and politically. It’s a question of the Kingdom of God—how would we expect economics to work in the Kingdom of God, as opposed to the systems of this world?



Cindy Jacobs: God has worked in this generation a desire to make the world a better place for all. This means grappling with issues of eliminating systemic poverty, taking care of the environment and living with each other in a kinder, more relational way.For this reason, I believe the question is, How much is enough? We need to make wealth to steward it to create jobs, help single moms, the elderly and find ways to deal with the AIDS crisis. Our lifestyle should not be “me” centric, but “Kingdom of God” centric.

Justice cont.

What is justice?

Justice concerns the proper ordering of things and persons within a society.

We are to bring this proper order.We are to be bringers of justice

This is active!

It is possible that we are unjust without realising it.

I have just watched a movie called “Black Gold”. It is a documentary that explores the injustice created by the coffee industry. Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world behind oil. Despite the demand for coffee, the large coffee corporations ensure they pay as little as possible to coffee growers. They do this generally by keeping knowledge of trading practices from the growers and giving them no options but to sell at a price that keeps farmers in poverty.
Black Gold looks closely at the coffee industry in Ethiopia, and is well worth you watching (or even buying and giving to friends to watch). It chronicles the stories of farmers who are in generational poverty – poverty that could be reversed if the coffee cartels offered a fair price for the coffee. I think I worked out that it would cost us about an extra 50 cents a cup (at a cafe) to enable these farmers to have a reasonable level of income that enabled them to give an education to their children and sufficient food to eat. However, in order to maximise profits, these cartels keep many of these farmers in poverty.

This is where fair trade coffee comes in. Fair trade coffee is bought at a fair price that enables farmers to attain a reasonable standard of living. I have notice that generally it is no more expensive than coffee that is purchased at a price that literally destroys lives.

What can we do? Buy fair trade coffee. Ask your local cafe to stock fair trade coffee.

For all those smug non-coffee drinkers, this concept of fair trade does not just apply to coffee. Chocolate as well as many other products we buy can create injustice. The challenge to me and perhaps for you as well is to become aware of where what I buy comes from and who it affects.

But will it affect our wallet? Maybe.
Proverbs 16:8 Better is a little with righteousness, than great revenues with injustice.