School sport, carbon taxes & the internet

This morning just an update on past posts.

TAS 2011 Rugby Union Games has attracted a steady stream of hits. I have therefore updated the posts to include what results I have, results kindly provided by a commenter. I emailed Donna at the school to see if I could get official results. She has kindly agreed to put them up on Facebook.  I will provide details here once they are up.

TAS doesn't just play Rugby, by the way.

This photo from SBS commentator Craig Foster's Facebook page has the following comment: 

Coaching at TAS, The Armidale School, last Friday. Fantastic afternoon spent with 1st XI team plus a few younger talents. Good boys, very eager to learn, picked up principles very quickly. Coach Richard Newton is promoting football at the school and doing a great job with the kids. Junior and senior school now growing strongly in football numbers. Wonderful to see. Fozz

My post on Sport shooting in schools beat the ABC's NSW Stateline program by twenty four hours! The story is now on-line. It shows the NEGS and TAS shooting teams that I was talking about shooting at the GPS competition at Hornsby. The heads of both schools were interviewed, as was a Greens MP. I have updated the original post to include the Stateline link.

Both the TAS Rugby and Sport Shooting posts are interesting from a traffic viewpoint.  Both and especially the Rugby post are special interest posts. They don't attract big traffic as compared to some of the broader posts, but they do attract enough traffic to be clearly visible in the stats. Some of the most active responses I get come from these types of posts.

In a passing comment on the sport shooting post, KVD wrote:

I used to go with my older brother; shoot to eat sort of stuff. Best fun ever round Lithgow, in all weathers, with a dog and nobody else around. He shot, and we all ate - at least three main meals a week were so provided.

In terms of self sufficiency I've always thought that the inventor of cling wrap has a lot to answer for. I say this after a four day period last week when my valley was without power.

I understood the first paragraph, but found the second a bit obscure, so I sought clarification. KVD responded: 

Sorry about 'cling wrap' reference. Should have been 'Glad Wrap'.

Family shorthand term for the point at which we stopped either growing our own or purchasing same direct from grower (complete with dirt attached) to simply lining up in the local store to buy stuff - all of which seemed to be wrapped in Glad Wrap.

This got me thinking, for that's not a bad description of a fundamental social change. It made me search the internet to try to discover the history of Glad Wrap. I can feel another post coming on!

In another post, New England unis & the university games, I mentioned that eldest had played for UNSW in the mixed netball in the Eastern University Games held in Canberra. That's actually a sign of Australia's size, for UNE played in the Northern Games held in Armidale.

This is a photo of the UNSW team. I leave it to you to spot Helen. Oddly, perhaps not given the small world factor, the team includes the son of old friends of ours. Neither he nor Helen realised the connection!

The remarkable success of Cadel Evans in the Tour de France means that every part of Australia with even some remote connection wants to claim ownership. We are no different! The Armidale Express records that Cadel went to Newling Public School and then Duval High. Helen was quite chuffed to learn that she had gone to the same primary school! 

I have now written a number of posts on Australia's carbon tax debate. In A final word on the carbon tax debate, I provided some gratuitous advice to Julia Gillard on the approach she might follow. It seems to me that, with invaluable assistance from Messrs Abbott and Turnbull, the debate has actually gone along the lines I suggested! For the first time in a long while, the public opinion polls show a pick up in support for the Government.

Over twelve months ago I suggested that the economic hype about Australian economic growth was just that, hype. I won't bore you with the posts, but my conclusions weren't based on detailed analysis of the data. Rather, they were based on an assessment of what might go wrong, along with doubts about analysis based on general statistics that ignored (or seemed to ignore) the actual structure of the Australian economy. Now the economic commentators are coming around to the view I put forward.

I was right when I put forward a contrarian view during the global financial crisis, so that's two ticks. Does this mean that I know what will happen now? No, because the position is so clouded that I do not have a formed view. Indeed, I find it all very confusing. I simply don't know enough about the imbalances in the global economy that underlay current developments. I really hate not knowing things.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why discussions on Greece mix together issues over the fate of the euro with the possible flow on effects of Greek default. Of course there are links, but they are very different issues. The world won't end if Greece or, for that matter the US defaults. But that's another story.

Issues associated with structural change on the internet are much on my mind at present.

Over the last month, or so I have written a number of posts continuing my analysis of the internet. As always, my interest has been driven by my own concerns; both The joy of history in an internet world and Academic journals, the shuttle & the internet reflected my history interests.

During the week, I received my first invitation to join someone's network on Google+. I ignored it!

I have a part completed post trying to pull together some of the analysis I have done on the changing internet. Again, I am just seeking to understand. I really do think that some of the present analysis is wrong-headed.

Google+ will carve out a niche, perhaps a very big one, and will certainly affect Facebook. But so what? Is this really important, a quantum social or technological change? To my mind, it's just another change at the margin.

Enough, I think. I have other things to do!