Lecture tonight:
UPDATE: An American reader of Atlantic writer James Fallows sent in a helpful list of distinctive things about Australia, which I pass on because, well, they seem about right:
• that prostitution is legal, unproblematic, regulated, organized, and therefore much less obtrusive than it is in the US.
• that gambling is also legal, with slot machines in every “hotel”, but that unlike prostitution this remains very problematic and controversial.
• that the institution of the “hotel” (for what we would call a tavern) arises from an ancient requirement that establishments serving alcohol must also provide lodging, to avoid disgorging drunks onto the street. While the legal requirement has fallen away, classic “hotels” still have this feature.
• that in New South Wales, the legalization of small, quiet wine bars serving alcohol without food — as distinct from the noisy “hotels” — occurred only in 2010. During that debate, as I recall, the head of the NSW Hotels Association was quoted as saying: “Really, who in the world would want to sit with a glass of chardonnay and a book!”
• that nobody likes to talk about the fact that the entire economy rests on digging up rocks and selling them to China.
• that mining companies expect to be praised for their cleverness simply because Australia has lots of rocks.
• that the plastic currency doesn’t deterioriate or tear the way paper currency does.
• that despite the levelling pretenses of Australian culture, there is considerable bandwidth for both erudite and artistic broadcasting on both TV and radio, especially through SBS and the ABC, and that it’s accepted that national radio should have an educational function. Aussies generally believe that it doesn’t hurt to learn more stuff in the course of life, and that when the radio offers to teach you something objective and useful, that doesn’t mean they have a “left-wing bias.”
More here under: Do those Aussies have all the answers?
