The sport of “breaking”, a more formalized version of break dancing, took it’s place in the summer Olympics. Some can debate whether it should qualify as an Olympic sport or not, but what’s caught my interest is a story about an Australian competitor, Rachel Gunn, who apparantly has a very unique style, so far afield that some consider it mockery.
And someone who was unhappy about that went forward and created a petition to investigate unethical conduct in the Australian Team’s Olympics selection, alleging that she’d only received her position on Australia’s Olympic team by stacking the governing body for breaking, manipulating the selection process, and relying on her husband to be a judge in one of the qualifying events. All of which was not only untrue, but could be fairly easily researched and found to be untrue, as Rachel qualified at an event where her husband (who is indeed a coach) was not a judge.
Yet over 56,000 people signed that petition. Change.org has since pulled it for violating their guidelines on misinformation.
What is it about so many people, so many of us, that so desperately makes us seek to be “white knights” and look for any possible instances of discrimination or failure that we can put our name against and consider ourselves good people for having contributed. How lazy of a knight do you have to be to look at these allegations and just conclude absent any references what-so-ever that what’s being said is true? Normally I use the excuse that people simply aren’t used to media without editorial gatekeepers, without people actually taking time to verify what gets published is trustworthy, but that becomes a harder justification with every year that goes by. We’ve had social media for over a decade now, how long should people be given to learn a lesson that keeps getting repeated—that no information on the internet is trustworthy aside from primary sources.
That’s why I encourage our writers to include links, and references, because you never know when somebody might be lying to you.
In other news, be sure to check out [blue rare] this week. No reason. Just cause.
So anyway, this week, we start off with a brand new student interview in the latest Minds We Meet, with a student who has one of the most interesting “proudest” things I’ve seen.
We’ve also got a report on the latest AUSUnights event. As a distance university, it can be a bit challenging to run an event for students, but new writer Emily but we’ve got a new writer who joined the AUSUnights Summer Bash and brings us a report on what happened. Also we take a tour of Basel, Switzerland and learn about the Wickelfish. This report goes along great with our latest Cities in Six, which also takes a look at Basel and some of the sights you might see.
Also this week, we have a continuation of our look at immigration Canada as Alek digs into how the system became what it is, some advice for holding the perfect BBQ as summer winds down, inspirational articles, and a brief look at private parking lots and how they may well be screwing you by more than just the prices.
Plus, of course, scholarships, advice, events, articles to make you think or perhaps give you some new reading material and much more!
Enjoy the read!
