Keep calm! Hold your horses! (Pun intended.) What's good for the gander (or is it the other way round?) etc... The fact is that they projected the barrier draw of a certain horse race, on which people can gamble, onto the pristine sails of the Sydney Opera House. There have been unconfirmed reports that the earth trembled in the City of Copenhagen, where Jorn Utzon is buried.Whilst personally, I'm vehemently negative on an iconic work of art such as the Sydney Opera House being subjected to any graffiti (electronic or otherwise), you have to hand it to the promoters: the controversy generated tens of millions of dollars worth of free publicity. Nay, more: money couldn't buy it; it intimately affected people's emotions. Even your Editor was motivated to fire off a text message to the ABC to protest this vandalizing of a national icon. The result: record numbers of patrons climbing all over the Everest venue, Randwick Racecourse. The lesson? How can Rotary get some maximum free publicity? Do we need to become a bit more outrageous? Should we start a controversy that makes the news, such as, say, one party opposing (Polio) vaccination whilst another argues in favour? (Sorry, might not work - anti-vaxxers are old news.) OK, what about starting a new satellite club to which only males are admitted and mobile phones are banned? OK, pretty weak... Anyone's got a good idea?
By the way: It's not the first time, of course, that the Opera House was used as a canvas. See picture above right. Except that this obviously did not generate any controversy.