I'm a bit late writing this up, but I can't let it go by without a memento ( Read more... )

I've just realised that the passing of the Renewable Energy Bill, widely praised as an environmental success story (with some reservations about the allegedly favourable treatment for carbon-intensive energy providers) has a somewhat unexpected result for me personally (and maybe for some other readers of this journal). When I moved to Australia ( Read more... )

I can't remember if I've mentioned KeepCup before. I first met with this company's products at the Melbourne Design Festival earlier this year. Since moving back to Australia (i.e. away from the land of the Wimpy Bar), my coffee purchasing habit has, predictably, gone off the scale. I was starting to feel guilty about the number of disposable cups ( Read more... )

Australian academics will be aware the latest version of the ERA journals list has just been released. (ERA is the Australian "research excellence" quality monitoring system, equivalent to the UK's REF). Now I've had lots of corridor moans with colleagues about the potential negative impact of the ERA journal ranking on the discipline: early-career ( Read more... )

The 2009 Melbourne Festival has just started, predicting a few weeks of random art and discovery. :-)

Last night was the last hurrah of the opening weekend celebrations, which saw a bunch of bell-themed street theatre (or, as the French put it, "les arts de la rue") invade the city at dusk, all preceded by a carillion of bells pealing out from the ( Read more... )

Lunch today was more challenging than usual. I went to see Manne, one of Australia's (and La Trobe Uni's) leading public intellectuals, in conversation with former minister and Australian Labor Party President Barry Jones, and former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. Though they spent their careers on different sides of the political fence ( Read more... )

I'm proud that Elizabeth Blackburn, an Australian medical researcher, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for her pioneering work on chromosomes and ageing, together with her colleagues Carol Greider and Jack Szostak ( Read more... )

Dear festival organisers, congratulations on the LA10 closing gig at the Melbourne Planetarium - a fine event.

Suggest that there is an interesting opportunity, in the Planetarium space, to create a work to parallel Ligeti's "Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes".

Metronomes to be replaced by reclining chairs. :-)

Best wishes, finella_c.

This is an appropriate post for Stravinsky's birthday (thank you, Google). I've always loved the music of the Firebird -- dreamy and passionate in equal parts. I was lucky enough to witness some of the glamour and exoticism of Diaghilev's original costumes and staging for that ballet a couple of years ago, at an exhibition on 1920s design at the ( Read more... )

So they've discovered a new element in the periodic table. ("A new hope" might have been nicer, but I guess that's not likely till Japan commits to a better emissions target than 15%). Heavy stuff. Literally.

The method used by Hofmann and his team, though, seem to offer an interesting instance of the convergence of the disciplines in science. Is ( Read more... )