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http://christmas.rnn.libsynpro.com/rss
Well it looks mostly Christmassy to me.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-13/howard-lends-support-to-anti-climate-change-book/3727650
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8389167/australia-defends-canadas-kyoto-exit
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3732114.html?WT.svl=theDrumhttp://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3389508.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3390224.htm
Alright, if there is one thing worse than not being able to find the book you are looking for it is not being able to find the article you are looking for I think these links cover the Howard and science story but I sware I thought it was a ninemsn article on the 14th that had a headline about NSW Science teachers although these articles cover the same subject was there one with a photo and a different layout, too hard to find!
Looking for yesterday’s article on Higgs boson but this one is more recent.http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/14/us-science-higgs-god-idUSTRE7BC28H20111214?feedType=RSS
Yesterday’s article from ninemsn:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/8389294/scientists-narrow-search-for-god-particle
Well if you were a scientist you would probably call it the Higgs boson particle after Peter Higgs and if not the media will probably go on calling it the God particle. The ninemsn article crunches the data to the sub-atomic particle of a range of mass between 116-130 (Gev), gigaelectronvolts, with a sweet spot at around 125 Gev. The researchers at CERN expect to know by 2012 more definitely the outcome of their experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which they pose as the Shakespeare question ‘to be or not to be’. Scientists explain that they are charting an unmapped map of dark matter and dark energy.
Two research teams: CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research and ATLAS.
CERN Researchers: Bruno Mansoulie
Director General Rolf Heuer
ATLAS Fabiola Gianotti
The title ‘Just a speck’ for the first blog also has connotations of cleaning and domesticity a word Keating used in his interview yesterday and occaissionally these blogs will wander along this path as I contemplate the side salad of one’s life, perhaps it will be a brief part of a regular routine before the luxury of blogging disappears into more hectic routines. So far I have kept writing to an early morning routine, this morning I couldn’t find yesterday’s notes, the hard drive or immediately remember where I had gone yesterday afternoon or the book I was looking for Mrs Dalloway. Which brings me to another point about memory and space. How is it that information goes missing in our mind? How strong is the link between organization and memory? I have four library books yesterday I knew I had two on the Renaissance and one on the Enlightenment and I didn’t remember the title or the subject or the author of the last one for the whole day. Although I tried to think about its colour and shape which turned out to be wrong which was surprising because it is the thickest book and of the same length as two others of a similar colour but with vertical signage. I noticed that I thought the missing book was a light grey green and slim but until I put the books together I realised that I was confusing this detail with another book. Now I can recall going to the library and browsing through the book and reading a few pages but not remembering very much of it. However, it’s author was not obscure Martha Nusssbaum and it is unlikely that I would forget the author’s name. So does it matter that it was on a desk with paper and things covered over it, I guess so!
Yesterday Margaret Throsby’s interview with ex-Prime Minister Paul Keating’s was replayed. Fortunately, I took notes otherwise I would find it difficult to recall the substance of his arguments. Considering I started with a piece on writing I mentally noted Keating’s remarks on writing which were to jot ideas down on a piece of paper which I mostly habitually do, after about a page of messy notes along with a a list of things-to-do and instructions for using WordPress and a doodle I returned to my notes in the afternoon to re-read and re-write them and they still were not that clear.
However, Keating’s interview was long enough to be an article all by itself and once again I had about an hour at my disposal which wasn’t long to delve into the territory of Australian history and world politics. Perhaps not surprisingly since the interview takes place on an arts programme with the guests own selection of music the relationship between art and politics was discussed which Keating described as a food for life except not in those words. Their discussion also included Keating’s preference for neo-classicism in French art and architecture and the age of Enlightenment as opposed to the Renaissance. Although, the idea of magnificence is firmly established by the civic humanists of the quattrocento in the Italian city-states, particularly the Medici’s. However, it is more the ideas of independent democratic political thought in the enlightenment that Keating is absorbed by through Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and Montesqiueu. He also referred to republican values of ancient Greece and Rome, which were heavily a focus of the Renaissance such as the Republics of Florence and Venice. He did mention the monarchy as a thing of the past in relation to a remark.
Which draws us back to the Howard years and Keating’s comment in relation to his 1996 election speech that ‘you should speak to the author and not the photocopier.’ Besides political structure there are two domestic issues at hand being asylum seekers and aboriginal people that distinguished the leadership of Keating and Howard. Keating’s achievements included the Native Title Act 1993 following on from the High Court decision of Mabo no.2 , he acknowledged aboriginal dispossession and need for self determination. In relation to immigration he referred to the 1994 Migration Reform Act and the UN Refugee Convention. Keating also portrayed Howard as a ‘sticky fly’ promoting prejudice and racism.
Keating’s other remarks addressed foreign policy in response to the Cold War, American hegemony and the Asia-Pacific with emphasis on relations between China and Australia. Also, he notes that racism is inconsistent and objectionable as Australia fits iself into the picture of the Asian region.
He remarks upon America’s rejection of liberal internationalism during the George Bush era and comments on Iraq as a base in the Middle-East and the unipolar moment. Further, he notes that it is a multipolar not a unipolar world that is influenced by international rule of law. Finally, he observes the necessity for Australia to have a ‘human narrative over-arching the Cold War and the 2008 Financial crisis in the modern political age.’
abirdinthebanksia 