The Age published an article about http://theconversation.edu.au/, a new media outlet run by the former chief in editor of The Age. Not only have I seen intelligent articles on it, their editors and authors understand Creative Commons licenses.

It seems that Senator Carr didn't like the frank and fearless advice his public servants were offering him, and the Chief Scientist's position became untenable. Sure, you're not meant to offer that frank and fearless advice through the media, but what's the point of a having a chief scientist or indeed any publicly paid scientist if they're only ( Read more... )

Yikes. I'm reading Clive Hamilton's "Requiem for a species. Why we resist the truth about Climate Change". (all tyops are mine)

To date, governments have shunned geoengineering for fear of being accused of wanting to avoid their responsibilities with science fiction solutions. The topic is not mentioned in the Stern report and receives only one ( Read more... )

Yay, I still have a job. The Anglo part of the Anglo−Australian Observatory will have fully pulled out by 2010, so we had been wondering where the shortfall was going to come from. We're fully budgeted now for the next 4 years (as fully budgeted as you can be when you start talking about the next term of government). (We still don't know what ( Read more... )

If anyone has ever thought "why is it so hard to servo a telescope", wonder no more (this post prompted by a similar musing from the lead programmer of the new Telescope Control System as he works the final few bugs out of the servoing control ( Read more... )

I know some people have been concerned about the LHC creating black holes.

Fortunately, they have a webcam to demonstrate just how seriously they take safety.

As I said, I have been fairly ill[1] for 4 months or so. I've also been snowed under at work (up til July is booked out with projects that need doing urgently). These have conspired against me to mean that I haven't touched my thesis since 3 Dec 2007, and it is absolutely due in a mere short 5 or 6 months ( Read more... )

Oh, FFS!

Why the hell do newspapers publish opinion peices from a front group for the Institute for Public Affairs with a nice fuzzy, and misleading, name like "Australian Environment Foundation"?

Furrfu! Talk about non-sequitors! How, may I ask, are star bursts relevant to climate change on a timescale of several hundred years? I believe the ( Read more... )

Dear science ( Read more... )

For electricity: 110 tonnes per month of carbon. When electricity companies say this, I don't know whether that means 110 tonnes of carbon atoms, or 110 tonnes of carbon dioxide molecules. To be conservative, let's assume the latter (and multiply the final result by 44/12=3.67 otherwise). 44 grams of carbon dioxide fills a volume of 22.4 litres ( Read more... )