Aug 20 2009
What do Star Trek, popular science and democracy have in common?
similarities anyone?
Star Trek adventures across a futuristic democracy called the ‘United Federation of Planets’ and contributed to popularising science fiction?
Possibly, but not quite the topic of this post. The answer lies closer to home.
Aug 20 2009
Scrumping. Verb: The art of finding free food in the street, mostly from large fruit trees that overhang people’s yards or are in public places.
Surely, also, the delicate first cousin of dumpster diving: the art of retrieving perfectly edible food from dumpsters.*
Scrumping is just one of the 100 social “experiments” listed on www.livelocal.org.au – a website that aims to help people re-connect with their immediate environment – and exist more sustainably – by living locally.
Video extraordinaire Amanda Hoh visited the ‘InsideOut: Growing Communities‘ installation at LiveFutures 2020 last Saturday and talked to researcher Natalie Rowland about the project and how it ties in with Live Local.
Myself and my partner were, in fact, two of the people “interviewed” in the Botanicals room on the future of our native seedlings.
Aug 19 2009
Alex likes to listen to shells because they sing the song of the sea. He is interested in the bit of science between chemistry and biology.
As I write this, it seems the world is in a bit of a pickle. Greenhouse gas concentrations are rapidly rising and it’s thought if they cross some hidden threshold we will no long be able to stop ‘runaway’ climate change.
Runaway climate change. Image: Holyrood 350 (http://holyrood350.org)
This means we need a simple solution to a complex problem – and fast. Experts say if we are going to solve the problem, we are going to need a mixture of different renewable energy sources. Options include: wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, wave and tide.
Of all the renewables listed above, one stands as different. Did you say biofuels? Well you’d be right.
Why? Because biofuel is the only renewable energy source listed that isn’t a direct source of electricity. Now, before you jump up and down about rising food prices and destruction of rainforest to grow palm oil, let’s take a closer look at the black sheep of renewable energy.
Aug 19 2009
Pat Mahony is an Environmental Researcher at ANSTO and former president of the Young Scientists of Australia.
So, what does nuclear power mean to you? For many, it means green glow, Chernobyl and Homer Simpson. Throw in the words ‘dangerous’,'meltdown’, ‘cancer’ and ‘radioactive waste’ and you have a frightening picture of a technology that supplies around one-sixth of the world’s electricity.
Nuclear Power Plant
But if nuclear power is so unsafe, then why is almost every developed country in the world including it as part of a long-term energy strategy?
Aug 19 2009
Thanks partly to Fiona McDonald’s ‘Are humans still evolving?‘ piece on this blog, and partly to Portopolitico’s ‘The Failings of the Green Left‘ post on his Armchair Critique, I have been needled into looking around me at the situation of the environment circa 2009 AD.
It’s surprisingly difficult to assess the situation with any objectivity.
For the last 20 years, the public discussion around climate change has been dominated by the increasingly-shrill carbon lobby funding one climate denier after another, until they have no-one left but the dregs and the lunatics.
Aug 18 2009
As if diminished sunlight, cold weather and blasting heating systems were not bad enough for our immune systems, this year, just to spice winter up, we faced a pandemic. Yes I’m talking about H1N1, something you’re probably all sick of hearing about.
Swine Flu conspiracy
There have been conspiracy theories (did USA big pharmaceutical companies create the virus to boost sales, or was it a terrorist group?), panic (no, we’re not all going to die) and a lot of miscommunication (twitter as a main culprit!).
But all of the talk and hysterical media coverage is drowning out the most important question in my opinion: what’s going on with the vaccine?
Aug 18 2009
It’s the stuff of dreams for most kids: staying at the zoo overnight surrounded by wildlife!
Penguin discussion
Last Friday night, Taronga Zoo welcomed 35 students as they started their training as Future Endangered Species Scientist (FESS) mentors.
Aug 17 2009
Today I stumbled upon the humbling realisation that I had a lot to learn, professionally, from school-children.
Astronaut, Megan McArthur. Image: NASA
Megan fields some excellent questions at Google HQ today.
I was one in their midst at Google HQ in Pyrmont this morning, listening, agog, as NASA astronaut Megan McArthur talked about working in space. Megan had fronted up in her blue NASA overalls, there to talk primarily about the fifth and final servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope she worked on in May this year.
Aug 17 2009
A remembrance of things past, inspired by the new Star Trek movie.
I wasn’t a fan of Star Trek when it first came out. The cheesy effects and cheesier writing of many episodes of the original series did not whet my appetite for more.
Image: Artist Jon Lomberg with the black hole fountain he designed for the center of his Galaxy Garden in Hawaii.
When I began to show my art at Sci-Fi conventions, I couldn’t help but absorb some of the Trekkies’ excitement, and eventually started watching the show in reruns. But it was a guilty pleasure.
I was working Carl Sagan, who was contemptuous of Star Trek. Bad stories and bad science did not represent the space program in a very positive light.
I met Star Trek’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1976, on the night Viking 1 landed on the surface of Mars. I was there making a documentary about it for CBC radio. Roddenberry and actress Nichelle Nichols (who plays communications officer Lieutenant Uhura) were in attendance, along with writers Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury, among other Sci-Fi luminaries.
Not yet 30, I was brash enough to alienate Roddenberry by suggesting most Star Trek fans of my acquaintance were less interested in the real space program and more in trivia from the show, like the name of Capt. Kirk’s brother.
Aug 15 2009
OMG. I just had an Octopus on my head. Otherwise known as: the Emotiv Headset. With the helmet moistened to read my brain-waves more easily, it really felt like an octopus was being peeled off my skull when the Emotiv Headset was removed.
The Emotiv Headset will become an addition to video games: where users can think certain commands to supplement games. And, trust me, it’s a lot harder than it sounds! Thinking a command isn’t just ‘do this’: it’s focusing mentally on doing the activity.
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