An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.
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The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.
Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.
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Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.
1. Scientists at Large Hadron Collider hope to make contact with parallel universe
The LHC is being fired up again after two years down time when it was refurbished and enhanced. In their first experiment they hope:
a completely new universe will be revealed – rewriting not only the physics books but the philosophy books too. It is even possible that gravity from our own universe may ‘leak’ into this parallel universe, scientists at the LHC say.
As mentioned at Mark’s Facebook, if they want a parallel universe a plane ticket to Australia might be cheaper.
2. Crazy polls
Either opinion is swinging wildly or the pollsters have lost it.
Two weeks ago there was a significant crossover of Newspoll and Morgan. Now they’ve crossed back again.
Morgan has a 2.5% swing to to ALP, putting them on 56/44 TPP.
Newspoll has a 4% swing the other way to leave Labor barely ahead on 51-49.
Essential has a 2% swing to Labor this week to leave it comfortably ahead on 54-46. Essential’s weekly poll has been reasonably steady over a four-week period.
3. ‘Supertide’ at Mont Saint-Michel
They call it the tide of the century, but it actually happens every 18 years. Mont Saint-Michel is a tidal island off the coast of Lower Normandy. Acessible by a causeway at low tide, the tide comes in at the speed of a galloping horse. Mont Saint-Michel receives over three million visitors each year.
4. Native title threatens Adani’s Carmichael mine
Adani’s Carmichael mine in the Galilee Basin is planned to mine 60,000 tonnes of coal per year, creating 10,000 direct and indirect jobs. Adrian Burragubba as spokesman for the Wangan and Jagalingou Family Council says that under native title they do not approve of mining in any shape or form and no amount of money will change their mind.
We’re concerned that it will devastate the land beyond repair.
It will destroy the waterways and our totemic animals and beings that are on that land and our ancestor dreaming stories and those things that are associated with our culture and heritage.
And it will also destroy it beyond repair to the point where we’ll be displaced forever from that land as the original custodians of that land.
It seems that the native title claim substantially overlaps with another native title claim lodged by the Bidjara people. If the claim cannot be settled between the groups then the Federal Court will test the matter at trial.