When I grow up I want to be a …

Given the current economic crisis, kids should think hard what career path they would like to take. Here are some suggestions.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Dear Jesus,

it has been yet another year. I hope you are well. All the best for your birthday and may all your wishes come true. Have a good one mate!

Melbourne to be activated

Old Melbourne town had to elect a new mayor. The new Lord Mayor is Robert Doyle, a state politics looser whose aim is to ‘Activate Melbourne’.

Overindulging on scientific confectionery

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator facility at the Swiss-French border, accelerates protons which create other subatomic particles as they collide. One does this in order to test and expand the theories describing the subatomic world. At first sight, the research would appear to be purely academic with no practical applications. That however is not quite true.

The most common reasons raised against funding research such as the LHC include the premise that the money could be spent on more ‘valid’ causes and that this sort of research has no practical application, hence it is just scientific indulgence. Here I look at the latter premise.