The Poet and The Scientist Debate How To Reclaim the Shared Language of Wonder

Ever since the romantic poet John Keats accused Newton of trying to unweave the rainbow in his poem Lamia, science and poetry have lost a common tongue. Listen to this wonderful podcast from ABC Radio National's Big Ideas Programmes entitled Weaving the Rainbow: The Poet and The Scientist Speak as two of Australia's leading cultural icons, Barry Jones and Les Murray discuss and share views on how science and arts might regain a shared language for wonder.

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Is there a national cultural identity in a Facebook world?

An interesting article originally titled "Is there an Australian culture in a Facebook world?" published to-day in the Sydney Morning Herald could even more appropriately be entitled "Is there a national culture identity in a Facebook world?" Simon Letch Illustration: Simon Letch CULTURE and creativity are central to life in the 21st century. The global stakes have never been higher; never before have we been surrounded by so much information or so much art - high and popular, visual and aural, original and reproduced, amusing and challenging, bland and exciting. In cities the world over, tribes are instantly recognisable irrespective of country of origin, defined by the beautifully designed objects of consumer capitalism they wear and carry, the entertainment they download, the food and drinks they consume, the news they absorb. Spotting anything uniquely Australian in this wash of global brands is harder than recognising the distinctively laidback style of Australians abroad.

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Artists and Sustainability - A New Frame on The Vexed Question of Climate Change

Last month Edward Burtynsky featured as our visual artist and we had some great responses to his work. As a result, we decided to feature this wonderful video, made by Burtynsky and Yann Martel (author of Life of Pi) as an example of how art has the potential to make us look at climate change in a more connected way. Whether you are a climate change skeptic or not,these artists have found a way of expressing the cultural importance of the way we have created the world in which we live and in so doing ask the vital question - is this the type of progress we want and if not, how might we think about changing the outcome?

The Ill Informed Argument of Death by PowerPoint

I have recently come across a series of comments about the "death of PowerPoint" that are at best ill-formed and at worse reactionary. Professor John Sweller of the University of New South Wales argues that the use of Powerpoint has been a disaster and should be ditched. He says it is effective to speak while showing a diagram or graph because it presents information in a different form. However he argues it is not effective to speak the same words that are written because it puts too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented. An article in the Melbourne Age on the same topic by Christopher Scanlon of RMIT University titled "The PowerPoint of No Return references a book The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint by Edward Tufte. Scanlan claims Tufte suggests that PowerPoint affects the way we think. " Technologies shape what we think about, how we think about it, and, more importantly, how we relate to the world around us. For the naive bullet lists may create the appearance of hard-headed organised thought. But in the reality of day-to-day practice, the PowerPoint cognitive style is faux-analytical. Bullet outlines can make us stupid, " says Tufte. The basis of these argument are incorrect because they don't address the core issues.

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