If the SMH can’t get it right, who can?
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Tags: punctuation, smh
Since everyone else seems to be blogging about the election, I might as well jump on the bandwagon as well.
While I was watching a McCain-Palin interview on the New York Times website, it happened to freeze right at this moment:
If you use your imagination a little, that’s how McCain might look like if he were to suffer a slight mishap while driving.
In any case, nointrigue.com for Obama! For all it’s worth, given I don’t actually have a vote…
Tags: barack obama, john mccain, nytimes, politics
One in 10 Tasmanians racist: So, 46.6% of people in NSW believe that some cultural or ethnic groups don’t fit into Australian society. This sort of figure is bound to shake off any naïve belief that Australians have fixed the scourge of racism. I guess, though, it wasn’t altogether surprising given the brouhaha at Camden and Bass Hill. What would you do to create a more tolerant society?
Rees’s red-hot razor: I was right. Mr Premier says that he’s “pulling back” from the metro, and he’s unwilling to commit to the project. But should NSW go ahead anyway? Are the long-term benefits worth the large debts that the state will rack up?
Floundering in a sea of change: I still consider the New York Times to be the pinnacle of journalism, but is it floundering because of the collapse of the old guard, and “the cost structures and privileges of the old media are being swept away”?
So we have a new Premier. But Joe I’m-very-popular Tripodi and Eric Let’s-build-some-more-roads Roozendaal are still there. And I’m very confident the new Premier is just going to pull $10 billion out of his rear end to build the metro now that the power sell-off has fizzled. Sigh. Update: Miraculously, they’re now Finance Minister and Treasurer respectively. According to Wikipedia, our esteemed Treasurer started his Commerce degree but never managed to finish it. And now he’s in charge of a $47.6bn budget?
The New Jews: bias against Asian Americans at Ivy League universities is exposed, and although the statistics are alarming, the picture is far more complex than it first seems. (Note that in New South Wales, we are fortunate enough to have the impartial Universities Admissions Centre to manage university admissions.)
‘Human flesh search engine’ in hot pursuit of the iPhone girl, proclaims the headline. I was initially quite curious as to why there is a search engine that indexes bits of human flesh on the planet. Update: Tommy suggests that the phrase “human flesh search engine” is a literal translation from the Chinese.
The Games Began. Hearts Swelled: Chinese patriotism is a varying and nuanced entity - from the perspective of an American-born Chinese New York Times writer.
The Darlington side of main campus of the University of Sydney was a renovator’s dream. Its endless array of concrete slabs might lay claim to coherence in some kind of brutalist architecture, but I suspect the university pretty much built the Engineering and Architecture faculties out of whatever spare cash they could find at the time.
The USyd Central building adjacent to the Union’s Wentworth building is part of the Campus 2010 plan to reverse the years of neglect that have rendered other universities with substantially more attractive (and marketable) campuses. The first part of the USyd Central to open, the SciTech Library, has now been delivered, and it sure was a delivery from heaven.
When you first walk into SciTech, the thing that strikes you is how different it is from any other library that you’ve been to. With your first steps past the stylishly glassy entrance, you are presented with a large, welcoming atrium that envelops you and draws you in; the splendour and the interesting topology of the library makes you feel like you are viewing spectacular scenery from the top of a mountain. To the right is a lounge-like area, with playful, lime-green chairs that wouldn’t look out of place in an Ikea store. To the left are the book stands, and in front is a sunken valley of study cubicles. At night, the entrance area is tastefully lit up with small spotlights that cast small pools of light on the soft carpet, and during the day, there is ample natural sunlight from the wall of glass.
As I intimated above, the furniture is one thing that sets SciTech apart from any other library I’ve seen. Colourful, distinctive, modern and definitely playful - as I write, some people are stacking up the lime-green chairs in various configurations, possible as the chairs are made up of three conjoined cylinders - the furniture is fitting for a science and technology library. From the jelly-coloured red and orange stools to the Ikea-like chairs, they are all inviting and very comfortable.
The library, from the ground up, has been designed to be more than just a repository of books. It appears to have been designed for students to learn, to study and to collaborate. The “study valley” that I alluded to before encases you as a cocoon encases a caterpillar, drawing you away from the hustle and bustle of the outside world into a study world of your own. The hours melt away as you study in one of the the plush, multicoloured pods, or the seats that line the green river-like divider that separates the study valley from one of the computer access areas. As you meander between the mellow-coloured bookshelves, you come across islands of tranquillity, where you can sit down and enjoy a book or two. If you prefer electronic learning, power points are abundant, and there are multiple computer rooms, with desktop computers and laptops - now that is something I haven’t seen before anywhere in the university. The only minor complaint is that the wireless connection here isn’t as stable as it could be.
Ultimately, a library isn’t much of a library unless it stores books. Although I find it disappointing that in the move to the new library, a large portion of the Engineering collection was moved into archival storage, because there just isn’t room at SciTech, there is something that they have done that is quite interesting; some shelves hold the book so that the front is displayed, much like special book displays at book stores.
If the rest of the Campus 2010 improvements are of the quality and thoughtfulness of the SciTech Library, the university is onto a winner. The design of the SciTech library shows a thoughtfulness to the needs of students and staff at the university. I look forward to the new law library with much anticipation - and to spending many days and nights at SciTech.
The SciTech Library: Level 1, Jane Foss Russell Building, on City Road
Tags: campus 2010, ikea, library, study, sydney university
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