Experience Anu

The second in the Conversations Across the Creek series was a lively discussion of the abstract beauty of mathematics, the crisis of too much data, the possibilities of a universal language, and the potentials of machine learning within the constraints of making something which doesn't not work. Also mentioned: hammers, certainty, ethics, and Proust. This session’s speakers were: Professor Anna Wierzbicka (Linguistics, School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics), Dr Glenn Roe (Digital Humanities, Centre for Digital Humanities Research), Professor Bob Williamson (Machine Learning, Research School of Computer Science), and Dr Vanessa Robins (Computational Topology, Research School of Physics & Engineering). Hosted by Director of the Humanities Research Centre Professor Will Christie. The Conversations Across the Creek series is an initiative of the Humanities Research Centre and the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science. ‘Conversations’ seeks to highlight the commonalities and interesting intersect

Australians came to the ABC's 2015 TV series The Killing Season in their droves, their fascination with the Rudd-Gillard struggle as unfinished as the saga itself. 'The Killing Season: Uncut' takes readers behind the scenes with new on-the-record material and telling insights into the key players of this dramatic period in Australian politics. Sarah Ferguson says "The making of The Killing Season matched the drama on screen and that's a story we wanted to tell. And now we have a place for the episodes of rich material we could have put into a 5-part series." In this conversation Sarah is joined by Lenore Taylor, political editor for the Guardian Australia.

This talk was recorded at the launch of Dr Andrew Glikson's and Professor Colin Groves' latest book 'Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene'. Dr Glikson and Professor Groves were also joined by Professor Will Steffen and Professor Stephen Eggins to explore future climate trends and debate the philosophy of science. 'Climate, Fire and Human Evolution' uses Earth System science to explain pre-historic human evolution, give insight into the origins of the mastery of fire and broaden our understanding of climate change. It outlines principal milestones in the evolution of the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere during the last 4 million years in relation with the evolution of primates to the genus Homo - which uniquely mastered the ignition and transfer of fire.

Stan Grant discusses his new book, Talking To My Country, a powerful and personal meditation on race, culture and national identity. Talking To My Country is not just about race, or about Indigenous people but all of us, our shared identity. This is his very personal meditation on what it means to be Australian, what it means to be Indigenous, and what racism really means in this country. Stan Grant, a Wiradjuri man, is one of Australia's leading journalists, having worked in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa for the ABC, SBS, and the Seven Network. From 2001 to 2012 he was a CNN anchor in Hong Kong before relocating to Beijing as a correspondent. Since 2013, he has been the International Editor for SKY News. He is also Managing Editor of National Indigenous Television, and the Indigenous Affairs Editor at The Guardian. In 2015, he won a Walkley award for his coverage of Indigenous affairs.

Kerry O'Brien joined Lenore Taylor in conversation on 30 October 2015 to discuss his long awaited book, Keating. As there will never be an autobiography nor a memoir from Paul Keating, this book is as good as it gets: funny, sweeping, angry, imaginative, mischievous, with arrogance, a glimmer of humility and more than a touch of creative madness.

This talk looks at Syria’s history since the First World War, the events leading up to the Arab Spring uprising in Syria, the nature of the Syrian conflict since 2011, and the reasons for the current refugee crisis. Clive Williams is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Military and Security Law at the ANU. He has worked extensively in conflict zones and was last in the Middle East in August 2015.

Despite the recent rhetoric about transferring responsibilities back to the States and ensuring each jurisdiction has sovereignty in its own sphere of responsibilities including to raise the revenues needed to meet its spending commitments, reform of the Australian Federation will hopefully take a more pragmatic form, building on the growing demand for national policies - and growing range of international requirements - to guide public services, improving the way in which shared responsibilities are managed, while allowing service delivery to respond to local and regional needs and preferences. Such a pragmatic approach requires a degree of bipartisanship and political leadership at both Commonwealth and State levels; it also entails engaging with the Australian public, promoting steady reform in the national interest and avoiding short-term or ideologically-driven political fixes. About the speaker Professor Andrew Podger AO is an Hon. Professor of Public Policy at ANU. He has been at the University since

Australia has offered an emissions reduction target for the Paris talks that is significantly below that of the European Union and which even falls short of the United States target. Australia needs to re-engage with the rest of the world, which is increasingly aware of the impact of dangerous climate change. It is simply too urgent to opt out - we need action now. The Rt. Hon John Gummer, Lord Deben, is a former UK Secretary of State for the Environment and is currently the Chairman of the UK’s Climate Change Committee and Special Advisor to the United Nations on Carbon Pricing. His sixteen years of top-level ministerial experience also included Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Minster for London, Employment Minister and Paymaster General in HM Treasury.

Malcolm Walter, Professor of Astrobiology (retired) at the University of NSW and Founding Director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, presents the 2015 The David Cooper Memorial Lecture. In this talk he examines where the best place to look for life on Mars would be and why discovering life on the Red Planet is so important.

David Marr joins Laura Tingle in conversation to discuss his new quarterly essay on Bill Shorten – Faction Man Bill Shorten's Path to Power. David Marr is the nation's leading writer of political biography. His Quarterly Essay profiles of Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott were national bestsellers. This controversial and brilliant new essay looks at the making of Shorten. It also addresses a key question: how does the union movement for good or ill continue to shape the Labor Party? May contain some brief coarse language.

Ten years after his internationally bestselling The Weather Makers, acclaimed scientist and author Tim Flannery argues that Earth's climate system is approaching a crisis. Catastrophe is not inevitable, but time is fast running out. In the lead-up to the United Nations Climate Change Summit to be held in Paris in December, Atmosphere of Hope provides both a snapshot of the trouble we are in and an up-to-the-minute analysis of some of the new possibilities for mitigating climate change that are emerging now.

In The Luck of Politics, The Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP weaves together numbers and stories to show the many ways luck can change the course of political events.This is a book full of fascinating facts and intriguing findings. Why is politics more like poker than chess? Does the length of your surname affect your political prospects? What about your gender? The Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Federal Member for Fraser in the ACT. Prior to being elected in 2010, Andrew was a professor of economics at The Australian National University.

When Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson was on campus last month he sat down for a conversation with Nobel laureate Professor Brian Schmidt to discuss the importance of science, the democratisation of space and the possibility of alien life.

Chris Bowen speaks about his latest book 'The Money Men' an in-depth look at the twelve most notable and interesting men to have held the office of Treasurer of Australia. This talk brings a unique insider perspective to the lessons learned from the successes and failures of those who went before him. The Hon Chris Bowen was appointed Treasurer by Kevin Rudd in 2013 and is the current Shadow Treasurer.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report is the world's most comprehensive evaluation of climate change, its potential impacts and the choices we have for responding to it. The report provides leaders with a scientific basis for developing strategies to address climate change. Most importantly, it will be the leading scientific document to inform negotiations at the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP 21) in December 2015, at which negotiators will try to reach a global climate agreement. Whilst the report finds that human influence on the climate system is clear, we do have the means to limit climate change and build a more prosperous, sustainable future. Speakers: Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, IPCC Vice-Chair: Overview of the Fifth Assessment Report Dr Youba Sokona, IPCC Co Chair Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change Dr Andy Reisinger, IPCC Lead Author: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability: focus on Australia Dr Debra Rob

Professor Sir Richard Evans talks about German history and his advice for budding historians. Sir Richard Evans is Regius Professor Emeritus of History and President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and Provost of Gresham College, London. His publications include Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History; The Coming of the Third Reich; The Third Reich in Power; The Third Reich at War; Telling Lies about Hitler and In Defence of History.

On average, people who live, or have lived, in a Mr Fluffy house probably have higher exposure to asbestos than other Australians. How much this higher exposure increases their risk of asbestos-related disease is uncertain. There is very limited evidence on the level of asbestos exposure in Mr Fluffy houses. Most of the evidence on the health effects of asbestos comes from studies of people heavily exposed to asbestos in their workplace; and extrapolating from effects at high levels of exposure to effects at low levels requires uncertain assumptions. In this lecture, Professor Bruce Armstrong reviews background evidence on health effects of asbestos and their importance in Australia, discuss what is known of the frequency of these effects at low levels of exposure, make an estimate of the risk of mesothelioma to people who live or have lived in a Mr Fluffy house, and briefly describe research currently being done to permit more certain estimates.

Australia is a world leader in tobacco control and currently has one of the lowest rates of smoking in the world. Reliable quantitative evidence on the relationship of tobacco smoking to mortality in Australia has not been previously available, and has the potential to contribute to what is known internationally about the contemporary risks of smoking. Professor Emily Banks presents data on the smoking epidemic, and its health consequences, internationally. It will provide details of a large-scale prospective cohort study involving 204,953 individuals aged 45 years and over from the general population of New South Wales: the 45 and Up Study. This study found that current smokers were three times more likely to die during the 4 year follow-up period than people who had never smoked. Smokers are estimated to die an average of 10 years earlier than non-smokers and up to two-thirds of deaths in current smokers can be attributed to smoking. These findings show that the harms of smoking in Australia, and the bene

The specter of massive inequality is haunting modern capitalism, with a small elite – the 1%, 0.01%, 0.001% of billionaires and financiers and the like – gaining the bulk of the benefits of modern economic growth and using their wealth to dominate economies and politics. In virtually every country, labor's share of income has fallen and inequality has increased massively. What, if anything, can we do to restore a more egalitarian distribution of income, with a strong middle class, and restore the historic link between growth of productivity and real wages? This talk argues that the answer lies in wider ownership of capital and worker participation in decisions at their workplace and firm. It gives the evidence that this solution works and lays out ways to get from here to there. Richard B. Freeman holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University and is currently Faculty co-Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School. He directs the National Bureau of Economic Rese

From one of the leading thinkers of our time comes a landmark book on the case for constitutional reform - No Small Change: The Road to Recognition for Indigenous Australia by Frank Brennan. This timely book is a stark reminder of the tainted relationship between successive governments, lawmen and Indigenous Australians, but also a provocative lesson on what we can learn from the past. Brennan unpacks the laws and philosophies from terra nullius, protectionism and forced assimilation to the 1967 referendum, land rights, self-determination and beyond. Rigorous, accessible, and insightful, No Small Change is a profound document that has the power to change our nation's future. Frank Brennan is a Jesuit priest, professor of law at the Australian Catholic University, and adjunct professor at the ANU College of Law and the ANU National Centre for Indigenous Studies. Professor Brennan has been actively committed to Indigenous reconciliation, justice and recognition for over 30 years.