Crispin Hull

As Britain started to right its historic wrong in Ireland in the past week, the word “”Taoiseach” appeared fleetingly in the news.

It is the Gaelic name for prime minister and is used in the Irish Constitution. The great majority of Irish people speak and use English in their everyday lives and English predominates in the media, but they rarely if ever refer to the “”prime minister”. They refer to the Taoiseach and the word stands out as a title in its own right, distinctively Irish as the Dali Lama is Tibetan.

The use of the word is a cultural statement and one affirming national identity.
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Over the centre of this mighty continent there hangs a veil which the most enterprising might be proud to raise .[TH].[TH]. I shall envy that man who shall first plant the flag of his native country in the centre of our adopted one. [EP] Adelaide, 1840. The explorer Charles Sturt thus captured the mystery and challenge of Page1 Story continues … Enter N for more

npenetrating central Australia -and the honour of being the first European to do so.[EP] South-eastern Australia was then generally known, but what lay north of Adelaide was shrouded in mystery. Most colonists believed the interior was a region of barren deserts. But some, including Sturt, still hoped that ‘the centre’ hid a fertile pastures – and even an ‘inland sea’. Adelaide farewelled five pathfinding central Australian exploring expeditions in the two decades from 1840 62: Edward Eyre’s in 1840; Charles Sturt’s own party in 1844; and John McDouall Stuart’s three trans-continental expeditions in 1 860, 1 861 and 1 862 .[EP] Eyre’s, Sturt’s and Stuart’s explorations were historically and geographically related. All aimed to reach ‘the centre’, and to then continue to the north or north-west coast. And all crossed vast stretches of country hitherto totally unknown to European Australians: the traditional lands of numerous Aboriginal tribes.[EP] Their journeys transcended those of most other Australian inland explorers. Ten years ago – inspired by their discoveries, moved by their hardships, and provoked by some recent belittling accounts – I set out to research their expeditions.[EP] The work, leading to three books and AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC features, spanned six years. It led me into library archives in Australia and Britain, and took me three times across some of Australia’s most forbidding regions.[EP] Retracing their routes, and experiencing and photographing the country they crossed, were my keys to re-assessing the explorers’ journeys. Camped along their tracks, I came to recognise the challenges they faced – and to better understand both their achievements and Page2 Story continues … Enter N for more

nfailures.[EP] My own four-wheel-drive expeditions each lasted about two months. They were often grinding, but never burdensome. Indeed, the sheer exhilaration of being amidst the outback’s desert wilds – ‘the fearful joy’ that urged on the explorers themselves – was always enlivening. Dust, mud, flies, boggings, all were compensated for by the inland’s sweeping space and harsh grandeur.[EP] [EP] Edward Eyre was only 24 when he left Adelaide on 18 June 1840. Driven by ideals of ‘honour’ (Si Je Puis – If I can – was the family motto), and accompanied by seven men, Eyre planned tto reach central Australia by following the Flinders Range northwards.[EP] By early July, 400 kilometres north of Adelaide, they were surrounded by the Flinders Range’s peaks. Reconnaissances from the ranges were met in every direction by forbidding salt lakes. Blocked by these lakes, ‘brilliant and glittering beyond conception’, Eyre wrote, Our toils and labours had all been endured to no purpose .[TH].[TH]. and the only alternative left to us would be to return, disappointed and baffled.[EP] However, unwilling to return humiliated to Adelaide, Eyre decided to travel westwards along the south coast towards Western Australia. There, they found massive dunes fringing a desert coast. It was beautiful but utterly forbiding and, apart from some Aboriginal wells, there was no water. Yet Eyre still resolved to travel some 1500 kilometres westwards around the Great Australian Bight to AlbanPage3 Story continues … Enter N for more
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Six out of seven recent dual occupancy applications in Banks have been rejected permanently after residents’ appeals.

A spokesperson for the Banks Action Group, Ros Thomas, said yesterday that she had been told by the Minister for Planning, Bill Wood, that they had been rejected.

Mr Wood confirmed this. He said they had been rejected by the Chief Territory Planner on qualitative grounds, mainly loss of amenity of existing residents.

That meant the rejection was permanent, unlike rejection on quantitative grounds such as set back, window placements and the like when the applicant could resubmit.
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The Commonwealth Bank called on the Federal Government yesterday to trim its budget deficit.

The managing director of the bank, David Murray, said, “”We cannot afford to allow the fiscal position to deteriorate in the growth stage of the economy, I believe the Government should be using every opportunity to trim that fiscal position.”

On the other hand he thought it was too early for the Reserve Bank to be looking at a change in monetary policy.
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It was a dream come true. The other day a computer beat the world champion, Garry Kasparov, at chess. But hang on a moment. Computers don’t dream. Can they be made to dream? To be poetical? To think? The chess feat was not of enormous moment. It was of the same quality as getting a computer to always win or at least force a draw at draughts. It was just of different quantity. In both cases, the computer just crunches the millions of different chess combinations that all must ultimately end in a win, draw or lose, and only moves in a way that will result in a win or draw.

To date most of the research on artificial intelligence has centred around this high-end or high-focus logical thought. But we know that most human creativity comes not from high-focus logical thought, but from quirky links between unassociated things that come when our attention is distracted.

To date most attempts at replication of human thought by computers have worked with the analogy that the hardware is the brain and the mind is the software and that if the software and data are comprehensive enough, bingo, you have a brain, or at least a something which imitates it pretty well. The brain is a giant computer, the theory goes.
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ABOUT THE POLL – Federal Politicians

Method : Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI).

Date : Saturday 13 August 1994 to Tuesday 13 September 1994.

Sample : Simple random sample from the Canberra Telephone Directory 1994

The Questions
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There is a piece about databases in ba dives that can be used. if no room for this hold out hold out.) Pars end with (have lost q/l for now)There were thousands and thousands of thin red and white coated twisted copper wires. Two of those pairs were mine and they were not behaving themselves.

That was Friday inside the bowels of the Civic Telephone Exchange, but the story starts before then.

It starts with a shiny new Banksia modem which came in one of those video covers. It had the words Fax Modem on it. And the letters PCMCIA (presumably the post-Cold War US secret service is now usefully making fax modems). Anyway, it is a state of the art, matchbox sized modem that slots into a notebook computer and enables you to send text and faxes down the phone line.
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The Australian National University’s proposal to charge $9000 for the nine-month Legal Workshop course is most welcome. Not because it is a worthwhile proposal, quite the contrary, but because it will stir up much needed debate about the whole nature of legal education in Australia and the whole nature of university funding.

Two decades ago, courses like Legal Workshop were set up around Australian university law schools to give a period of practical legal education after four or five years of Socratic, academic education leading to the Bachelor of Laws degree.

Before that, law graduates did a year or so as an articled clerk or “”read” with a barrister for a year or so before become eligible to practise.
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This week a respected authority on land tenure in the ACT, Justice Rae Else-Mitchell, called for freehold to replace leasehold in the ACT. His conclusion may be impractical. But the fact that he came to such a radical conclusion indicates a belief that the present land tenure system has gone seriously off the rails.

Since self-government in 1989 there has been a feeling of the way, a groping in the dark. First the draft Territory Plan got a thorough work-over and became the Territory Plan. Since it has been in force there have been screams from all over town that the 50-50 infill-greenfields policy is causing heartache for existing residents and the government has embraced it as an article of faith without any economic or social underpinning.

And the logic of infill in the fringe suburb of Banks (before they have even got fill or infrastructure to be used let alone under-used) has yet to be explained by the Member for Brindabella and Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood.
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The scene is a Federal Court hearing room in Civic this week. It is used for commercial causes, so the public area consists of a few chairs along the back wall.

The judge has not arrived.

A good-looking man in his late thirties turns from chatting airily with his lawyers walks across to the other side of the court to a man sitting on one of the public chairs. He is an ACTTAB official.

“”My dear, Bruce, how are you?” the good-looking one says. “”I am so sorry we meet again in such strained circumstances.”

Some further pleasantries are exchanged.
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