Australia's Growing Disaster

Farming is threatening to destroy the soil and native flora and fauna over vast areas of Australia. What price should be put on conservation?

Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Committee estimates that burning wood from cleared forests accounts for about 30 per cent of Australia's emissions of carbon dioxide, or 156 million tones a year. And water tables are rising beneath cleared land. In the Western Australian wheat belt, estimates suggest that water is rising by up to 1 meter a year. The land is becoming waterlogged and unproductive or is being poisoned by salt, which is brought to the surface. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) reckons that 33 million hectares has been degraded by salivation. The federal government estimates the loss in production from salinity at A$200 million a year.

 

According to Jason Alexandra of the ACF, this list of woes is evidence that Australia is depleting its resources by trading agricultural commodities for manufactured imports. In effect, it sells topsoil for technologies that will be worn out or redundant in a few years. The country needs to get away from the "colonial mentality" of exploiting resources and adopt agricultural practices suited to Australian conditions, he says.

 

Robert Hadler of the National Farmers' Federation (NFF) does not deny that there is a problem, but says that it is "illogical" to blame farmers. Until the early 1980s, farmers were given tax incentives to clear land because that was what people wanted. If farmers are given tax breaks to manage the land sustainable, they will do so. Hadler argues that the two reports on land clearance do not say anything which was not known before.

 

Australia is still better off than many other developed countries, says Dean Graetz, an ecologist at the CSIRO, the national research organization. "A lot of the country is still notionally pristine," he says. "It is not transformed like Europe where almost nothing that is left is natural." Graetz, who analyzed the satellite photographs for the second land clearance report, argues that there is now better co-operation between Australian scientists, government officials and farmers than in the past.

 

But the vulnerable state of the land is now widely understood, and across Australia, schemes have started for promoting environment friendly farming. In 1989, Prime Minister Bob Hawke set up Landcare, a network of more than 2000 regional conservation groups. About 30 percent of landholders are members, "It has become a very significant social movement," says Helen Alexander from the National Landcare Council. "We started out worrying about not much more than erosion and the replanting of trees but it has grown much more diverse and sophisticated,"

 

But the bugbear of all these conservation efforts is money. Landcare's budget is A$110 million a year, of which only A$6 million goes to farmers. Neil Clark, an agricultural consultant from Bendigo inVictoria, says that farmers are not getting enough. "Farmers may want to make more efficient use of water and nutrients and embrace more sustainable practices, but it all costs money and they just don't have the spare funds," he says.

 

Clark also says scientists are taking too large a share of the money for conservation. Many problems posed by agriculture to the environment have been "researched to death", he says. "We need to divert the money for a while into getting the solutions into place." Australia's chief scientist, Michael Pitman, disagrees. He says that science is increasingly important. Meteorologists, for example, are becoming confident about predicting events which cause droughts in Australia. "If this can be done with accuracy then it will have immense impact on stocking levels and how much feed to provide," says Pitman, 'The end result will be much greater efficiency."

 

Steve Morton of the CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology says the real challenge facing conservationists is to convince the 85 per cent of Australians who live in cities that they must foot a large part of the bill. "The land is being used to feed the majority and to produce wealth that circulates through the financial markets of the cities," he says. One way would be to offer incentives to extend the idea of stewardship to areas outside the rangelands, so that more land could be protected rather than exploited. Alexander agrees. "The nation will have to debate to what extent it is willing to support rural communities," she says. "It will have to decide to what extent it wants food prices to reflect the true cost of production. That includes the cost of looking after the environment."

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Books, Films and Plays

The novelist's medium is the written word, one might almost say the printed word; the novel as we know it was born with the invention of printing. Typically, the novel is consumed by a silent, solitary reader, who may be anywhere at the time. The paperback novel is still the cheapest, most portable and adaptable form of narrative entertainment. It is limited to a single channel of information -writing. But within that restriction it is the most versatile of narrative forms. The narrative can go, effortlessly, anywhere: into space, people’s heads, palaces, prisons and pyramids, without any consideration of cost or practical feasibility. In determining the shape and content of his narrative, the writer of prose fiction is constrained by nothing except purely artistic criteria.

This does not necessarily make his task any easier than that of the writer of plays and screenplays, who must always be conscious of practical constraints such as budgets, performance time, casting requirements, and so on. The very infinity of choice enjoyed by the novelist is a source of anxiety and difficulty. But the novelist does retain absolute control over his text until it is published and received by the audience. He may be advised by his editor to revise his text, but if the writer refused to meet this condition no one would be surprised. It is not unknown for a well established novelist to deliver his or her manuscript and expect the publisher to print it exactly as written. However, not even the most well established playwright or screenplay writer would submit a script and expect it to be performed without any rewriting. This is because plays and motion pictures are collaborative forms of narrative, using more than one channel of communication.

 

The production of a stage play involves, as well as the words of the author, the physical presence of the actors, their voices and gestures as orchestrated by the director, spectacle in the form of lighting and "the set”, and possibly music. In film, the element of spectacle is more prominent in the sequence of visual images, heightened by various devices of perspective and focus. In film too, music tenets to be more pervasive and potent than in straight drama. So, although the script is the essential basis of both stage play and film, it is a basis for subsequent revision negotiated between the writer and the other creative people involved; in the case of the screenplay, the writer may have little or no control over the final form of his work. Contracts for the production of plays protect the rights of authors in this respect. They are given "approval” of the choice of director and actors and have the right to attend rehearsals. Often a good deal of rewriting takes place in the rehearsal period and sometimes there is an opportunity for more rewriting during previews before the official opening night.

 

In film or television work, on the other hand, the screenplay writer usually has no contractual right to this degree of consultation. Practice in t his respect varies very much from one production company to another, and according to the nature of the project and the individuals involved. In short, while the script is going through its various drafts, the writer is in the driver's seat, albeit receiving advice and criticism from the producer and the director. But once the production is under way, artistic control over the project tends to pass to the director. This is a fact overlooked by most journalistic critics of television drama, who tend (unlike film critics) to give all the credit or blame for success or failure of a production to the writer and actors, ignoring the contribution, for good or ill, of the director.

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Astonishing The Gods

Astonishing the Gods by Ben Okri is not for the habitually cynical. Nor, even if you're not a habitual cynic, is it the kind of book that should be read on a day when the real world is likely to intrude. This book oozes escapism. But it isn't easy or simple to digest.

So, to avoid irritation, do not try

 to read this short but intense novel on your way to work or at times when you might have to stop to answer telephone calls or cope with domestic or other practicalities. Also, avoid it like the plague if you are hooked on straightforward linear narratives or if you're the sort of person who can only identify with trees that are trees and buildings that don't dissolve into thin air.

 

Apologies for appearing to labor this point about who should read Okri and about when and how he should be read. But he has been so harshly criticized by the impatiently earthbound that the point cannot be made strongly enough. If you aren't capable of -or in the mood for - locking yourself away for a few hours and allowing your mind to drift in a dreamlike state down magical, mythical avenues, you’d be best to settle for a book with a 'normal’ plot, tangible landscapes and effortlessly understandable characters.

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Visit to Student Fair is Vital Homework

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The number and variety of courses on offer these days makes it difficult to pick the right one. But thousands of Europeans who flock to Brussels Exhibition Centre will be shown how to simplify the difficult job of choosing the right course of study for the career they wish to pursue.

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Ten years ago a handful of Belgian teenagers, baffled by the array and number of university courses offer, put their heads together to try to hack their way through the academic undergrowth. They knew that choosing the wrong subject or failing to make the grade would make finding a job all the more difficult. They decided something had to be done to help students approach the task of choosing a course in an effective way. They came up with the idea of a Student Fair,

 

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It was decided that this would take the form of a small forum for everyone in Belgium involved in higher education from both the French and Dutch-speaking parts of the country. It would provide the opportunity for representatives of educational institutions to give information on the courses they have on offer and allow school-leavers time to discuss these with them.

 

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But what the youngsters did not know was that they were tapping a source of anxiety among students right across Europe. The fair became an annual event. It expanded to include higher education bodies from the whole continent, becoming known as the European Student Fair.

 

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Each year ten million students are faced with the same dilemma/said exhibition organizer Valerie de Narrate bewildering variety of options, the evolution of the employment market, the economic downturn, changes in working methods and personal interests all play an important role in the decision-making process. We hope the fair can help people make the correct decision for them.'

 

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This year the theme of the fair is 'the right to education for all’ and to mark this there is a special exhibition area for bodies that promote equal opportunities in education. Also, the Master of Business Administration course continues to attract an enormous amount of interest across Europe and, in response to demand, air organizers are once again holding an MBA day.

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The Writing Module

GENERAL WRITING STRATEGIES

 

As a student at college or university, you will have to produce a lot of written material. Some of this may be in the form of short essays or reports. Other pieces of writing will be longer and will require considerable planning and attention to detail. It will therefore be important for you to be able to express yourself clearly, write in a variety of styles and organize your ideas carefully. You will also need to be fairly accurate in your writing, so that your message is not obscured by a lot of grammatical errors.

IELTS WRITING (ACADEMIC)

 

IELTS tests your ability to produce two quite different pieces of writing in a fairly short period of time. The test is divided into two parts and you are allowed one hour to complete both parts.

 

Writing Task 1

 

In the first part, you are given a task based on some graphic or pictorial information. You are expected to write a descriptive report of at least 150 words on the information provided,

 

Writing Task 2

 

The second task is more demanding. You are expected to produce a written argument on a given topic and to organize your answer clearly, giving some examples to support your points. You will have to write at least 250 words and, as Task 2 is longer than Task 1, you are advised to spend approximately 40 minutes on this task and 20 minutes on the first task.

 

IELTS WRITING (GENERAL TRAINING)

 

If you are planning to take the GT module, the Writing test is different. You are allowed one hour to complete two tasks, of 150 and 250 words, as in the Academic module. However, Task 1 is always a letter, while Task 2 is an essay based on a given topic.

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How Blogs Work

Blogs appear on the news pretty often these days. For example, a reporter is tipped to a story by a blog, or a blog reports another angle on a story. Blogs show up in magazines a lot, too.

But there is a good chance you have never seen a blog (also known as a weblogs) or experienced the blogosphere. What are blogs? There are now millions of them -- where did they all come from?

One of the things that is so amazing about blogs is their simplicity.

Think about a "normal Web site." It usually has a home page, with links to lots of sub-pages that have more detail. HowStuffWorks is like this, with thousands of information pages all organized under a home page. A small business site follows the same format -- it might have a home pag e and five or 10 sub-pages. Most traditional Web sites follow this format. If the site is small, it is sort of like an online brochure. If it is large, it is like an electronic encyclopedia.

A typical Web site has a home page that links to sub-pages within the site. CNN.com is typical of this genre. The CNN site contains thousands of articles all organized into big categories. The categories and all the latest stories are accessed from the home page.

A blog is much simpler:

A blog is normally a single page of entries. There may be archives of older entries, but the "main page" of a blog is all anyone really cares about.

A blog is organized in reverse-chronological order, from most recent entry to least recent.

A blog is normally public -- the whole world can see it.

The entries in a blog usually come from a single author.

The entries in a blog are usually stream-of-consciousness. There is no particular order to them. For example, if I see a good link, I can throw it in my blog. The tools that most bloggers use make it incredibly easy to add entries to a blog any time they feel like it.

In this article, you will have a chance to enter the world of blogging. You will even learn how to create your own blog and publish it to the world.

A typical blog has a main page and nothing else. On the main page, there is a set of entries. Each entry is a little text blurb that may contain embedded links out to other sites, news stories, etc. When the author adds a new entry, it goes at the top, pushing all the older entries down. This blog also has a right sidebar that contains additional permanent links to other sites and stories. The author might update the sidebar weekly or monthly.

Basically, a blog is a lot like anonline journal or diary. The author can talk about anything and everything. Many blogs are full of interesting links that the author has found. Blogs often contain stories or little snippets of information that are interesting to the author.

Even though blogs can be completely free-form, many blogs have a focus. For example, if a blogger is interested in technology, the blogger might go to the Consumer Electronics Show and post entries of the things he/she sees there. If a blogger is interested in a certain disease, he/she might post every news article and every piece of research he/she finds on the disease. If a blogger is interested in economic issues, he/she might post links to articles that discuss the economy and then offer commentary on them.

There are people who use their blogs simply as a scrapbook -- a form of online memory. Whenever the author finds a link or a snippet of information that he/she wants to remember, it gets posted in the blog. Even if no one else ever looks at it, it is still useful to the author because the blog is a searchable electronic medium that the author can access with a Web browser anywhere in the world.

In other words, a blog can be anything the author wants it to be. The thing that all blogs have in common is the reverse-chronological ordering of entries.

The Blogosphere

One thing about blogs that is so fascinating is the interlinking. There are millions of people keeping active blogs, and bloggers often tend to look at other people's blogs. When they see something they like in their favorite blogs, bloggers will often link to and comment on it.

All of this tight interlinking has created a phenomenon known as the blogosphere. The blogosphere consists of all the cross-linked blogs. Once you arrive at one blog in the blogosphere, it will often have links that connect you to many of the other sites in the blogosphere. You can bounce around in the blogosphere for years if you like that sort of thing.

Many blog readers enter the blogosphere and find one (or a few) bloggers they really like. For example, you might have a blog you use to keep up to date on the latest technology, and another to keep up to date on the latest news. The blogger is acting a lot like a DJ on a radio show, choosing stories, links and/or snippets just like the DJ chooses songs. People who like what the blogger focuses on each day come back and read that blogger every day or so. Celebrities have also gotten into the act, creating blogs as a way to interact with their fans.

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Penguins show signs of stress

A new argument has been put forward as to whether penguins

are disturbed by the presence of tourists in Antarctica.

Previous research by scientists from Keil University in Germany monitored Adelie penguins and noted that the birds' heart rates increased dramatically at the sight of a human as far as 30 meters away. But new research using an artificial egg, which is equipped to measure heart rates, disputes this. Scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge say that a slow moving human who does not approach the nest too closely, is not perceived as a threat by penguins.

 

The earlier findings have been used to partly explain the 20 per cent drop in populations of certain types of penguins near tourist sites. However, tour operators have continued to insist that their activities do not adversely affect wildlife in Antarctica, saying they encourage non-disruptive behavior in tourists, and that the decline in penguin numbers is caused by other factors,

 

Amanda Nimon of the Scott Polar Research Institute spent three southern hemisphere summers at Cuverville Island in Antarctica studying penguin behavior towards humans. "A nesting penguin will react very differently to a person rapidly and closely approaching the nest," says Nimon. "First they exhibit large and prolonged heart rate changes and then they often flee the nest leaving it open for predators to fly in and remove eggs or chicks." The artificial egg, specially developed for the project, monitored both the parent who had been 'disturbed' when the egg was placed in the nest and the other parent as they both took it in turns to guard the nest.

 

However, Boris Culik, who monitored the Adelie penguins, believes that Nimon's findings do not invalidate his own research. He points out that species behave differently - and Nimon's work was with Gentoo penguins, Nimon and her colleagues believe that Cultk's research was methodologically flawed because the monitoring of penguins' responses entailed capturing and restraining the birds and fitting them with heart-rate transmitters. Therefore, argues Nimon, it would not be surprising if they became stressed on seeing a human subsequently.

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