Russia
Have we murdered the liberal arts education? That was the final question on Monday night’s Q&A on ABCTV from one of the best panels they’ve had this year.
Jeffrey Eugenides, Glenn Carle, Greg Sheridan, Masha Gessen and Kathy Lette. It’d be hard to find a more erudite and dynamic combination of people, which is what made their unified reponse to this question all the more interesting.
Despite different nationalities, backgrounds and histories, all five said hardly anyone is enrolling in Arts degrees at universities anymore and society is paying the price.
Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit, a regular column on spin, pseudoscience and shenanigans. It’s a hairy one this week – does Yeti exist?
On a research trip to a remote Russian mountain this week, scientists found some hair and a footprint – and a ‘presumed bed’ - and declared they were now 95 per cent sure the mythical Yeti lives.
The Yeti legend is of a big, ape-like creature roaming the Siberian tundra, with wild fur but a hairless face. Reports of sightings crop up with Roswellian frequency – and coincidentally there have been several reports of alien bodies and UFO crash sites in the ‘hood as well.
Continue reading "ICB: An abominable snowjob… and Yeti may exist" »
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Robert Smissen Of rural SA says:
The Yeti legend is of a big, ape-like creature roaming the Siberian tundra, with wild fur but a hairless face. Reports of sightings crop up with Roswellian frequency – and coincidentally there have been several reports of alien bodies and UFO crash sites in the ‘hood as well. I think… Read more »
And so now we’re selling uranium to the Russians. Juggling the morning madness of kids, breakfast, dogs and work, the news item relayed via my tinny trannie was easy to miss and at first didn’t register. And then the irony of it all hit me like a shovel between the eyes.
It is very, very, hard to convey to Gen Y what it was like coming of age in the late ‘seventies and early ‘eighties - before we were called Gen X, before mobile phones and before the internet.
It’s hard to make them understand what it was like living everyday thinking that it could be your last, thinking you were seconds away from being annihilated in atomic cataclysm launched by those Godless Soviets.
Continue reading "Longing for a more innocent time of nuclear apocalypse" »
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youdy beaudy says:
Nuclear weapons should never have been allowed to procede further after the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And further, those first bombs were 100 times smaller than the ones we have today. The lunacy regarding weapons of mass destruction and their possible use should be resigned to the dustbin of… Read more »
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Reg says:
I don’t think we should underestimate the scare the USSR got from the Cuban crisis as well. The Soviet submarines around Cuba with their surface launchable nuclear missiles, the ones we only found out about only after the wall came down, were under instruction that if communications was lost with… Read more »
Nuclear warfare isn’t as popular as it used to be. There was a time when it was on everybody’s lips, from the cheery family man stocking up a bomb shelter to fresh-faced children learning to crouch under desks.
That old-fashioned pine was the best defence against hydrogen bombs was a bone of contention between engineers and education departments for years.
The Cold War was a time when the world was an uncomplicated place. Red was bad. Smoking was good.
Continue reading "How to start worrying and love disarmament" »
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Timmo says:
What about this Idealistic thought. Why don’t we make a ban on warfare for the first time in history. Close down the factories that make these weapons of mass destruction.?. Makes sense to me!. What a stupid world we live in. No common sense at all. Well if the Nations… Read more »
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Dan says:
Why on earth would we develop a nuclear arsenal? We have no enemies. Read more »
Welcome to Monday @ The Punch
Today in 1989 Soviet Troops pulled out of Afghanistan after nine years of conflict.
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Max Power says:
They still are brave freedom fighters. The Northern Alliance have been battling the Taliban for years in an effort to restore freedom to Afgahnistan. The Taliban are terrorists, not just in the Pentagons eyes but the whole worlds. Blowing up markets full of civilians, blowing up schools, hospitals and any… Read more »
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Lindsay says:
T Chong, you are a goose. The mujahideen who fought against Soviet troops fell into civil war following their victory. They were then decimated by the Taliban and reorganised into the Northern Alliance. In turn the NA - assisted by coalition airpower and advisors - played a major role in… Read more »
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