Atheists convention in Melbourne

Benches & bike racks, Southbank, Melbourne


Pedestrian bridge across the Yarra, Melbourne


Walking to the convention along the Yarra


Reflections of the Polly Woodside. (Just in front of the convention centre)

I went this last weekend to the Global Atheists Convention in Melbourne. I had thought it would be a case of preaching to the converted and that it would be boring, but it seemed a good excuse to see Melbourne again and to see my friend, Eve.

In the event, we found ourselves attending the entire shebang, and while much of the argument reiterated stuff I knew, much didn't, or it elaborated on themes in less well known (to me) areas. In any case, it was liberating to hear others say what I have now for a long time believed, that the Christian (Judaic/Muslim) God and the various attendant beliefs are incompatible with science....

The standout speaker for me was Dan Dennett (philosophy, Tufts University), but others were not far behind (Sam Harries, Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott,Dan Barker, A.C.Grayling... and the list is invidious).

It was an amazingly good venue, with morning/afternoon teas and lunches provided easily for 4000 people in the short time allowed for these things, and the degree of mingling forced by the numbers of people doing to these things was most enjoyable.


Us

If you have read this far, please check out this haiku,
hexapod haiku (winner under 13)

haiku challenge winners

I've been chasing IDs on some of my photos, Wasp species, host for a mistletoe,..), but this morning I wondered how the Hexapod Haiku Challenge was going, to discover that judging will not finish for about a month.

In the meantime I wanted to put up some previous winners. And it is worth clicking on the links, since the judges dissect each haiku, teasing out its meaning and saying why it won.
2010:

Silverfish, tell me,
Darwin and Dostoevsky,
do they taste the same?

Martha Love, Gatsonia, NC

2008:
Two million flowers
The Ten-thousand mile harvest
Sweetens my pancake

Joel Caren, Raleigh, NC

And I finally got an ID on the strelitzia below, Ravenala madacasgariensis, which grows in a single plane.

Still working on the haikus

This beautiful katydid is from
Jean's photos.

The haiku is:

Pretty Katydid
hiding in dead leaves & twigs.
Don't move, Katydid.

Another, again based on
Jean's photos verticordia is

Green soldier fly
and pink Verticordia.
Each helps the other?

haiku for the hexapod haiku challenge

Thrips & beetles
So needed in the sex life
Of the idiot tree.


Idiospermum australiense, the idiot tree.
Photograph courtesy of Tony Rodd.

Link to photo

For the pollination story, see Williams, G and Adam, P. (2010) "The Flowering of Australia's Rainforests A Plant and Pollination Miscellany", CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Victoria.

I have taken the following from
BlackDiamondImages

Idiospermum australiense, is the most famous of the primitive North Queensland rainforest plants having been considered extinct until it was found again just south of Cairns near Noah Creek in 1971. It has been called the Green Dinosaur Tree or otherwise,Ribbonwood. It belongs to an ancient 120 million year old family of plants only previously known from fossils. The fruit is very large, as big as a tennis ball and toxic to birds and animals. It is brown in colour and descibed as a woody nut by Cooper. It is believed however that the seeds were dispersed by extinct animals and birds. The tree produces fruit with some interesting characteristics. All modern flowering plants produce seeds which have either one seed leaf (monocots) or two seed leaves (dicots) but the seeds of the Idiospermum can have between 2 to 6 seed leaves! Normally seeds will germinate and send up a single shoot but the Ribbonwood can sprout more than one shoot per seed. The fruit is large at 80mm (3 inches) and globular, splitting into four segments on the ground. The spirally arranged flowers can range in colour from white or cream aging to pink, red or orange and are fragrant. The fruit contains alkaloids which can disrupt nerve transmission to the brain. This rare species is only found from Noah Creek to the Daintree River and from the Mt Bellenden Kerr Range to the foothills of Mt Bartle Frere in lowland rainforest up to 260m altitude.
Source-Plants of Tropical North Queensland by John Beasley p.106 plus Cooper and Cooper 2004, P.232

4th Annual Hexapod Haiku Challenge