Thursday, August 10, 2006

Has anyone heard about this?

Got sent an email today from someone within Chem:

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Australian Museum
I have received the following from scientists at the Australian Museum...

You may be aware that the NSW government is planning to merge the Australian Museum and Powerhouse Museum ( the latter is a museum of technology and design, at which no scientific research takes place, rather they undertake research associated with exhibitions). For a variety of reasons, we are concerned that scientific research at the Australian Museum will suffer in this merger. Because of this, I'm writing to seek your assistance in letting the minister know that people in the wider scientific community care about the research effort at the Australian Museum, and want to see it maintained. We are in the Arts Ministry, so the minister is Bob Debus.
Attached is a letter the Museum's research scientists have prepared to make this easy: you can simply paste this into an e-mail and send to Debus (his e-mail is contained in the letter). Please modify as you see fit, or even draft your own message.
The key issues are: SCIENTIFIC research at the Museum is perceived to be at risk, that it covers a range of subjects, that it is relevant, and that the connection with the collections is what makes it unique.

If you have any questions about what is happening please contact Dr Pat Hutchings, Principal Research Scientist, Australian Museum - 02-9320 6243 or path@austmus.gov.au

On this you might also be interested in an article Julian Cribb has written in today’s Australian Higher Education Supplement pointing out that you can’t import scientists to do quintessential Australian research in taxonomy etc.
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Okay, so how does merging the Power House Museum of technology and the Australian Museum of natural history make sense in the first place?
And where would they put it all? Power House is full of huge whirring machines and the Australian Museum is full of whale skeltons.

Though, I have to admit, i have been very lax in my local culture participation and haven't been to the museums or the art gallery in years.
Shame on me...

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