Editorials 27 May 2010
Not so long ago, Avondale and Ellerslie enjoyed virtually equal status in the world of horse-racing. The Avondale Cup was a highly prestigious event. How times have changed. This week, the Avondale Jockey Club suspended racing at its course after its meeting on July 3 because of severe financial problems. …
The same applies to Avondale. Its potential closure is not just a matter for the club and the industry. It is about a community and city resource that would be lost forever. Even now, the course is valuable for more than just racing. It is the venue for a Sunday morning market, and the club leases the infield to the city council for football and cricket. Other events could be held there. If the course were closed and the club raced elsewhere, Auckland, which proclaims so often that it wishes to be known as a vibrant city full of attractions, would lose one of its entertainment options.
Can’t say I care too much.
The Press criticises ACT over its ETS campaign:
The misleading and alarmist figures being propagated by the ACT Party and Federated Farmers about the cost of the carbon emissions trading scheme which will start in July are a last gasp from groups that have had difficulty accepting the idea at all.
In their latest scaremongering, ACT and Federated Farmers have suggested that the financial impact of the scheme in higher fuel and electricity prices has been seriously underplayed by the Government and that consumers, and particularly farmers, are in for an unpleasant shock when the scheme begins.
And the Dom Post reserves judgement on the three strikes law:
Now that the three-strikes legislation is in place, its real trial begins.
Supporters believe it will see a drastic fall in the number of serious offences – ACT MP David Garrett, pressed on Radio New Zealand to give a figure, said he expected a 5 per cent to 10 per cent fall in violent offending in the first five years of the law’s operation.
That will be easy to assess from the crime statistics.
I believe we will see a fall in serious violent offending, but only after a few years as it takes time for people to get a first strike, let alone a second or third strike.
If the new law had been in place when Graeme Burton began his life of offending, he would have been unable to shoot and kill Wainuiomata father Karl Kuchenbecker in Lower Hutt. At the time he killed Mr Kuchenbecker, Burton had more than 100 convictions. He was on parole for an earlier murder.
Exactly.
The ODT focuses on the creation of an artifical organism:
Even in the rational world of biological science, the publication in Science of the findings of an American-based team of researchers caused considerable excitement.
A bacterial cell had been controlled by a chemically synthesised genome.
That meant that the cell began replicating and making a new set of proteins entirely controlled by man.
In the secular world, this was briefly sensational, and described somewhat effusively as the creation of the world’s first “artificial cell”. …
There is no doubt that the team employed at the J. Craig Venter Institute has achieved an important technical step towards the goal of creating artificial or synthetic life.
But we are a very long way indeed from realising some of the speculation: the construction of human limbs or body parts or even a human being in the laboratory.
That remains in the realm of fiction.
For now.
I believe that within two generations, humans will be living to 150 or older as science discovers uses for stem cells, gene therapy etc.