Canberra Sunrise Rotary - The Great Debate

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Canberra Sunrise Rotary - The Great Debate

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The Great Debate

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The Great Debate

1. 2010 PLANS

2. 2010 EVENT DETAILS

3. The Media is to blame

4. 2008 PANEL

5. Another GREAT DEBATE

1. 2010 PLANS

We will be keeping to our popular and time-honoured format. The evening will commence with a cocktail function from 6.30pm with the Debate commencing at 8.00pm sharp.

The topic this year will be "The Media is to blame". Our Adjudicator will be Justice John Faulks. Deputy Chief Justice Faulks was appointed as a Family Court Judge in 1994. He was appointed as Deputy Chief Justice on 25 June 2004. Prior to his appointment to the Family Court, Deputy Chief Justice Faulks was a senior partner of Phillips Fox, practising extensively in family law. His Honour was chairman of the Family Law Council of Australia from 1992 to 1995; a member of the Council between 1990 and 1992; president of the Law Council of Australia from 1987 to 1988; vice president from 1986 to 1987; and treasurer from 1984 to 1985. Deputy Chief Justice Faulks was admitted as a barrister of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in 1969 and holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the Australian National University.

Funds raised during the night will support the very deserving Community Projects that the Rotary Club of Canberra Sunrise supports. We hope that we will have your support on the night. Especially, we hope that you will thoroughly enjoy what will be a wise, witty and humorous debate.

2. 2010 EVENT DETAILS

Preliminary event details are as follows. Note that these may change, mainly depending on the availability of celebrity panelists.

What: 2010 Great Debate: The Media is to blame

When: Wednesday 24 February 2010, 6.30pm refreshments, 8.00pm Debate begins.

Where: Finkel Theatre, John Curtin School of Medical Research, ANU (corner of Garran & Ward Roads)

Ticket prices: $45.00.

3. The Media is to blame

4. 2008 PANEL

The Great Debate has previously attracted impressive and talented personalities including the distinguished Panel that we had in 2008:

Professor Judith Whitworth - Scientist, Doctor and CEO, John Curtin School of Medical Research, ANU

Genevieve Jacobs - ABC Radio Presenter and Gardening expert

Kate Carnell - CEO of AGPN and previous ACT Chief Minister

Professor Don Aitkin - previous Vice-Chancellor, University of Canberra and writer.

Professor Richard Chisholm - Research fellow and retired Family Court Judge

David Gilks - Model United Nations Assembly Winner 2006

Adjudicator

Justice Michael Kirby (Judge of the Australian High Court)

Master of Ceremonies

Dr Duncan Steel (Space Researcher & Author)

5. Another GREAT DEBATE

In astronomy, the Great Debate, also called the Shapley–Curtis Debate was an influential debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis which concerned the nature of spiral nebulae and the size of the universe. The basic issue under debate was whether distant nebulae were relatively small and lay within our own galaxy or whether they were large, independent galaxies. The debate took place on 26 April 1920 in the Baird auditorium of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The two scientists first presented independent technical papers about "The Scale of the Universe" during the day and then took part in a joint discussion that evening. Much of the lore of the Great Debate grew out of two papers published by Shapley and Curtis in the May 1921 issue of the Bulletin of the National Research Council. The published papers each included counter arguments to the position advocated by the other scientist at the 1920 meeting.

Shapley was arguing in favor of the Milky Way as the entirety of the universe. He believed galaxies such as Andromeda and the Spiral Nebulae were simply part of the Milky Way.

Curtis on the other side contended that Andromeda and other such nebulae were separate galaxies, or "Island universes". He showed that there were more novae in Andromeda than in the Milky Way.

It is now known that the Milky Way is only one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the visible universe, proving Curtis the more accurate party in the debate in that respect.