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A white marble tablet at the gateway to Dingley Dell reads:- This Gate was generously presented by Mrs E C E Phillips, a keen admirer of Gordon and whose father (Mr Krull) was a close friend of the Poet. 28 December 1938.

*Dingley Dell is an important part of Australian folklore and history.
Built in 1862 by local farmer George Randall, the cottage was purchased and named two years later by the famous poet Adam Lindsay Gordon.
The property remained in the Gordon family until 1898.

In 1922 the South Australian Government bought the cottage at the request of the Dingley Dell Restoration Committee. Since then the cottage has become a popular visiting place for Adam Linday Gordon enthusiasts.
More recently restorations have returned Dingley Dell back to its original 1860s style, displaying life in that era and an insight into the world of Adam Lindsay Gordon.

*The Heritage listed Dingley Dell Cottage, a museum containing artefacts and memorabilia.

One day while Adam Lindsay Gordon was out horse-riding he fell in love with, and was inspired by, a piece of land near the Limestone Coast, with a stone cottage set in the bush.

In 1864 Gordon purchased the cottage for £350 intending it to be a holiday home. He and his wife lived there for three years.
He was an Australian poet, horseman, police officer, and politician and left a significant legacy of Australian literature. His published works continue to be read and referenced to this day.

Dingley Dell cottage remains preserved as a reminder of its former resident.

In April 1972 the property was renamed as the Dingley Dell Conservation Park.

Ref:
Australian Dictionary of Biography,Volume 4, 1972 online.
SA's Environment.

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Live Science spoke with physicist David Gross, who today received the $3 million "Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics". He was part of a trio that won the 2004 physics Nobel prize for research that helped complete the Standard Model of particle physics. But when asked if physics will reach a unified theory of the fundamental forces of nature within 50 years, Gross has a surprising answer. "Currently, I spend part of my time trying to tell people... that the chances of you living 50 [more] years are very small."
Cold War estimates for a 1% chance of nuclear war each year seem low, Gross says. "The chances are more likely 2%. So that's a 1-in-50 chance every year."


David Gross: The expected lifetime, in the case of 2% [per year], is about 35 years. [The expected lifetime is the average time it would take to have had a nuclear war by then. It is calculated using similar equations as those used to determine the "half-life" of a radioactive material.]
Live Science: So what do you suggest as remedies to lower that risk?

Gross: We had something called the Nobel Laureate Assembly for reducing the risk of nuclear war in Chicago last year. There are steps, which are easy to take — for nations, I mean. For example, talk to each other. In the last 10 years, there are no treaties anymore. We're entering an incredible arms race.

We have three super nuclear powers. People are talking about using nuclear weapons; there's a major war going on in the middle of Europe; we're bombing Iran; India and Pakistan almost went to war. OK, so that's increased the chance [of nuclear war]. I would really like to have a solid estimate — it might be more, and I think I'm being conservative — but a 2% estimate [of nuclear war] in today's crazy world.
Live Science: Do you think we'll ever get to a place where we get rid of nuclear weapons?
Gross: We're not recommending that. That's idealistic, but yes, I hope so. Because if you don't, there's always some risk an AI 100 years from now [could launch nuclear weapons], but chances of [humanity] living, with this estimate, 100 years, is very small, and living 200 years is infinitesimal. So [the answer to] Fermi's question of "Where are the civilizations, all the intelligent organisms around the galaxy, and why don't they talk to us?" is that they've killed themselves...

There are now nine nuclear powers. Even three is infinitely more complicated than two. The agreements, the norms between countries, are all falling apart. Weapons are getting crazier. Automation, and perhaps even AI, will be in control of those instruments pretty soon... It's going to be very hard to resist making AI make decisions because it acts so fast.

He points out that with the threat of climate change, "people have done something," even though "It's a much harder argument to make than about nuclear weapons.

"We made them; we can stop them."

Thanks to hwstar (Slashdot reader #35,834) for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ukrainian president discusses Patriot alternative with other countries; Bulgarian election may be new headache for Kyiv. What we know on day 1,517

Europe must have its own defence system against ballistic missiles and Ukraine is holding talks with several countries to create one, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday. Ukraine relies heavily on scant supplies of the Patriot system, produced by the US, to shoot down Russian missiles, which are often fired at Ukraine’s electricity generation and transmission systems. “I believe, and my idea is, that we should have a European anti-ballistic missile defence system. We are in talks with several countries and are working in this direction,” Zelenskyy told the national TV channel, Marathon. “We need to build our own anti-ballistic missile defence system within a year.”

Fire Point, maker of Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missile, told Reuters this month that it was in talks with European companies to launch a new air defence system by next year, creating a low-cost alternative to the Patriot which is in increasingly short supply amid extensive deployment in the Gulf because of Donald Trump’s war against Iran. Europe’s only anti-ballistic system, the Italo-French SAMP/T, is produced in relatively small numbers.

A “massive” night-time drone strike on Chernihiv in northern Ukraine killed a 16-year-old boy and wounded four others, the head of the city’s military administration said on Sunday. Russian drones also attacked the southern city of Kherson on Sunday, local officials reported. A man died of his wounds after a drone hit a van driving through the city centre, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the regional administration. A second man was hospitalised with blast injuries, regional authorities said.

Ukraine hit the Atlant Aero drone factory in the city of Taganrog, the Ukrainian military general staff reported. The site lies about 55km (35 miles) east of Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine in south-western Russia. According to the military, the strike started a fire at the factory, which designs and produces strike and reconnaissance drones, as well as components for more powerful UAVs that can carry guided bombs weighing up to 250kg.

Ukraine’s navy said it carried out the Atlant Aero attack using domestically manufactured Neptune cruise missiles. Russian officials in Taganrog confirmed an attack on “commercial enterprises” as well as a vocational school and multiple cars.

Russia launched 236 drones into Ukrainian territory overnight into Sunday, Ukraine’s air force reported. Of those, 203 drones were shot down while 32 hit targets in 18 separate locations, it said. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces shot down 274 Ukrainian drones during the night, as well as guided aerial bombs and a Neptune cruise missile. The ministry did not say how many struck targets.

The centre-left coalition of Rumen Radev is expected to win Bulgaria’s parliamentary election, though without an outright majority, after polls closed on Sunday. Radev is seen by critics as pro-Russian and Eurosceptic. If he is able to form a government, this could pose another headache for the European Union in its support of Ukraine’s defence.

Though Radev has denounced the Russian invasion, he has opposed military aid to Ukraine and has favoured reopening talks with Russia as a way out of the conflict. It comes after Hungarian voters ousted Viktor Orbán, who cultivated close ties with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and obstructed European help for Ukraine.

Ukraine’s interior minister said on Sunday that two police officers had been suspended after a video circulated online showed them fleeing the scene of the shooting in Kyiv in which six people were killed. “Shameful, unworthy behaviour. This is a disgrace for the entire system. They have been suspended, and an investigation into this is underway,” said Igor Klymenko, the government minister. Zelenskyy, added that “there will be a full review of the patrol officers’ actions”.

Ukraine’s police chief, Ivan Vygivsky, told reporters that the suspect had served in the Ukrainian armed forces before retiring in 2005 and then lived in Russia until 2017. “We checked his social media pages … His views there are negative. You can’t say he had a pro-Ukrainian stance, it was, let’s say, somewhat in the other direction,” Vygivsky said.

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Catholics around Atlanta share mixed feelings on faith and politics as Trump engages in rhetorical war with pope

Alex Sullivan tended to his five children on the lawn after a traditional Latin mass at the Catholic Church of Saint Monica in Duluth, Georgia, and contemplated his faith in the light of God and the shadow of Donald Trump.

Sullivan, a self-described conservative who once staffed a libertarian state representative at the Georgia capitol, described his faith as almost medieval.

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Todd Haimes Theatre, New York
Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara are comic gems in a pitch-perfect revival that sparkles like champagne

Fallen Angels has appeared only twice on Broadway since its stateside premiere in 1927, two years after the lustful comedy’s London premiere cemented Noël Coward as England’s drawing room enfant terrible. A sort of proto-Godot where two society women drink themselves into a stupor waiting for an old lover to arrive while their husbands are away, it was nearly censored by the office of the Lord Chamberlain for its sexual frankness. (That kind of historical description usually indicates that perhaps someone showed some ankle). But 99 years later the play remains hilariously horny and startlingly modern, and Scott Ellis’s champagne cocktail of a revival has the exact right ingredients: complete faith in the material, drop-dead deluxe design, and the sugar-and-bubbles combination of Oscar-nominated actor Rose Byrne and stage veteran Kelli O’Hara.

The two are stars of elastic, compulsively watchable talent, and the unexpectedness of their pairing only serves their dynamic in this expert staging of Coward’s play, as their characters goad each other’s worst impulses on until they come into conflict with their own. Their performances work – brilliantly – in the converse, with Byrne’s knack for bawdiness and O’Hara’s born gentility swirling around to intoxicating effect.

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