IT’S adults only at Questacon when the next SciNight explores the science behind sport.

A curtain raiser for National Science Week, Questacon describes it as a “geeky night for grown-ups, where visitors can battle against a robot in a game of air hockey, compare their baseball pitch to that of a professional player or discover the science of power lifting.

DJ Alex Carder will play and there’s a bar and special menu at the cafe.

Questacon, Friday, August 15, 6pm-10 pm. Tickets are $10 at the door.

Ian’s Tattoo surprise

“CITYNEWS” music reviewer  Lt Col Ian McLean, is just back from an extended holiday that took in Basel, Switzerland, where he and  his wife Lynne planned to volunteer for the annual Basel Tattoo (he took an Army Band there some years ago).

But on arrival, he found himself catapulted into the role of artistic consultant and co-ordinator for the whole 15-show sellout shindig when the previous director pulled out. “It was a terrific job,” McLean says, “fantastic and so unexpected.”

What Katy did next…

IT appears our eighth Chief Minister, Katy Gallagher, is a happy accident of democracy – she first stood for election on the encouragement of the “faceless women” with no expectation of winning, as she told the recent  ALP Women’s Conference in Canberra.

“Labor was on track to win government locally in 2001 under Jon Stanhope’s leadership but with the serious possibility of no women MLAs, as all sitting ALP members were men,” she said.

“This was an embarrassing prospect for the party of affirmative action – perhaps even the leading branch of affirmative action.

“It was clear to women across all of the various groups within the party that in order to address this we needed to put women forward as candidates and more than that, once women were preselected, support them in their campaign to win a seat.

“I was certainly keen to support a women’s campaign but was genuinely surprised when I was asked to stand by the ‘faceless women’, which I agreed to on the clear understanding that my role was to fill the ticket and that I wouldn’t win.

“I was guaranteed that that would be the result. That result didn’t eventuate. I won my seat by about 70 votes – fast forward 10 years and I became the eighth Chief Minister of the ACT.”

Vicki’s out there

VICKI Collins has left the cloisters of TAFE, where she has been nurturing budding journalists for some years, to take up the role of marketing and communication manager at Goodwin Aged Care Services. “Really enjoying getting my hands dirty again as opposed to just talking about comms as a teacher,” she told CC.

Hmmms

THE self-absorbed tram spinners have spun themselves into laughing stocks with this tweet: “#CBR #lightrail aims to add benefit to the day-to-day lives of Canberrans beyond simply a mode of transport”.

MASTERFUL understatement from Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson: “Even by the Government’s own figures light rail will carry less than one per cent of the population during peak periods and knock about a minute off travel times from Gungahlin. Not a sensible way to spend over $600 million.”

SUNDAY’S “Canberra Times”, top of the front page: “August 10, 2013”.

“THE countdown until Floriade 2014 is officially on…” they breathlessly announced. “Officially”? Was there some doubt it was going to happen this year?

SOME droll comfort as we shiver… CC’s Campbell snout reports from Denmark that the Scandinavian country is enduring its hottest summer with the mercury tipping 22C.

DOES anyone else think it’s odd that Ginninderra, which saved the Labor Government’s electoral bacon by delivering three of the five seats (Chris Bourke, Mary Porter and Yvette Berry) doesn’t have any representation in the Assembly’s front bench?