Keywords in the Australian context

Borrowing the title of Raymond Williams’ famous study, the following reflections – sometimes collective and sometimes individual – are based on a series of “Keywords”, specifically: “fear” “community” and “creativity”. By reflecting on the meanings these words have for us today, we attempt to capture their dialogical character, posing them as sites of contestation and struggle, and thereby developing a language of both resistance and hope in the face of neoliberal and neoconservative attacks on education. These reflections continue a series of arguments in defence of the profession first presented in the publication “Only connect”: English teaching, schooling and community in 2006.

Pre- and posttrip factors influencing the visitor experience at a battlefield commemorative event : Gallipoli, a case study

Battlefield tourism is a major component of national and international tourism. This article sets out to provide a holistic understanding of the preevent factors influencing attendance at an event commemorating a famous World War I battle and to follow the cycle through to gain an understanding of what postevent factors influence event satisfaction and how this translates into recommending behavior. The Anzac Day commemorative event at Gallipoli, Turkey, provides the backdrop for this study. A two-step process was used to gather information from Australians partaking in the Gallipoli commemorations in 2007. A preevent questionnaire was distributed to a convenience sample of respondents while they were in transit from Istanbul to Gallipoli for the commemoration. In total, 482 preevent questionnaires were obtained. Step two of this process saw an exit questionnaire administered to a convenience sample of participants on the return journey to Istanbul, resulting in 331 completed postevent questionnaires. The pre- and postevent datasets were separately analyzed using factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) where appropriate. The findings highlight the role of various event attributes, most prominently the ceremonial and experiential aspects of the Anzac Day commemorations, in encouraging visitor satisfaction and further flow-on effects for recommending behavior.

The invincible summer : on Albert Camus’ philosophical neoclassicism

What follows is a work of critical reconstruction of Camus' thought. It aims to answer to the wish Camus expressed in his later notebooks, that he at least be read closely. Specifically, I hope to do three things. In Part I, we will show how Camus' famous philosophy of the absurd represents a systematic scepticism whose closest philosophical predecessor is Descartes' method of doubt, and whose consequence, as in Descartes, is the discovery of a single, orienting certainty, on the basis of which Camus would proceed to pass beyond the 'nihilism' that conservative critics continued to level against him (MS 34). Part II will unfold the central tenets of Camus' mature thought of rebellion, and show how Camus' central political claims follow from his para-Cartesian claim to have found an irreducible or 'invincible' basis for a post-metaphysical ethics, consistent with the most thoroughgoing epistemic scepticism. Part III then undertakes to show that the neoclassical rhetoric and positioning Camus claimed for his postwar thought—as a thought of moderation or mesure, and a renewed Greek or Mediterranean naturalism—is more than a stylistic pretension. It represents, so I argue, a singular amalgam of modern and philosophical classical motifs which makes Camus' voice nearly unique in twentieth century ideas, and all the more worth reconsidering today. So let us proceed.

All things bright and beautiful

The famous hymn played on a piano.

Amazing grace

Amazing Grace the famous hymn featuring a sampled bagpipes, piano, acoustic drums, synth pads and strings.

Ave Maria

Ave Maria is the famous hymn and it features piano and 5 synths. I decided to use synth pads to create the evolving strings part and sounds of synth bells to add tone. The piano part makes this hymn distinctive.

Away in a manger (Christmas pop carol)

Away in a manger, the famous Carol, is given the pop treatment.

The Sophists (Ancient Greek)

The sophists were itinerant professional teachers and intellectuals who frequented Athens and other Greek cities in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E. In return for a fee, the sophists offered young wealthy Greek men an education in aretē (virtue or excellence), thereby attaining wealth and fame while also arousing significant antipathy. Prior to the fifth century B.C.E., aretē was predominately associated with aristocratic warrior virtues such as courage and physical strength. In democratic Athens of the latter fifth century B.C.E., however, aretē was increasingly understood in terms of the ability to influence one’s fellow citizens in political gatherings through rhetorical persuasion; the sophistic education both grew out of and exploited this shift. The most famous representatives of the sophistic movement are Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Hippias, Prodicus and Thrasymachus.

The historical and philological difficulties confronting an interpretation of the sophists are significant. Only a handful of sophistic texts have survived and most of what we know of the sophists is drawn from second-hand testimony, fragments and the generally hostile depiction of them in Plato’s dialogues.

The philosophical problem of the nature of sophistry is arguably even more formidable. Due in large part to the influence of Plato and Aristotle, the term sophistry has come to signify the deliberate use of fallacious reasoning, intellectual charlatanism and moral unscrupulousness. It is, as the article explains, an oversimplification to think of the historical sophists in these terms because they made genuine and original contributions to Western thought. Plato and Aristotle nonetheless established their view of what constitutes legitimate philosophy in part by distinguishing their own activity – and that of Socrates – from the sophists. If one is so inclined, sophistry can thus be regarded, in a conceptual as well as historical sense, as the ‘other’ of philosophy.

Perhaps because of the interpretative difficulties mentioned above, the sophists have been many things to many people. For Hegel (1995/1840) the sophists were subjectivists whose sceptical reaction to the objective dogmatism of the presocratics was synthesised in the work of Plato and Aristotle. For the utilitarian English classicist George Grote (1904), the sophists were progressive thinkers who placed in question the prevailing morality of their time. More recent work by French theorists such as Jacques Derrida (1981) and Jean Francois-Lyotard (1985) suggests affinities between the sophists and postmodernism.

This article provides a broad overview of the sophists, and indicates some of the central philosophical issues raised by their work. Section 1 discusses the meaning of the term sophist. Section 2 surveys the individual contributions of the most famous sophists. Section 3 examines three themes that have often been taken as characteristic of sophistic thought: the distinction between nature and convention, relativism about knowledge and truth and the power of speech. Finally, section 4 analyses attempts by Plato and others to establish a clear demarcation between philosophy and sophistry.

Lobbying defined and observed

The critical and most obvious component of lobbying is the interaction an entity has with government. The executive, parliament and bureaucracy are the key players in the field. On the opposing side, to extend a sporting analogy, are the lobbyists – who are identified or labelled, singularly or plurally, by a variety of names: pressure groups, policy consultants, tariff consultants, public relations consultants, interest groups, special interest groups, industrial and professional associations, government relations managers, public affairs managers and Lloyd’s qualified term, the ‘political lobbyist’ .
All these nomenclatures require further explanation – some are used interchangeably, others are now an historical term only, some fall from the common language only to reappear at a later date. Of all, the oldest and most widely recognised is lobbyist and lobbying. Lloyd (1989) states that the term ‘lobby agent’ was first used in Westminster in the mid-17th century. In the United States Schriftgiesser (1951) writes that the famous American journalist H L Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, traced the first use of the word lobby, as we currently understand it, to Washington DC in 1829. At that time the term lobby-agent was in use but it was shortened, by journalists, to lobbyist by 1832.
It has been suggested that the concept of lobbying – of seeking influence among the powerful – is as old as government e itself. Lloyd (1989) cites examples of lobbying from the Old and New testaments – the most famous pressure group being those who petitioned Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus Christ!
In the US the activities of lobbying were recognised before the term was coined when, according to Schriftgeisser (1951), ‘a little gang of painted –up merchants (who) pushed British tea into the salt water of Boston harbor’ (p4).
So the pedigree of lobbying activities is long and colourful. As the western form of parliamentary democracy has evolved and expanded among nations it seems that lobbying has been ever present on this journey. It is by its activities, its parts, that we can define and recognise lobbying most clearly and view the changes.

Introduction : women as cause – media, gender, responsibility

Introduces the five chapters on Australian media representations of women and men, with a current events related examination of today's news, especially in relation to Prime Minister Julia Gillard's now famous "Misogyny Speech" in Federal Parliament in 2012.

Zeroes of Riemann's zeta function on the critical line with 40000 decimal digits accuracy

The project aims at computing Riemann's zeroes with high accuracy through an analysis of large determinants using Matyasievich's Artless method. Location of Riemann's zeroes is the famous 8th Hilbert problem, and one of Clay's Institute millennium problems.

Celebrity fakes – where porn meets a sense of possession

A widescale phenomenon permeates contemporary online culture: graphically explicit images of very famous people are made available. These images are advertised as fake and fabrications; nonetheless, the reconstruct our field of recognisable personalities into the cultural economy of online pornography. The article debates why these kinds of sites and images are not prosecuted by celebrities and continue to form an intriguing conduit into online pornography.

Beckett and Bion: The (Im)patient voice in psychotherapy and literature

This book focuses on Samuel Beckett’s psychoanalytic psychotherapy with W. R. Bion as a central aspect both of Beckett’s and Bion’s radical transformations of literature and psychoanalysis. The recent publication of Beckett’s correspondence during the period of his psychotherapy with Bion provides a starting place for an imaginative reconstruction of this psychotherapy, culminating with Bion’s famous invitation to his patient to dinner and a lecture by C.G. Jung. Following from the course of this psychotherapy, Miller and Souter trace the development of Beckett’s radical use of clinical psychoanalytic method in his writing, suggesting the development within his characters of a literary-analytic working through of transference to an idealized auditor known by various names, apparently based on Bion. Miller and Souter link this pursuit to Beckett’s breakthrough from prose to drama, as the psychology of projective identification is transformed to physical enactment. They also locate Bion’s memory and re-working of his clinical contact with Beckett, who figures as the 'patient zero' of Bion’s pioneering postmodern psychoanalytic clinical theories.

Celebrity and power : fame in contemporary culture

Through a new introduction for this edition, Marshall investigates the viewing public's desire to associate with celebrity and addresses the explosion of instant access to celebrity culture, bringing famous people and their admireres closer than ever before.  He explores the concept of the new public intimacy: a product of social media in which celebrities from lady Gaga to Barack Obama are expected to continuously campaing for audiences in new ways. The new introduction also details the development of celebrity studies and the need for research into the construction of persona in contemporary culture as the dimension of publicizing the self has expanded through online culture.