What's instinct got to do with it? A blueprint for a coherent approach to punishing criminals

As a result of the instinctive synthesis approach to sentencing, decisions are often based on the intuitive inclinations and sentiments of sentencers, as opposed to binding rules and principles. In particular, insufficient regard is paid to the purposes and objectives that can be achieved through a state-imposed system of punishment. Momentum is gathering for the High Court to revisit the manner in which the sentencing inquiry is undertaken. We believe that the court should use the opportunity to implement fundamental reform in sentencing and direct the sentencing process down a more transparent and forensic path. We suggest that there are seven basic steps that need to be undertaken to achieve enlightened sentencing reform. Ideally this is a role for the legislature. However, given the populist climate in which we live we have little confidence that the legislature will undertake such an exacting task – one which would almost certainly lead to a less severe sentencing regime. The judiciary offers the strongest hope that at least some of these steps will be taken. This article offers a blueprint for how such reform can be implemented. The first step is simply to assume that the institution of state-imposed punishment is justified – this has already been undertaken. The second is to select the theory which best justifies punishing wrongdoers. Thirdly, public opinion must be ignored in developing sentencing principle. Next it must be determined which objectives (such as deterrence and rehabilitation) can be achieved through sentencing. The fifth step involves matching the punishment to the crime. Step six is to critically analyse the foundation, and reassess the relevance, of the hundreds of aggravating and mitigating considerations that presently affect the sentencing calculus. Finally, sentencing law and practice should be subject to ongoing reform to take into account emerging empirical evidence concerning the positive benefits that can be achieved through sentencing.

From estrangement to a sense of place …

Maggie MacKellar in her book Core of my Heart, my Country writes 'What is sense of place? Why is relationship with place so fundamental to our identity as individuals and as communities?' MacKellar rightly acknowledges that 'A sense of place is a complex connection between land and self. Place is both inside and outside; it takes us beyond ourselves, yet allows us to make sense of ourselves. Attachments to place are born into us, but they are also formed through movement, through labour, through words.' My mother Maria Radzimirski-Herzog considered herself truly Swiss and thoroughly Australian. Through one migrant's story this paper explores something of the complex intertwining of place, memory and identity. It grapples with the notion of belonging to one's country of birth and one's adopted country via a rich understanding of place. In Maria's case, place becomes inextricably bound with who she became as a person. In the early 1940s, Maria explored Switzerland on bike and on foot during war-time restrictions on cars and she came to know it intimately. She photographed the land and the mountains; she documented her journeys. Spirn writes perceptively that 'Significance does not depend on human perception or imagination alone.' For Maria significance was, to use Spirn's words, 'there to be discovered, inherent and ascribed, shaped by what senses perceive, what instinct and experience read as significant, what minds know'. For Maria, Landscape was not 'mere scenery'. The ability to see, to listen, to be present in place, stood her in good stead in her adopted country, Australia. Maria called place into being for her children: through her lived experiences, her memories, her story telling, through language, traditions and history, Maria shared her Swiss identity with her children. But imperceptibly she also taught them how to understand her new homeland Australia, their birth country. How did Maria become Australian? Was that her creative response to exile from Switzerland? How did she come to feel at home in both countries, to understand both places? How did they seep into her and she into them? Through my own research on place I have discovered that assessing 'sense of place' is not an exact science but a creative analysis of the attributes of a place. The methodology I have adopted to explore the complex interrelationships between place, memory and identity allows recovery and reclamation, rediscovery, juxtaposing the subjective and the objective, the co-presence of different evidence. This paper draws on place research, on personal papers, letters and photographs, and the author's own experiences and memories. Through story and narrative it interweaves autobiography and biography with theoretical scholarship, to illuminate one migrant's journey from estrangement to a sense of place in her adopted country, Australia.

Link between vertical and horizontal movement patterns of cod in the North Sea

We used a geolocation method based on tidal amplitude and water depth to assess the horizontal movements of 14 cod Gadus morhua equipped with time-depth recorders (TDR) in the North Sea and English Channel. Tracks ranged from 40 to 468 d and showed horizontal movements of up to 455 km and periods of continuous localised residence of up to 360 d. Cod spent time both in midwater (43% of total time) and near the seabed (57% of total time). A variety of common vertical movement patterns were seen within periods of both residence and directed horizontal movement. Hence particular patterns of vertical movement could not unequivocally define periods of migration or localised residence. After long horizontal movements, cod tended to adopt resident behaviour for several months and then return to broadly the same location where they were tagged, indicating a geospatial instinct. The results suggest that residence and homing behaviour are important features of Atlantic cod behaviour.

The whiteness of David Bowie

During the 1980s, in particular, Bowie embodied particular notions of white masculinity that were on the one hand supportive of its idealized hegemony, and on the other subverted its normative power. I will take 1983 as the year when his whiteness is particularly visible and unstable. Bowie, as either the blonde dandy from Let’s Dance; the enigmatic character, Maj. Jack 'Strafer' Celliers from Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983); or the simmering vampire, John Blaylock from The Hunger (1983), crystlised the pure qualities of white masculinity while demonstrating its violent, queer and subversive nature. The chapter will suggest that Bowie has constantly operated along a white continuum, self-consciously embodying it, granting it carnal and ideological power, while drawing attention to its death-like instinct, its anti-reproductive progeny, its implicit queerness.I have chosen to read Bowie’s whiteness through this shortened window of temporality to enable me to draw into the analysis the historical and cultural issues of the period in question. 1983 registers as the year in which whiteness is acutely imagined to be under threat from the Asian tiger and transforming geo-political realities, its own languid anti-corporeality, the AIDS ‘epidemic’, and from the rise of racism in Europe and elsewhere - realities which require it to re-position its power relations with the sexual, and ethnic Other. The whiteness in/of David Bowie speaks particularly eloquently to this historical moment.

Spatial coordinated medium sharing: Optimal access control management in drive-thru internet

Driven by the ever-growing expectation of ubiquitous connectivity and the widespread adoption of IEEE 802.11 networks, it is not only highly demanded but also entirely possible for in-motion vehicles to establish convenient Internet access to roadside WiFi access points (APs) than ever before, which is referred to as Drive-Thru Internet. The performance of Drive-Thru Internet, however, would suffer from the high vehicle mobility, severe channel contentions, and instinct issues of the IEEE 802.11 MAC as it was originally designed for static scenarios. As an effort to address these problems, in this paper, we develop a unified analytical framework to evaluate the performance of Drive-Thru Internet, which can accommodate various vehicular traffic flow states, and to be compatible with IEEE 802.11a/b/g networks with a distributed coordination function (DCF). We first develop the mathematical analysis to evaluate the mean saturated throughput of vehicles and the transmitted data volume of a vehicle per drive-thru. We show that the throughput performance of Drive-Thru Internet can be enhanced by selecting an optimal transmission region within an AP's coverage for the coordinated medium sharing of all vehicles. We then develop a spatial access control management approach accordingly, which ensures the airtime fairness for medium sharing and boosts the throughput performance of Drive-Thru Internet in a practical, efficient, and distributed manner. Simulation results show that our optimal access control management approach can efficiently work in IEEE 802.11b and 802.11g networks. The maximal transmitted data volume per drive-thru can be enhanced by 113.1% and 59.5% for IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11g networks with a DCF, respectively, compared with the normal IEEE 802.11 medium access with a DCF.