Thoughts on the origin, character and interpretation of Scriptural prophecy. In seven discourses.

Mode of access: Internet.

Modern criticism and the preaching of the Old Testament : eight lectures on the Lyman Beecher foundation, Yale Uuniversity /

"The Eight Lectures in this volume . . . were delivered before Yale University in 1899." --Pref.

The holy bible : containing the old and new testaments, tr. out of the original tongues; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised. The references and marginal readings of the Polyglott Bible, with numerous additions from Bagster's Comprehensive Bible.

The Family record between the old and new testaments records the family of Solomon Sprague, b.1794.

Theoretical critique of the work of art : co-producers in research

The ways in which the "traditional" tension between words and artwork can be perceived has huge implications for understanding the relationship between critical or theoretical interpretation, art and practice, and research. Within the practice-led PhD this can generate a strange sense of disjuncture for the artist-researcher particularly when engaged in writing the exegesis. This paper aims to explore this tension through an introductory investigation of the work of the philosopher Andrew Benjamin. For Benjamin criticism completes the work of art. Criticism is, with the artwork, at the centre of our experience and theoretical understanding of art – in this way the work of art and criticism are co-productive. The reality of this co-productivity can be seen in three related articles on the work of American painter Marcia Hafif. In each of these articles there are critical negotiations of just how the work of art operates as art and theoretically, within the field of art. This focus has important ramifications for the writing and reading of the exegesis within the practice-led research higher degree. By including art as a significant part of the research reporting process the artist-researcher is also staking a claim as to the critical value of their work. Rather than resisting the tension between word and artwork the practice-led artist-researcher need to embrace the co-productive nature of critical word and creative work to more completely articulate their practice and its significance as research. The ideal venue and opportunity for this is the exegesis.

Use of 3D visualisation to enhance groundwater stable isotope data and its interpretation, Lockyer Valley, southeast Queensland

The use of stable isotope ratios δ18O and δ2H are well established in assessment of groundwater systems and their hydrology. The conventional approach is based on x/y plots and relation to various MWL’s, and plots of either ratio against parameters such as Clor EC. An extension of interpretation is the use of 2D maps and contour plots, and 2D hydrogeological vertical sections. An enhancement of presentation and interpretation is the production of “isoscapes”, usually as 2.5D surface projections. We have applied groundwater isotopic data to a 3D visualisation, using the alluvial aquifer system of the Lockyer Valley. The 3D framework is produced in GVS (Groundwater Visualisation System). This format enables enhanced presentation by displaying the spatial relationships and allowing interpolation between “data points” i.e. borehole screened zones where groundwater enters. The relative variations in the δ18O and δ2H values are similar in these ambient temperature systems. However, δ2H better reflects hydrological processes, whereas δ18O also reflects aquifer/groundwater exchange reactions. The 3D model has the advantage that it displays borehole relations to spatial features, enabling isotopic ratios and their values to be associated with, for example, bedrock groundwater mixing, interaction between aquifers, relation to stream recharge, and to near-surface and return irrigation water evaporation. Some specific features are also shown, such as zones of leakage of deeper groundwater (in this case with a GAB signature). Variations in source of recharging water at a catchment scale can be displayed. Interpolation between bores is not always possible depending on numbers and spacing, and by elongate configuration of the alluvium. In these cases, the visualisation uses discs around the screens that can be manually expanded to test extent or intersections. Separate displays are used for each of δ18O and δ2H and colour coding for isotope values.

The art of interpretation: Tracing logics of evaluation in Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing (2000) and Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing (2010)

Celebration (and the celebritisation) of the Australian-ness of children’s authors who enjoy critical or commercial international success, and especially of those who win international prizes speaks to a desire to partake in both national and international cultural spheres. Prizing is often presumed to both guarantee and emerge from a creator's reputation at home and abroad. Australian artist and writer Shaun Tan has received a wide array of cultural and literary prizes, ranging from Australian book awards, to an Academy Award, to the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize. This paper considers logics of evaluation and interpretation as they can be traced in the intratextual, intertextual, and extratextual codes of Shaun Tan’s picture book, The Lost Thing (2000), the animated film adaptation of The Lost Thing (2010). It further considers the ways in which the desire for a global audience may necessitate an erasure of the national culture which is traded on in a global market.

Reconsidering Relativism and Intentionalism in Interpretation : Donald Davidson, Hermeneutics, and Pragmatism

This study focuses on two philosophical issues related to the interpretation of art. Firstly, it considers the role of authorial intentions in interpretation. Secondly, the study raises the issue of relativism in interpretation through a discussion of the relativistic tendencies apparent in the views of three major figures of contemporary philosophy: Joseph Margolis, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Richard Rorty. The major goal of the thesis is to develop a theory of interpretation supporting the role of authorial intentions in interpretation on the basis of Donald Davidson s late philosophy of language and the holistic account of interpretation that underlies different parts of his philosophy. It is my belief that an intentionalist view of interpretation built on Davidsonian elements manages to form the most convincing defense of that interpretive position against the skepticism present in the views of Margolis, Gadamer, and Rorty. The theoretical issues addressed in the thesis are illuminated by discussions of case-examples, most importantly Richard Wagner s The Valkyrie, Thomas Adés America: A Prophecy, and some symphonies by Dimitri Shostakovich. In chapter one, I present a critical discussion of Margolis robust relativism. While finding Margolis criticism of the self-refutive argument plausible, I, nevertheless, argue that the relativistic logic Margolis offers should not be favored in interpretation. The first parts of chapter two outline Davidsonian intentionalism by presenting a reading of Davidson s later work in philosophy of language and mind, and by indicating its relationship to Davidson s views of literature. Then, I shall compare Davidson s ideas with some recent modest forms of intentionalism found in analytic aesthetics, and argue that Davidsonian intentionalism is in many respects more satisfactory compared to them. Chapter three engages Gadamer s hermeneutics by defending E.D. Hirsch s criticism of Gadamer. Uncovering the shortcomings in the replies of Gadamer s followers to Hirsch s criticism serves as a basis for the defense of intentionalism in interpretation carried out in the chapter. That defense is then extended with a discussion of some recent hermeneutic readings of Davidson s views. Chapter four deals with the standing of intentionalism through Rorty s pragmatist approach to literature. By indicating the position of pragmatist notions of aesthetic experience and imagination in Davidsonian intentionalism, it is shown that an intentionalist approach need not be as impoverished with regard to the value Rorty attributes to literature as he assumes. The concluding chapter outlines some ways in which one can be a pluralist with regard to art and interpretation without falling into relativism.

Clinical reasoning: The relative contribution of identification, interpretation and hypothesis errors to misdiagnosis

The aim of this study was to identify and describe the types of errors in clinical reasoning that contribute to poor diagnostic performance at different levels of medical training and experience. Three cohorts of subjects, second- and fourth- (final) year medical students and a group of general practitioners, completed a set of clinical reasoning problems. The responses of those whose scores fell below the 25th centile were analysed to establish the stage of the clinical reasoning process - identification of relevant information, interpretation or hypothesis generation - at which most errors occurred and whether this was dependent on problem difficulty and level of medical experience. Results indicate that hypothesis errors decrease as expertise increases but that identification and interpretation errors increase. This may be due to inappropriate use of pattern recognition or to failure of the knowledge base. Furthermore, although hypothesis errors increased in line with problem difficulty, identification and interpretation errors decreased. A possible explanation is that as problem difficulty increases, subjects at all levels of expertise are less able to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant clinical features and so give equal consideration to all information contained within a case. It is concluded that the development of clinical reasoning in medical students throughout the course of their pre-clinical and clinical education may be enhanced by both an analysis of the clinical reasoning process and a specific focus on each of the stages at which errors commonly occur.

Constraining the interpretation of 2-methylhopanoids through genetic and phylogenetic methods

Hopanoids are a class of sterol-like lipids produced by select bacteria. Their preservation in the rock record for billions of years as fossilized hopanes lends them geological significance. Much of the structural diversity present in this class of molecules, which likely underpins important biological functions, is lost during fossilization. Yet, one type of modification that persists during preservation is methylation at C-2. The resulting 2-methylhopanoids are prominent molecular fossils and have an intriguing pattern over time, exhibiting increases in abundance associated with Ocean Anoxic Events during the Phanerozoic. This thesis uses diverse methods to address what the presence of 2-methylhopanes tells us about the microbial life and environmental conditions of their ancient depositional settings. Through an environmental survey of hpnP, the gene encoding the C-2 hopanoid methylase, we found that many different taxa are capable of producing 2-methylhopanoids in more diverse modern environments than expected. This study also revealed that hpnP is significantly overrepresented in organisms that are plant symbionts, in environments associated with plants, and with metabolisms that support plant-microbe interactions; collectively, these correlations provide a clue about the biological importance of 2-methylhopanoids. Phylogenetic reconstruction of the evolutionary history of hpnP revealed that 2-methylhopanoid production arose in the Alphaproteobacteria, indicating that the origin of these molecules is younger than originally thought. Additionally, we took genetic approach to understand the role of 2-methylhopanoids in Cyanobacteria using the filamentous symbiotic Nostoc punctiforme. We found that hopanoids likely aid in rigidifying the cell membrane but do not appear to provide resistance to osmotic or outer membrane stressors, as has been shown in other organisms. The work presented in this thesis supports previous findings that 2-methylhopanoids are not biomarkers for oxygenic photosynthesis and provides new insights by defining their distribution in modern environments, identifying their evolutionary origin, and investigating their role in Cyanobacteria. These efforts in modern settings aid the formation of a robust interpretation of 2-methylhopanes in the rock record.

The feasibility of milkfish (Chanos chanos) aquaculture in Solomon Islands

Fish is crucial to food and nutrition security in Solomon Islands, and demand is expected to increase due to a growing population. However, it is projected that current capture fisheries production will not meet this growing demand. Aquaculture has the potential to mitigate the capture fishery shortfall, and the Government of Solomon Islands is prioritizing aquaculture as a solution to meet future food and income needs. Aquaculture in Solomon Islands is still in early development. Mozambique tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) is farmed for household consumption, but its prolific reproductive rate and resulting slow growth limit its potential as a commercial aquaculture species. More productive fish species that are not indigenous to Solomon Islands but are successfully farmed overseas could be introduced; however, such a decision needs to take into account the potential ecological or social impacts. For land-based pond aquaculture, the only indigenous species that has been farmed extensively elsewhere is milkfish (Chanos chanos). This report presents a feasibility assessment for milkfish farming in Solomon Islands. It synthesizes the current knowledge about milkfish farming and presents results of a 4-year study on the potential for milkfish aquaculture in Solomon Islands.

Heritage interpretation challenges and management issues at film-induced tourism heritage attractions: Case studies of Rosslyn Chapel and Alnwick Castle

Although previous research has widely acknowledged the phenomenon of film-induced tourism, there is a paucity of research in relation to management of film-induced tourism at built heritage sites. This research, underpinned by a constructivist paradigm, draws on three distinct fields of study – heritage tourism management, film-induced tourism and heritage interpretation – in order to provide a contribution to the heritage management field and address this particular gap in knowledge. Relying on the method of semi-structured interviews with managers, guides and visitors at Rosslyn Chapel (RC) and Alnwick Castle (AC), this thesis provides a rich understanding of how heritage interpretation can address a range of management challenges at heritage sites where film-induced tourism has occurred. These heritage visitor attractions (HVAs) were specifically selected as case studies as they have played different roles in media products. Rosslyn Chapel (RC) was an actual place named in The Da Vinci Code (TDVC) book and then film, whereas Alnwick Castle (AC) served as a backdrop for the first two Harry Potter (HP) films. Findings of this research include a range of management challenges at both RC and AC such as an increase in visitor numbers; seasonality issues; changes in visitor profile; revenue generation concerns; conservation, access, and visitor experience; and the complex relationship between heritage management and tourism activities. The findings also reveal film-induced tourism’s implications for heritage interpretation such as the various visitors’ expectations for heritage interpretation, changes to heritage interpretation as a result of film-induced tourism, and issues with commodification. These findings also demonstrate that film-induced tourism to some extent influenced visitors’ preferences for heritage interpretation, though visitors’ preferences differed from one to another. This thesis argues that, in the context of film-induced tourism at HVAs, as evident from the two case studies considered, heritage interpretation can be a valuable management tool and can also play a significant role in the quality of the visitors’ experience.

Facts and Fictions: Feminist Literary Criticism and Cultural Critique, 1968-2012

"Facts and Fictions: Feminist Literary Criticism and Cultural Critique, 1968-2012" is a critical history of the unfolding of feminist literary study in the US academy. It contributes to current scholarly efforts to revisit the 1970s by reconsidering often-repeated narratives about the critical naivety of feminist literary criticism in its initial articulation. As the story now goes, many of the most prominent feminist thinkers of the period engaged in unsophisticated literary analysis by conflating lived social reality with textual representation when they read works of literature as documentary evidence of real life. As a result, the work of these "bad critics," particularly Kate Millett and Andrea Dworkin, has not been fully accounted for in literary critical terms.

This dissertation returns to Dworkin and Millett's work to argue for a different history of feminist literary criticism. Rather than dismiss their work for its conflation of fact and fiction, I pay attention to the complexity at the heart of it, yielding a new perspective on the history and persistence of the struggle to use literary texts for feminist political ends. Dworkin and Millett established the centrality of reality and representation to the feminist canon debates of "the long 1970s," the sex wars of the 1980s, and the more recent feminist turn to memoir. I read these productive periods in feminist literary criticism from 1968 to 2012 through their varied commitment to literary works.

Chapter One begins with Millett, who de-aestheticized male-authored texts to treat patriarchal literature in relation to culture and ideology. Her mode of literary interpretation was so far afield from the established methods of New Criticism that she was not understood as a literary critic. She was repudiated in the feminist literary criticism that followed her and sought sympathetic methods for reading women's writing. In that decade, the subject of Chapter Two, feminist literary critics began to judge texts on the basis of their ability to accurately depict the reality of women's experiences.

Their vision of the relationship between life and fiction shaped arguments about pornography during the sex wars of the 1980s, the subject of Chapter Three. In this context, Dworkin was feminism's "bad critic." I focus on the literary critical elements of Dworkin's theories of pornographic representation and align her with Millett as a miscategorized literary critic. In the decades following the sex wars, many of the key feminist literary critics of the founding generation (including Dworkin, Jane Gallop, Carolyn Heilbrun, and Millett) wrote memoirs that recounted, largely in experiential terms, the history this dissertation examines. Chapter Four considers the story these memoirists told about the rise and fall of feminist literary criticism. I close with an epilogue on the place of literature in a feminist critical enterprise that has shifted toward privileging theory.

The "Art" of Criticism: Rubén Darío and his Unknown Chronicles of the 1895 Salon for "La Prensa"

With the impetus that has led recent studies on Latin American Modernism to a reevaluation of the sense of cultural fluxes from the modernity capitals to its peripheries –discarding categories such as “influence”, “exotism” and “ivory tower”, stereotypes that have clouded critical understanding of this aesthetics for decades- the present study intends to investigate a persistent practice of the main writers of the movement. This practice is modernist pictorial criticism, a genre that will be approached through the analysis of an unknown corpus: the seven chronicles Rubén Darío published in the journal La Prensa on occasion of the third art exposition of the Ateneo de Buenos Aires. Our hypothesis is that the rare creators of images portrayed by Darío by the end of 1895 work as a visual counterpoint of the eccentric writers’ biographical sketches that a year later will be part of the fundamental volume Los raros (1896). In this early “salon”, which we reproduce in its entirety, accompanied by explanatory notes, the leader of Modernism rehearses and consolidates his transcultural work with the universal tradition –now applied to the Salons (1845-1860) by Charles Baudelaire and to the monumental project by John Ruskin in Modern painters (1843-1860)- to legitimate, from another subgenre of Modernist criticism, a new figure of the critic, in dissent with the Enlightenment model of the writer.

Human Dignity and judicial Interpretation of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights was pivotal in popularizing the use of 'dignity' or 'human dignity' in human rights discourse. This article argues that the use of 'dignity', beyond a basic minimum core, does not provide a universalistic, principled basis for judicial decision-making in the human rights context, in the sense that there is little common understanding of what dignity requires substantively within or across jurisdictions. The meaning of dignity is therefore context-specific, varying significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and (often) over time within particular jurisdictions. Indeed, instead of providing a basis for principled decision-making, dignity seems open to significant judicial manipulation. increasing rather than decreasing judicial discretion. That is one of its significant attractions to both judges and litigators alike. Dignity provides a convenient language for the adoption of substantive interpretations of human rights guarantees which appear to be intentionally, not just coincidentally. highly contingent on local circumstances. Despite that, however, I argue that the concept of 'human dignity' plays an important role in the development of human rights adjudication, not in providing an agreed content to human rights but in contributing to particular methods of human rights interpretation and adjudication.

Interpretation of ambiguity in children: a prospective study of associations with anxiety and parental interpretations

Interpretation of ambiguity is consistently associated with anxiety in children, however, the temporal relationship between interpretation and anxiety remains unclear as do the developmental origins of interpretative biases. This study set out to test a model of the development of interpretative biases in a prospective study of 110 children aged 5–9 years of age. Children and their parents were assessed three times, annually, on measures of anxiety and interpretation of ambiguous scenarios (including, for parents, both their own interpretations and their expectations regarding their child). Three models were constructed to assess associations between parent and child anxiety and threat and distress cognitions and expectancies. The three models were all a reasonable fit of the data, and supported conclusions that: (i) children’s threat and distress cognitions were stable over time and were significantly associated with anxiety, (ii) parents’ threat and distress cognitions and expectancies significantly predicted child threat cognitions at some time points, and (iii) parental anxiety significantly predicted parents cognitions, which predicted parental expectancies at some time points. Parental expectancies were also significantly predicted by child cognitions. The findings varied depending on assessment time point and whether threat or distress cognitions were being considered. The findings support the notion that child and parent cognitive processes, in particular parental expectations, may be a useful target in the treatment or prevention of anxiety disorders in children.