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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Australia in three words, part 1-“Mateship”

“Mateship” is an Australianism – my American spell-checker doesn’t recognise it – and it’s one that captures something widely held to be distinctive about Australia. Like many Australianisms, the word existed well before there were any Australians in the ordinary sense.

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Colombia: the embattled road to peace

Is absolute peace throughout a nation ever truly attainable and sustainable? Can a country ever unite as one entity in the face of extreme opposing views and ideals throughout the land, its people unable to achieve the plurality of a single bilateral, collective human interest legislative mandate?

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Ten facts about the bass guitar

The bass guitar is often thought to be a poor musician’s double bass or a poor musician’s guitar. Nonetheless, luthiers and performers have explored its expressive possibilities within a wide range of musical styles and performance traditions, some of which we chart below.

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Brexit and UK company law

Most discussion relating to the referendum result has focussed on the effect that Brexit will have upon our constitutional arrangements or workers’ rights. This blog post will focus on the effect that Brexit will have upon the UK system of company law. Unfortunately, the current uncertainty regarding the terms on which the UK will leave the EU (if indeed it does) means that a definitive answer cannot be provided.

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How to choose a medical school

Feeling confused? You’re not alone… Applying to medical school is like asking someone to marry you. This might seem like an exaggeration, however over your lifetime you will spend more hours working than you will spend awake with your life partner. Like marriage, being a doctor will change who you are, influence where you live, and affect what you can do.

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Blowin’ in the wind

I am, I suppose, part of the “cognoscenti” in the area of social identity, social bias, and social justice. I’m a tenure-track assistant professor of social work, I’m a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant, and I recently wrote a book on how to understand and overcome challenges associated with race.

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Jewish identity – the Israeli paradoxes

Is Judaism a religion and a culture or is it also a nationality? To this question the Zionist movement, which led to the establishment of the State of Israel, gave a clear positive answer. This approach has been adopted by Israel.

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Measuring sun exposure in outdoor workers

Sun exposure is a key feature of summer for many people, especially in countries like Canada where pleasant weather can seem so fleeting. Unfortunately, sun exposure (in particular ultraviolet radiation) is the primary cause of skin cancer, the most common cancer in Canada. Skin cancer is also one of few cancers where diagnoses are increasing.

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The evolution of international criminal justice

In commemoration of International Criminal Justice Day, it is worth pausing to reflect on the evolution and impact of the field in just two decades. Of course the history goes back much further, and it remains painstakingly challenging to realize in many contexts, but it is without question that accountability is now a key feature of the global response to atrocity.

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Ethical change in the Catholic Church

In just a little more than three years as the Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis appears to have disrupted what many thought was a straight and unchangeable course of moral teaching in the Catholic Church. Some of the more conservative members of the church are worried that the fundamentals of that teaching are being ignored, or worse, thrown overboard. Francis’s call for a ‘poorer’ church and a world that cares about the environment displays a significant turn in Catholic politics.

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Transitions in transitional justice: reflections on International Criminal Justice Day

Today we commemorate International Criminal Justice Day to honor the 1998 adoption of the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the International Criminal Court (ICC), the world’s first permanent international war crimes tribunal. This year we should take the opportunity to reflect on various transitions in transitional justice. With the recent closure, creation, and consideration of several ad hoc war crimes tribunals.

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The obscure objects of mass production

The objects of mass production – screws, nails, cell phones, cars – are everywhere. They are, for the most part, humdrum and insignificant and beneath the notice of philosophers. But in fact, I shall suggest, they are deeply mysterious from an ontological point of view.

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Westminster professor takes home law teaching prize

Professor Lisa Webley of the University of Westminster has been named Law Teacher of the Year 2016, fending off strong competition from lecturers from Bangor, Leicester, Nottingham Trent, Oxford, and Sheffield Hallam. The prestigious national award, which is sponsored by Oxford University Press, was presented at the end of the inaugural Celebrating Excellence in Law Teaching conference held in Oxford on Friday 1 July 2016.

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The Enlightenment and visual impairment

Blindness is a recurrent image in Enlightenment rhetoric. It is used in a political context to indicate a lack of awareness, seen in a letter from Edmund Burke to the chevalier de La Bintinnaye, in poetic rhetoric, with the stories of the blind poets Milton, Homer, and Ossian circulating among the intelligentsia of the time, or simply as a physical irritation, when writers with long lives and extensive correspondences frequently complained of their eyesight deteriorating.

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Oral history and social justice

The #OHMATakeover of the OHR blog continues as Sara Loose explains her origins in oral history and how the skills and perspectives she gained at Columbia have influenced her career so far.

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