Distracting people from sources of discomfort in a simulated aircraft environment

BACKGROUND: Comfort is an important factor in the acceptance of transport systems. In 2010 and 2011, the European Commission (EC) put forward its vision for air travel in the year 2050 which envisaged the use of in-flight virtual reality. This paper addressed the EC vision by investigating the effect of virtual environments on comfort. Research has shown that virtual environments can provide entertaining experiences and can be effective distracters from painful experiences. OBJECTIVE: To determine the extent to which a virtual environment could distract people from sources of discomfort. METHODS: Experiments which involved inducing discomfort commonly experienced in-flight (e.g. limited space, noise) in order to determine the extent to which viewing a virtual environment could distract people from discomfort. RESULTS: Virtual environments can fully or partially distract people from sources of discomfort, becoming more effective when they are interesting. They are also more effective at distracting people from discomfort caused by restricted space than noise disturbances. CONCLUSIONS: Virtual environments have the potential to enhance passenger comfort by providing positive distractions from sources of discomfort. Further research is required to understand more fully the reasons why the effect was stronger for one source of discomfort than the other

Reflections on a crisis: political disenchantment, moral desolation, and political integrity

Declining levels of political trust and voter turnout, the shift towards populist politics marked by appeals to ‘the people’ and a rejection of ‘politics-as-usual’, are just some of the commonly cited manifestations of our culture of political disaffection. Democratic politics, it is argued, is in crisis. Whilst considerable energy has been expended on the task of lamenting the status of our politics and pondering over recommendations to tackle this perceived crisis, amid this raft of complaints and solutions lurks confusion. This paper seeks to explore the neglected question of what the precise nature of the crisis with which we are confronted involves, and, in so doing, to go some way towards untangling our confusion. Taking my cue from Machiavelli and his value-pluralist heirs, I argue that there is a rift between a morally admirable and a virtuous political life. Failure to appreciate this possibility causes narrations of crisis to misconstrue the moral messiness of politics in ways that lead us to misunderstand how we should respond to disenchantment. Specifically, I suggest that: (i) we think that there is a moral crisis in politics because we have an unsatisfactorily idealistic understanding of political integrity in the first place; and (ii) it is a mistake to imagine that the moral purification of politics is possible or desirable. Put simply, our crisis is not moral per se but primarily philosophical in nature: it relates to the very concepts we employ—the qualities of character and context we presuppose whilst pondering over political integrity

A moral duty to act there

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:m03/11358 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Danse Macabre: politicians, journalists, and the complicated rumba of relationships

This study aimed to explore the ways politicians characterize and think about the relationships they sustain with journalists, using a case study approach that focuses on the views and attitudes of New Zealand MPs towards members of the Press Gallery and, to a lesser extent, their local and regional news media. Undertaken over a twenty-four-month period, with two fieldwork phases, 62 of 121 MPs were interviewed. The broad findings suggest that MPs are relatively sanguine about their media relationships, recognizing their symbiotic nature, but clear differences emerged in terms of the complexity and friendliness of these relationships. Those differences can be accounted for primarily by way of personal style and preferences, on one hand, and party status and position, on the other: factors such as gender (either of the politician or the journalist) were not significant as determinants of difference, although women were more likely to characterize their relationships as “friendly” compared with men, who tended to use more neutral language such as “collegial.