London 2012 and the impact of the UK’s Olympic and Paralympic legislation: protecting commerce or preserving culture?

The general commercial rights associated with the Olympic Movement are protected in the UK by the Olympic Symbols etc (Protection) Act 1995. In addition, the UK Government, in response to a requirement of the Host City Contract with the International Olympic Committee, created the London Olympic Association Right under section 33 and Schedule 4 of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games Act 2006. These provisions enable the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games to exploit, to the fullest extent, the commercial rights associated with the London Olympic Games. This article questions whether the IOC’s requirement for legislative protection and state enforcement of the commercial rights are compatible with the Fundamental Principles of Olympism as defined in the Olympic Charter, and its stated aim of being a celebration of sporting endeavour, culture and education

Grasshoppers and Crickets

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Implications of Conformal Invariance for Quantum Field Theories in d>2d>2

Recently obtained results for two and three point functions for quasi-primary operators in conformally invariant theories in arbitrary dimensions {\absit d} are described. As a consequence the three point function for the energy momentum tensor has three linearly independent forms for general {\absit d} compatible with conformal invariance. The corresponding coefficients may be regarded as possible generalisations of the Virasoro central charge to {\absit d} larger than 2. Ward identities which link two linear combinations of the coefficients to terms appearing in the energy momentum tensor trace anomaly on curved space are discussed. The requirement of positivity for expectation values of the energy density is also shown to lead to positivity conditions which are simple for a particular choice of the three coefficients. Renormalisation group like equations which express the constraints of broken conformal invariance for quantum field theories away from critical points are postulated and applied to two point functions.\hfill\break Talk presented at the XXVII Ahrenshoop International Symposium.Comment: 14pages, Damtp 93/6

Local Couplings and Sl(2,R) Invariance for Gauge Theories at One Loop

The response of the one loop effective action for a gauge theory with local couplings $g(x),\theta(x)$ under a local Weyl rescaling of the background metric is calculated. Apart from terms which may be removed by local contributions to the effective action the result is compatible with $Sl(2,R)$ symmetry acting on $g,\theta$. Two loop effects are also discussed.Comment: 10 pages, uses harvma

Why tracing a locality's networked governance is worthwhile

The transition from government to governance brings about a shift in performance evaluation. The focus can no longer be on an individual entity, but must extend into considering how a collective of government and non-government institutions achieves the outcomes sought. How can this evaluation task proceed? While applying the formal methods of social network analysis (SNA) to measuring, analysing and managing networked governance may seem obvious to some, such a solution seems to have been avoided over many decades. SNA tools that non-experts can use have been released in recent past, providing opportunities in learning-by-doing among practitioners and scholars with responsibilities or interests in public sector management. The overarching aim in this paper is to promote adoption of an open-source software tool - NodeXL - as one pathway toward understanding and improving networked governance situations, and toward communicating results to others. It begins by establishing three areas of information needs held by Australia's local governments, where undertaking a pilot study could be useful. They are, local government's real positioning with other decision-makers in the networked governance that is Australian federalism; world better practice in risk governance, given the significant exposure of Australian councils to natural disaster events; and measuring change over time in governance capital, as a component in the capitals approach to measuring sustainable development. Establishing functional and spatial boundaries was a key step in design, with the choice being environment protection and natural resources management in the 350km2 catchment area of the Wonboyn Lake estuary on the far south coast of New South Wales. A Web search of documents containing the terms 'Wonboyn Lake' or 'Wonboyn River' then followed. One hundred and twenty nine documents were retrieved. Analysing their contents led to identifying over two hundred institutional actors either transmitting or receiving knowledge relevant to the locality. Some 420 communications taking place between 1967 and 2011 were identified, and tagged according to year of transmission. The decision-making level within which each institutional actor operated; and whether industry, regulator, external researcher or stakeholder were other characteristics recorded. A 421 x 2 matrix of Wonboyn data was then pasted into the NodeXL template operating on MS Excel 2007/2010. Resource materials downloaded from the Web supported the learning-by-doing element of the pilot study. Four visualisations on networked environmental governance are provided. The first shows unmodified data as a graph in random layout. Its purpose is to provide a benchmark against which some of the SNA procedures available for analysing data can be compared. Then follow three graph layouts, each designed to meet the areas of information need established at the study's beginning. Results suggest, in the author's opinion, any time invested in learning-by-doing with NodeXL will reward those wishing to understand, manage and communicate the complexity that is networked governance. Suggestions on how the Australian Centre for Excellence in Local Government, and practitioners in local councils, could be early adopters of this innovation by using data already available to them are offered, so that they may undertake similar pilot studies

On the Difference Between Being and Object

If philosophy in the wake of Kant’s transcendental revolution tends to orient itself around a subjective principle, namely the human subject, then recently various schools of thought have proposed a counter-revolution in which philosophy is given an objective, non-human starting point. In this historical context, ‘object-oriented ontology’ has sought to gain the status of first philosophy by identifying being in general with the object as such—that is, by systematically converting beings to objects. By tracing the provenance of contemporary object-oriented philosophy to a key moment of late 18th-century German philosophy, this paper develops the idea of the difference between being and object in order to demonstrate that object-oriented thinking, contrary to its anti-Kantian claims, adheres to the central axiom of transcendental idealism, that this axiom is an unsolvable paradox, and that Kant and Novalis give us the resources for a transformative philosophical project that meets the challenge of the cultural and theoretical turn to objects

Review of Angela Carter and Decadence: Critical Fictions/Fictional Critiques by Maggie Tonkin

Review of Angela Carter and Decadence: Critical Fictions/Fictional Critiques by Maggie Tonki