Psephy's ~ologies: psephy extra: podcast link

Monday, March 5, 2012

psephy extra: podcast link

Following some enquiries from kind people, I can offer readers a link to the podcast of my public lecture at the National Library of Australia in November 2010. The lecture, called 'Gold and wool are so yesterday', details some of the finds I made on the Meiji adventurers to 19th century Australia. There is more to come...

http://www.nla.gov.au/podcasts/collections.html
Click on this link, and scroll down the page. The podcast is approximately 48.70Mb and runs for about 60mins.

I thank the staff at the National Library for their cooperation and exuberances in helping us discover our national treasure.

In case you're wondering...

Thank you for visiting. My blog is like many others, mostly a way to extend my conversations on Twitter and/or comment on all the politics as the need arises. Politics is broadly defined here and, as I get older, I am trying to philosophise about life and politics--hence the '~ologies' (the 'psephy'--silent p--is short for psephologist, one who analyses elections).
At present, I'm seeking to find better ways for us, the electors, to engage with those, our elected. I am concerned about where too much apathy towards our politicians might lead us. I actually think the onus is on our elected representatives to engage with us as well.
I'm doing this via explorations of the idea of the 'social contract', espoused most famously by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century, but flavoured by others including Machiavelli, Hume, Locke, Kant, Mill, Arendt and Maruyama. These philosophical threads weave their way through all my posts here...they are ideas we need to revisit.

I am also a passionate educator and, after some three decades in Australia and in Japan, you'll find I have a bit to say about that too. In April 2016, I relocated to Tokyo to take up a position in the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law at Musashino University. I'll be teaching Japanese politics and peace studies to Japanese students, in Japanese. These views are my own and any resemblance to actual events is likely to be coincidental. But such are our constructed lives and opinions.