Sinead Lee

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Articles

Australian voters have spoken — do we know what they said? - ABC listen

1 week ago | abc.net.au | Scott Stephens |Sinead Lee

In 2000, after a hotly contested American election and amid an equally contested vote count, outgoing US President Bill Clinton famously remarked to a pool of reporters, “The American people have now spoken, but it’s going to take a little while to determine exactly what they said.”In this particular case, what was at issue is whether Democratic candidate Al Gore or Republican candidate George W. Bush won the state of Florida, and therefore the election.
Is disillusionment a feature of democratic politics, not a bug?

2 weeks ago | abc.net.au | Scott Stephens |Sinead Lee

Democracy is often lauded as a peculiarly just and effective form of government — one that enjoys the benefits that flow from twin virtues of popular engagement and political accountability. And yet the effectiveness and resilience of democratic politics depends on the trust voters have in political institutions.
What are we doing when we vote?

3 weeks ago | abc.net.au | Scott Stephens |Sinead Lee

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first federal election to be held in Australia after the passage of Senator Herbert Payne’s private member’s bill, which made voting compulsory. In 1922, only 57.95 per cent of registered voters turned out. Payne’s home state of Tasmania had the poorest showing (45.93 per cent), whereas Queensland — where voting in state elections had been compulsory since 1914 — saw the highest (82.66 per cent).
AI in education - is it a technology to be feared, or a tool to be taught? - ABC listen

1 month ago | abc.net.au | Scott Stephens |Sinead Lee

This is the second of two episodes recorded in front of a live audience as part of a special “Week with Students”, a collaboration between Radio National and ABC Education. Shortly after OpenAI made its powerful generative AI tool, ChatGPT, available to the public in October 2023, there was a torrent of reports forecasting the “end of the essay” or warning that the advent of advanced chatbots would sound the death knell of academic integrity.
Are we on the brink of a world without books? On Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”

1 month ago | abc.net.au | Scott Stephens |Sinead Lee

This is the first of two episodes recorded in front of a live audience as part of a special “Week with Students”, a collaboration between Radio National and ABC Education. Of the three great dystopian novels published on either side of the Second World War — Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” (1931), George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (1949) and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” (1953) — it is Bradbury’s vision of a future without books that can lay legitimate claim to being the most prescient.
Ramadan: Is hope a flimsy emotion, or can it grow from devastation?

1 month ago | abc.net.au | Scott Stephens |Sinead Lee

We arrive, at last, at the end of our Ramadan series — and the second of our pair of positive responses to radical disappointment with the world. For some, hope is untrustworthy, amounting to little more than dreaming or wish-fulfilment. For others, hope can turn into kind of bad faith demand, leading to dishonest politics (in the name of being up-beat or staying positive) or even to habituated practices of avoidance.
Ramadan: Is optimism a virtue, or a form of moral evasion?

1 month ago | abc.net.au | Scott Stephens |Sinead Lee

For the last two episodes, we’ve been discussing what might be called negative or aversive responses to radical disappointment with the world — even though, as we’ve seen, both despair and fear have characteristics which commend them. In the next two episodes, we’re turning to rather more positive responses. There is little doubt that pessimism enjoys a certain cultural cache these days. It is easy to say that things are bad and getting worse.
Ramadan: Should we try to live without fear, or learn to face it together?

2 months ago | abc.net.au | Scott Stephens |Sinead Lee

Throughout the month of Ramadan, we are examining the range of emotions that arise in response to radical disappointment with the state of the world. Last week, we looked at the centripetal emotion of despair — a response that can cause us to withdraw into ourselves. This week, we turn to the centrifugal emotion of fear — which can take the form of paralysis, but most often is directed outward toward some threat. There are few emotions that are more natural than fear.
Ramadan: Should we avoid despair, or can it give rise to hope? - ABC listen

2 months ago | abc.net.au | Scott Stephens |Sinead Lee

The political climate over the last six months in much of the world has been undeniably dark. It’s little wonder that so many people seem to have given in to despair.
How hate speech in healthcare tears at something sacred in our common life

2 months ago | abc.net.au | Scott Stephens |Sinead Lee

At a time when the Australian community seems to be so deeply divided along multiple faultlines, there was something somewhat heartening about being able to share a common outrage. That’s only word that captures the depth of public response that greeted a now infamous video in which two nurses at Bankstown Hospital seemed to express extreme anti-Israeli/antisemitic sentiments and allegedly boasted about killing Israeli patients in their care.