Will we be able to sustain civilization?

While agriculture made civilization possible, destructive agricultural practices have destroyed many civilizations, making it clear that without a truly sustainable agriculture civilization will not be sustainable. Neither organic nor industrial agriculture can sustain civilization on the basis of all evidence before us and thus a new form of agriculture has to be developed. New discoveries and thinking, in both agriculture and economics, are beginning to point the way to the development of such a new agriculture.     

Staging language: An introduction to the sociolinguistics of performance

Staged performance involves the overt, scheduled identification and elevation of one or more people to perform, with a clearly demarcated distinction between them and the audience. It involves the agentive use of language, building on the foundation of existing social meanings. Staged performances tend to be linguistically stylized, pushing the limits of language creativity. They have the potential to trigger significant sociolinguistic effects, circulating novel forms and contributing to language change. The paradigms used in this theme issue for approaching language performance include Bakhtin's notion of Stylization, Bell's Audience and Referee Design, Silverstein's Indexicality, Agha's Enregisterment, and Bauman's construct of Discursive Culture. Themes that run through the articles include: a concept of identity that is part product, part process; the centrality of the audience; the reflexivity of staged performance; and the importance of non‐linguistic modalities such as music and appearance. The language analysis in this collection of papers concentrates mainly on phonological features of varieties of English, finding instances of selectivity, mis‐realization, overshoot and undershoot in their performances of a range of targeted dialects.     

Attempting to Work Co-operatively in Queensland

This paper reports the results of a search for groups attempting to work cooperatively in Queensland. Results indicate there is a small number of people attempting to work co-operatively but the initiatives are tiny operations dependent upon a lot of lowly paid hard work and external help from friends or the local community. Four types of co-operative efforts were identified: the traditional, the alternative life style, the welfare oriented and the idealist The growth of worker co-operatives in Queensland will be dependent upon a long process of development, education, research and dialogue, along with the tireless efforts of those committed to the co-operative philosophy.     

Performance evaluation of normal distribution software

Methods are developed to test the performance of software for calculating the standard normal distribution function. The accuracy and implementation details of the tests are described. Results are presented on a selection of available codes, showing a wide variation in performance. At least one published code is shown to have severe defects.     

How Bad Can a Crisis Be If It Does Not Top the News?

Sudden onset of front-page news about the U.S. financial crisis, beginning September 6, 2008, may have exacerbated underlying financial problems and facilitated the spread of risk panic to other nations.     

The interplay of friends and parents in adolescents’ daily lives: Towards a dynamic view of social support

This daily diary study investigated the interplay of perceived friend and parent support in adolescents’ everyday lives. Specifically, we tested the interactive effects of friend and parent support on adolescent well‐being at both the intra‐ and inter‐individual level. A diverse sample of 119 adolescents (M_age = 15.36) completed diary reports for 2 weeks. Multivariate multilevel models demonstrated that on days adolescents felt more supported by their friends or parents, they experienced increases in their happiness and social connectedness. Additionally, parent support emerged as a protective factor for youth lacking friend support, although patterns differed at the intra‐ vs. inter‐individual level. The findings underscore the dynamic nature of social support in adolescents’ daily lives and highlight the interactive roles of friends and parents in promoting youth well‐being.