White Pages Research Articles

Where To?: An Indian Perspective on Australian Aboriginal Poetry in English

I WOULD LIKE TO BEGIN THIS PAPER BY QUOTING TWO WELL-KNOWN AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL poems in English. first one, My Other, a work of Anita Heiss, was published in 2006, and the second one, The Unhappy Race, a work of Oodgeroo, was published in 1964 in what is considered to be the first Aboriginal book of poetry, We Are Going. Before we proceed further let's have look at these two poems:My OtherYou are my otherBut you do not steal my gazeOr consume my thoughtsI am not preoccupiedWith trying to understand what it's likeTo be youTo be whiteTo be the majorityTo be the so-called definition of civilityHow it must feel to assume the superior role.And I do not ask youwhat it's like to be non-IndigenousTo be born to have the freedom to chooseto be politically activeOr to choose to participatein the reconciliation process.I do not ask you to tell methe entire history of your peopleor the customs of your ancestorsor why your people can't seem to agree on a topic.I do not ask these questions not only becauseThey may make you feel uncomfortableBut because it is important for meTo determine my own roleMy own placeIn this world that we share.So I wish you would startAsking yourself the same questionsYou ask of meAnd that you would focusMore on the selfRather than the other. (Meanjin 178-79, original emphasis)The Unhappy RaceWhite fellow, you are the unhappy race.You alone have left nature and made civilized laws.You have enslaved yourselves as you enslaved the horse and otherwild thingswhy, white man?Your police lock up your tribe in houses with bars,We see women scrubbing floors of richer women.Why, white man, why?You laugh at poor blackfellow, you say we must be like you,You say we must leave the old freedom and leisure,You say we must be civilized and work for you.Why, white fellow?Leave us alone, we don't want your collars and ties,We don't need your routines and compulsions.We want the old freedom and joy that all things have but you,Poor white man of the unhappy race. (We Are Going 32, emphasis mine)Despite the differences in tone and mission, the two poems have two things in common. Both poems show a desire for a sovereign Aboriginal identity (which is evident from the italicized phrases of the poems) and (as identity is hardly sovereign and is mediated by issues of difference and the notion of the other), interestingly, both poems, in spite of their surface-level denial of the heavy presence of the in Australian Aboriginal life, show how one Aboriginal poet tried to negotiate the notion of the other some forty years back and how another is trying to do the same at present. Australian Aboriginal poets' engagement with the trope of the other is not surprising at all if one keeps in mind the history of colonization in Australia, the highly racialized policy of assimilation, Howard's firm stand of not begging apology on the issue of stolen generations, and the fuss that went in the name of high-sounding Reconciliation. Heiss's poem was written in 2006. Between 2006 and 2013, so many things have happened in Australian politics: Howard had lost the election, the Parliament had heard the words of apology, and even Rudd had made way to Gillard. Against such a backdrop, this paper would try to situate Australian Aboriginal poetry in English-which since its birth has been an essential part of Aboriginal activism in Australia-to see where one of the very powerful genres of contemporary world literature could go.Adam Shoemaker, in his famous book Black Words White Page, has argued that the diversity of Australian Aboriginal literature is best illustrated by Australian Aboriginal poetry. …

Copyright and Computer Generated Materials

Computer generated materials are ubiquitous and we encounter them on a daily basis, even though most persons are unaware that this is the case. Blockbuster movies, television weather reports and telephone directories all include material that is produced by utilising computer technologies. Copyright protection for materials generated by a programmed computer was considered by the Federal Court and Full Court of the Federal Court in Telstra Corporation Limited v Phone Directories Company Pty Ltd. The court held that the White Pages and Yellow Pages telephone directories produced by Telstra and its subsidiary, Sensis, were not protected by copyright because they were computer-generated works which lacked the requisite human authorship. The Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) does not contain specific provisions on the subsistence of copyright in computer-generated materials. In the light of the decision of the Full Federal Court in Telstra v Phone Directories it is timely to consider whether specific provisions should be enacted to clarify the position of computer-generated works under copyright law.

Le Blanc et le Noir: The Spectre behind the Spectrum in Maupassant's Short Stories

In Maupassant's short stories, as psychologically distressing events proliferate and his protagonists descend into madness, polychromatic modernity fades away to reveal a stark world of black and white. Such monochromism also engenders an anxiety-ridden reading experience. Black and white draw our attention beyond intradiegetic events to the diegesis itself, where Maupassant's play on textual shape and punctuation gestures towards the non-signifying white page beneath the comfortingly signifying black-ink words. This article explores Maupassant's dissolution of the spectrum, as he moves beyond the nineteenth-century's fascination with colour towards the bleak, monochromatic realm at the very edges of the symbolic.

Faecal incontinence in rural and regional northern Queensland community-dwelling adults

In Australia, faecal incontinence, the involuntary loss of liquid or solid stool with or without a person's awareness, has been reported in 8% of the South Australian and 11% of the urban New South Wales community-dwelling populations. Studies conducted in 2004 and 2005 reported faecal incontinence in more than 20% of colorectal and urogynaecological clinic patients at Townsville Hospital (a referral centre serving rural North Queensland). This prompted concern regarding the level of faecal incontinence in the community. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of faecal incontinence in the North and Far North Queensland urban and rural communities. The sample size was based on the New South Wales postal surveys (11% prevalence). Higher rates were expected in North/Far North Queensland, so prevalence there was estimated at 12.1% (confidence interval ± 2%, ie the true level to be between 10.1% and 14.1%). The sample for each of the Townsville, Cairns (in Far North Queensland) and rural/remote settings was calculated at 1022. The database for the present study was compiled using a systematic randomised process selecting two private names from each column on each page of the Cairns and Townsville White Pages® (Cairns: 1112 urban, 481 rural, 226 remote; Townsville: 1049 urban, 432 rural, 320 remote). The questionnaire covered personal demographics, health/risk factors, bowel habits, nutrition (fibre and fluid intake) and physical activity. Faecal incontinence was defined as accidental leakage of solid or liquid stool in the past 12 months that was not caused by a virus, medication or contaminated food. To improve the response rate a participation incentive of a chance to win a $250 voucher or one of ten $50 vouchers was offered in the initial mail-out. The initial survey was mailed out in July 2007; two follow-up surveys were mailed out to non-responders in September 2007 and January 2008. One hundred randomly selected non-responders were telephoned in February 2008. A total of 1523 responses provided a 48.1% response rate. Faecal incontinence prevalence was 12.7% (174/1366) with no gender or locality differences. Prevalence increased significantly with age in men (p=0.034), but not in women. Only 10 respondents with faecal incontinence consulted their doctor in the previous year for this reason. Incontinent respondents had significantly more medical conditions including urinary incontinence, coeliac disease, irritable bowel syndrome, injury to the anus, bowel cancer, spinal cord disease, neurological disease and psychiatric problems (all, p< 0.05). Stool-related accidental bowel leakage including faecal incontinence (defined), soiling with flatus or urgency, was 18.2%. An additional 3% were possibly incontinent, having disclosed leakage of mucus, bothersome or passive staining. Of the remaining respondents, 16.2% reported incontinent episodes due to an acute illness, 22.9% could not always differentiate between flatus and stool, and only 35.2% reported neither concerns with nor accidental bowel leakage. There is a high level of untreated faecal incontinence in North/Far North Queensland communities. Demand for treatment will increase because of the ageing population and the expectations of younger, more assertive cohorts.

The White Pages: Diversity and the Mediation of Race in Public Business Media

In this article we examine the empirical impact of diversity on non-white participation in corporations by analyzing images of racial minorities that appear in business magazines. Our findings indicate that odds of non-white inclusion increase when explicit reference to diversity is made. We also find that non-whites are more likely to be depicted as having ancillary roles in corporations; rarely are they presented in leadership positions. Media images are not only produced and disseminated, they are translated into social practices. Therefore we also consider how the images that are included in the magazines we reviewed may inform organizational practices that shape the racial makeup of corporate workplaces. We argue that how and when non-whites are included in these media reinforces an emergent ideology, which concedes that diversity enables corporations to give discursive attention to race without prompting deep investigations into continuing patterns of racial inequality in the workplace.

Exploring International Relations in Civilization IV: The World Within Your Hand's Reach

When reading any textbook, many students see black ink on endless white pages. Instead of focusing on the concepts within the book, they cannot wait to finish the assigned chapter and call it a day or night. However, if the students were to play video games relating to the subject, then they would be part of the action, free to explore the world by their own control. This type of learning holds true with International Relations and Sid Meier’s Civilization IV (2005), which gives the player the power, as leader, to be the first to build up his or her civilization. As decision makers of his or her empire, the student faces an endless number of international issues: the nature of power, international cooperation, conflicts, sustainable development, and the environment. This short essay explores how Civilization IV can teach students and help them better understand international relations, both its defining concepts and complexities.

Windblown by Édouard Manceau (review)

Reviewed by: Windblown by Édouard Manceau Jeannette Hulick, Reviewer Manceau, Édouard Windblown; written and illus. by Édouard Manceau; tr. from the French by Sarah Quinn. OwlKids, 2013 26p ISBN 978-1-926973-77-7 $16.95 R 3–6 yrs The wind blows a series of random shapes onto the blank white pages of this picture book, shapes that are then arranged as parts of various animals, with additional thin black lines completing details for each critter. A cumulative “House That Jack Built”–style litany accompanies the changing arrangement of shapes: they first take the form of a chicken’s head (“‘They’re mine!’ said the chicken. ‘I saw them lying around!’”), then the head, fin, and tail of a fish (“‘No, they’re mine!’ replied the fish. ‘I’m the one who cut the paper into the pieces that the chicken saw lying around’”), and so on. This continues from chicken to fish to bird to snail to frog, until the wind intercedes and scatters them toward the reader: “They’re yours now too. What will you do?” Although the story is very slight, the shape-rearranging is entertaining and the crisp, bold shapes—a large, light blue semi-circle, an orange pie-shaped wedge, a set of gray and black circles, and a red tulip-like shape—are visually appealing against the plain white backdrop. This title lends itself to a number of uses, from the obvious creative shape-arranging indicated in the book (a printable page of the book’s shapes is available online), to lessons on wind or simple drawing techniques à la Ed Emberley. Pair this with one of Lois Ehlert’s shape-based picture books such as Color Zoo (BCCB 9/89), Emberley’s Go Away, Big Green Monster (BCCB 3/93), or even Matisse’s famed cut-paper collages for a enjoyable lesson/storytime on shape and form. Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Scientific Racism and Masculine Recuperation: Charles Lummis and the Search for “Home”

Scientific Racism and Masculine Recuperation:Charles Lummis and the Search for “Home” Tereza M. Szeghi (bio) Like many of his peers who came of age during the second half of the nineteenth century, Charles Lummis (1859-1928) chaffed against the constraints of what he and other antimodernists viewed as the overly civilized Eastern United States.1 However, in Lummis’ own estimation, one of the many qualities that distinguished him from his peers was his willingness to take the necessary action to combat the devitalizing impact of city life by heading west to experience unfamiliar lands and cultures. As he states in the opening pages of his 1892 travel narrative, A Tramp Across the Continent, “I am an American and felt ashamed to know so little of my own country as I did, and as most Americans do” (1-2). In 1884, having spent too much time “chasing the alphabet across the white page” (19) as editor of Chillicothe, Ohio’s Scioto Gazette, he decided to embark on a great outdoor adventure by walking 3,507 miles from Cincinnati to Los Angeles (where he had accepted a job as editor of the Los Angeles Times). Lummis rejected the notion that he was motivated by money, despite his periodic mailing of letters to the Chillicothe Leader for publication—letters he later edited and compiled in Tramp. Rather than economic gain, Lummis claims he sought “the exhilarant joy of living outside the sorry fences of society, living with a perfect body and a wakened mind, a life where brain and brawn and leg and lung all rejoice and grow alert together” (1-2). This quotation sums up key themes that would define Lummis’ life: an antimodern sensibility, an exceptional sense of self, and a commitment to promoting the American West as a site for spiritual and physical regeneration. He also allows room for discovery, room that largely was filled by the American Indian and Mexican American peoples and cultures he would encounter in the Southwest. A careful consideration of A Tramp Across the Continent allows us to appreciate not only the degree to which Lummis was in fact able to step “outside the sorry fences of society,” but also in what ways his upbringing and education molded and constrained his thought and writing. I argue that Eurocentric standards of civilized domesticity and contemporary ethnographic trends played a critical role in shaping Lummis’ assessment and comparative ranking of Mexican Americans and members of different American Indian tribes. Although Lummis often is referenced casually as an ethnographer and credited for his promotion of the U.S. Southwest, the specific ethnographic influences on Lummis’ writings and his use of domestic space as a barometer of civilization have not received extended consideration. It is my contention that these two threads of Tramp (the ethnographic and the domestic)—and the relationship between them—function to uphold prevailing Anglo American [End Page 91] assumptions of the period. Such an examination of Lummis’ narrative will allow us to appreciate the interested and intentional nature of his observations, his claim to have stepped outside the influence of his own cultural milieu notwithstanding. Tramp was among the first of several ethnographic works Lummis authored. Despite his lack of professional ethnographic training, he believed firsthand experience qualified him to contribute to this new scientific field (a field that was just gaining official academic status during the late nineteenth century) while educating a broad readership about a region largely unknown to residents of the Eastern United States.2 In the preface to his 1891 A New Mexico David and Other Stories and Sketches of the Southwest, Lummis asserts that he was no “random tourist” but, as a result of deep acquaintance with the region and careful study, an expert in Southwestern histories and cultures (v). However, he did not position himself as an academic scholar but rather as a popular writer who aimed to educate readers about the Southwestern United States and to encourage their travel to the region.3 Lummis was just one of many writers to navigate the historically fluid disciplinary divide between literature and anthropology. Since the late nineteen-eighties, increasing academic attention has been given to the relationship between these...

The Australian Community Does Not Support Gender Selection by IVF for Social Reasons.

This study was carried out to determine the attitudes of the Australian community to IVF by a reliable community poll. Cross-sectional surveys, conducted by telephone of a random sample of 650 Australians were undertaken. The sample was drawn from the residential phone numbers in the Australian electronic “White Pages” and stratified by geographical area with quotas controlled by gender and age to be representative of the Australian population. The participants were asked to answer to three questions about gender selection, and their response was measured as “yes-allowed,” “no-not allowed,” or “undecided” for each of the questions. Whilst 91% of respondents supported the use of IVF to help infertile couples, only 20% supported gender selection within IVF or for family balancing. When it came to the use of IVF only for gender selection, only 17% were in favour. This survey shows that Australian community overwhelmingly opposes gender selection for social reasons.

Ghosts of Southern Imperialism: Caribbean Space, Functions of Fiction, and Thomas Nelson Page’s “No Haid Pawn”

TAYLOR HAGOOD Florida Atlantic University Ghosts of Southern Imperialism: Caribbean Space, Functions of Fiction, and Thomas Nelson Page’s “No Haid Pawn”1 IN LIGHT OF THOMAS NELSON PAGE’S PRO-WHITE-SOUTH STANCE, IT IS very strange when complexity regarding race appears in his writing. For example, in his early frame narratives African American narrators serve his purpose of telling stories about harmonious race relations in antebellum plantation culture, yet those very narrators often lace their stories with subversive elements that undercut the very positive stories of slavery they tell. In these cases it is difficult to discern whether such characters somehow get out of Page’s control (which presents a problematic theoretical situation) or if Page realizes the other side of slavery and includes it in his crafting of otherwise pro-slavery, pro-Old South tales. Although the stories succeeded in bringing about their apparent desired effect of eliciting the sympathy of white Northerners and Page gave no known intimation that he was up to something more complicated,theslippageswithintheseAfricanAmericans’rhetorichint at an awareness of the sham of the Peculiar Institution on the part of the narrators if not Page himself.2 In the cases I am mentioning, such indications of slavery’s terrors are little more than hints, shadows in an otherwise sunny overall portrait, but in one of these stories terror becomes explicit. The story is “No Haid Pawn,” part of Page’s 1887 collection InOleVirginia. To observe that the story shows the dark side of slavery is to state a fact many scholars have 1 I want to thank Barbara Ladd, John Lowe, and Kirstin Squint for the SSSL panel this paper originated in. Thanks to my colleagues who offered prescient feedback, including Eric Berlatsky and Papatya Bucak. Thank you to Susan Donaldson and the anonymous reader for Mississippi Quarterly for their tremendously helpful comments. 2 Frederick Douglass had pointed out this doubleness of rhetoric a good four decades before Page when he noted that for fear of spies sent by masters onto plantations, slaves invariably reported that they led happy lives when asked by white people about their living and working conditions. 140 Taylor Hagood acknowledged, but what has not been so much explored are the reasons it does so or the machinery and underpinnings of the story’s critique.3 The question of why Page includes this discordant story is not easy to answer because doing so requires probing into the tricky techniques and purposes of Page’s compositional method. It also requires a careful investigation into the layering of time in the story, specifically the relationship betweenthepresent(post-Reconstructiontime)andthepast (the antebellum era). In “No Haid Pawn,” Page works out this temporal element through configurations of space in a specific kind of figure that can by its nature cross temporal borders—a ghost. Many of the other stories in Page’s first collection strategically deal with the past, before the Civil War, to soften antebellum sins and allay reader qualms with a sanitized portrait of a bygone and now irrelevant institution. “No Haid Pawn,” however, seeks to treat time and space so that both weave between a marked distance and an equally marked proximity. In other words, Page brings the antebellum past crashing into the story’s present with a ghost as the bridging figure while simultaneously invoking spaces distant from the Virginia setting.4 He does so in order to craft a horror story written in line with other horror stories by American writers before him. The specific kind of spatiality Page creates blends Virginia space with a Caribbean spatial model, and he particularly evokes the Haitian Revolution, a not uncommon move for white Southern writers (Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! is a famous later example).5 Page uses long-standing fears of slave revolt to infuse his own historical moment 3 For treatments of this story, see Cuenca, Cowan, and Rubin. Fred Hobson extensively investigates Page’s oeuvre for critiques of slavery as a system inflicted on white Southerners “beneficial for the Negro but detrimental for the Southern white” (141). In Page’s thinking, while race-based slavery may have held back the white South economically and culturally, its ordering of race...

List Media: The Telephone Directory and the Arranging of Names

List Media: The Telephone Directory and the Arranging of Names

Text Accessibility by People with Reduced Contrast Sensitivity

Contrast sensitivity is reduced in people with eye disease, and also in older adults without eye disease. In this article, we compare contrast of text presented in print and digital formats with contrast sensitivity values for a large cohort of subjects in a population-based study of older adults (the Salisbury Eye Evaluation). Contrast sensitivity values were recorded for 2520 adults aged 65 to 84 years living in Salisbury, Maryland. The proportion of the sample likely to be unable to read text of different formats (electronic books, newsprint, paperback books, laser print, and LED computer monitors) was calculated using published contrast reserve levels required to perform spot reading, to read with fluency, high fluency, and under optimal conditions. One percent of this sample had contrast sensitivity less than that required to read newsprint fluently. Text presented on an LED computer monitor had the highest contrast. Ninety-eight percent of the sample had contrast sensitivity sufficient for high fluent reading of text (at least 160 words/min) on a monitor. However, 29.6% were still unlikely to be able to read this text with optimal fluency. Reduced contrast of print limits text accessibility for many people in the developed world. Presenting text in a high-contrast format, such as black laser print on a white page, would increase the number of people able to access such information. Additionally, making text available in a format that can be presented on an LED computer monitor will increase access to written documents.

Child maltreatment, subsequent non-suicidal self-injury and the mediating roles of dissociation, alexithymia and self-blame

ObjectiveAlthough child maltreatment is associated with later non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), the mechanism through which it might lead to NSSI is not well understood. The current retrospective case–control study examined associations between child maltreatment and later NSSI, and investigated the mediating roles of dissociation, alexithymia, and self-blame. MethodsParticipants were 11,423 Australian adults (response rate 38.5%), randomly selected from the Australian Electronic White Pages, aged between 18 and 100 (M=52.11, SD=16.89), 62.2% female. Data were collected via telephone interviewing. Main outcome measures were reported history of child maltreatment (sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect) and reported 12-month NSSI. Dissociation, alexithymia, and self-blame were examined as potential mediating variables in the relationship between child maltreatment and later NSSI. All analyses were conducted using logistic regression and adjusted for age and psychiatric diagnosis. ResultsResults differed by gender. Compared to no child maltreatment, physical abuse (OR 2.75, 95% CI 1.68–4.51) and neglect (OR 2.56, 95% CI 1.65–3.99) independently increased the odds of NSSI among females. Physical abuse (OR 2.69, 95% CI 1.44–5.03) increased the odds of NSSI among males. Sexual abuse did not independently increase the odds of NSSI for males or females. For females, self-blame had the greatest effect on the child maltreatment–NSSI relationship (OR decreased by 14.6%, p<.000), although dissociation and alexithymia also partially mediated the relationship. For males, dissociation had the greatest effect (OR decreased by 12.9%, p=.003) with self-blame also having a relatively strong effect. ConclusionsThe results indicate that child maltreatment, and in particular, physical abuse, is strongly associated with the development of subsequent NSSI and may be partially mediated by dissociation, alexithymia, and self-blame for females and dissociation and self-blame for males. Altering attributional style (through cognitive therapy or emotion focussed therapy) and improving the capacity to regulate emotions (through dialectical behaviour therapy) may contribute to reduction or cessation of NSSI.

Hyper-Border. The Contemporary U.S.-Mexico Border and Its Future By Fernando Romero/LAR

Hyper-Border. The Contemporary U.S.-Mexico Border and Its Future is Fernando Romero/LAR's (his architectural firm) attempt to show the complexity of U.S.-Mexico relations in 300 black, white, and magenta pages. This nicely designed book is divided into two main sections. The first contextualizes the U.5.-Mexico border region by presenting basic statistics on both nations and comparing their border with other borders around the world. The second is a compendium of.the major issues pertaining to U.S.-Mexico relations: Security; Narcotraffic and Corruption; the Informal Sector; Migration; Education; Economic Development and Trade; Transportation; Energy; Health; Environment; and Urbanization. The second half also features 38 imaginary scenarios of what the relationship between these two countries might look like in the near future.

The Viability of Removing Personal Information from Online White Page Directories: Are Consumer Perceptions Aligned with Reality?

This research undertakes two related studies to investigate the difficulties faced and costs incurred by consumers in order to remove information about themselves from online white page directories. These directories contain an aggregate of personal information and create threats to consumers by allotting easy access. A survey study examines consumer awareness of these online directories and expectations of opt‐out procedures. A field study tracks attempts at actual information removal for twenty volunteers to provide a real‐world assessment of the effectiveness of current opt‐out mechanisms. The results reveal a dramatic misalignment between consumer expectations and the reality of current opt‐out practices. The results highlight the costs and difficulties associated with opt‐outs and bring the validity of these mechanisms into question.

The Wild Book (review)

Reviewed by: The Wild Book Hope Morrison Engle, Margarita . The Wild Book. Harcourt, 2012. 130p. ISBN 978-0-547-58131-6 $16.99 R Gr. 4-7 This lyrically composed novel in verse, based on the life of the author's grandmother, is set in Cuba in 1912, when eleven-year-old Fefa is first diagnosed with "word blindness," or dyslexia. While the doctor treats the diagnosis as an irrevocable and untreatable scar, Mamá responds by giving Fefa a blank book and the instructions to use it for writing: "Throw wildflower seeds/ all over each page . . . Let the words sprout/ like seedlings,/ then relax and watch/ as your wild diary/ grows." It is not an easy task: Fefa is mocked by her siblings, dizzied by the glowing white pages, and frightened about the possible consequences of her inability to read. In the end, however, Fefa's slow and observant style of reading saves the family from a dangerous situation. The plotting, though carefully constructed, is secondary here to the remarkable, intimate depiction of Fefa's struggle with dyslexia; Engle is masterful at using words to evoke this difficulty, and even those readers unfamiliar with the condition will understand its meaning through her rich use of imagery and detail ("The skin of a frog/feels just as slippery/and tricky as a wild/inky word"). An author's note provides information about the real life Josefa de la Caridad Uría Peña as well as some basic information about dyslexia. [End Page 452] Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

A Prompt to the Web: The Media and Health Information Seeking Behaviour

Objective, Design, Setting and ParticipantsThe objective was to investigate media influence on consumers' health related behaviours. A cross-sectional survey of randomly selected adults (18+ years) residing in the Hunter Region of New South Wales Australia was conducted. The sample was selected using a combination of the white pages and random digit dialling.Main Outcome MeasuresThe proportions of respondents who recalled seeing or hearing about conditions or treatments in the media over the 12 months prior to interview (August 2009–August 2010) and their subsequent health related behaviour.ResultsAlthough most survey participants reported seeking health information from their doctors, around two-thirds of survey participants (551, 68.8%) recalled hearing, seeing or reading about one or more medical conditions (total = 1097 instances) in the mainstream media over the past 12 months. Almost 40% of respondents (307, 38.4%) stated that they had looked for more information about a condition as a result of hearing about it in the media, and most used the internet (269, 87.4%). More than a quarter of respondents (215, 26.9%) indicated that they had asked their doctor about a condition they had heard about in the media. Around half of those who asked their doctor (109, 50.6%) reported that their inquiry resulted in them receiving treatment, of whom almost half (53, 48.3%) reported being prescribed a medicine.ConclusionThe survey results show that consumers become aware of medicines through traditional media and then to learn more often turn to the internet where quality of information may be poor. (252 words)

Tick Tock Clock: A Phonics Reader (review)

Reviewed by: Tick Tock Clock: A Phonics Reader Hope Morrison Cuyler, Margery . Tick Tock Clock: A Phonics Reader; illus. by Robert Neubecker. Harper/HarperCollins, 2012. [32p]. (I Can Read Books) Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-136309-2 $16.99 Paper ed. ISBN 978-0-06-136311-5 $3.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. K-1. Twin girls spend the day with Grandma while their mother works, and the passing hours of the day are marked by the ticking clock and their activities. The girls are a bit on the rambunctious side—whipping paint at each other, splashing their stockinged feet into the lake, hitting each other with pillows—and by the end of the day, Grandma's tuckered out. There is plenty of repetition to support the beginning [End Page 304] reader here: every single page opens with "Tick tock," there are no more than five words on any given page, and every single line ends with either "tock" or its rhyme. While there are a few stretches to fit this formula (particular when Grandma busts out the "wok" to make dinner), most episodes fit nicely into the story of the girls' day. The girls' inclination toward mischief is pretty much the only plot, though, making for a fairly thin story; much of the book's humor lies in Grandma's reactions to the girls, but this subtle, adult-angled humor may be lost on the intended readership. Neubecker's line and digital color illustrations contrast a tidy layout, with spot art against white pages, against the girls' wildness, their arms flailing, hair flying, and mouths wide open. Grandma's countenance decidedly shifts from happy to tolerant to frazzled to just plain worn out as the day wears on, though when the girls are gone and she collapses into her easy chair at the end of the day, there is a smile on her face and a framed picture of the girls at her side: "Tick tock. Asleep like a rock!" Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Association between soft drink consumption and asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among adults in Australia

The aim of this study was to examine the association between soft drink consumption and self-reported doctor-diagnosed asthma and COPD among adults living in South Australia. Data were collected using a risk factor surveillance system. Each month a representative random sample of South Australians were selected from the electronic White Pages and interviews were conducted using computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI). Among 16 907 participants aged 16 years and older, 11.4% reported daily soft drink consumption of more than half a litre. High levels of soft drink consumption were positively associated with asthma and COPD. Overall, 13.3% of participants with asthma and 15.6% of those with COPD reported consuming more than half a litre of soft drink per day. By multivariate analysis, after adjusting for socio-demographic and lifestyle factors, the odds ratio (OR) for asthma was 1.26 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.01-1.58) and the OR for COPD was 1.79 (95% CI: 1.32-2.43), comparing those who consumed more than half a litre of soft drink per day with those who did not consume soft drinks. There was a positive association between consumption of soft drinks and asthma/COPD among adults living in South Australia.

The Pleasures of Contamination: Evidence, Text, and Voice in Textual Studies (review)

Reviewed by: The Pleasures of Contamination: Evidence, Text, and Voice in Textual Studies Michael Epp The Pleasures of Contamination: Evidence, Text, and Voice in Textual Studies. By David Greetham. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. 402 pp. $27.95. This collection of almost entirely previously published work is a window to the state of the field of textual studies in the 1990s. Greetham's wide-ranging collection engages multiple problems for textual studies, including its generally low status relative to other work carried on in literature departments, its fraught relationship to copyright law, and its capacity to shed new light on philosophical problems related to epistemology and the historical development of textual communication. Most of the essays provide a light and informed survey of a debate in the field and then make a gentle push in one direction or the other through historical analysis and multiple, often hilarious, examples (for instance, discussions of the Barbie Liberation Movement and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers). The small amount of new material in the book attempts to draw a thread through all of the essays, observing that all of the chapters are concerned with what Greetham calls "contamination." The term is loosely defined, quite deliberately, and generally signifies as both a technical textual studies term meaning a "confluence whereby an external or precedent text invades the composition (consciously or unconsciously) of the current text" (10) and as a more philosophical term meaning a conflict arising from the invasive mixing of different texts (21, 95), "where one mode of discourse (political, religious, musical, philosophical, and so on) leaks into or infects another, so that we experience both at the same time" (1). Although the book identifies multiple aims, for the most part Greetham's explicit goal is to embrace contamination and "celebrate" its pleasures (8). Greetham makes a heroic effort to argue for the significance of this thread, and for the status of the book as more-than-collection, but at the end of the day, The Pleasures of Contamination is little more than a collection of essays you can find elsewhere [End Page 109] (probably for free if you are affiliated with a university library), and, moreover, a collection that, as a whole, will only be of interest to graduate students who want to learn about what mattered to textual studies in the 1990s. There are some wonderful essays in the book, as one would expect from a distinguished scholar and accomplished writer such as Greetham. Probably the best is "Textual Forensics," which plays off double meanings for text as authority (textus) and as tissue (textile) and for forensics as argument (rhetoric) and as empirical study of evidence (science) (59). The contradictions or conflicts between these terms "contaminate" each other, revealing problems and potentials for the way we think about text, knowledge, and evidence. Also interesting is "The Telephone and Dr. Seuss: Scholarly Editing after Feist v. Rural Telephone." In the famous 1991 copyright case Feist, Greetham explains, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided that a telephone book's white pages were not protected under copyright law because they "did not manifest a genuinely 'creative' or 'original' contribution to human knowledge" (284). Greetham extrapolates that old-fashioned editing practices that seek ideal editions with invisible editing are threatened by this decision, and that, in fact, more complex and editor-centered methodologies will become more common under conditions where the editors must show creativity and originality in order to make any money and to avoid being ripped off. While Greetham appears a bit naïve at times—assuming that scholarly editors in general might change their firmly held ethical relationship to their methodology in order to line their pockets—the argument is clever and insightful and plays to Greetham's strength, which is to bring disparate practices and discourses together, not in order to tie a nice clean bow but to see what kind of mess they make. If the book is taken as a record of the field of textual studies in the 1990s, then the robust, open-minded approach to "postmodernism" that informs many of the essays is valuable indeed, for Greetham's thoughts on this are an important response to a...