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Click, print, fire: 3D printing and the Arms Trade Treaty
Get PDFOn 3 June 2013, countries united to sign the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in an effort to combat illegal arms transfers and regulate legal arms transfers between countries. The ATT provides an unprecedented regulatory framework that encompasses previously unregulated military materiel such as combat aircraft and battle tanks. However, exactly one month earlier, a new threat emerged when shots were fired from the world’s first entirely 3D-printed plastic polymer firearm—the Liberator. On 12 May, two Daily Mail journalists printed a copy of the Liberator and smuggled it past airport-style security. Despite this threat, 3D-printed firearms are not mentioned in either the treaty negotiations or the final treaty text. This article analyses whether the legal architecture provided by the ATT can address the three main challenges posed by 3D printing: firearms, components and digital design files. This article reviews the ATT through the lens of international disarmament law and international institutional law, analysing commentary from superior international courts and eminent legal scholars. Ultimately, this article posits that while the ATT adequately addresses 3D-printed firearms, it creates a legal void in the space of 3D-printed components and digital design files, meaning that weapons can still be transferred by sending them component by component or by sharing the original design file online. A solution is possible within the current parameters of international law, but this will depend on states’ willingness to give proactive legal powers to the ATT’s primary organ—the Conference of States Parties
Introduction
Get PDFEach year the Bruce Hall community and the wider university community are the beneficiaries of the accomplishments of the Cross-sections editorial team. Annually, the current editorial team produces a noted, scholarly journal of the works of their fellow Bruce Hall residents
Legal Brief on Commercial Space Flight Regulation
Get PDFThe submitted piece is a legal brief on the regulation of collisions of commercial space flight vessels with other space objects. It illuminates the inadequacy of current international treaties that regulate outer space exploration and explores the complexity of jurisdiction in outer space. The brief proposes a comprehensive liability scheme, the development of domestic regulation of commercial spaceships and the removal and the management of space debris to regulate collisions in outer space
Taking care in prehistoric Latin America: A case study of care giving among hunter-gatherers in the Final Late Holocene
Get PDFA published case of metastatic cancer from a hunter-gather group in pre-Columbian Argentina analysed the effects this illness would have on group dynamics. This essay uses the published details of the case study to analyse the possibility of care being provided to the dying individual. After a detailed discussion on the skeletal analysis and diagnosis offered by the original authors, this essay proposes that prior to his illness this individual would have been an active contributor to his group, likely involved in the transport and manipulation of stone. The functional impact the individual would have experienced as the result of his illness is discussed including the impact on the rest of his group, i.e. reduced contributions to group subsistence and inability to maintain residential mobility in a nomadic lifestyle. This essay argues that, based on the accommodation of their ill member by continuing to supply food despite his deteriorating state, this group of hunter-gatherers valued their individual members more so than their contribution to the group. This case study provides an insight into the value system of a pre-Columbian hunter-gatherer group outside of the more commonly examined subsistence activities, trading and burial practices
When the forest calls: My experience on the Primate Behavioural Ecology Field School in Cambodia
Get PDFBiological anthropology is deeply rooted in developing a better understanding of the behaviour and biology of humans and nonhuman primates. Though the classroom remains an effective tool for sharing theories and discussing concepts, behavioural studies continue to be enriched by the opportunity to enter the field and make real world observations. This essay shares how the Primate Behavioural Ecology Field School in Cambodia provided the opportunity for undergraduate and postgraduate students to observe and report on nonhuman primates within their natural forest habitat. Based at the Veun Sai-Siem Pang Conservation Area in northeast Cambodia, the field school allowed students to not only collect and report on behavioural and ecological data, but simultaneously experience local environmental conservation efforts in practice
From Mardis Gras to Marriage Equality: Resisting Assimilation and Embracing Transgression
Get PDFAs public opinion around sexuality continues to evolve, social movements face the challenge of adopting those strategies most effective in dismantling heteronormativity. It is within this struggle that two dominant branches of politics arise; assimilationist politics, seeking integration within existing cultural norms, and transgressive politics, advocating a more radical platform of difference. Through an examination of foreign and domestic marriage equality campaigns, as well as the rising prominence of the Sydney Mardi Gras, this paper will show that while assimilation may be successful in gaining minority rights, only transgressive sexual politics can help achieve queer liberation
Painting beyond the stretcher
Get PDFThis article is an extract of my Honours exegesis, Boxes of Contrast and Painting Beyond the Stretcher, completed within the Painting Department at the ANU School of Art, 2015. The article focuses on my Painting Beyond the Stretcher research, which investigates the relationship between colour, shape and materiality through the language of abstract painting. I explore the way shape, colour and material relate to each other through intuitive and responsive processes of paint application. My fundamental concerns are how these elements can construct ambiguous pictorial spaces and therefore create visual tensions within the pictorial order of marks applied. This project also explores how non-traditional painting materials can aid this, with contextual research that includes contemporary artists who work with similar ideas; such as Katharina Grosse and Jessica Stockholder. This research informs how my studio practice contributes to contemporary art and the field of an expanded notion of painting
Nativism and the poverty of the stimulus: A demanding argument for the ‘innateness’ of language
Get PDFThis article critiques nativism about language (also called linguistic nativism), the view that language capacities are somehow innate, associated especially with Noam Chomsky (for example, 1980, 1993). The focus of the article is on the so-called ‘poverty of the stimulus argument’ (PSA), often taken to be the backbone of nativism, which says that children’s knowledge of language is underdetermined by their linguistic environment. I first argue for how the nativists’ claim should be interpreted—an important task given arguments that the notion of ‘innateness’ in science is problematic (e.g. Mameli & Bateson 2006). I then outline and critique one example of a PSA, that of Lidz et al. (2003), applied to English anaphoric ‘one’. I show that the study is far from successful in demonstrating a PSA for this feature of language. I also argue that the problems with Lidz et al. (2003) are instructive in showing how difficult it is to empirically substantiate a PSA. The article concludes that nativists about language needs to move away from the PSA and look to alternative means of supporting their thesis
Looking east: Vincent van Gogh and Japan
Get PDFDuring the formative years of his life in Arles, Vincent van Gogh became deeply enamoured with the art of Japan. This vision, while short-lived, was crucial for the eventual flowering of his unique painting style. Therefore, it is vital for us to understand the Japanese aesthetics and philosophy hidden in his paintings. This article commences with a discussion on the origins of van Gogh’s Japonism interests, and then proceeds with an analysis of how this manifested itself in three periods of his ‘Japanese Era’, including where it drew on Japanese study, philosophy and utopia as well as paintings and prints. The visual analysis technique is widely utilised in this article to consider van Gogh’s paintings and the Japanese influences on their colour, line, texture and size. The research shows that van Gogh established a rich connection to Japanese aesthetics and created the largest numbers of masterpieces of his career in his ‘Japanese Era’
‘Doing’ masculinity: Enactments of masculinity and manliness in drawings of rifles and bayonets in the Australian Imperial Force, 1914–1918
Get PDFDuring the First World War, a number of Australian soldiers used drawing as a way to communicate and record their experiences of active service. As a neglected body of archival material, these drawings offer unique insights into how men of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) understood and conceptualised their masculinity and manliness while abroad. In this study, I analyse depictions of rifles and bayonets in 91 drawings by Australian soldiers to explore the ways in which a number of the men of the AIF enacted militaristic and ‘working-man’ masculinity. I argue that while both of these masculinities existed concurrently in soldiers’ drawings, the bayonet was commonly used to further militaristic virtues of aggression and martial prowess, whereas the rifle tended to reassert the pre-war ideals of the working man. For the first time, Australian soldiers’ drawings fall under the gaze of the historian and they present a nuanced, sometimes contradictory, understanding of how soldiers imagined and enacted their own masculinity and manliness at war