Dr Neville Buch

Professional Historian and History Consultancy Services Brisbane

Category: Blog

  • What is Wrong with “the world”: A Christmas Thought in Our Violent Times

    What is Wrong with “the world”: A Christmas Thought in Our Violent Times

    What is wrong with our world? It is a perennial question, which come to those at this time of year who are not swayed by the Xmas glitter; or the glitter of any other season.     There are many answers but I believe there is ONE primary answer: perception. What is meant, in the…

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  • My Message in the End of the 2023 Commemoration Season From 2022 for 2024, and the year after…

    My Message in the End of the 2023 Commemoration Season From 2022 for 2024, and the year after…

    Dear friends,     This is my message at the end of the 2023 commemoration season for Queensland and Brisbane, and speaks for work of the Southern Brisbane Suburban Forum Inc., in 2024, 2025, and so forth.     In 2022 the Forum had an important discussion on how we can “Break the Cycle” of…

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  • Being Alone and Urban Space: 4 Conferences, 2 Weeks, 2 Cities

    Being Alone and Urban Space: 4 Conferences, 2 Weeks, 2 Cities

        I am alone, not like this blank page to which I start to write. We are thrown into a world (Heidegger).     I woke up slowly this morning. I slept in. Each morning since 17 December 2016, I awake with a sense of disorientation, and in loss and grief. I am alone.…

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  • The Semantics of Work: Reference and Meaning

    The Semantics of Work: Reference and Meaning

    A response to Justine Toh’s, “Work has conquered every day of the week. How do we remain human in a world that worships toil?” The Guardian, Monday 20 November 2023, online.       I find these days with journalism, the semantics is so much more unclear, such that one reads an enjoyable piece, about…

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  • How to provide the Educative Message?

    How to provide the Educative Message?

    Dear friends,       Educational theories from unusual places, an e-newspaper in Los Angeles, discussing housing and homeless policies. Text below.       The messaging follows the email I just sent to the Mayor, Deputy Premier, and the Brisbane City Council. Here we have community intellectuals in Los Angeles, bringing down heavily the sociological…

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  • Artificial General Intelligence replicates human intelligence in a machine? A CLEAR NO!

    Artificial General Intelligence replicates human intelligence in a machine? A CLEAR NO!

    These seven points are important to understand in the debate between I.T. designers and the philosophers.       SEVEN IMPORTANT CORRECTIONS.       Understand the opening statement is the conclusion in most debates. No need to go down rabbit holes.       The general rhetorical statements on AGI, for its promise, is…

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  • Semantics, Power, and Local Politics in Misunderstanding Urban Sociology

    Semantics, Power, and Local Politics in Misunderstanding Urban Sociology

      By Neville Buch, Ph.D., MPHA Third Paper, Exploratory, Version for 2023 Sydney TASA Conference   Slide 1. Introduction In preparing the publication and presentation papers for the Sydney TASA Conference, at the end of November 2023, this is a third paper, an exploratory pre-look at the arguments, explaining the sociological models in more detail…

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  • Have We Learnt Anything? The Failure of Higher Education in the Neo-Liberal University

    Have We Learnt Anything? The Failure of Higher Education in the Neo-Liberal University

    Have we learnt anything in this beast we might call, “the higher education industry”. I fear that I am forced to a cynical answer, which I am sure is not quite correct, and in the analysis, it is a temporary starting point.       My cynicism comes from reading, ‘THE’, this morning, a regular…

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  • Misunderstanding interdisciplinary studies and research

    Misunderstanding interdisciplinary studies and research

    Dear friends,       It seems that university academics have existed for too long in the ivory tower, that they do not understand the dynamics of interdisciplinary studies and research. Take, for example, the Monash Study where “50 Monash executives and researchers found that ‘tangible’ factors were the main barriers to multidisciplinary research.” My paper for…

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  • History, Philosophy, Theology, and the Failure of Rankings

    History, Philosophy, Theology, and the Failure of Rankings

      Nobody understands “the state of affair” (a philosophical term) of History, Philosophy, Theology in Australia from The Times Higher Education (THE) Supplement’s world rankings of universities. THE has just released the disciplinary measures in their ranking series. It is as erroneous as all ranking systems are; because the statistics used for the rankings cannot…

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