Studies An Irish Quarterly Review最新文献

{"title":"The Dail General Election of August 1923","authors":"Anthony White","doi":"10.1353/stu.2023.a911714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/stu.2023.a911714","url":null,"abstract":"The Dail General Election of August 1923 Anthony White (bio) The general election to the Fourth Dáil held on 27 August 1923 was significant in several ways. For the first time all Irish women over the age of twenty-one were eligible to vote. Previously only women over thirty could do so. Another important feature of the election was that for the first time since 1800 all geographic constituencies were contested.1 Perhaps most surprisingly in retrospect partition did not figure as a major issue in the election. The Constitution of the Irish Free State formally ratified by the Dáil and the British Parliament in December 1922 required that a general election be held within a year of the ratification of the Constitution.2 The Chairman of the Executive Committee, W. T. Cosgrave, called the election three months earlier than the deadline. The number of seats to be contested rose from 128 in 1922 to 153, while the number of constituencies rose by just two, from 28 to 30. Most constituency representation was enlarged. Galway had nine seats, while Donegal, Dublin North and Dublin County had eight. 34 Sinn Féin TDs had been elected unopposed in 1918; in 1921 all 124 TDs were elected without opposition, and 34 did not face a contest in 1922.3 But on this occasion, 1923, all TDs (except for the three elected by Dublin University graduates) had to face the electorate.4 This was to represent a new pattern that was to characterise all subsequent Irish elections.5 There were 376 candidates for the 153 seats, Galway being the constituency with the highest number at 24. 132 candidates lost their deposit. There were just seven women candidates, of whom five were elected. These were Constance Marckievicz, Mary MacSwiney, Caitlín Brugha, Kathleen Lynn, and Margaret Collins-O'Driscoll. Turnout at the election was 60.3%, to date the lowest in the history of the state. Apart from the still unsettled condition of the country, holidays and harvesting made August a less than ideal month for election canvassing, and it is notable that no subsequent Irish general election has been held in that month. Dublin had the highest turnout at 65.2% with Leinster at 62.2%. Munster was at 62.0% and Connacht/Ulster at 52.3%.6 Turnout was highest at the National University of Ireland (73%), Waterford (70.3%) and Clare (67.4%), the lowest being in Galway (45.7%), Mayo North (48%) and Cork [End Page 354] West (50.6%). 74 outgoing TDs were re-elected, and there were 77 new TDs.7 18 outgoing TDs lost their seats. Of those elected in June 1922 ten had died, including Arthur Griffith and four violently killed in the Civil War – Michael Collins, Cathal Brugha, Harry Boland and Sean Hales. Four had resigned in the period prior to the calling of the election and twenty-two did not contest the election. Cumann na nGaedheal (CG), with 39% of the vote, took 63 seats; republicans, with 27.3%, had 44 seats; Labour had a share of 10.6% and 14 seats; 12.1.% for the Farmers' Party (FP) elected 15 TDs; wh","PeriodicalId":488847,"journal":{"name":"Studies An Irish Quarterly Review","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135782371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gnostic Undercurrents in Our Avatar Culture","authors":"Fiachra Long","doi":"10.1353/stu.2023.a911716","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/stu.2023.a911716","url":null,"abstract":"Gnostic Undercurrents in Our Avatar Culture Fiachra Long (bio) We are sometimes attracted by a striking, colourful and convenient initiative, but like the apparent bargain that flatters to deceive, or the colourful mushroom that turns out to be poisonous, some level of discretion is advised. The emergence of ChatGPT as the lead Artificial Intelligence platform is striking, colourful and convenient, but a high level of discretion is urgently advised. Apparently advanced algorithms can master more facts and possible connections than the human brain, and so there is a temptation to hand over human decisions to these platforms, thus relegating the importance of human experience as a litmus-test of wise action. This concern may seem trivial when you are looking for the best deal on a hotel room. It may even seem reactionary when computer power promises rapid analysis of medical conditions and an accelerated production of cures. The concern now is that technology might push an increasing number of situations beyond the scope of human judgement. This poses the question: should certain choices be reserved to humans and not handed over to machines or are we moving inexorably to a stage where important decisions and choices are moving out of biology into the digital sphere? The computer challenge ChatGPT is a Large Language Model (LLM) Conversational Agent that can use conversational language to interact with its user either by text-input or speech-input (such as Alexa or Siri). Generative AI systems can appear to 'think' by linking input terms to many tags or tokens that 'suggest' themselves in response to the inputted spoken words or text. These responses are drawn from a vast number of word strings based on probability. Responses are likely to be plausible but, governed by currently trained programmes, sometimes wide of the mark and false. ChatGPT generates predictions based on the data available up to 2021. Developers are working to reduce machine 'hallucination' as far as possible. OpenAI has warned that students using [End Page 371] ChatGPT who presume accuracy of detail in ChatGPT results would need to check them carefully1 and this same advice is given in other reports.2 It is like having several spellings presented in a spell-check. These failings, however, are likely to be short-lived. ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI on 30 November 2022, free to all, and within two months had 100 million monthly users (Hu, 2023 as referenced in Gimpel et al.). Subscription versions such GBT-3.5 could manage 4000 tokens while GBT-4 (March 2023) already can manage 32000 tokens. These impressive advances in a few months look likely to accelerate. In the meantime, scientists need to be more careful in their use of psychological descriptors. Too many speak of machines being 'conscious' and 'thinking'. Indeed William Reville has written of one researcher, Blake Lemoine, who believed that his own Lamda AI was not only sentient but a persona worthy of legal rights.3 These","PeriodicalId":488847,"journal":{"name":"Studies An Irish Quarterly Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135782377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House and What We Can Do About It by Rory Hearne, and: Housing in Ireland: Beyond the Markets ed. by Lorcan Sirr, and: Ways out of the European Housing Crisis ed. by Christoph U. Schmid","authors":"Martina Madden","doi":"10.1353/stu.2023.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/stu.2023.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House and What We Can Do About It by Rory Hearne, and: Housing in Ireland: Beyond the Markets ed. by Lorcan Sirr, and: Ways out of the European Housing Crisis ed. by Christoph U. Schmid Martina Madden (bio) Rory Hearne, Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House and What We Can Do About It (Dublin: HarperCollins Ireland, 2022), 342 pages. Lorcan Sirr (ed.), Housing in Ireland: Beyond the Markets (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2022), 313 pages. Christoph U. Schmid (ed.), Ways out of the European Housing Crisis (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2022), 416 pages. There is nobody in Ireland who can be unaware of the crisis in housing and homelessness at this point, either through first-hand experience or its prevalence in the news cycle. Unfortunately, despite the fact that almost 11,000 people are homeless and an innumerable amount are unable to find or maintain a secure affordable home, no imminent solution to the problem has been found. Three books published this year examine issues around the crisis and attempt to contribute to its resolution. Gaffs, by Maynooth University lecturer Rory Hearne, sets out ‘to inform, engage, educate and inspire real change in housing’.1 Housing in Ireland: Beyond the Markets, edited by Lorcan Sirr, a Senior Lecturer in Housing, Planning and Development at the Technological University Dublin, brings together a range of housing experts and practitioners to ‘deliberately neglect market issues, and instead focus on elements of housing that have never been examined deeply enough’.2 Ways out of the European Housing Crisis, edited by Christoph U. Schmid, Professor of European Private and Economic Law at the University of Bremen, seeks to fill the gap of the ‘scientific evaluation, categorisation and comparison aimed at exploiting the potential of tenure innovation and diversification’3 in housing. These are three very different books. They are for different audiences and reflect this in their content as well as the overall style and tone of the writing. But together they make a valuable contribution to the conversation around this often complex and seemingly intractable issue. Gaffs is an accessible book aimed at the cohort most affected by the current crisis – Generation Y, or Millennials (broadly defined as people born [End Page 120] between the years 1981 to 1996), who are also known as Generation Locked-out, Generation Rent, and Generation Emigration. Aside from Hearne’s academic credentials, he is a well-known media personality who has a strong online presence via his Twitter profile and Reboot Republic podcast, making him well-placed to reach the readers this book targets. Gaffs answers the first part of the book’s subtitle in the first four chapters. No one can get a house – primarily – because of a historical policy shift in the 1980s where the Irish state stopped building public housing and instead moved to an economic framework that promoted the market provision of housing;","PeriodicalId":488847,"journal":{"name":"Studies An Irish Quarterly Review","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134949890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}