The Forgotten Menzies: Cultural Puritanism and Australian Social Thought

Recent debates on the social thought of Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, describe his career as a programme either to realise liberalism, conservatism, or liberal conservatism in Australian institutions and national identity. While these analyses have some merit, they fail to capture the historical context of Menzies' age, particularly the kind of Britishness for which he stood, a Britishness compatible with modes of liberalism and conservatism, but far more comprehensive than either of those traditions conceived narrowly as systematic ideologies. We contend that what Menzies was trying to do for much of his career was to reinvigorate what modern historians, and Menzies' contemporary social commentators, identified as a cultural puritan inflexion to British character. Once the nature of this cultural puritanism is understood, Menzies' political ideas, at least up until the Cold War, look less like attempts to promote liberalism or conservatism, and more as a project to reinvigorate a conception of Britishness that many during Menzies' time feared was in mortal danger by the forces of affluence, individualism, and socialism. We focus on his most well-known speech, “The Forgotten People” (1942), and analyse it in the context of many of his other writings, published and hitherto unpublished.     

试论数据采集与虚拟修复在大足石刻修复中的应用

文物作为一种不可再生的宝贵资源,其本体上的保护修复工作均需慎之又慎,需遵循国际上规定的“最小干预”及“可逆性”基本原则.为此,虚拟修复成为对文物动手修复时的重要辅助手段.然而,多数文物具有复杂立体结构和色彩,传统的虚拟修复技术难以实现逼真效果.三维激光扫描是近年来飞跃发展的一项高新测绘与信息技术,具有无损、空间精度高、速度快等突出优势,在文物数字留存及相关保护应用中发挥了重要作用.三维激光扫描技术与高清摄影技术相结合,为文物的虚拟修复带来新的契机.本文结合文物虚拟修复基本需求分析,提出了基于三维激光扫描技术的文物虚拟修复关键技术与工作流程,并以国家一号石质文物保护工程——大足石刻宝顶山千手观音造像的保护修复为例,进行了应用实践,综合历史资料和现有数据的分析,实现了三维形态及色彩的虚拟修复.结果表明,基于三维扫描的虚拟修复能够提供更为逼真的三维虚拟修复模型,供修复专家研究参考.     

Role of Monitoring in Historical Building Restoration: The Case of Leaning Tower of Pisa

A short summary is presented of the studies and the actions of Committees appointed in past 50 years for the Tower of Pisa. The discussion first addresses the attempts carried out during the whole history of the Tower to measure its movements and the efforts made to understand the origin and causes of its inclination. A history of foundation rotation has been also deduced by means of a precise architectural survey, which has led to a diagnosis for the inclination and its increase in time. As a consequence, several hypotheses for its stabilization have been proposed. All the measures for leaning tower stabilization need the application of observational method for their implementation. The observational method is strictly based on a comprehensive monitoring system, both described in the second part of the paper. The aims are to stress the importance of a well-conceived monitoring system and to propose the extension of concept of monitoring to construction history details. The data and actions described are from the work carried out by committees appointed by Italian Government during the second half of 20th century, in particular by the committee chaired by Professor Jamiolkowski, appointed in 1991. The authors have collaborated with this committee since 1993, and they are still in charge of the monitoring and maintenance of the Tower of Pisa.