Expert Judgment Versus Public Opinion – Evidence from the Eurovision Song Contest

For centuries, there have been discussions as to whether only experts can judge the quality of cultural output, or whether the taste of the public also has merit. This paper tries to answer that question empirically, using national finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. We show that experts are better judges of quality in the sense that the outcome of finals judged by experts is less sensitive to factors unrelated to quality than the outcome of finals judged by public opinion. Yet, experts are not perfect; their judgment does still depend on such factors. This is also the case in the European finals of the contest.     

Instruments for Determining Reaction of Students,Parents, and Teachers to the Program of a Regional Hebrew High School

The rabbi-educator relationship is a major concern to the Jewish educator. The quality of the working relationship fluctuates from synagogue to synagogue. In some congregations it is excellent. However, in most synagogues the rabbi-educator working relationship is far from satisfactory. Many talented and creative educators have left congregational education in order to escape the tension and frustration associated with congregational school administration.     

Sites of Indeterminacy and the Spectres of Eurocentrism

The concepts of Europe and Eurocentrism, along with the political, cultural, and philosophical issues that are inseparable from them, touch upon many of today's most pressing concerns. This essay examines the ways in which problems of the aporia and of undecidability may shed light on the possibility of a new Europe to come. Through a comparative reading of Slavoj ?i?ek's pleas for a leftist Eurocentrism, Walter Benjamin's historical unweaving of Europe and Jacques Derrida's engagements with Europe as perpetually nonself-identical, Europe becomes visible as one of the names for the faint promise lodged in what will not simply remain transparent and itself.     

An axiomatic analysis of Egghe’s g-index

The g-index is a well-known index for measuring and comparing the output of scientific researchers, which has been introduced by Leo Egghe in 2006 as an improvement of the Hirsch-index. This article gives an axiomatic characterization of the g-index in terms of three natural axioms.