We are pleased to announce the first

writers festival to come to the Syd-

neys hills district, the Northholm
Writers Festival, featuring a subject
humans have searched to answer
since the start of mankind The Com-
pulsion of Fate.
The festival will occur on the leafy,
tranquil, rural school grounds of
Northholm Grammar School, 50
minutes from Sydneys CBD and will
play host to seminars, open discus-
sions and performances from the very
experienced, entertaining and popu-
lar triple J HACK presenter Kaitlyn
Sawrey, Artist Catherine Gomer-
sall, Associate Professor Kerry Sher-
man, Lecturer Peter Menzies and PhD
Student Stephanie Rennick of Mac-
quarie University, Comedian Jackie
Loeb, Professor Aaron Kay of Duke
University, America and senior
teachers and students .
Gourmet food will also be provided
during breakfast, morning tea, lunch
and afternoon tea while the schools
very talented bands and writers take
to the stage to perform.
Welcome to the first edition of
The Compulsion
Must see: The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 American-
Australian science fiction action
film that is written and directed by
The Wachowski Brothers. The film
feature's a dystopian future that in
is thought to have been controlled
by human power however is realis-
tically a simulated reality known as
the Matrix.
In the film, the protagonist, Neo is
contacted and shown signs from
well known criminals Morpheus and Trini-
ty and resultantly discovers that his
world is a lie and the human race are
actually batteries contained within a ma-
chine named the matrix. Neo is then
given a choice, which he is told has al-
ready occurred. Through his decision, Neo
becomes aware that what he believed was
his life was controlled and free will had
never realistically occurred, a concept
developed largely to question whether we
live in a world that is out
of our control and fate
truly does exist.
The matrix is a must see
for any Fatalism vs Free
Will or sci-fi geek and
will spark the burning
question to whether we
really control our world
or we live under the
motherboard of another.
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1
1:
24/ 07/ 2014
The Compulsion
Northholm Writers Festival Newsletter
NORTHHOLM GRAMMAR SCHOOL PRESENTS
The Northholm
Writers Festival
1
Must See 1
Believe it or not 2
Free will or Fatalism 3
Feature Article 3
Whats Trending 4
Speaker of the Week 4
I NSI DE THI S I SSUE:
The newsletter will be released weekly in anticipation to the event and is available in an
e-newsletter and printable format.
The newsletter will hold pages of stories, articles and news, sourced from around the
world and picked to bring you the most relevant, engaging and entertaining infor-
mation about the Compulsion of Fate .
For more information, you can
visit the school website:
www.northholm.nsw.edu.au
The event website:
https://
www.northholmwritersfestival.
weebly.com
or call:
(02) 9656 2000
VOLUME 1, I SSUE 1 1: PAGE 2

1

Believe it or not; Stories of Fate from around the World
Caption describing picture or
graphic.
James Deans Porsche
In September 1955, James Dean was
killed in a horrific car accident whilst
he was driving his Porsche sports car.
After the crash the car was seen as
holding a continuously unfortunate
fate.
Firstly, when the car was towed away
from accident scene and taken to a
garage, the engine slipped out and fell
onto a mechanic, shattering both of
his legs.
The engine was then bought by a doc-
tor, who put it into his racing car and
was killed shortly afterwards, during
a race. Another racing driver, in the
same race, was killed in his car, which
had James Dean's driveshaft fitted to
it. When James Dean's Porsche was
later repaired, the garage it was in
was destroyed by fire.
Later the car was displayed in Sacra-
mento, but it fell off it's mount and
broke a teenager's hip. The car was
then on its way to Oregon, when the
trailer that the car was mounted on
slipped from it's towbar and smashed
through the front of a shop.
Finally, in 1959, the car mysteriously
broke into 11 pieces while it was sit-
ting on steel supports.
It seems since its grave beginnings,
the car was built to cause havoc and
disaster everywhere it went, but was
this the cars fate or just continuous
bad luck?
Above: James Dean in his Porsche
prior to the crash
Right: The wreck of Deans car after
the first wreck.
A bullet with Henry
Zieglands name written
on it
Henry Ziegland thought he had
dodged fate. In 1883, he broke off a
relationship with his girlfriend who,
out of distress, committed suicide.
The girl's brother was so enraged
that he hunted down Ziegland and
shot him. The brother, believing he
had killed Ziegland, then turned his
gun on himself and took his own
life. But Ziegland had not been
killed. The bullet, in fact, had only
grazed his face and then lodged in a
tree. Ziegland surely thought him-
self a lucky man. Some years later,
however, Ziegland decided to cut
down the large tree, which still had
the bullet in it. The task seemed so
formidable that he decided to blow
it up with a few sticks of dynamite.
The explosion propelled the bullet
into Ziegland's head, killing him.
The bullet, in fact had only grazed his face and lodged in a tree...the
explosion propelled the bullet into Zieglands head, killing him.
Above: The bullet with Zieglands name
written on it.
Twin Boys,
Twin Lives.

The stories of identical twins' nearly
identical lives are often astonishing,
but perhaps none more so than those
of identical twins born in Ohio. The
twin boys were separated at birth,
being adopted by different families.
Unknown to each other, both families
named the boys James. And here the
coincidences just begin. Both James
grew up not even knowing of the oth-
er, yet both sought law-enforcement
training, both had abilities in me-
chanical drawing and carpentry, and
each had married women named Lin-
da. They both had sons whom one
named James Alan and the other
named James Allan. The twin broth-
ers also divorced their wives and mar-
ried other women - both named Betty.
And they both owned dogs which they
named Toy. Forty years after their
childhood separation, the two men
were reunited to share their amazing-
ly similar lives. (Reader's Digest, Jan-
uary 1980)
For more stories of fate, visit:
http://www.oddee.com/item_82923.aspx
Above:
The twin boys after meeting later in
life.
THE COMPULSION
PAGE 3

Inside Story Headline
Free will or Fatalism-Your Philosophical options are waiting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W-QXP_IuPc
When Faced With a Hard Decision, People Tend to Blame Fate
Life is full of decisions. Some, like what to eat for breakfast, are relatively easy. Others, like whether to move cities for a new job,
are quite a bit more difficult. Difficult decisions tend to make us feel stressed and uncomfortable we dont want to feel responsible
if the outcome is less than desirable. New research suggests that we deal with such difficult decisions by shifting responsibility for
the decision to fate.
The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Fate is a ubiquitous supernatural belief, spanning time and place, write researchers Aaron Kay, Simone Tang, and Steven Shep-
herd of Duke University. It exerts a range of positive and negative effects on health, coping, and both action and inaction.
Kay, Tang, and Shepherd hypothesized that people may invoke fate as a way of assuaging their own stress and fears a way of say-
ing Its out of my hands now, theres nothing I can do.
Belief in fate, defined as the belief that whatever happens was supposed to happen and that outcomes are ultimately predetermined,
may be especially useful when one is facing these types of difficult decisions, they explain.
To test their hypothesis, the researchers capitalized on a current event of considerable significance: the 2012 U.S. presidential elec-
tion.
They conducted an online survey with 189 participants and found that the greater difficulty participants reported in choosing be-
tween Obama and Romney (e.g., both candidates seem equally good, I am not sure how to compare the candidates plans), the
more likely they were to believe in fate (e.g., Fate will make sure that the candidate that eventually gets elected is the right one).
In a second online survey, the researchers actually manipulated participants decision
difficulty by making it harder to distinguish between the candidates.
Participants read real policy statements from the two presidential candidates some read
quotes from the candidates that emphasized the similarities in their policy positions, others
read quotes that emphasized the differences.
As predicted, participants who read statements that highlighted similarities viewed the
decision between the candidates as more difficult and reported greater belief in fate than
the participants that read statements focused on differences.
The two studies presented here provide consistent and converging evidence that decision difficulty can motivate increased belief in
fate, write Kay and colleagues.
The researchers note that these findings raise additional questions that still need to be answered.
For example, do people invoke fate when they have to make decisions that are personally but not societally significant, such as
where to invest money? And are we just as likely to invoke luck or other supernatural worldviews when faced with a difficult deci-
sion?
Belief in fate may ease the psychological burden of a difficult decision, but whether that comes at the cost of short-circuiting an
effective decision-making process is an important question for future research, the researchers conclude.
Article retrieved from:
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/when-faced-with-a-hard-decision-people-tend-to-blame-fate.html
Listen to Professor Aaron Kay in the festival Open Discussion on why we believe in fate at the festival on the 19th of December on
the grounds of Northholm Grammar School.
Address: 79 Cobah rd, Arcadia, 2159, NSW
Northholm Writers
Bucket of Cold
Water prize in
2013.
*In 2013 she
toured with Hey
Geronimo, Sam-
pology, Kate
Miller-Heidke
and Spoonbill
reporting on the
rise of the alter-
native music
festival scene in
India.
Bio:
Kaitlyn Sawrey, originally from the
hinterland region of the Sunshine Coast
now lives in Sydney, working as a multi-
media journalist and producer of triple
js HACK program (a national radio
current affairs program).
At the festival Kaitlyn will be speaking
alongside Wedny Mackenzie and Jackie
Loeb at the "DOOMSDAY" seminar
which will discuss the many failed
prophecies that have occured throughout
history, including the Mayan calendar
2012 prophecy and 2000 prophecy.
Interesting Facts:
*Kaitlyn has reported from all over
Australia including pieces on:
Youth suicide in the remote
WA desert.
The deadly floods in Queens-
land
The political fight over wild
rivers in Cape York.
The housing issues in Darwin
and Central Australia.
*She was a part of the HACK team
who were awarded the Media Watch
Phone: (02) 9656 2000
Email: fiddletownfestivities@gmail.com
Web: northholmwritersfestival.weebly.com
The Compulsion
of Fate
We are on the web!
www.northholmwritersfestival.weebly.com
Whats Trending...
Speaker of the week: Kaitlyn Sawrey