Lev Lafayette's journal

I find myself in the situation where I have a number of "almost finished" diverse projects nearing completion and several social activities worthy of mention, but without a common and unifying theme. The first involves an essay I'm composing out of pure love following several Shakespearean events which my mind raises the question: "Why Shakespeare?" After all, there were many excellent playwrights and other artists during the English Renaissance, but here we are still looking toward The Bard almost five hundred years later. It is an extraordinary achievement by any measure, and I have a few thoughts on the matter which I will circulate in the near future. Also in the "coming soon" category is a review of "Bleak Squad" at the Queenscliff Town Hall, a sort of 90s supergroup made up from members of Dirty Three, The Bad Seeds, Magic Dirt, and Art of Fighting, which I attended with Kate R., who rather delightfully took me out to see them and spend an evening at the 19th century Vue Grand Hotel (their website is so bad I won't link it). Band member Mick Harvey was also present at the lodgings, and I took the opportunity to mention how much I liked his work in "The Birthday Party". The overnight stay was also an opportunity to visit my old friend Lyle A., who now lives in the region, and also to see the famous "Black Lighthouse", apparently one of only four in the world to have such a hue.

On the RPG side of things, I notably joined Liz, Karl, Gavin, Phil, and Dan for an in-person session of "Dragonbane" on Sunday. This game is derived from the almost-mythic "Drakar och Demoner" Swedish RPG from the early 1980s, which itself was "very heavily" derived from Chaosium's Magic World booklet from Worlds of Wonder. The latest incarnation still shows these roots, albeit with some newer innovations, but still with a great deal of style and design elegance. The day previous, my dear friend from Ningxia, Dr Yanping, graced my home for lunch with Kate R., and Mel S., as well (why am I always surrounded by such fabulous women?), where I experimented with an Italian-Chinese fusion cuisine. Yanping has been away from Australia for over a year, so it was a real delight to see her again, and I'm very pleased that she'll be here for an extended period, having acquired some gainful employment at Monash University. Somehow I neglected to mention attendance at Brenda L's birthday gathering in recent entries where I played the role of waiter and provider of cocktails; especially excellent conversation with Brenda, Fiona C., Matthew C. and others. This all does sound like an extensive social life, and to be fair, that has taken a good portion of the past several days. Journaling does provide a gentle reminder that I do have other serious ("boring but important") work to catch up on; the batteries have been recharged.

The past couple of weeks have resulted in some rather pleasing work-related events. The first followed a meeting with representatives of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Western Australia which has resulted in me acquiring a test account and becoming the responsible person for approving projects that are seeking to upgrade from UniMelb's Spartan to systems like Setonix, which is the most powerful in the country and number 59 in the world (this time last year it was 28 - the landscape moves quickly!). The architecture is somewhat different to what I am used to (HPE Cray OS, HPE Cray MPI), so I'll be doing some additional learning myself and some hand-holding for researchers as they navigate and migrate data and code to this system. At the other end of the scale for the newcomers on Spartan I conducted two introductory workshops last week with some fifty attenedees. Quite a few times now, I have met researchers several years after taking my introductory courses who express their significant gratitude that I led them on the path of using high performance computing to process their data with efficiency, and hopefully, there will be a few of that nature from this cohort.

I often make the point of how supercomputers are utterly critical for current economic development with an ROI of 7:1 almost all through positive externalities, and literally save millions of lives. Could you imagine COVID-19 vaccines without HPC systems to do the simulations? We'd still be living under lockdown. Well, on a smaller scale, I was very proud to organise a researcher presentation last week for Research Computing Services (RCS) and Melbourne Data Analytics Platform (MDAP) with Dr Debjyoti Karmakar who is developing a non-invasive fetal monitoring device to prevent perinatal asphyxia for high-risk pregnancies. Dr Deb's presentation was very well received, even if he had to take a brief emergency call in the midst of it! He has been making extensive use of both the Spartan supercomputer and our Mediaflux-based data storage system, which dovetailed quite nicely with a virtual meeting a few days later with several representative from Princeton University who also are interested in integrating the HPC systems with Mediaflux, which is not as simple as it should be, but that is the nature of our work.

In my own research, I am still making good progress on studies in the psychology and sociology of climate change denial and have recently made contact with a long-standing member of the UNFCCC Accreditation Panel of Experts and Methodology Panel of Experts who shares this interest. Over the next two months or so, I am hoping to elaborate from this member's own interest on the psychological need for "belonging" and "club membership" which leads to climate science denial being strongly correlated with ideology rather than scientific evidence, and to draw a stronger correlation between this and vested interests in political economy. Ideological positions are usually strongly associated with political economy, so it should not surprise me to find such a connection, and when it comes to the damage done, there are those who are responsible, and one thing we do know from institutional and individual analysis, very few people like to take responsibility.

Several years ago, I was visited by John August of the Pirate Party as I was hosting a special dinner for visitors, and he watched with keen interest as I put together a four-course French dinner with paired drinks, music, and a multi-layered laminated menu. "You have a very organised mind", he observed kindly. Cue last Friday, and I find myself in the company of Liza D., at a multi-narrative arthouse theatrical production, "Art, War, and Other Catastrophes". It was quite an interesting show, with unexpected convergence of the past (hello Helen!) afterwards, with our discussion venturing to a slightly wayward younger friend and my consistent efforts to encourage their intellectual insight. "You would make a good father", Liza remarked, which is probably one of the nicest things that one could say to a man of my vintage. Between the two events, a moment burned in my mind is Karl B., discussing life-skills referred to what he called "shit-togetherness", the ability to manage everything from one's own mental states, to personal and household budgets, to community groups, and beyond. Karl was expressing some concern that many don't seem to acquire this skill and knowledge until their thirties, if at all.

I suggested to Karl (inspired by the skill in the Pendragon RPG, no less) that the most appropriate term was "stewardship". The word, from Old English (stigweard) itself, originally means "hall guardian". It has semi-religious overtones as well, an trend in the Judeo-Christian tradition that represents an active and responsible engagement with the environment, a point I strenously made in an address to the Unitarian Church some eight years ago, and one which our political and economic leaders have manifestly failed; we are supposed to "serve the garden in which we have been placed" (Genesis 2:15). There is a grim irony that an rational atheist and emotional pantheist finds himself appealing to Biblical verse when our nominal leaders profess a faith that they do not seem to even aspire to practise. But of course, there are very profound secular reasons as well why stewardship is the right noun to describe human interaction with our environment, rather than a protectionist laissez-faire or indifferent exploitation.

Stewardship most of all entails a sense of responsibility. Starting from oneself, it entails a sense that one will not engage in self-sabotating behaviour and put effort in making the best use of one's mind ("the mind is a terrible thing to waste") and time ("Life is short, death is long, use your time wisely"). Extended to households, whether shared or singular, it means being responsible for creating an home that is both stimulating and a sanctuary, and extended to the social world, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt, it is engagement in the public realm where social freedom, through action and dialogue, becomes manifest, within the context of the natural world as a whole. Ultimately, stewardship is the responsible and ethical planning and management of resources, whether personal, social, or environmental, and as Lamb pointed out, the greater the power, the greater the responsibility. How careless are our rulers! As Frankl remarked, without responsibility, freedom degenerates into arbitrary whims, these rampaging childish pathological monsters who crush others underfoot with their indifference.

Yesterday was the aphelion when the Earth reached the furthest distance from the sun at 157 million km (the closest distance, the perihelion, is 146 million km). It seemed appropriate on that day to describe the relatively flat shape of the solar system and how "flat earthers" need to think bigger. Interestingly, the aphelion and perihelion change with some regularity measured as Milankovitch cycles, which is a driver of long-term climate change. On that topic, I had an interview this week concerning my doctoral progress and grades to date ("mention très bien", to use the Université de Paris system). The next part of my studies is "Climate Change Denialism", which I am sure will be absolutely fascinating, having missed out on doing climate change psychology at the University of Wellington. Speaking of which, I attended a University of Wellingto alumni event on during the week with a Professor of Statistics, Peter Smith, talking on "Fluids in your phones?", about the development of liquid antenna for the next generation of mobile devices. And, to continue the theme, I have been recently offered the role to coordinate alumni events for Murdoch University here in Melbourne.

The week has also witnessed some activities in the aesthetic dimension as well. With an early submission made for Midsumma Festival, I have officially become a producer with my inaugural effort being for Liza Dezfouli's comedy-cabaret "Binosaur". Also, I have ventured out locally with Kate R., twice with aesthetics in mind, once was for Lightscape at the Botanic Gardens, which was beautiful, but rather low numbers due to drizzle, and today for a visit to the National Gallery of Victoria. This evening, I attended the awards ceremony for the Melbourne Poet's Union International Poetry Competition, which featured a marvellous and insightful speech by the well-known anarchist poet, Pi O. Finally, last night I visited ACMI for millihertz producing a rather raw and politically challenging audio-visual production with the descriptive title "Cruise Missile Intersectionality".

To finish the alliterative headings, I will conclude with some reflections on "athletics". Last week, I posted an announcement and a couple of photos of my significant weight loss over the past year (117 to 82 kgs), along with a descriptive essay on how I achieved it. I will point out that I'm not planning to lose anymore, although body composition still has room to change. I've had to hunt through my high school records - four decades in the past - to find when I had a similar weight and, in the process, have discovered my athletic records of the time, which were "quite good". I was among the best in the school for medium and long-distance running, plus I played cricket, rugby, football, and volleyball at an interschool level. But ultimately, I couldn't stand the aggressive competitiveness and the yobbish fans, and dropped out of all those activities. I hope that I can avoid all that in this rejuvenated period of my life.

I must prefix this entry with a note of appreciation to Kate R., for looking after "mes animaux de compagnie", Mayhem and Mayday, during my first recent trip to China and Rafe EC for the second. It's good to have such excellent neighbours in my life. My companion ratties are now approaching an entire year of age, which, by a rule-of-thumb, is about 30 years on a human scale. As always, I prefer to let my rodent friends a free-range lifestyle and in this case the study is their home. Poor Mayday, however, is currently in protective custody as his larger brother has power-groomed him a little too much, and his back has too many bite marks. Whilst he disagrees, I assure him it's for his own good, and he seems to be recovering in his relative solitude, spending most evenings snuggled up on my shoulder; it's good to be a rat in my home.

This week, after returning from China, I have, as can be expected, caught up with a lot of work-related business. But I have not neglected my social life either. Kate took me out to the "Ballet of Lights: Sleeping Beauty". It was a very family-friendly affair and, as Kate described it, "P-plates for experiencing ballet". But it was at the Capitol Theatre, a venue I adore, and the costumes with embedded lights were attractive and effective. The following day I caught up with Mel during the day, whom I haven't seen for too long, and then Liza D. for dinner and discussion about her forthcoming performance. The following evening I found myself at Carla BL's Winter Soltice gathering where conversation was vibrant and diverse, but spent most time with Julie A., who joined me today at the Australia-China Friendship Society meeting which was addressed by Dr Fiona Swee-Lin Price on bi-cultural experiences, history, and understanding. Frankly, the presentation was nothing less than glorious, and all attendees thought very highly of the presentation and insights.

It has not been all smooth sailing on this return week, however. I have, unfortunately, experienced a couple of disappointments, one in the form of an otherwise knowledgeable person who stubbornly refused to accept a descriptive error on their own part that was objectively wrong. This occurs more often from political partisanship and typically results in increasingly aggressive responses as the cognitive dissonance kicks in. The other, which I look upon from the benefit of extensive lived experience, is a somewhat sub-optimal life-choice for the person, assuming they care about their future success, but normatively it's their prerogative. In situations like this, one can only offer future support, and then we will remember ("memories in future tense", as "The Church" described it decades ago).

The second part of my visit to Nanjing was now more formally part of the Jiangsu People-to-People Conference. Whilst other conference attendees made their way to the truly impressive Nanjing City Wall and Zhonghua Gate I went to Zhongshan Mountain Park instead, as I visited the Wall the night before on my back to the hotel from the Confucian temple and academy area of Fuzi Miao. The evening visit was helped by meeting two young mechanical engineering students from Yunnan province, extra-memorable as we almost managed to get ourselves stuck on the wall's confines as we travelled so far engaging in excellent conversation on China, Australia, and scholarship.

The practical upshot was that I had a morning spare, and the visit to the Zhongshan Mountain Park was glorious in its beauty. There are several notable attractions at the Park, all of which are deserving a visit, but I had a particular priority to pay homage and go to the Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, "father of modern China", first president of the Republic. Sun Yat-Sen was a practical revolutionary and a highly nuanced political, economic, and national theorist whose views, drawing on liberalism, socialism, and anarchism, have certainly been extremely influential on my own. The grounds of the Mausoleum, buried according to his wishes, provides an astounding view of Nanjing.

After our hosts provided a banquet lunch (which would be followed by a banquet dinner, and then another banquet dinner the following day), I rejoined the international guests for a visit to the Grand Baoen Museum Buddhist Temple. The museum part included a good number of relics and in situ archaeological digs, along with some delightful modern artworks. The reconstructed pagoda temple is an attraction in its own right, but it is difficult to capture the original porcelain beauty that captured the imagination of so many visitors; alas, it was destroyed in the Taiping Revolution.

The following day was a more formal part of the conference. Moderated by the vice-governor of Jiangsu Province, Fang Wei, an excellent opening speech was given by the governor, Xu Kunlin, and was followed by a variety of former politicians and ambassadors from around the world, because that's the sort of people I sometimes run with. There were over 40 countries represented by some 145 attendees, with 17 international speakers, including yours truly. I spoke about the history of the Australia-China Friendship Society, our work in building cultural ties and understanding, and the formal relationship that the state of Victoria has with Jiangsu Province. It was particularly notable that some speakers made a point of China's commitment to "green technology"; despite being the world's biggest manufacturer, and producer of greenhouse gases, China already has falling GHG emissions, along with massive implementation of renewable technologies, forestration, and electric vehicles. We could certainly learn from them.

I find myself in Melbourne for a mere several days between concluding my recent holiday to China and returning to said country for a conference, and intresting enough, a new city for me to visit (Nanjing) albeit one relatively close to the several just visited (Beijing, Suzhou, Wuxi, Hangzhou, and Shanghai). The purpose of this upcoming visit is an international conference for the 70th anniversary of Jiangsu (Province) Friendship Associations and I'll be there in an official capacity and, so I've been told, I'm expected to give a brief speech on behalf of the small Australian delegation. Between work demands, and a furious effort to get in some substantial progress on my Euclid University doctoral studies, I've even managed to get a hint of a social life with a couple of enjoyable dinners with friends and a couple of gaming sessions (along with moving of the substantial RPG Review Cooperative library to my premises).

I'm also going to take this opportunity to express my valedictions to the recent passing of activist and author Tracy Sorensen. We knew each other quite well in the mid to late 1980s in Western Australia when we were both involved in the youth wing of what would be the Democratic Socialist Party. Fellow-comrade at the time, Neville Spencer has written a very good summary of Tracy's life for "Green Left Weekly" and, the day before she died, a rather heartfelt account of meeting her partner was published in "The Guardian". Although Tracy and I had not really been in contact for literally decades, I do have very fond memories of her excellent humour, steadfast commitment to justice and environmentalism, and her excellent organisational ability. The universe has been a bit unjust in taking her early, yet with her whimsical sense, she even managed to write about her illness from her organ's point-of-view. So fare well, old comrade and friend. It truly was a honour to know you.

The second part of our time in Beijing involved a visit to the Great Wall, an incredible example of human engineering, a series of connected fortifications with parallel protections that spans over 20,000kms in total. Specifically, we visited the Juyong Pass part of the wall, which is quite close to Beijing itself and served not just a defensive structure (if you controlled the pass you had an open door to Beijing) but also as a trading post. That evening we ventured into the old Beijing hutongs (winding laneways) where, as is our want, we spent most of the time in a local cat cafe with a dozen or so well-cared felines. The Scottish fold with different coloured eyes was quite enchanting.

The following day was a visit to the Forbidden City (forbidden to all but the imperial family and eunuchs). This was the former home of 24 Ming and Qing dynasty Emperors for over 500 years. The vast complex, roughly 1km by .75km and surrounded by a 50m moat, consists of almost 10,000 rooms and expresses its opulance through the vast courtyards in prime real estate. There are all sort of geomancy reasons for the layout and numerous temples that would require essay-length analysis to do it justice, but overall it's enough to say that this was the most important seat of power in traditional China and it shows.

After that it was a plane trip to Shanghai and a bus ride to Suzhou, a city I have visited before and remember fondly. Suzhou presents itself as "the Venice of China" which probably stretching it a bit, although I was delighted by a join Venetian-Suzhou conference paper on canal management last year. Last year I had the opportunity to visit the Humble Administrator's Garden; this year was the Lingering Garden, built with four distinct styles of foliage. Suzhou has over sixty classical gardens, which are recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Although busy, they are a good opportunity for quiet reflection.

A great deal of my voluminous spare time in the past week or so has been spent on various China-related projects. The first was a social dinner with the Australia-China Friendship Society last Thursday week at the well-regarded "David's Hot Pot". It was an opportunity for Kate to meet another vector among my friendship circles, and I was pleased to have the presence of Dr Fiona, who will be speaking to the society in a month's time on various cross-cultural matters. A few days after this social event, there was a trade and cultural delegation from Sichuan that hosted a mini-conference at the University of Melbourne. I provided a short speech on the history and activities of the ACFS, whilst speakers from Sichuan and city associations and the Deputy Consul-General made their contributions as well, along with a charming presentation by a young journalism student from the University - a bright future awaits you.

Then, two days later, a high-level delegation from Guizhou Province came to visit as well, and the ACFS hosted a small meeting, which, due to a mutual interest, also included a discussion on the philosophy of mind. Both delegations included future invitations to their respective provinces, so perhaps that will become a combined trip in the new year. In the meantime, on Sunday, I take the great silver bird to Beijing for a two-week visit to that city, the Great Wall, Longmen, Suzhou, Wuxi, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. When I return to Melbourne, I have only a week here before I have to head off again to Nanjing to attend the 70th anniversary conference of the Jiangsu Friendship Association.

On a related tangent, this week I also managed to get to visit the Melbourne Immigration Museum. Despite living here for more than half my life and with the building's architecture rather suiting my tastes, I have neglected in all these years to actually enter the place. With the last week of their Notre Dame exhibition in place, I took the opportunity to take a look and was very impressed by pretty much everything except the Notre Dame exhibition. Nevertheless, I am going again Saturday to the final night that includes a concert.

Last Saturday saw the re-election of the Albanese Labor government, decisively defeating the Dutton Liberal-National Coalition. Labour was able to offer a fairly solid social-democratic programme that wouldn't scare the horses, whilst also running on a record of carefully steering the economy and Australian sovereignty among the international chaos caused by the U.S. President. Dutton, on the other hand, was clearly wedded to the Trump agenda, as well as advocating the interests of mining corporations through an incredibly expensive nuclear plan, along with flip-flopping on major policy decisions. The scoreboard tells the story; on two-party-preferred, this is the best Federal election result for the Australian Labor Party since 1943 and the worst ever result for the LNP coalition since they were formed. It's a truly significant result (for both winners and losers) and will be the discussion theme for the Isocracy AGM in a fortnight's time.

For my own part, I spent election day volunteering at the Southbank Primary polling booth, which received a positive swing of 8% on primaries, clearly helped by the presence of the MP. Labor, Greens, and Liberal volunteers were all pretty friendly to each other, although I did receive a few words from one young Greens volunteer who argued that the population needs to move to their position, rather than the Greens being more electorally palatable. Principled to the point of permanent opposition, only the impotent are pure and all that. He also recommended that I read "Capitalist Realism" and seemed quite surprised that I downloaded and read it (it's only eighty pages) under an hour, along with having some harsh words about it. It's basically psycho-political cultural anthropology (Lacan, Zizek, Jameson), all stuff I'd encountered in my undergraduate days decades ago. The fact that it mentioned climate change in passing on two brief moments was indicative of the sort of practical implications the publication has (i.e., not much).

On a somewhat related matter, last Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending a little doctoral graduation party for former Labor candidate Dr Wesa Chau; a good collection of her favourites from the international student community and some local Party activists. I will count this is as the beginning of a few China-related events that I have in the coming weeks; firstly a social dinner for the Australia-China Friendship Society on Thursday, then on the 11th a visit by the Sichuan Friendship Society at UniMelb to discuss economic and cultural ties and development, and then on the 14th a high-level delegation from Guizhou Province on cultural and education ties. After that, Erica and I are boarding the big silver bird to visit said country for a fortnight's holiday, a trip that includes visits to Beijing, Shanghai, and the Great Wall. Then I have to go back again a fortnight later! But more about that in another post.