Unitarian Services/Addresses, HPC Training, Emissions Price

[tcpip]

Last Sunday attended the Unitarian Church, with the assumption that I was giving the service. As it turned out the speaker didn't show, so at the last minute I gave my notes to the person I was supposed to be replacing and gave an address (I was especially impressed with the words by the Knox Dunedin Church), specifically a repeat of a talk I gave to the atheist society a few months prior on The Rejection of Imposed Authority, Divine or Human.

Spent today out at Monash University to assist in training researchers at the Melbourne HPC GPU Computing Workshop by familiarising said people with PBS/Torque. An extremely good turnout and was very impressed (again) by a presentation by Phillip Ward on HPC benchmarking and optimisation. Now planning to write an addditional course manual on "An Introduction to Scientific Programming Using Python, C, and Fortran" to bridge the gap between the Linux/HPC courses and the OpenMPI programming courses.

Big political event of the week in Australia was the announcement of a Clean Energy Future by the federal government. For once, the ABC has done a good job in explaining the matter of the carbon emissions tax that's part of the package in terms of how it works, key figures (note that tax-free threshold - it's been tripled!), effect on food prices, and Australia's contribution to emissions. The fact is, this is a bloody good policy and should see both an improvement in the Australian economy, a reduction in greenhouse emissions and significant assistance for the lower-income earners. What's not to like? Oh that's right.. it's socialist.

Comments

[shehasathree]

Now planning to write an addditional course manual on "An Introduction to Scientific Programming Using Python, C, and Fortran" to bridge the gap between the Linux/HPC courses and the OpenMPI programming courses.

My partner mistersteve says "awesome!", and would like to know how to go about getting a copy when you're done. :)

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

There is one thing not to like: The inflation hit. It'll only be a one-off, but give recent years, the 1% increase in food prices is quite a bump. Not a huge deal, but it's a downside.

However, I don't think the government has a hope of convincing the public that the carbon dioxide tax is good. Partly, that's because our PM said she wouldn't introduce this tax and such a straight-up lie is just unpopular. Mostly, it's because so many voters are inherently self-centred and the thought process (using the term loosely) appears to be: "Is this something I want right now? If not, it should not happen/be illegal." Same applies whether the disapproval is of those evil adult video games or those naughty dope smokers or the $2/week they might be worse off for from a tax change. What you would like is for people to actually think about principles of what's best for everyone. Good luck with that.

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

Better to impose it now than to have it as part of an election platform, perhaps--I'm looking at Stephane Dion, who featured carbon tax as a main plank of his candidacy and also had it be a source of criticism from others.

[grailchaser.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting that stuff on the Carbon Tax, Lev. I had no idea how it was supposed to work.

My next question would have to be "what renewable energy and low emissions goods"? Besides putting a Solar Hot water system on the roof and some expensive solar panels... what else is there?

[leadgend.livejournal.com]

While the ABC made a big deal out of the raising of the tax-free threshold they completely failed to mention that the tax rates in next couple of tax brackets are also being raised so people on ~50k+ get no net benefit. The amount people would actually pay for the carbon tax is almost trivial but by looking like they are sneaking a tax rise in the back door isn't doing the government any favours.