Coursework, Annual Dinners and Meetings, Federal Election

[tcpip]

Have neglected a journal entries as the past three days has been largely taken up with running the "boot camp" intensive course that I run through work for Linux, High Performance Computing, and MPI programming. It is impressive that many of the students start off with no experience with command-line Linux at all and by the third day they're working through the logic of parallel programming in C or Fortran. The feedback suggests that it may have something to do with my teaching style; I prefer to think that because the trainees are typically PhD-candidates or higher that they pick it up quickly. On topic, gave a presentation to The Philosophy Forum on Sunday on The Philosophy of Education, with possibly the largest turnout witnessed at said gathering. There was some good debate over the counter-intuitive proposition that learning styles are complete arse, and the debate of globalisation (multiculturalism, Internet, transnational economics) in economics - I tried to emphasise the point that there was no avoidance or turning back from this fundamental setting of education debates.

Each evening has also witnessed some interesting events. On Monday night was the 122nd Annual Henry George Dinner, held at the Royal Society premises with Saul Eslake as the speaker. He presented some rather sensible comments on the economic damage caused by negative gearing and the first home-owners scheme and so forth, and indicated his preference for site-based taxes over that on capital and labour - all common sense really. The following night was the Linux Users of Victoria Annual General Meeting which, true to tradition, was the smallest attendance for the year. My report emphasised the improvements in membership, meeting attendance, and finances but also raised the question of strategic choices for the organisation. A motion on disincorporation and merging with Linux Australia was lost on proxies. Initially, I must admit, I opposed the idea of disincorporation but in the very recent past have come to see that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. The arguments against seemed to be more of emotional attachment, which of course is a legitimate issue, but it is not by sentimentality that organisations succeed.

The Federal election opinion polls continue to provide less than satisfactory results for the Labor Party. Some punters have tried to emphasise the point in a sweary and ranty, yet surprisingly spot-on comparison on the major issues. It is surprising of course that given the disparity in policy common-sense that Labor is coming in on Saturday in underdog status. What it does seem is that there is a mood of "things are good, let's have a change", which of course is just crazy reasoning; do you apply that to relationships, for example? Perhaps the weirdest is the continuing claim by the LNP that they will abolish the so-called carbon tax (which is already an ETS) and replace it a "Direct Action" scheme which will cost more and not achieve our emissions commitments. I just hope that somehow people decide not to be an idiot this coming Saturday.

Comments

[saithkar.livejournal.com]

In case you're interested I posted up some thoughts on the upcoming election that I think explains what is driving events: http://saithkar.livejournal.com/52985.html

If a majority of the public cared enough and/or knew enough to care about the the future of both Australia and the global climate this election would be looking very different. Then again so would the whole political landscape of this country; it would be one that Kevin Rudd was not a feature of.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

In the last two elections, Labor is (again) being reminded that the real powers in the country are the mining companies and the media.

I am marking however the downward turn in Rudd's policy as being shortly after the PNG agreement. If only he'd come back from Indonesia with a bit of paper saying they'd agreed to become signatories to the UN Convention and Protocol on Refugees..

[saithkar.livejournal.com]

Indeed, Gina, unlike Clive, realises she doesn't need to waste time and money actually running for parliament in order to control things, far easier to buy yourself an already extant political party with a track record of winning elections and deluding people to vote against their own economic self interests.

It will be interesting to see in which direction The Greens' primary vote moves on Saturday. All moral arguments aside, I'm not convinced that UN Conventions on the rights of asylum seekers are the vote winners with most of the Australian public. I think that The Greens are running a big risk by being identified more with asylum seeker policy than their core issues of climate change and the environment.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, Clive was very happy when the Queensland LNP won their overwhelming victory in the state election. He was less than elated when he discovered that there were other lobbyists.

As for the UN Convention, in itself it's not a vote winner, but if Indonesia was a signatory there would be absolutely no boats arriving in Australia, thus removing the impetus to treat asylum seekers in the manner that we do.

[tatjna.livejournal.com]

That 'things are good, let's have a change' idea is how NZ got John Key. Or maybe it was 'these guys have had a fair whack at it, let's give someone else a go now'.

Either way, it says something about the rationality of voters.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty good example which matches what seems to be happening here and it certainly does say something about voter rationality. I have sometimes speculated about the advantages of a more deliberative democracy as a result.

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

The message i hear from people planning to vote Liberal is that they just don't believe 'things are good'. There really is a perception that the Australian economy is a smoking ruin. I only ever hear good news about it from stories linked by Labor supporters.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose anything like absolute and comparative statistics would help, would it?

Perception over reality; as Milton said, the mind can make a hell of heaven. Not to say we're in heaven, but goodness, if they want to see a smoking ruin, cast one's eye at other countries, and cast one's eye back several years and see how far things have improved.

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

Well, on the one hand there's confirmation bias for those that believe Labor can do no right (as demonstrated on one occasion, when two chaps at work were bemoaning Labor being to blame for interest rates being so high, at a time when interest rates had fallen to the lowest in years in Rudd's first year). On the other, the only newspaper you see in the staff room here is the Herald-Sun. So, it's not really surprising, sadly.

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

And i'm also aware that i'm just as susceptible to confirmation bias and selective sources of information, just in the opposite direction. Makes it confusing sometimes.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yes, but being aware of one's own confirmation biases hopefully makes it less likely.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Everytime I hear the results of some poll, it's always "two party preferred". Why not just give us percentages of parties instead?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The TPP report is usually just found in the media reports; if you go to the actual polling documents themselves they usually give a breakdown. For example the good Pollbludger has a link to:

http://www.reachtel.com.au/blog/7-news-national-poll-3september13