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Coursework, Annual Dinners and Meetings, Federal Election
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.
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.
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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.
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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..
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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.
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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.