![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
My poor neglected livejournal!
Been over a week since I posted an entry...
I have almost, almost, almost finished section 3-4 (Data Security) for my thesis. It should be on the web in draft form by this time tomorrow. I'm pretty happy with it as a summary of the history of Internet fraud, anonymity and encryption, intellectual property and computer hacking. I'm also thinking of combining the following two subchapters ('The Public Sphere' and 'Technical Standards') into one - this chapter is already close to 50,000 words and I don't think it needs to be much longer!
Aside from writing myself into the ground, I've tinkered a bit with the Australia Pacific Journalism Centre website (no, that work is not mine), something that I should also have finished by tomorrow as well. Regrettably my amusing attempt to have a new employer per week hasn't come to fruition as January 21st came and went without offers :/
Next Sunday I'm speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on (quelle suprise) "A Man of Great Spirit: The Life and Philosophy of Dr. Jim Cairns", so if anyone's in town it starts at 11am. Speaking of that half-way house to infidelity, I spent my birthday (Jan 20) on a road trip with said people to Daylesford, spending some time among natural springs and parklands, a very fine second-hand books, records and video store and dropping into a art gallery built out of a former convent. Hahaha. We love our irony. Had a great theological conversation with one of the members aptly helped by a three volume Systematic Theology written by a lecturer in such material from Princeton University in the 1880s.
I've also started rereading Roger Peyrefitte's 'The Keys of St.Peter', a little something I picked up which I though severina_242 would be interested in being a fellow apostate and all. However, she's currently engrossed in the land of hobbits and elves, so such realistic reading may be an uncomfortable diversion. Personally, I think Peyrefitte is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the best French authors. To be sure, I think Alain Robbe-Grillet is a clear winner on matters of style (the new french novel), but Peyrefitte wins on his scandalous realism and impeccable research.
Spent most of Invasion Day at the Melbourne Museum in Calton gardens which, in the decade I'd lived in Melbourne, had never been through even though I'd walk through the Carlton gardens on almost a daily basis. A pleasant experience, quite enjoyed the exhibits, especially the mind/body section.
Oh, and for Jan 26.. Happy birthday Slammer Worm!. Speaking of which, heads up for a new little virus,
In the "Democracy, but only if it gets the results that we want" department, some expected news. The AFA acts on the
gay marriage poll.
The world's most dangerous
geek has new plans. Heh.
I recently had a debate with angel80 on the proposed banning of religous symbols in state institutions by the French government. Whilst that was over the hajib it seems that Sikh's are now also are target:
Paris Sikhs alarmed at proposed turban ban.
How to keep an eye on the Queensland election. My good friend Billy Bowe, always with a very sharp sense of political nous, has created this beauty. Speaking of which, bloody Mark Latham has a livejournal.
Finally, just to keep us all happy and to sleep well at night, can anyone please find fault in the following article which suggests we'll have to pack up from the planet by 2050?
I have almost, almost, almost finished section 3-4 (Data Security) for my thesis. It should be on the web in draft form by this time tomorrow. I'm pretty happy with it as a summary of the history of Internet fraud, anonymity and encryption, intellectual property and computer hacking. I'm also thinking of combining the following two subchapters ('The Public Sphere' and 'Technical Standards') into one - this chapter is already close to 50,000 words and I don't think it needs to be much longer!
Aside from writing myself into the ground, I've tinkered a bit with the Australia Pacific Journalism Centre website (no, that work is not mine), something that I should also have finished by tomorrow as well. Regrettably my amusing attempt to have a new employer per week hasn't come to fruition as January 21st came and went without offers :/
Next Sunday I'm speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on (quelle suprise) "A Man of Great Spirit: The Life and Philosophy of Dr. Jim Cairns", so if anyone's in town it starts at 11am. Speaking of that half-way house to infidelity, I spent my birthday (Jan 20) on a road trip with said people to Daylesford, spending some time among natural springs and parklands, a very fine second-hand books, records and video store and dropping into a art gallery built out of a former convent. Hahaha. We love our irony. Had a great theological conversation with one of the members aptly helped by a three volume Systematic Theology written by a lecturer in such material from Princeton University in the 1880s.
I've also started rereading Roger Peyrefitte's 'The Keys of St.Peter', a little something I picked up which I though severina_242 would be interested in being a fellow apostate and all. However, she's currently engrossed in the land of hobbits and elves, so such realistic reading may be an uncomfortable diversion. Personally, I think Peyrefitte is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the best French authors. To be sure, I think Alain Robbe-Grillet is a clear winner on matters of style (the new french novel), but Peyrefitte wins on his scandalous realism and impeccable research.
Spent most of Invasion Day at the Melbourne Museum in Calton gardens which, in the decade I'd lived in Melbourne, had never been through even though I'd walk through the Carlton gardens on almost a daily basis. A pleasant experience, quite enjoyed the exhibits, especially the mind/body section.
Oh, and for Jan 26.. Happy birthday Slammer Worm!. Speaking of which, heads up for a new little virus,
In the "Democracy, but only if it gets the results that we want" department, some expected news. The AFA acts on the
gay marriage poll.
The world's most dangerous
geek has new plans. Heh.
I recently had a debate with angel80 on the proposed banning of religous symbols in state institutions by the French government. Whilst that was over the hajib it seems that Sikh's are now also are target:
Paris Sikhs alarmed at proposed turban ban.
How to keep an eye on the Queensland election. My good friend Billy Bowe, always with a very sharp sense of political nous, has created this beauty. Speaking of which, bloody Mark Latham has a livejournal.
Finally, just to keep us all happy and to sleep well at night, can anyone please find fault in the following article which suggests we'll have to pack up from the planet by 2050?
A comforting thought
I have sympathy for ecological pressure arguments because the ecology ain't getting any bigger and the pressure on it is clearly increasing [on the other hand, extra CO2 emissions do encourage plant growth :)]. Though, short of movement of population or industry, not sure how other planets can help there.
I have no sympathy for the 'running out of resources' arguments, because clearly we're not, nor is there any evidence that stacks up that we are. Technologically stagnant non-trading economies can (and have) run out of resources (Easter Island is the usually cited example, possibly also the classical Maya civilisation). We're not and we don't.
A little thought experiement. Consider the energy use pattern of 1900. Consider the energy use pattern of 1950. Consider the energy use pattern of 2000. Would anyone in 1900 had any chance of predicting the 1950 pattern, let alone the 2000 pattern?
Consider the materials use pattern of 1900. Of 1950. Of 2000. Would anyone in 1900 have been able to predict that of 1950 or of 2000?
The running-out-of-resources argument requires predicting the future of technology (amongst other things).
A little tale. One of the reasons why BHP has had a bumpy time of it is that it decided to become the world's largest private sector copper producer. Because, after all, this is the electronic age and we need copper wiring for all that electronic stuff.
Does terrible things to your share price when you have all this copper and suddenly you're competing with sand. Optical fibres anyone?
predicting technological change...
Re: predicting technological change...
Some examples of clever people making bad predictions:
Tim Flannery, in his excellent The Future Eaters inferring from (technolgically stagnant, isolated) indigenous cultures to contemporary Australia.
Jean Gimpel, in his brilliant The Medieval Machine predicting, in the mid-1970s, that the current wave of technological innovation had run out of puff. (IT revolution anyone?)
Pau Kennedy, in his fine The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers suggesting, in the mid-80s, that the US was suffering worse imperial overstretch than the USSR.
As for the Club of Rome, a group discussing resource use and prospects without a single economist present? He or she could have told them about price effects and how resources are a moveable feast. (Maine use to export ice as a valuable resource. Then refridgeration was invented. Bauxite used to be valuable only as road filler, then we learnt how to smelt aluminium, etc.)
Fraser, Anthony et al used Club of Rome thinking (in a context of Oil Shocks) to say Resources Booms were going to save the Australian economy. Yeah, sure folks.
Come to think of it, getting Fraser out and Hawke in was probably the one good effect the Club of Rome had any hand in :)
Re: A comforting thought
Whilst resource prices are a good rule of thumb for many commodities, the main body of the article was more concerned with those items (forests, fresh water etc) which are used in the production of commodites...
I've since discovered this little mine of information which I'll view over the next couple of days...
(note I've used the text only link - bandwidth is a scarce resource!)
http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/
Re: A comforting thought
bandwidth is a scarce resource
But, one notices, increasingly less scarce :)
(But thanks)
Interesting link. No German organisations, which is a good prima facie sign. (As a Jewish-American intellectual friend says, Germans like environmentalism because it allows them to indulge their cultural obsessions about purity. And they came up with the bloody silly precautionary principle.)