Deaths and Politicians, Science and Computing

Thanks for all the kind comments on the last post regarding the passing of Mischief rat and the arrival of Rascal. The latter has settled in very happily with the gregarious and phlegmatic Trouble. On a more human scale I was asked during that week to select some words for the funeral of Florence W's husband; I chose Bishop Jeremy Taylor's The Pomp of Death, some rather sensible words I think. On a related topic my article on a potential UU seminary in Australia has been published in the latest issue of Quest. Apropos this I conducted the service for last Sunday's address by Kelvin Thomson, MHR for Wills, who had very excellent things to say about climate change policy (as he does about energy, population and so forth - he's an MP with brains). To continue the tangent on Tuesday I attended a modest ALP gathering with John McNally (candidate for Hawthorn), Kate Jackson (candidate for Kew), and Jennifer Huppert MLC (candidate for Southern Metropolitan. Also in attendance with Alan Griffin, MHR, whom we seem to share some opinions with regarding the rise of the Greens and what the ALP's response should be in this regards.

On Monday co-worker Mike Kuiper was published in Nature, which was widely reported, based on work that has been conducted with molecular modeling (which I installed). Just goes to show that scientific computing does actually produce results. Last night was the LUV November meeting where Matt Davis provided an excellent introduction to Linux kernel modules and Ben Sturmfels showed some of the ways that Emacs can make your life simpler. Apropos recently received a PDP-11 core memory module (where you can see each individual bit) from the University of Queensland, which has closed down its computer museum. It lives happily alongside my the maintenance manual, which I had signed by author Gordon Bell on his last visit to Australia. Finally, for those who enjoy such humour, the Poetic BSD licence.