![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The final session of the NZ E-Research Symposium at the University of Otaga has just finished. I presented a brief paper on teaching HPC to researchers before engaging in a practical example by running a couple of minor jobs on the BlueFern. As part of the conference dinner last night was spent at Lanarch Castle, complete with a haggis ceremony. A special meeting was held by the Dunedin Linux Users Group for my benefit; they had an excellent turnout for a city of its size and with animated conversation. Also managed to visit the Ravensbourne home, where we met the student tenants in person, who have proven to a very responsible and thoughtful group; they can stay there as long as they want as far as I'm concerned.
As usual I am impressed by so much about The South. We flew in via Christchurch and stayed at the deco City Motor Lodge which has survived the recent spate of earthquakes, unlike its neighbours. The poor city of ChCh has really suffered a great deal with large sections of the central city still closed to traffic, and red and yellow stickers adorning a multitude of buildings. The stern normalacy and occassional humour expressed by those who had an earthquake just a fortnight ago is typical of human resilience in a real disaster. The people complaining about their flights being delayed because of the Chilean ash cloud can just suck it up as far as I'm concerned; first-world problems.
Prior to the New Zealand flight I spoke twice on Sunday; the first was at the Humanity Plus Conference (after a gruelling but very impressive prior day where I presented with the title More Human Than Human: The Computation of Moral Reasoning where I argued that (a) computational capacity will not provide artificial intelligence, (b) the physics of consciousness are unknown and possibly unknowable and (c) that consciousnesses is linguistically mediated, is not rules-based, and requires moral (conscience) decision making. After that I walked to the local Unitarian Church and gave an address with the provocative title Unitarian-Universalism: The Only Religion for the Twenty-First Century where I combined two sides of my recent MBA studies (strategy and leadership) to suggest a necessary plan for growth and to counter fundamentalist religions.
As usual I am impressed by so much about The South. We flew in via Christchurch and stayed at the deco City Motor Lodge which has survived the recent spate of earthquakes, unlike its neighbours. The poor city of ChCh has really suffered a great deal with large sections of the central city still closed to traffic, and red and yellow stickers adorning a multitude of buildings. The stern normalacy and occassional humour expressed by those who had an earthquake just a fortnight ago is typical of human resilience in a real disaster. The people complaining about their flights being delayed because of the Chilean ash cloud can just suck it up as far as I'm concerned; first-world problems.
Prior to the New Zealand flight I spoke twice on Sunday; the first was at the Humanity Plus Conference (after a gruelling but very impressive prior day where I presented with the title More Human Than Human: The Computation of Moral Reasoning where I argued that (a) computational capacity will not provide artificial intelligence, (b) the physics of consciousness are unknown and possibly unknowable and (c) that consciousnesses is linguistically mediated, is not rules-based, and requires moral (conscience) decision making. After that I walked to the local Unitarian Church and gave an address with the provocative title Unitarian-Universalism: The Only Religion for the Twenty-First Century where I combined two sides of my recent MBA studies (strategy and leadership) to suggest a necessary plan for growth and to counter fundamentalist religions.