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Linux, Religion, Philosophy, and Gaming
Oct. 14th, 2013 05:20 pmWas very neglectful of posting here last week, even if I did read and post on other journals. The first three days were almost entirely taken up with conducting training courses for HPC and Linux. Two of the students in the three-day class were doctoral candidates in computer science, and one had their PhD, so there was some expectation that the material may have been a little below their level. If this was the case, they certainly didn't suggest so on their feedback, which was extremely positive. It's usually very good, but this was close to perfect throughout. I've also written a short article on The Quest for Demoggifying Continues after being slightly horrified by some poor advice on a tech 'blog.
As a crossover issue from the first to second subject items, have written about some recent experience of anti-religious prejudice in the free software movement. Also, have recently discovered that The Freethinker published my letter expressing concerns of the Sunday Assembly, who responded, and which I have further replied to. Finally, Andrew Bolt condemns the Uniting Church for having practical Christianity whilst ignoring their actual mission statement. Pity about the Melbourne Science Ficton Club being in one of the churches slated for sale.
As per the last post, I've had a bit of a revival of interest in the past few months with Karl Popper from the perspective of critical theory. It like revisiting Positivismusstreit, but with some recent interesting additions by Hilary Putnam on the fact-value distinction. To aid this revival I've been working my way through Popper's Objective Knowledge, Conjectures and Refutations (which I actually have never read), and Habermas' Between Facts and Norms. Also sorely tempted to put together the fifty pages or so of notes that I compiled from The Theory of Communicative Action which I hand-wrote in the mid-nineties.
The week of gaming has also been good. Played Eclipse Phase on Thursday and Fantasy Craft Middle Earth on Sunday. Still putting the spring edition of RPG Review which has the taster article The Representation of Computers in Roleplaying Games, which will have a twin article, The Representation of Roleplaying in Computer Games. Also waiting for some interview questions from the developers at PC Gen.
As a crossover issue from the first to second subject items, have written about some recent experience of anti-religious prejudice in the free software movement. Also, have recently discovered that The Freethinker published my letter expressing concerns of the Sunday Assembly, who responded, and which I have further replied to. Finally, Andrew Bolt condemns the Uniting Church for having practical Christianity whilst ignoring their actual mission statement. Pity about the Melbourne Science Ficton Club being in one of the churches slated for sale.
As per the last post, I've had a bit of a revival of interest in the past few months with Karl Popper from the perspective of critical theory. It like revisiting Positivismusstreit, but with some recent interesting additions by Hilary Putnam on the fact-value distinction. To aid this revival I've been working my way through Popper's Objective Knowledge, Conjectures and Refutations (which I actually have never read), and Habermas' Between Facts and Norms. Also sorely tempted to put together the fifty pages or so of notes that I compiled from The Theory of Communicative Action which I hand-wrote in the mid-nineties.
The week of gaming has also been good. Played Eclipse Phase on Thursday and Fantasy Craft Middle Earth on Sunday. Still putting the spring edition of RPG Review which has the taster article The Representation of Computers in Roleplaying Games, which will have a twin article, The Representation of Roleplaying in Computer Games. Also waiting for some interview questions from the developers at PC Gen.
