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Like a good portion of the world I have been paying some attention to the US presidential election. As one should, after all it is the single most powerful political office in the world and even if you aren't interested in politics, politics is very interested in you. After four years of rule by an insincere and immature demagogue that has mishandled the pandemic with a tragic loss of life and the worst economic performance in over seventy years, one would think that the results wouldn't be as close as they are. There are two possible explanations. The first is that the well-mannered centrist liberal Joe Biden simply wasn't inspiring enough. One must note this does stand in contrast with the alternative candidate, and it has secured the largest vote for any candidate in US history (and maybe even as a percentage in the last fifty-plus years; I'm not sure). The alternative explanation is that the US political culture really does have a very large portion of the country preferred a sociopath, preferred the extreme nationalism, the racism, the attacks on organised labour etc. There is, quite clearly, a lot that needs to be fixed in that country.
Anyway, it has hardly been the only thing I've been doing over the past several days. In this inter-semester break from usual studies, I've been going through my MOOC enrolments, primarily the Macroeconomics course. But I've also been assessing other people's works for the Psych course as part of peer review; of the eleven or so essays I think I've failed seven, and reported one for plagiarism (a blatant copy-and-paste from another source). It leaves me a little amazed at how many people just don't answer the question, let alone apply any critical thought. I have also made a submission to present at Linux Conference Australia on a topic related to my masters dissertation from earlier this year. I have also been beavering away at a few hundred words a day on a book chapter which I'm writing with colleagues at the University of Freiburg on using HPC to process large datasets. I also have a review of eResearchAU (already written) and two workshop teaching days to run next week, with the latter undergoing some substantial revision to include updated content on GPU programming.
Still, it hasn't all be avoiding the amusements of life. Australia has this weird festival of the Melbourne Cup I am not really into (animal welfare being prominent, and yes, another horse died), but I did host a toy unicorn-pegasus race (FB) as an alternative (because that's just the sort of thing that a man in his autumn years does, right?). Thursday night was the regular gaming session of CyberDarkSpace with further explorations in The Zone and last night, as part of "uncontrol day" kicked back to watch The Big Lebowski (a middling film in most regards really, but I understand it as a source of memes and social critique) and, appropriately, drink White Russians.
Anyway, it has hardly been the only thing I've been doing over the past several days. In this inter-semester break from usual studies, I've been going through my MOOC enrolments, primarily the Macroeconomics course. But I've also been assessing other people's works for the Psych course as part of peer review; of the eleven or so essays I think I've failed seven, and reported one for plagiarism (a blatant copy-and-paste from another source). It leaves me a little amazed at how many people just don't answer the question, let alone apply any critical thought. I have also made a submission to present at Linux Conference Australia on a topic related to my masters dissertation from earlier this year. I have also been beavering away at a few hundred words a day on a book chapter which I'm writing with colleagues at the University of Freiburg on using HPC to process large datasets. I also have a review of eResearchAU (already written) and two workshop teaching days to run next week, with the latter undergoing some substantial revision to include updated content on GPU programming.
Still, it hasn't all be avoiding the amusements of life. Australia has this weird festival of the Melbourne Cup I am not really into (animal welfare being prominent, and yes, another horse died), but I did host a toy unicorn-pegasus race (FB) as an alternative (because that's just the sort of thing that a man in his autumn years does, right?). Thursday night was the regular gaming session of CyberDarkSpace with further explorations in The Zone and last night, as part of "uncontrol day" kicked back to watch The Big Lebowski (a middling film in most regards really, but I understand it as a source of memes and social critique) and, appropriately, drink White Russians.
