Plague Expectations, Plagues of Wrath
Mar. 28th, 2020 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipIt has been an interesting week, mainly because I've been one of two-three people still going into work at our office, which has thirty or so staff in normal circumstances. But events being what they are, this was the week that I had to present a lecture (via Zoom) in a course that has some three hundred students in it, and is followed up by two workshops. It was simply not viable to do this from home on account of pretty poor network connectivity. So I made the careful trip into the city each day, following the same route etc, and trying to follow the recommended hygiene principles, and on the three allocated days gave a two-hour lecture on high-performance computing in general, Spartan in particular, and followed with some introductory examples of MPI parallel programming in Python, Java, C, and Fortran.
In many ways, the journeys were quite pleasant, as it should be in such circumstances. Public transport and the city itself were nearly empty, with the overwhelming majority of people following the directives of "stay at home if you can". With Australia's combination of state and federal governments and an astounding lack of coherent leadership from the latter, the state governments have been doing most of the direction in this regard. I've been doing a running daily total of cases and trends on Facebook, and whilst the past couple of days look good for some states, it is obviously no time for complacency, when people can and do spread the disease without being aware, and as international numbers continue to skyrocket, especially in the United States (as predicted). I have written a long piece on the matter for the Isocracy Network, which was given a "recommended" status by our friends on![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
talkpolitics.
So, from now on and into the foreseeable future I'll be working from home, and certainly not going to the beach as some dickeads in Melbourne thought was a good idea. As is appropriate I've also taken the opportunity to turn to some appropriate literature and films on the subject. Today I finished Albert Camus's The Plague, which is available on The Internet Archive (and I have no issue with the main critical response to the book), and have started Daniel Defoe's, A Journal of the Plague Year, which is on Project Gutenburg, which can be followed by René Baehrel's, Class Hatred in Times of Epidemic, on The Marxist Internet Archive. There is also Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of the Red Death which is also on Project Gutenburg, which I have read a few times already, but will be appropriate once more. Movie-wise I watched La Jetée, available on Vimeo, the Chris Marker arthouse film that was a partial inspiration for Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, which surely be on the list. Beyond this list, I appeal to the social media for further suggestions!
In many ways, the journeys were quite pleasant, as it should be in such circumstances. Public transport and the city itself were nearly empty, with the overwhelming majority of people following the directives of "stay at home if you can". With Australia's combination of state and federal governments and an astounding lack of coherent leadership from the latter, the state governments have been doing most of the direction in this regard. I've been doing a running daily total of cases and trends on Facebook, and whilst the past couple of days look good for some states, it is obviously no time for complacency, when people can and do spread the disease without being aware, and as international numbers continue to skyrocket, especially in the United States (as predicted). I have written a long piece on the matter for the Isocracy Network, which was given a "recommended" status by our friends on
talkpolitics.So, from now on and into the foreseeable future I'll be working from home, and certainly not going to the beach as some dickeads in Melbourne thought was a good idea. As is appropriate I've also taken the opportunity to turn to some appropriate literature and films on the subject. Today I finished Albert Camus's The Plague, which is available on The Internet Archive (and I have no issue with the main critical response to the book), and have started Daniel Defoe's, A Journal of the Plague Year, which is on Project Gutenburg, which can be followed by René Baehrel's, Class Hatred in Times of Epidemic, on The Marxist Internet Archive. There is also Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of the Red Death which is also on Project Gutenburg, which I have read a few times already, but will be appropriate once more. Movie-wise I watched La Jetée, available on Vimeo, the Chris Marker arthouse film that was a partial inspiration for Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, which surely be on the list. Beyond this list, I appeal to the social media for further suggestions!
