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tcpipLast Thursday evening I gave a presentation to SoFiA Melbourne on "From Stoicism and Natural Pantheism to Effective Altruism" which weighs in at some 2500 words. Apart from what is included on the title, also had quite a bit on the relationship between Stoicism and therapeutic techniques. Like any school of philosophy, I have some significant disagreements with the Stoics and lean more towards the Peripatetics when it comes to virtue and external goods, but I really do admire their early pantheism and their contributions to cognitive behaviour and its successors. Over the past two years, I increasingly feel my interest in such matters is increasingly going to be one of my life projects, and I feel pretty good about that. The presentation went well, there were some excellent questions from the audience, and I caught up with Nigel S., a dear friend whom I hadn't seen for quite a few years.
Work-wise the past three days have consisted of delivering high-performance computing workshops; the first two (intro to supercomputing, shell scripting for HPC) went quite well. But I found, unusually, that I was a bit out-of-sorts for the third (parallel processing) and finished the workshop a little earlier than usual - even with the addition of some new content (recurring jobs). In hindsight, I realise the reason was that I was simply exhausted from the previous two days of workshops and the evening's Stoic presentation - even an extrovert such as myself who is energised with communication in groups can run out of steam. Worse still, I was cognisant that this might happen beforehand. Oh well, all in the past. I know to timetable myself with just two workshops rather than three in succession.
Following an important dinner with Robin M., and Anthony L., on Friday night, on Saturday spent a good portion of the day preparing food and drinks for the Wild Arts Social Club dinner at The Rookery. Apparently, my dining room can fit 15 people in it with plenty of room to spare, so that's a good sign that the apartment can hold such events at this scale so there will be more to come. It was a wonderful night of animated conversation with some pretty amazing people, veritable mountains of food, and a wonderful dance performance with private randomly (fated?) readings in the study from the famous Sufi poet Rumi ("The ruby and the sunrise are one"); I provided my own Sufi story in return. The porró drinking game also proved to be a bit of a hit. Sabre, bless her old cat heart, decided to join in the party rather than hiding in the wardrobe, as expected, and was on excellent behaviour. Many thanks to Miriam G., as organiser, Sandy, Dave, Gerhard, and Rob for bringing even more delicious food (have I missed anyone?), and to all attendees.
Work-wise the past three days have consisted of delivering high-performance computing workshops; the first two (intro to supercomputing, shell scripting for HPC) went quite well. But I found, unusually, that I was a bit out-of-sorts for the third (parallel processing) and finished the workshop a little earlier than usual - even with the addition of some new content (recurring jobs). In hindsight, I realise the reason was that I was simply exhausted from the previous two days of workshops and the evening's Stoic presentation - even an extrovert such as myself who is energised with communication in groups can run out of steam. Worse still, I was cognisant that this might happen beforehand. Oh well, all in the past. I know to timetable myself with just two workshops rather than three in succession.
Following an important dinner with Robin M., and Anthony L., on Friday night, on Saturday spent a good portion of the day preparing food and drinks for the Wild Arts Social Club dinner at The Rookery. Apparently, my dining room can fit 15 people in it with plenty of room to spare, so that's a good sign that the apartment can hold such events at this scale so there will be more to come. It was a wonderful night of animated conversation with some pretty amazing people, veritable mountains of food, and a wonderful dance performance with private randomly (fated?) readings in the study from the famous Sufi poet Rumi ("The ruby and the sunrise are one"); I provided my own Sufi story in return. The porró drinking game also proved to be a bit of a hit. Sabre, bless her old cat heart, decided to join in the party rather than hiding in the wardrobe, as expected, and was on excellent behaviour. Many thanks to Miriam G., as organiser, Sandy, Dave, Gerhard, and Rob for bringing even more delicious food (have I missed anyone?), and to all attendees.
