Lev Lafayette's journal

There's been a couple of opportunities for exploring the arts this week with Erica H., being present for both events. The first was entitled "Folio Live" for graduating students in Interactive Composition from the University of Melbourne, which combined film, animation, dance, and theatre. The second was the Australian World Orchestra and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (again, recent graduates) performing Mozart, Glinka, and Dvořák, the latter as always being very impressive to me. This coming Tuesday I also have an evening with Alison B., for Chant du Saxophone Ténor with pieces from Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Glazunov. Whilst in so many ways Southbank is the Manhatten of Melbourne with its towers of glass and steel, it is also a great arts precinct, and I cannot imagine living here without taking advantage of that.

On the work-related front, the Spartan supercomputer has finally run the necessary tests on part of the upgraded system, earning itself a certificate in the top 500 this week as the third most powerful ranked system in the country (after NCI and Pawsey). The assessment actually leaves out a good portion of our GPU nodes that would have pushed our ranking even higher and doesn't include any of our CPU-only nodes which would have given it another third in performance. This said the Top500 is really a marketing exercise that provides an at-a-glance indication of improved computational performance over time. The real metric is how much successful research is done, and on that criteria, we're doing extremely well. On that matter, the first three days of next week will include HPC training workshops, including "High Performance and Parallel Python", which I have spent a fair bit of this past week doing further development.

Finally, there is some academic progress for the Masters of Climate Change Science and Policy. As expected my illness in the assessment week had led to a dip in grades, although in one case it really strikes me as quite implausible. Nevertheless, by my calculations I have two A- grades for "Climate Change Mitigation" and "Climate Change Impacts Adaption" and have fallen just short of one with a B+ for "International Climate Change Policy"; I am still waiting for the results form "Climate Change Lessons from the Past". In any case, I am certain to have received a sufficient overall grade to do the research paper, which will be a 15,000-word essay on climate change impacts, adaption, and mitigation in developing Pacific nations - that is, combining content from the year's study. I am extremely tempted to take a visit to one such set of islands in the next month or so as part of that research, and the most likely candidate is looking like Vanuatu.

The past few days have all been about "evenings and weekends" as one of my favourite bands made a point of expressing. Apparently, I'm making good use of a modicum of free time I have outside of working hours. Work itself included an interesting morning tea session which included a rather sensible restructure proposal for our group. Apart from that most of my work has been almost entirely spent fulfilling one of my annual requirements of reviewing training and workshop material - along with arranging final courses for the end of the year (which filled up within 90 minutes). In non-work but IT-related matters, I've been successfully playing with ways to get around Youtube's misguided war on ad-blockers, and fixing a Drupal-site that WSODed after an upgrade, and not for the first time; which does make me wonder whether I should just return to a html, css, and javascript site instead.

The social activities started on Wednesday evening with an interstate visitor that came in the form of the delightful Lara D., who knowing my tastes well, took me to see the "BBC Earth Experience" which combines my love of the animal world and geography. After that we had dinner at the fairly well-known Yakimono restaurant (the salmon was beautifully rich) which we concluded with Clase Azul México and then a drink at Chin Chin. The following evening was drinks and dining with Alison B., where we started at Ponyfish Island. Whilst I walk past the place almost every day this was the first time I had ventured within. The view was great, the cocktails wonderful, and the atmosphere spoiled by the overwhelming blasting of music. Afterward, we made our way to an Italian restaurant, Park Street Pasta, whose outdoor dining on a quiet street was just perfect for the spring evening.

Music in the right context is, of course, quite a joy of mine. On Friday night I caught up with Liana F., and we ventured to The Astor to seek the 4K remaster and 40th anniversary of the Talking Heads movie, "Stop Making Sense". Well-prepared for the inevitable, the staff had prepared the stage and stalls as a "dancing area". It's not often that an old art-deco cinema effectively turns into a nightclub, but this was certainly one of those evenings, and many of those present (myself included) could not help but pay some tribute to David Byrne's more unusual dancing style and moves. For more a relaxing event, last night was spent with Brendan E., whom I haven't caught up with for a few months, and such visits are always a pleasure.

Having completed three days of training workshops (Introduction to Linux and HPC, Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting for HPC, GPGPU Applications and Programming), I now have something not quite akin to a break. It's been a challenging previous month; an international conference in China, and two short bouts off work with sick leave due to two different colds; I think the six days off for such a reason in one month is the most I've ever had in my life, which is quite a blessing really. Last week, of course, also included the final essays and exams for the second trimester of my climatology studies. Results for the previous round of assignments (Comparison between US and China NDCs for the Paris Accord, Reflection on climate mitigation opportunities in Te Tairāwhiti, Pacific Islands Ecosystem-Based Climate Adaptation) have come in quite satisfactory grades. But realistically, the combination of full-time study, full-time work, and all the additional worldly activities probably all added up.

Like anyone who pays some attention to international news, I have been giving some thought to the recent conflict in Gaza, an ongoing issue since the violent establishment of the Israeli state that was applied with very scant regard for the population that was already there. Quite frankly, the issue is unlikely to go away as long as the distinctions between people are given priority by obsessive and extremist people and their institutional powers above visceral and human commonality. I have written about such matters many times before; for example "The Country of Palestine: A Zero State Solution" and "Apartheid and Zionism: Precise Definitions, Visceral Ontologies", both of which I argue for a position which respects a Jewish homeland in a secular and democratic Palestine where's one ethnicity or religion is of no political or legal consequence. This is an ideal position of course far from the grubby "political realism" that is normally discussed. But it does align itself to a very grounded current position with a long history (e.g., Brit Shalom, Tahalof Essalam) for a moment's respite: Ceasefire now!

With an eight-hour overnight layover between flights at Guangzhou airport, I find myself composing a few notes on my first visit to the People's Republic of China after spending a week at the 2023 International Conference on Green and Innovation-Driven Development in Cities and Towns (a rather wordy title) at Suzhou, a large city that has a long history and is now a hub for international technological developments. The conference and the few hundred guests were housed in the brand-new and truly massive (1500 rooms!) Suzhou International Conference Hotel, which is certainly one of the best I've ever been to in my not-inconsiderable experience. Attendees included the Vice-Director of the provincial foreign affairs office, the district mayor and deputy mayor, a multitude of local academics and scientists, and various international guests, including the deputy speaker of the Portuguese parliament.

The formal conference agenda was really only a single day of parallel sessions, concentrating on heritage protection and integrating urban and rural areas. The rest of the time was a combination of historic town visits (Museum of Imperial Kiln Bricks, Humble Administrator's Garden (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), Suzhou Silk Museum, Embroidery Art Musuem) and high-tech development centres (the industrial park exhibition centre, the Higer bus company, the High-Tech Rail Tram Limited, the local campus of Nanjing University). Also of particular note was the astoundingly beautiful Taihu Lake wetland park whose resident giant pandas attracted, of course, a great deal of interest. My main interest was the degree to which the city is especially involved in the development of ICVs ("intelligent connected vehicles") and their production of electric vehicles. I was positively charmed by the automated cleaning robot that did its rounds on the lake next to the hotel. There was, it must be said, an absence of discussion on the pressing environmental challenges facing China as a whole and more of an emphasis on the successful integration of high-technology industries, historical character, and the natural environment in the city itself.

Of course, there were a number of networking opportunities, although I must confess I often gravitated toward the several visiting New Zealanders and the other two Australians. One new contact of note was Pinjun, a deputy director of the Provincial Department of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, who introduced me to the work that the local vocational college of Agriculture and Forestry is doing with international students from developing countries for food security science in the context of climate change. With three assignments and an exam this coming week for my own climate science degree, it was a very serendipitous meeting of minds. I will also take this opportunity to express my deep thanks to Tower L., for helping organise my attendance on the trip, to David, who helped manage the Australian visitors during the conference proper, and Robin M., and Anthony L, for pre-and-post journey assistance.

I am cognisant that I have visited a fairly well-off area of China. Even with this in consideration, I cannot help but notice the exceptional scale at which operations are carried out, the gleaming newness of the modern structures and infrastructure, the levels of cleanliness, the quantity of electric vehicles on the road, the landscaping of public space, and so forth. There were little signs of dire poverty and an absence of visceral petty crime (I'm sure all of this exists, I'm just going on my observations). It is clearly still a developing country in many ways, but one that is that is making its way to a top-tier economy very rapidly. Most of all, "Shared Prosperity" is apparently more than just a slogan.

Between work and study this week I scooted down to the Port Melbourne town hall yesterday to cast a "Yes" vote in the Voice referendum. I recognise ATSI people as the original inhabitants of the land. My respect for this means that I think it is right that they, like other indigenous people throughout the world, should have an advisory body to the government on matters that affect them. And that's the entirety of the constitutional change. To say the least, the experience of indigenous Australians and the country's international reputation alone are sufficient justifications for this change, let alone the genuine need on the basis of closing the gap on socioeconomic status. Apparently, there are better outcomes when one consults with the very people who are going to be affected by a decision.

Despite this opinion polls are suggesting a defeat for the referendum which will mean not just more of the same but worse. It is telling that the "No" campaign has appealed to ignorance in its material ("Risky Voice", "If you don't know, vote no"), even though the information is readily available via the AEC. The Conversation has a very good collection of answers to common questions. Annotations and fact-checking has been carried out on both the Yes and the No cases in the AEC's referendum booklet (keeping in mind that in Australian politics, lying is legal)

Outside of those who do not know, those who haven't bothered to check, and those who have chosen some pretty wild conspiracies instead, the nay-sayers also consist of the political partisans. The "no" first jump in opinion polls was when the National Party announced they would oppose the referendum in December 2022, and really gained in April 2022 when Dutton announced the Liberal Party would oppose it. In both cases people left the respective parties, and with various Liberal Party leaders quite annoyed at the divisive games being played by Dutton. Further to the extreme right, of course, there are Hansonites and assorted racists, whose claim of the superiority of their race over others is a projective mask of their own inferiority complex. Finally, there is the "progressive no", the people who think the Voice is not enough and is too tokenistic. For them I have the sympathy, but despair at their political naivety and their inability to "read the room". A successful "yes" vote will give moral authority towards truth-telling and a Treaty; a successful "no" vote will set such initiatives back another generation at least.

Simply put, there is not a single compelling rational case for a "no" vote. Whilst it is the barest minimum change to the Constitution, it does incorporate recognition and respect. Is a tried and tested approach among other countries throughout the world that has indigenous and colonial populations. It will definitely lead to better outcomes, as health outcomes during the pandemic and the consultative response to violence in Alice Springs have already shown. "No" means that nothing changes, no hope, no future, no progress. I would like to hope that Australia has the courage to progress to a future with hope and change. Vote "Yes".

For the past five days in succession, I have been involved in presentations in some manner. Today I attended the seminars for our paleoclimatology paper at the University of Wellington and I presented on "The Younger Dryas and The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation" at Wellington University. The YD is clearly a topic of great interest as one other researcher gave a paper on the "impact hypothesis" as a critical review (it's almost certainly not true) and another in the context of volcanism (a contributing factor, but probably insufficient). Other seminar presentations included the idea of microplastics as a marker for the Anthropocene (I rate animal population extinctions and habitat change a little higher, but plastics can certainly be an "indicator species"), along with one on animal and plant population changes in the New Zealand Southern alpine regions due to climate change.

In addition to this, yesterday I chaired the presentation by Dr Matthew Burns and Tom Wilkins from the University's Waterway Ecosystem Research Group, who spoke about the implementation of "backyard catchments" and invertebrate populations. Preceding this was three days of Spartan Upgrade workshops that I conducted; the second day was probably the most interesting with the most relevant questions on the new software stack. Next week there is another presentation at Wellington University, but that is a group project (climate change mitigation in the Te Tairawhiti region - fortunately someone else has stepped up to do the actual presentation, so I'll just be making contributions to that.

It is probably opportune to mention in this context that I'll be visiting China is a couple of weeks, specifically Wuxi for the "International Conference on Green and Innovation-driven Development in Cities and Towns". I attended the first conference last year (online) and was quite impressed by the emphasis on presentations from an engineering, town-planning, and ecological background, and of course, the city itself has been part of a low-emissions pilot program for some years. This will be my first visit to said country and, as can be expected, the visa application was quite a hefty form, but all processed quite efficiently.

A good portion of this week was spent working on a 3,000-word essay - with 60 references - for the paleoclimatology paper (goodness, I've fallen into Aotearoa New Zealand parlance). My chosen subject was comparing the Younger Dryas, the last stage of the Pleistocene, with the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), especially in light of a recent paper that posit an impending collapse of the AMOC through the same mechanism as is commonly believed caused the Younger Dryas (i.e., a sudden influx of freshwater). If such a collapse were to occur one could end up with a situation where land and atmospheric temperatures increase, whilst the North Atlantic Ocean temperatures would fall - and there would be global ramifications. Interestingly, studies on the AMOC are most paleoclimatological as well, given that it's only been in the last twenty years that we've had an instrument record. Anyway, the essay will be followed up in a few weeks with an accompanying presentation.

Another form of connection between the prehistoric and modern occurred last night when I visited the Connection exhibition at Lume with Liana F. This is the third such event of theirs I've been to (along with Van Gough and The French Impressionists), it was really quite an impressive experience, expressing the deep and even religious connection of people to their land (broadly defined), and yet again with a combination of immersive and gallery artwork, accompanying music, interactive pieces and more. I was sensible enough to purchase "unlimited visit" tickets, so another visit mid-week is in order. One thing that really struck me was the disproportionate number of people from a non-European background that were present (based on phenotypical characteristics) - African, Indian, and Southeast Asian.

A related matter is the ongoing issue in the Voice campaign. I've had a number of interactions with "no" voters over the past few weeks. Based on these I started asking the question: "Do you know what you're voting on? The actual words to the constitutional amendment?". Of the 118 I surveyed (yes, really), over 97% could not give the correct answer, or even something close. Given that the 'no' campaign has now been caught out for instructing their volunteers to literally lie and sow confusion, one wonders what this means to the principle that an effective democracy depends on an informed public sphere, rather than one controlled by demagoguery.

The past several days have been full of activity, even more so than usual, and, as a result, I have been quite lax in putting finger to keyboard in the regular act of reflective correspondence. The outage of the Spartan supercomputer and upgrade of the operating system is going well, as is the testing and documentation that follows the application suite rebuilds and I've even managed to add a few new tutorials according to need (e.g., scikit-learn). I also had a meeting with the good people at the Australian Institute of Marine Science to conduct a week of HPC teaching for them early next year. Study-wise the second half of the trimester has started with a deluge of assignments; one has consisted of a review of three vulnerability assessments (Auckland, Baden-Wuerttemberg, and the Bishnupur forest of Nepal. Fortunately, there is an extra week for the paleoclimatology paper.

The study of the vulnerability assessments has highlighted to me the importance of the Voice referendum, and the importance of a body that has the ability to ensure the parliament and executive listen (at the very least). Examples of injustice, even to this day, are well-known to those who care to look. As much as one delights in the frankly brilliant and moving use of John Farnham's "You're The Voice" in the first major "Yes" advertisement). Ultimately, it will be results that count, and fortunately from the evidence that we have it is known that when governments listen to and work with, communities rather than just doing things to them, the outcomes are better.

Among all this I've had a modicum of a social life as well; for the first time in many years, I attended a local goth club (Elysium) at Kepler Bar, which comes with some rather nice scientific flavours, with the company of Liana, Simon, and Carla. The goths have always been a welcoming, if delightfully weird, community and there is nothing strange to them of having a fifty-something person in attendance at a nightclub, even if the median age is somewhat higher anyway. In a more low-key affair, I had a wonderful afternoon with my dear friend and neighbour Nitul and his visiting mother, as he has just returned from the homeland of the Indian state of Kerala with plenty of stories to tell. Finally, last night I hosted Justin's RPG session of The Burning Wheel set in The Thirty Years' War which uses scenarios from Warhammer FRPG. It's a delightful mash-up of systems and settings that's working extremely well. But, my goodness, I rather do need a bit of a rest sometime soon.

Following the Party conference I gave myself a couple of days in Brisbane before the return to Melbourne; after all I am supposed to be on leave. On the first day, I organised a "linner" in the rather beautiful Roma Street Parklands, which was attended to a small collection of Brisbane friends old and new - a big thank you for an afternoon of quality and clever conversation and delicious food from Chakae and Peter, Cameron and Chrissy (and Fox!), and Punky Pauline. The following day, I planned to take a trip on the ferry but decided instead to visit the Queensland Art Gallery, the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, and the Queensland Museum - all conveniently close to one another. I was quite happy with the Art Gallery and Museum, and whilst the Modern Art building was an impressive piece of modernism with wide open spaces is was hilariously somewhat lacking in actual art inside.

With the return to Melbourne, I have thrown myself back into work projects like I never left in the first place which is probably a clear indication that I should go on another "holiday" of some description soon. I have also burrowed deeply into climate science and policy studies with various mid-trimester assignments. An annotated bibliography on climate policy for developing Pacific island nations makes points that the Pacific has been subject to hundreds of years of imperialism, racism, and sexism which has treated the indigenous populations as voiceless and expendable. This continues to this day, as Pasifika people are on the frontline of the impacts of climate change whilst the developed and industrial world continues to reject responsibility for causing it. In the coming fortnight I also will be writing a comparison of vulnerability assessments from New Zealand, Germany, and Nepal, then a comparison between Australia and New Zealand for climate change actions, and finally a comparative paleoclimatology essay on the collapse of the thermohaline circulation. There is so much variety and callenging research with this degree!

In the past several days I've had the opportunity to attend a few political events. The first was a rock-standard ALP branch meeting in Albert Park where there was a quality and respectful debate over advance medical directives for voluntary euthanasia. With some direct experience of this catch-22 loophole in existing legislation, it was good to see the motion passed with overwhelming support. The second event was hosted by The Australia Institute was Tasmanian Liberal MHR Bridget Archer speaking on integrity in politics; Archer is a leader of the handful of small-l liberals in that party and has crossed the floor for a national anti-corruption commission, for protecting transgender students, to support carbon emissions reduction legislation, and even and to censure former prime minister Scott Morrison over his secret appointment to other ministries. With several hundred people attending, I was satisfied with her qualified answer ("Yes, in principle, but the details are important") to my question on whether she would support "truth in political advertising" legislation, a matter that I have written about in the past.

The third event was an absolutely woeful presentation by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Richard Marles with Pat Conroy, Minister for Defence Industry, defending the AUKUS agreement and the expenditure of an eye-watering $368bn, another matter that I have written about in the past. Unlike the Archer meeting where comments and questions were visible, these were prevented in the Marles-Conroy show, an old trick that allows one to be selective in their choices and prevent audience recognition of the depth of opposition. Marles' attempt to defend the expenditure as being "only" 0.7% of GDP per annum was deeply unconvincing as any analysis of opportunity costs would show, and Conroy's suggestion that these attack-class and fleet-support submarines are a deterrent in a global arms race was horrifical comical. If you want a deterrent you choose defensive weapons, not offensive weapons. These assault submarines are actually a major contribution to the arms race. Both offered the ludicrous bait that the project will provide 20,000 jobs - I'll leave it to others to calculate what good value for money 20,000 jobs are for a $368bn expenditure and perhaps to suggest alternatives.

The issue will, of course, be subject to some debate at the upcoming ALP National Conference in Brisbance this week, which I am attending as an observer, and thankfully there are those within the Party who recognise that this is a "mad, bad, and dangerous". At this stage, I suspect the "war faction" will get what they want for the time being, but this is far from over. In any case, I am looking forward to a few days in BrisVegas, as I haven't been for around a decade or so, and I have arranged a catch-up linner picnic with a few friends next Sunday after the conference in Roma Park.