Lev Lafayette's journal

It has been a very busy week and a sense of general tiredness is pervasive. Last Sunday I gave a presentation at The Philosophy Forum on Race Conditions for the Human Species: A Global Perspective (there are a few and our actions are piecemeal and responsive). Two days later on Tuesday night, I presented Is Pantheism an Atheism? to the Melbourne Atheist Society (it depends on experience). On Wednesday ran the Introduction to HPC course which received extremely good feedback from attendees. Classes will of course continue on their regular, weekly basis. Next Philosophy Forum presentation I'm giving is in December, The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics, following an encounter with a lunatic who believes that their consciousness creates reality. Seriously, there is a special circle of hell for people who misrepresent the Copenhagen Interpretation in such a populist, ignorant, and ill-considered manner.

It has not been all work and now play however. Sunday night was an enjoyable gathering for sebastianne's "thirtieth" birthday gathering at The Drunken Poet (related to such establishment, I have been interested in the series No Béarla - a first-language Irish speaker attempts to tour Ireland without using English). Last night went to see a gothic superhero double at The Astor; Batman (1989) and The Crow, with thefon, who is visiting us from Perth. Gaming-wise we had a session of Eclipse Phase on Sunday which was something like a cross between Avatar and Aliens, a first session of Delta Green Countdown, which has started quiet enough.

Much has been made this week of the almighty collection of failures surrounding the Australian Census. Apart from legitimate concerns on privacy, with various legal discussions, there was the miserable failure on the night it was supposed to be taken. I described it as: "The Census is a self-advertised Distributed Denial of Service attack". It didn't take the long before official claims that it was an actual overseas DDoS attack - to be honest I didn't think they would be so stupid to make such a claim. Still, on the positive side the recommendations that I initially made to the ABS in 2012 and were part of the formal review in 2013 have been accepted. To express simply, Unitarians were previously listed as a sub-group of Christians. Now they are Unitarian-Universalists and are counted under "Secular Beliefs and Other Spiritual Beliefs and No Religious Affiliation".

Last Tuesday night was the Linux Users of Victoria meeting which looked at two ends of development; Martin Paulo gave another excellent talk on the OpenStack free software cloud project, this time in a more tutorial framework, followed by Aryan Ameri (G+) on Ubuntu phones - more on how they don't quite work yet, but do show a roadmap of where they're going. The meeting also formally announed our Librarything, for our Library of LUV (LoL). Next Saturday I'll be presenting at the Beginners Workshop, An Introduction to Supercomputing. Further, as I've been working on another training manual I've had the opportunity to develop a few interesting scripts and posts over the past week; Backups and Synchronisations, Deleting Many Files, and Searching for Emails.

Earlier this week started writing about the decline of the socialist left in Japan. I am hoping that knowledgable people (e.g., aske) might suggest a few reasons. A pleasant surprise was the discovery that Matt Bush and I had been published in the latest issue of The Freethinker for our article on Islamofascism: A Real Term for A Real Problem, which argues that Islamic fascism really does exist and that the principles of secularism must be universalised. Finally, next Saturday the Isocracy Network is hosting a meeting (FB events) with Louis Byrne from West Papua Melbourne speaking. It remains an interesting question why West Papuan solidarity has never reached the mass appeal to that of East Timor, when both are of equal importance.

Last Friday night caseopaya and I ventured to the Corner Hotel to see the last ever show of The Stems, a 60s revivalist garage band who had some significant success in the 1980s and reformed in 2007 (following that?). They were aptly supported by the Huxton Creepers, along with The Dolly Rocker Movement and Even. It was an excellent show for aging alternative rocker types like ourselves, competently and energetically performed, although the couple standing behind us probably could have done with a hotel room.

The latest issue of RPG Review has been released which starts with a fascinating legal debate over our use of 'Young Gods' as the title of an article in the last issue (I'm sure some readers will love to get their teeth into this one), industry news from Mingshi, an interview and artworks by Dan 'Smif' Smith, a review of the New Worlds of Darkness series plus a scenario for the same, a retrospective review of Swordbearer and Heroes of Olympus plus a scenario for both game systems based on the Odyssey, a GURPS Transhumanists plus Time Travellers campaign, languages in GURPS, travel and transport in Paranoia, reliance on NPCs, Metagaming, Anachronisms and Diegesis, a review of Fallout 3, a review of the movie District 9, and, of course, advice and help from Lord Orcus himself!

I'm speaking tomorrow at the Melbourne Atheist Society on "Atheist Support for Religious Freedom?" which promises to discuss the hard issues, not the easy ones. In my absence the Unitarian Philosophy Forum discussed "Death and Existence" which I provided an outline for the discussion. Tickets now available for the 2010 Rise of Atheism convention in Melbourne which features Richard Dawkins, Phillip Adams, Peter Singer and P Z Myers.

Went to Liquid Architecture last week with _nightflower_, an interesting combination of video, sound, performance and installation art. On Saturday went with Karl and Liz to the to the Satirical Eye exhibition at the National Gallery (International) on Saturday; was particularly impressed by Rowlandsen's 'The Chamber of Genius', the content of Goya's Los Caprichos and the irony of Honore Daumier's Les Femmes Socialistes (genuinely ironic because Honoré was trying to ridicule socialist women but the arguments and presentation were actually supportive by contemporary standards). On Wednesday evening will be attending the Salvador Dali Liquid Desire at the same location. Also hoping to see the Light Years (photography and space) exhibition. Tonight will be attending The Comics Lounge with kremmen and caseopaya.

On Tuesday attended the Melbourne Atheist Society to listen to Silvio Bonazinga question 'scientism' in atheism. Meeting in the same hall on Sunday, Peter Abrehart, chairperson of the Melbourne Unitarian Church spoke pretty much in favour of scientism on a presentation entitled 'The Greatest Dissenters'; I took the service from this address and the reading was from Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, specifically oft-cited (and usually erroneously) comment on religion as the opium of the people.

RPG Review issue four has been released. Dennis Sustare's article on his life in gaming is particularly fascinating reading. Also some twit supposedly representing Barry Windsor-Smith studios is complaining about the article entitled Young Gods supposedly infringing trademark. Fun times ahead if they try to go through with that one.