Lev Lafayette's journal

This was indeed a cunning plan; travel up to Darwin for a week, help Lara D move into her new harbourside apartment, we both work on our respective jobs during the day, we can go to a nice list of Darwin Fringe Festival events in the evening, and have a Sunday day trip out to Litchfield National Park. Such are well-laid plans, and so far, everything has gone quite wrong. Lara's luggage was lost on the trip up (since recovered), and the long-term parking for Roxie (her car, a red convertible, very cute) wasn't recognised. Then I'm receiving messages that my dear Sabre cat is unwell, and mere hours later she's dead. "Nothing can be done about it", I say to myself (and thank you to everyone who expressed their love and concern), "I'll continue on with the quasi-holiday that I have planned here. Hmmm.. But what is it with this slight headache and scratchy throat?"

Yep, I've got The Plague, just to add to the pile. Of course, I tested myself before boarding the 'plane and that was a negative RAT. But last night, just before heading out to one of Darwin's much better dining establishments, I thought I'd do another one and those fateful double lines came up almost right away. It has thrown quite a spanner in the works, rebooking flights at additional cost and all that, having to give away all the Festival tickets to Lara's local friends (easier and friendlier than organising refunds), cancelling planned weekend events, etc. Fortunately, dear Lara is an absolute joy to have around; prior to this trip we'd spent all of one drunken evening in each other's physical company (but plenty of other correspondence and calls) and decided we were compatible enough for this adventure.

Here's the main thing; both of us remain in excellent humour even when struck by events that are outside of our control, and make the effort to do our best in the new circumstances. Despite the disruptions, it really isn't that bad. I have experienced the mildest of symptoms - a slight headache, a bit of a sniffle, a sore throat (for only one day); it's almost like vaccinations have meant that I have antibodies prepared or something. Apart from mild symptoms, I also have a pretty good isolation, spending the next seven days in a harbourside apartment, overlooking clear blue skies with but a gentle breeze. Plus, Lara has some wonderful neighbours who obviously adore her and will readily deliver whatever is needed. In so many ways, The Fates have smiled graciously upon me. Voltaire's Professor Pangloss could not see anything wrong with the world, whilst I see plenty of that, in my own circumstances, I am choosing to adapt to what is right.

Last Friday night I attended two farewells of a very differing nature. One was at The Prince Alfred as an unofficial goodbye organised by Greg S., to a few work colleagues who had found greener pastures. It was a good opportunity not only to catch up with said individuals but also everyone else nearly all of whom I hadn't seen in the previous eighteen months or so, and I spent a good portion of my time in conversation with NinjaDan and Andy B. I had to make my apologies and left a little early to attend a second farewell; this one an impromptu gathering of SF fans by Grant W in memory of _fustian. This event was held at the Great Northern Hotel, in my old haunt of Carlton North from some twenty-plus years prior. It's been a long time since I've been in that part of the world and took the opportunity to take a walk down Rathdowne Street at the end of the night for remembrance.

Whilst the company and conversation I was in for both events was excellent, I must confess to a sense of unease in being in such a large, crowded, indoor, public gathering. Certainly, both bars were checking in for double-vaccinated status and so forth, but nevertheless, we are aware that vaccination does not give one 100% immunity (a misconception that seems particularly common among anti-vaxxers from my encounters). Of course, now we have the latest Omicron variant, of it seems current vaccinations are "probably" effective. In the next day or so, I shall write up a post on variant as part of my regular tracking of such things. It all dovetailed quite well on the Friday with a presentation to our workplace by one Dr David Price, who was the lead author of a rather good paper on tracking the coronavirus in Australia in the first year.

Still, assuming all is well I continued through the weekend in the company of lei_loo, starting with dinner with her mother, brother, and brother's partner on Friday night at their new and rather modern home. Robin T., is a rather spectacular chef by trade whose "simple pasta" was simply astounding (this said, being a specialist pasta chef is part of his current work). In further venturings took some time on Sunday to visit the National Gallery of Victoria which, again due to the circumstances of our time, I hadn't visited in over two years. If I'm going to live in the arts precinct of this city, I'm going to make use of it. At least that venue wasn't so crowded that one was rubbing shoulders with other patrons!

From the very beginning, the Australian Prime Minister has tried to argue that we should "live with the virus". Recently he has been crowing and gaslighting at the same time, claiming that we are able to do so. It's gaslighting because when he said it (16/07/2020) there was no vaccine. Make no mistake, he wanted us "to live alongside the virus and to open up your economy", which meant "die for the economy". But of course, a year later we have multiple vaccines, and they're surprisingly effective for most people. Which is just as well, because the behaviour of people when the city opened up, was rather reckless as video from Chapel Street show, keeping in mind that mask-wearing is still supposed to be requisite.

I take the opportunity to point out that the UK now has roughly ten times as many coronavirus deaths per day than what they had on July 19, their so-called "Freedom Day". Of course, the vaccine has kept the number of deaths much lower (about 1/10th) than the numbers from January this year, albeit with greater case numbers. In Victoria, for those aged 16 and above, the state is now at 74.7% fully (two doses) vaccinated, 16.8% partially (one dose), 8.5% are unvaccinated. There are 144 people in ICU, 93% of whom were not fully vaccinated. Two-thirds of new cases each day occur in those who are not fully vaccinated. These numbers do not lie. Whilst it's a little surprising that the Victorian AMA has said that the anti-vaxxers should not seek treatment if infected, and "let nature run its course".

Obviously, such matters still dominate a lot of my thinking. Still, there are other activities in my life, even if somewhat related. Following on from my presentation at eResearchAustralasia, I have been meeting with the Assoc. Prof. who runs the cryo-electron microscopy laboratory at my workplace to see if we can further optimise their workflow, and with a longer presentation planned with a similar team at the University of New South Wales this week. The challenges are significant; their datasets are enormous, the processing is done in an interactive approach, and a great deal of visualisation is required, meaning expensive GPU servers which of course means latency between the researcher and the server.

The past week has consisted of days dedicated to the Otago University HEDC Symposium, three days of teaching workshops (Introduction to Linux and HPC, Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting, and, tomorrow From Spartan to Gadi). So far everything is doing well. Also doing well is my interviews for online learning tools, a field that has become all the more important in these coronavirus days. I feel the need to preface each time this is brought up that my study commenced just before the pandemic, a curious contextual serendipity that one would rather not have to experience! Apropos, a week ago I topped the Diamond League in Duolingo, the third time I have achieved such a level. However, it felt somewhat undeserved as I managed to snipe the position with less than 2,000 points - around the same amount that a year previous would need per day for a week to achieve such a position. Despite the flurry of online learning in its various forms, perhaps it is the case that fewer people are taking up languages or with as much gusto as in the past. It would seem that a certain "petite chouette verte" is also a victim of SARS-CoV-2, at least in some regions.

On that matter, the European Union 3G policy of "Geimpft, Genesen oder Getestet" (vaccinated, recovered, or tested) seems to be working surprisingly well with rapid testing tools. New cases having declined significantly in France, Germany, Spain, and Italy in recent months (but, notably, not the UK). Australia continues to lag on overall vaccination levels, and our case rates are three times their peak last year and increasing, with New South Wales and Victoria continuing to fare very poorly. Fortunately, vaccination does work and death rates have not increased proportionally. It is, of course, absolute figures that matter in this context if you're on the receiving end and the reality continues to be if you're wilfully not vaccinated or immunocompromised, life is going to be hard. It is the former group which appropriate disdain should be directed.

Which is one of those matters that vaccination is self-interested and other-interested as it does reduce transmission (the virus dies out quicker in a vaccinated person). It is, in a sense, an act of generosity. Contrariwise, being wilfully non-vaccinated is a sense of selfishness, combined with ignorance that is a danger to others. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of people tend towards generousity and a concern for others, and not just in this area. This is my own round-about way of expressing the pleasure of generosity toward a friend who required some bridging finance for a medical issue, but even more so, a most unexpected gift from overseas which I can only spend in memory of a dear and departed friend. Neither act was necessary, but both are carried out with a collective human spirit that inspires.

Today Melbourne city had a protest by anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protesters who represent a tiny percentage of the community but who are increasingly violent in their behaviour (compare, for example, the protests in Sydney and Perth). Many of the participants hold to bizarre fringe ideas, such as the coronavirus is a hoax, or a deliberate plan, or that the vaccination programme is a step towards a totalitarian government. Others, I suspect, were just there to get into a fight with the police or they wanted to riot. Well, hundreds of arrests later they had a gentle taste of power wielded by government. The problem with such people, as much as they cry "freedom", is that they don't have a very good sense of the difference between democratic public space and libertarian personal pace. We are in a public health conflict, of which war metaphors are quite appropriate, and these people are fifth columnists fighting on the side of the virus. I am rather more inclined to the AMA's position that a loosening of restrictions is premature. But such is the nature of politics; sometimes public will is against scientific opinion.

On the national scale, the decision this week by the Morrison government to renege on a deal with French designers to build 12 new attack-class submarines in Adelaide. Already Australia's largest military acquisition in history, it is an exercise in eye-watering opportunity costs. By early January it was already evident that what should have cost $50 billion was going to increase to $89 billion, and now the Federal government is cancelling the deal in favour of nuclear-powered submarines as part of a new defense pact with the United States and the United Kingdom (AUKUS), obviously aimed at curtailing Chinese influence. In doing so, the government has managed to aggravate our largest trading partner, shock and frustrate an important ally, throw away billions of dollars, and cost local jobs. It's a pretty ham-fisted set of actions, from a fumbling government that either announces and fails to deliver, or engages in shocking levels of nepotism and transfer of public money to their wealthy sponsors. Even on a technological level, smaller autonomous unmanned underwater and surface vehicles are the future - but they're more likely for defense, rather than attack.

I have a slight and ongoing annoyance at work, namely, my five-year-old laptop is giving up the ghost, mainly due to fan issues. It's a bit of a "first-world problem", but I've had a request in for a replacement for some months now and only recently has the IT procurement team decided that they can't replace it without a field assessment. They seem to have forgotten that we are in a lockdown and that all they need to do is check the date of purchase. Anyway bad became worse on Thursday when I had a need to do a firmware upgrade, and the system decided to freeze for the better part of 24 hours, which was unfortunate given that I had a workshop to conduct the following day. Fortunately, I managed to get all the necessary software, keys, etc together on my old Mac (a hand-me-down from Rick B) and I managed to conduct the class in that fashion. Still, it was an illustrative microcosm example of sometimes how bureaucracies don't think through their own edicts. Make of what you will whether this applies to national defense purchases.

Last Sunday I gave my presentation on "Pantheism: Beyond Theism and Atheism", which seemed to go fairly well with a pretty good turnout and excellent discussion. An MP4 audio-video recording is also available. There was a hint that perhaps I will do a follow-up presentation on "unverifiable ontologies", that is metaphysics, metaideals, metasymbols some time in the future, and also a reminder to self to put on paper (so to speak) thoughts about Spinoza's rational pantheism and the nature of the infinite, as twice now I have presented primarily on subjective experientiality. As pointed out in the presentation there was a little twist, namely if the universe is considered to be divine in the pantheistic perspective then the secular transcendentals (Truth, Justice, Beauty) must be considered, in some sense, "holy".

It is with this in mind one can think of the "freedom" rallies held in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane over the weekend. Now here's a curious thing; I support the choice of people not to undergo vaccinations on the basis of personal preference, even if I think they are completely ignorant in doing so. However, their "freedom" is also balanced an obligation to respect the safety of the rest of the public. This means movement restrictions and masks in public are valid, as are vaccination requirements for workplaces etc, even to the French method where a health pass is required for restaurants, trains, planes, and some public venues. . If people don't like this they find themselves their own special community to live in, a sort of quarantine from everyone else, or a big 'flu party if you like. I am prepared to take suggestions from Australia's currently uninhabited islands where this should be. Proper shelters can be constructed and food drops arranged. We won't need them for long, right?

It's all part of that difficult balance between truth and freedom, and the challenge when practices and expressions become objectively harmful. I have written about this before in the context of political advertising, suggesting that voters deserve the same protections from politicians as consumers. Of course, in the scientific world, there is a well-established practice of hypothesis-making and hypothesis-breaking where facts trump feelings as a matter of professional competence. "Science is not a democracy", as they say. Sometimes that can lead to surprises; I only recently became aware that the clinical results of the curative properties of aloe vera are mixed at best, regardless of subjective experiences. The most difficult confirmation bias is one's own opinion, experience, and iatrogenic memories, which is why corroborative and external evidence is requisite. But how many are going to believe external evidence against their own feelings and thoughts?

One of my roles at work, apparently so allocated because I have some degree of social skills and some ability to understand domain science, is to organise forums and case studies of interesting use of our technologies. I am particularly pleased over the past few days that I have worked on two such projects, one being a forum by Associate Professor Bernie Pope who has exceptional expertise in human genomics and cancers. Bernie used the Spartan system and the associated cloud compute platform quite extensively in our early days and continues this research. The second, alas, must remain unnamed as their big research project is, as yet, incomplete, but it involves a senior medical scientist with quite a complex workflow (and I say it's complex, it really is), engaging in reconstructions of everyone's friend, SARS-CoV-2. It really is working closely and supporting the computing resources so that scientists like these can make the world a better place that is one of the roles in my life that I take some pride in.

With a little bit of a reversion to a previous life, I have also found myself somewhat involved in a political case, specifically the role of Australian foreign policy in the coup against the elected socialist government of Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973. I have written a few words on the matter, including my own personal reflections as this was formative in my own political views. It might sound strange for one who has been so involved in political life, but like most, I don't actually like much of what constitutes politics, that is, the acquisition of power and the prevention of others from acquiring knowledge or rights. This is why this issue of Chile is important; we want to know what Australia's role was in installing a dictatorship that led to the death, torture, and rape of tens of thousands of people. Yes, there are operational "national security" issues. But this is fifty-year-old information. We need to have a political culture where we, the people, can expect transparent access to the actions of our governments. Such a right will not be generated by the niceness of our rulers, but rather it will have to be forced upon them. As always is the case, you might not be interested in politics, but politics is very interested in you. Because it defines the rules under which we live.

In no surprise to anyone who has been reading my public journal over the past several weeks, I have had a serious, looming, visitation of the Black Dog. Certainly this year it has been salivating over me more than any time in my life. As is my style, I engaged in some structured self-reflection and wrote and published the resulting essay, "Meet Old Shuck, My Black Dog". This comes from some helpful visits and conversations from Geoff K and Mimi R, both good friends and true. Geoff showed a solid theoretical grounding on relationship matters, practical solutions, as well as sharing some extraordinary experiences that far exceed my own. At least I have the comfort of knowing that the hesitations and doubts of mia koramikino were never motivated by malice. For her own part, the delightful Mimi provided her ever-consistent advocacy of the bon vivant aesthetic community with its underlying European-pagan threads, which is of course is absolutely in accord. I also especially wish to thank the contributions of Stephanie B-G who, whilst also recognising many of the symptoms of driven dysthymia, expressed the virtues of planning. Of course, I have written about such things myself in the past in relation to stoicism and anxiety. I must remind myself to listen to my own carefully considered words that I wrote for others, for they are often equally appropriate to myself.

The cathartic exercise of writing, the solidarity of other humans, and the motivating structure of ikigai have all helped in bringing the Black Dog to heel (or to heal, if one likes). Like some ancient Daoist psychological alchemy that seeks a natural and adaptive harmony from contradictions, the inner melancholic romantic clashes with the driven outer stoic. Not with one defeating the other, but rather aufhebung, where the contradictions and conflicts are resolved to a new higher unity. Don't get me wrong, Old Shuck is still there, always will be, and still looms very large indeed. But as he growls and threatens, I am breaking him in to be my steed, through the darkest nights but ever onward. After all, there are adaptive advantages to driven dysthymia, and I may as well use them to my advantage in my ongoing quest to become a better version of myself and to make the world a better place. This means, in the most immediate sense, finishing my MHEd chapter, sitting my macroeconomics exam for the GradDip, writing up the PID for the Wild Flying Geese project - and that's just this month. In other words, life is still worth living, and to the fullest, and for the greatest good. All of this, I must mention, is despite the fact a certain co-pilot veered off to attend to their own needs and their own repairs, but of course as they must. This flight, however, can still easily be picked up on the radar, and what a remarkable journey it already is.

Whilst on this extensive ramble on healing and repairs, I've had what I hope to be my last visit to the dentist for a while. Later on the same day, I ventured to get my first shot of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, which is sub-optimal, but our government goes for price not quality, even when lives are at stake. Whilst I've written about this before the situation has become much worse with a recent study suggesting as little as a 10.4% efficacy against the South African variant. Still better than zero, I guess, but there's an increasing clamour among medical researchers to use the more effective Pfizer or Pfizer-Novavax vaccinations. My fear that 2021 is going to worse than 2020, unfortunately, seems to be coming true, and at this stage, I can't say I'm too optimistic about 2022, either.

It is a rather extraordinary success of modern science that we have vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, especially considering that there other coronaviruses in existence prior to the pandemic, and there had been no vaccines for those. With that in mind, about a year ago, I started saying to those close to me that everyone will become infected eventually. That was the entire point of "flattening the curve" and "elimination" strategies; keep the infection rates down so the health systems can cope. Now people can become infected but will resist the infection with vaccines if they have been applied. In the meantime, the pandemic marches on and as it has now caused three million deaths, I penned a few words on the matter of developmental economics and health policy. From the relative safety and isolation of Australia, I can but look on in despondency as the case and fatality numbers continue their trend in places like the United States, India, Brazil, and many others.

It is also from this vantage point that I have two new short initiatives in recent days. The first arose from rage-quitting a frankly terrible course that I found myself enrolled in teaching online learning. I thought it might be useful for my own teaching and, whilst it did include some interesting, if speculative, edge-cases for education theory (heutagogy, rhizomatic learning). But the actual content was simply the worst I had ever encountered in any of the numerous tertiary courses that I have taken, with no consideration of the suggested tools in their operating context, or with policy considerations. I expressed my considered opinions quite bluntly in leaving the course but, not being the sort of person who likes to convert problems into opportunities, I have now started elaborating a more prescriptive solution on how one should such tools for educational purposes, for publication in an appropriate journal. Finding a co-author or two of a like mind on the issue would be excellent as well, he hints broadly.

Recently I have also been inspired to dust-off some old notes regarding Plato's Symposium, the famous drinking-party of the (male) philosophers in praise of the god Eros. It is from this narration that we have derived the terms "Platonic friendship" and "Platonic love" in popular culture, although they are obviously not used in the text itself. To be fair, some popular advice surrounding such terms can be quite useful and even nuanced to the complexity surrounding such a relationship, although there is no doubt that they are removed from the "ladder of love", expressed in the Symposium (from physical desire to love of the idea of beauty itself). One element that really intrigues me is the reported relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, and the context in which the story was written. I am the debt of Bruce T., for first raising these matters to me some decades ago, and with scholarship in journals seemingly lacking in elaboration on these matters, I find myself beginning another journal article. Again, I will find among my friends surely there is someone who is sufficiently well-versed in the classics to contribute.

It has to be said that Victoria, AU, has managed something quite impressive. Faced with what could have been a disaster, we've taken a hardline on movement and tracing, and have flattened a massive "second wave" which was peaking at 723 new cases a day in late July and is now down to zero, which being recognised, as a world standard. Slowly, and with appropriate caution, the state is easing restrictions based on the medical advice being provided. I am, of course, less than happy with the attempts to politicise the issue with various cries to "open up" earlier (they're curiously silent when it is pointed out that nearly 80% of the fatalities were in Federal-government run aged-care facilities). Of course there is a short-term economic cost. But the data is clear; the greater the death-rate per capita, the worse the economic effect.

Whilst my home state has had some successes, the prognosis for the rest of the world continues to be grim. Throughout July and August the world daily rate was relatively flat, around 250K to 300K per day. Then, in September and now into October, the rate began to climb again, from 300K to 400K and now at c470K, as the total number pushes towards 50 million. The daily death rate, which passed a million since my last major post on this subject, continues at around 5.5K to 6.0K per day. It does so because we have better contact tracing, better hospital care, and a better idea of what drugs to use. It is notable, for example, that President Trump received dexamethasone, remdesivir, and regeneron, not hydroxychloroquine or injecting disinfectant. And yes, it has all become very politicised. Once there was a time when the left and the right would argue about ownership of the means of production; now it's whether or not one should listen to the scientists or not.

But all of this has a personal, very individual cost. I know of people who have contracted SARS-CoV-2, and they speak about the recurring loss of smell and taste, the sudden brain fog and so forth. It affects the heart, it affects the kidneys, it affects the brain¸ and it will stay with you. But now I sadly have to say I also know of a person who has paid the ultimate cost; one Karen B., well-known among Australian science-fiction circles as a regular visitor to conventions. I can't say I knew this "flying penguin" (as she liked to refer to herself) particularly well, although we did meet a few times, and even visited The Asylum once, but certainly, one could not help be impressed by her good spirit, her intellect, and her very sharp sense of humour. The world is a lessened place without her, and as much as we may think what a terrible event this is, the balance of probabilities were weighted by some very real public health policy decisions of where she was. That is the real tragedy.