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Last Saturday was my last day in Melbourne for the next two weeks, and it witnessed four significant events. The first was the Isocracy Annual General Meeting discussing the rather extraordinary results of the Federal election. Our guest speaker, John Bade, is a former Liberal Party member of some note (branch president, state council delegate etc) and spoke on how the party really has been taken over by extreme religious activists who think the rest of Australia must move to them, a major factor in that party's decline. Afterwards, I went to the Effective Altruism conference, which concluded with a public lecture by famous ethicist Peter Singer. I spent a bit of time in the company with Adam Ford, who was the official photographer for the event, and then conversed a bit with Prof Singer about his earlier publications and rats (he's a rat fancier himself and speaks highly of them as animal companions). To conclude the evening I went to final session of "Notre Dame After Dark" at the Immigration Museaum, because the opportunity to hear some fine music in such surroundings was quite enticing.

The next morning, Erica and I ventured out to the airport to take the big silver bird to China, where we are staying for the next ten days. The first day was pretty much entirely in transit, first to Shanghai, then taking a connecting flight to Beijing. There is not much to report on this, except to say that the flight was tolerable, the food fine, the staff excellent, and the in-house entertainment limited. "Sirrocco" is a surreal children's animated film of escapism of sisterly love which can appeal to adult viewers with good characterisation and plot, but the animation, whilst creative, lacked a little in technique; 4/5. "Dune 2" was well produced with a good soundtrack, but I felt no sense of appeal with the plot and characters all based around violence and machismo. I am tempted to give it another viewing as I was surprised by how bad it was; 2/5. "Solitude" started slowly, but developed into a grim and tragic tale of loneliness, generosity, and an intergenerational friendship with an ambiguous ending; 3/5.

The first day proper in Beijing started with a visit to Tian'anmen Square, which, of course, is flanked by several important national buildings (e.g., the parliament). The square itself is just a vast courtyard, and it's fascinating in its blandness, even if, with all the usual connotations of Chinese geomancy, it represents the head of the city's land dragon. After that, we went to Qianmen Avenue (the body), which has some rather charming alleyways running parallel to the main drag. In the evening, we were treated to a rather extraordinary theatrical piece, "The Golden Mask", a legendary tale. This show has, in my somewhat considerable experience, the most extraordinary set and costumes, including several performers with actual live white peacocks as part of their costumes and a literal flooding of the stage. Two more days in Beijing are planned, including an excursion to The Great Wall, an evening in the Old City, and finally a morning in the Museum Palace (aka the Forbidden City). But all that will have to wait for the next post on this adventure.
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In recent days I have been thinking about the requirements of an ethical life, based on the principle of how to minimise suffering to human and non-human animals. Both have been a life-long interest that motivates, far more than anything else, my practical political activism and even employment choices as much as anyone has a choice in that. There are many changes to law and political economy which can make substantive and ongoing improvements to the lives of others, even if some may seem at first blush quite orthogonal (explaining the astounding benefits of land-tax is something that requires essays on a topic that would put normal people to sleep). But of course, political involvement is not the only way that one can meaningfully contribute to bettering the world. One can also do this on a personal level as well, at no cost to social activism. The reverse, I must mention, does not apply - if one concentrates only on the personal, then a system remains in place that perpetuates violence and suffering. It's like being a pacifist and ignoring a war; whatever personal virtue one has is lost in the lack of social action.

Recently I raised the matter of whether on The Ethical Eating Of Sentient Life. Is It Possible?. Of course, there are ethical situations where it is possible, and there is certainly also a continuum of sentience, expressed a punctuated equilibrium, and I am rather fond of the ancient Hellenic term, apochí empsýchon (ἀποχὴ ἐμψύχων) - abstaining from the consumption of beings with a psyche. The sting in the proposition I put is whether there are arguments for making it compulsory; there's the social aspect. There is a victim involved, even if they do not have political power themselves. Sensible, pragmatic, contributor to the discussion have noted that whilst this is a worthwhile project, it would require an exceptional cultural shift. At best the majority opinion today has concerns for animal welfare in husbandry practises and euthanasia in slaughter. I acknowledge that this is at least a start.

In other news, I became a first-time blood donor today - apparently, my O+ blood type is somewhat useful. The process took a surprisingly long time, but it certainly a worthwhile thing to do. On Saturday the Victorian Secular Lobby had its annual general meeting with associate professor Luke Beck talking about the federal government's "religious freedom bills"; yours truly is president once again. Currently marking assignment for Unimelb's Cluster and Cloud Computing course, and will be conducting training courses for the next three days with classes over 30 over Zoom. Should be interesting given my home bandwidth.

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Diary of a B+ Grade Polymath

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