Lev Lafayette's journal

On Sunday I gave an address to the local Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship on "The Pursuit of Happiness" which followed the phrase from the US Declaration of Independence, and outlined the three main approaches; hedonistic, Epicurean, and Stoic along with some empirical backing from the modern science of well-being and societal-level measures. As I mentioned in the presentation, I have discusssed this matter at some length in the past with "The Continuum of Needs and Wants", to the Melbourne Agnostics, on November 14, 2020, "From Stoicism and Naturalistic Pantheism to Effective Altruism" to The Sea of Faith in Australia, on April 21st 2022, and "We Are We Do: Emotions, Trauma, and Happiness" the Melbourne Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, on May 15, 2022. I neglected to mention, because I plain forgot, that I also gave a presentation to The Philosophy Forum on August 7, 2011, also entitled "The Pursuit of Happiness". Across all these presentations there is a running theme where I note that there are different stages of happiness that correlate with Hannah Arendt's categories of being and the satisfaction of each stage can lead to an indulgence which brings unhappiness - and the empirical evidence backs this up. Thus there is an evolution from sensual hedonism, to the contentment of Epicureanism, to the moral virtue and social engagement exemplified by the Stoics.

On the matter of hedonistic and epicurean approaches, the winter phase in Melbourne is an opportunity for me to engage in various forms of soups and stodgy fare of which various dining companions are given the opportunity to put on a kilo or two in my company. As promised in the last entry, I have a small mountain of recipes to update of this nature, so here's the new additions: Coq au vin, Vichyssoise, Soupe au Pistou, Hungarian Mushroom Soup and Langos, and Irish Colcannon. This last weekend also witnessed "German night" which is a challenge when you're cooking for vegetarians. Although in the past I have made Kaese Spaetzle (the German version of "mac and cheese"), this time I tried my hand at Eier in Senfsoße (eggs in mustard sauce) with a side of sauerkraut, Thuringian Klöße mit Bratkartofflen (potato dumplings and fried potatoes), with Schmorkohl (Braised Cabbage), and Frankfurter grie soβ (green sauce - mine was not nearly green enough), before finishing with a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Blackforest Cake). Apart from the cake, there was a pretty serious amount of cabbage, potato, and onion and whilst it all wasn't bad at all, my friends of Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg regions may forgive my preferences of the more colourful foods of the Campagne française.

The last morning in Zurich was spent at the Swiss Landesmuseum, conveniently located across from the Hauptbanhof. This massive, sprawling combination of joined old (historicist French Renaissance) and new buildings includes an excellent collection of local archeological finds, Swiss history content to modern events, various weaponary from the early modern period, as well as well-appointed rooms of the wealthy. It is probably one of the highlights of Zurich and a good way to finish the trip there before taking a flight to Vienna. If time permitted the six-hour train trip probably would have been preferable, but as it was the Swiss Air flight was pleasant enough.

From Zurich the next stop was Vienna, staying in the Hotel Geblergasse, which is utterly spacious and affordable following Zurich. The area is densely populated, with a heavy migrant and working-class population. Anarchist and communist stickers are plastered everywhere and the hotel itself has characters from many walks of life. Like much of what is seen around the inner region of Vienna, it could certainly with a bit more foliage, which contrasts to the surrounds of the well-provided Innere Stadt, which itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and for very good reason. Vienna is certainly the most "old European" city, with astounding baroque buildings everywhere. One could spend a lifetime or several in such a place.

Home of a multitude of famous musicians, it is nicknamed "the city of music" and it is appropriate to visit the central cemetery, Wiener Zentralfriedhof, for the gravesides of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, the Strauss family etc, as well as contemporaries such as Falco and Kurt Hauenstein. The Viennesse have a little joke, of their cemetery Halb so groß wie Zürich, aber doppelt so lustig ist der Wiener Zentralfriedhof"
("half the size of Zurich, but twice as much fun"). Also of note is the location of Carl Schweighofer, of the piano-manufacturer family, which featured on the great 1980s hit by Ultravox, "Vienna". As a deep fan of said band, the opportunity to have a photo taken at that location could not be passed up. I also gave my respects to the great psychologists, Viktor Frankl and Alfred Adler.

The following day was an attempt to visit some of the major sights of the Inner Stadt. This included St. Stephen's Cathedral, and a tour of the crypt, notable for containing some 12000 skeletons, mostly of people who died of the plague. When the smell became too much, prisoners were lowered into the pit to dismember the corpses. Afterwards it was a visit to the delicious Globenmuseum (flat-earther hell), and the small but charming Esperantomuseum. There was a Esperanto-word-building Pacman game which I was doing pretty well at, but had to leave for time considerations. Finally it was a visit to the truly beautiful Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, which had a special exhibition on the works of Emperor Maximilan I, being the 500th anniversary of his death.

That night was a visit to the Wiener Staatsoper (State Opera) to see Jules Massenet's Werther, and we were dressed up appropriately. The Opera itself is a truly delightful building and caters to people of all sorts of financial circumstances (best seats for the rich, standing room for the poor). Massenet's adoption of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, is faithful to the key themes of that story. Performed in French (as one would expect) the Opera also has individual screens for subtitles, including in French itself so one can follow along. Alas, the presentation in that language was not centered and truncated some sentences. Peering at the English translations, I can see that they were sometimes pretty cavalier with their interpretations in that language. Nevertheless, a great performance overall in an astounding location.

I'm now into my fifth night in Zurich and it's all been a bit exhausting. Everyday has been attending the residency during what is slightly more than normal work hours, plus working on draft proposals and proposals for my thesis. In a sense it's been good that I haven't had an enormous opportunity to see the limited sights of this city, as it is extremely expensive for visitors, however for locals the high GDP PPP per capita suggests that it is less onerous (Luxembourg is even higher, but on my limited time there it seemed a lot more friendly, financially-wise). Zurich has its charms of course, including the beauty of Zürichsee, the parks and gardens, and the fine old buildings of District 1 and Altstadt. The public transport system is excellent, and everything is neat and clean and just so. I also rather suspect I would be dying of boredom if I had to stay longer than a month. Either that or spending all my time with Cabaret Voltaire and engaging in good art damage.

As for the MSc Residency, it has been quite a mental disruption to what is supposed to be a vacation. It's pretty hard work in many ways, but is also an excellent introduction to the thesis writing process. The highly international class has been provided a number of group tasks, one being a very quick hypothetical business analysis of a European company moving into China. The group decided that I would do the presentation itself and, to be quite honest, it came across extremely well as I gave a rapid, relentlessly logical, and very passionate exposition on a project to rebuild China with various environmentally-beneficial building materials (apparently I've been nick-named "The Dragon Professor" by classmates as a result). In addition to this, I've produced the draft proposal and proposal for my thesis; Is the Future of Business Software Free and Open Source?, where I'm looking at various trends in software licenses over the past two or more decades, plus the disciplinary influences of business studies (especially monopolistic advocacies), the economics of imperfect competition, and software engineering. Plus a bit of the Church-Turing thesis for good measure; one can't get enough of that.

In addition to all this, I've been making preparations to the final leg of the vacation. This includes the flight to Vienna, and train tickets and hotel bookings to Bratislava, Prague, and then finally Frankfurt, before the journey home (after which I have two days of classes to conduct the day after landing). Tickets have been produced to see Jules Massenet's Werther at the Vienna State Opera because, let's face it, such opportunities like this don't come up often. Also worth mentioning is that over the past three weeks or so, I've been topping the weekly Duolingo leagues, firstly ruby, then emerald, and most recently pearl, through a combination of lessons in German, French, then German again, and most recently, in Czechoslovak. Hopefully, I will have enough of a grasp of the latter by the time I arrive in Prague to at least give simple greetings and requests! Actually, I am kind of hoping that this will be a gentle gateway to the Slavic languages and Russian in particular, which I have struggled with for some time.

After leaving the hotel in Delft, ventured slightly north to a visit to International Criminal Court, which included a small but interesting visitor's centre. Its work, of course, is limited to prosecuting those who are caught, rather than those that are victorious and powerful. Nevertheless, I did send some postcards to George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and John Howard with "Wish you were here. We have not forgotten you.". They have committed an international crime of aggression and they should never be forgotten in their responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. It is possibly one of the extremely few instances where the death penalty might even be justified, as it not possible for restorative justice to be carried out.

After The Hague it was a short trip to Ghent, where we stayed across the road from the Campo Santo cemetery. The Flemish hotel owner was surprised with our rather modest abilities with local European languages for people from Australia, but was satisfied with the answer, "We love Europe". Afterwards made our way to have dinner with Qassem, a Syrian refugee who has now settled in Belgium. It was one of those curious friendships where we had known each other online for several years before meeting him in person, and I made several representations to Australian politicians to get him out of some dreadful situations, but Belgium proved to be a lot more accommodating. Unfortunately the person who made the booking for us, Kenneth Hoste of EasyBuild fame could not attend for medical reasons.

From Ghent we took the train to Brussels to stop over for lunch, before boarding the Flix bus to go to Paris. The Flix bus service never seems to be on time (although N=2), but in this case it was a lot cheaper than the train, which is my preferred mode of transport. In Paris, we found ourselves in the 12th arrondissement in a hotel room which was tiny and pretty expensive even by Parisian standards. That evening finished a report for my Masters in Higher Education at a local laundromat (I've submitted essays from stranger places), and the following day went on a very extensive journey. We started at the Bois de Vincennes and managed to complete about ten percent of this magnificent city parkland and forest. Afterward, took a long promenade to the Place de la Nation and then down the Boulevard Diderot to the Left Bank, where I someone managed to limit my purchases to a single book (albeit published in 1791). This was followed with a late lunch with Norman Spinrad, in the Basque restaurant Beaurepaire downstairs from his apartment. We spent about three hours discussing his science fiction, contemporary fiction, and historical fantasy books, as well as international politics, and I'll be interviewing him for the Isocracy Network in the coming month or so.

Afterward headed back towards the hotel, but made a detour the somewhat hidden Picpus Cemetary, which is on the same street as our hotel. The cemetery is famous for two things; firstly being a location of mass graves of individuals who were executed during the Reign of Terror. Secondly, being the gravesite of my namesake, the Marquis de La Fayette, author of La Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, "le fils de la Revolution Américaine", & etc. "Lafayette, Je suis ici". Shortly afterward Gianna V., caught up with us and took on a visit to a local comic store where, by good fortune, a first-time author Marine Spaak, was doing signings ("dedicace") for her graphic novel "Sex, Sexisme, and Sun". The young woman had spent a year in Bendigo, of all places, so we could converse in a combination of French and English. Afterwards Gianna, caseopaya went down the bar and restaurant district of the 11th arrondissement and had dinner at the Italian restaurant, Popine, which is mentioned for its excellent quality for simple fare.

A journey to the other side of the world involves some time which, despite the best efforts of carriers (Etihad in this instance), is always a little hard on the body, even with a short stop-over in Abu Dhabi. Of course, it's a first-world problem at worst. At least one has the opportunity to catch up on movies and readings, and this trip was no exception in that regard. Having found a couple of Norman Spinrad books I re-read my rather battered second copy of Bug Jack Barron, which I thoroughly enjoyed, again. I then watched a few disappointing episodes of Family Guy, a show I normally enjoy for being a bit edgy and dank, followed by the decidely average horror film, The Curse of La Llorona, before concluding on a few excellent episodes of season 2 of Westworld, which continues its conflict-laden exploration of complex androids turning on their creators who have abused them for years.

Arriving in Frankfurt we were waved through customs and passport in a matter of minutes and was lucky enough to have trains waiting for us at both the airport and at Frankfurt HBh to take us to Stuttgart. Due to pure luck we had arrived on German Unity Day, which was utterly devoid of nationalistic nonsense, at least where we were. It was a public holiday and long-weekend, which primarily means family activities and staying with die familie in Stuttgart, we provided our usual bag of gifts which the growing Kinder always enjoy, along with some wines and a bottle of Vantage, an interesting lemon myrtle liquor for the adults. The agenda has been quite busy already; on the first day we went to the Heilbronn Bundesgartenschau, which is basically an open-air botanical museum and festival along the banks of the Necker, which also paraded various environmental and urban renewal of former industrial sites. The following day we returned to Heilbronn for Experimenta, a multi-story interactive workshop and science show, again aimed for kids, but also highly educational as well.

It's been a busy week for secular activities in my word. The petition I initiated, to de-register the Australian Christian Lobby and end "advancing religion" as a charitable category, has reached over 17,000 signatures, although it has slowed down in the past couple of days. In upping the ante, the Federal government is raising the prospect of "religious freedom" bill which almost certainly would enshrine the power to discriminate. I have offered the alternative that "religion" should be removed from the statute books entirely, following the clause of the Australian constitution, "Commonwealth not to legislate in respect of religion". The Victorian Secular Lobby had a committee meeting as well, to confirm our banking details, given that we might actually need to use it now. Finally, just on the verge of finishing the association's submission to the Victorian government's Royal Commission on the Mental Health System.

In other news, caseopaya have booked our tickets for this year's trip to the other side of the planet. Of course, part of this is due to necessity as I have a residency in Zurich to complete as part of my MSc in Information Systems. At least most of this journey will actually be a holiday. Naturally enough, the plan is afoot to visit friends and family, all of whom are within a few hours of each other in the central-west region; thus the plan is Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Freiburg, Zurich, Paris, Ghent, Deflt, Amsterdam, and then back to Frankfurt. The journey will take pretty much most of the month of October; I would rather like to take a bit of a journey to the south and east (Venice, Vienna, Bratislava, Prague), but alas time does not permit such an opportunity this time around. Next time for sure, right?

In other news, things are mostly normal, as much as they are in my life. Have had a few support successes at work with the various interesting user issues, which is kind of unavoidable with scientific software. I've had a good discussion making comparisons between war and business in international business strategy in the MSc discussion forums. In gaming news, an issue has been raised in RuneQuest circles about the relative value of shields vis-a-vis two-handed weapons, which has generated some discussion on the RuneQuest rules mailing list and on the Facebook group. Currently playing Megatraveller, where we've "kidnapped" a despot who is paying well to have some medical treatment on another system.

In a hat-tip to the previous journal entry (which referred to SF adventures), there is a certain degree of similarity in this one. The weekend, apparently, is similar to the week prior which explains why I feel that I haven't had a weekend yet. Today however I was teaching mainly immunological doctoral researchers at the Peter Doherty Institute. I was planning to do an Introduction to Linux and HPC but after listening to their explanations of existing genomics workflows, I switched my presentation immediately to my Bioinformatics for HPC course which combines the general courses with the Date Carpentry course on genomics (so yes, two courses squeezed into one), with most of the first part being completed. They were a pretty switched-on group, with a number having good levels of previous experience, and with some challenging and insightful questions.

Out-of-hours what spare time I have has been largely spent on working on an assignment for my final course for my MSc in Information Systems, with the dissertation to follow. With a few stuff-ups in my residency enrolment, I am now booked to go to Zurich in November. After missing winter for two years in succession, it will be a pleasant change to get two in a single year, although I imagine it will be quite a shock to the system returning from the onset of a European winter to the beginning of an Australian summer. Still, the practical upshot of all this will be the completion of degree number five, and with six and seven in the wings as well. It will, of course, be another opportunity to visit Europe which will require mapping out something will include visits to friends and family as well as trying to expand the scope of places to include new areas.

On the weekend played a session of the new edition of RuneQuest, having wrapped up our third edition game that made use of various "gateway" settings (Questworld, Griffin Island, Elderaad). This is set in the deep, weird, and mostly consistent fantasy world of Glorantha which in some many ways has a mythic structure that is stronger than most real-world religions, but that's what you get for a fantasy world designed by a practicing shaman and mythologist. For my own part, I took the role of the most comic species in the setting, the duck-like durulz (and with an appropriate pun, named her Rowena Wigeon, a trickster cult member). The curious thing about these beings is that even though they come across initially as quite ridiculous (image of Donald Duck come to mind), they have an extraordinary depth of character. Cursed, flightless, they live in a swampland inhabited by a demi-god vampire and his minions. As a result, they may seem initially to be ridiculous, but they carry with themselves a level of surly seriousness and are savagely foul-beaked as a result. Strange, deep, but consistent? That's Glorantha for you and that is why in the past I have described it as the greatest fantasy world ever created.

Just about to board the early morning train journey from Berlin to Frankfurt, then the big silver bird to Bangkok and finally Melbourne. The past few days have been a bit of a whirlwind, starting with a visit to the Alte Nationalgalerie and the Siegessäule on Tuesday. The former was housed on the appropriately named Museum Island, and presents itself in a grand neoclassical style. The interior included far too much German realism (Menzel is so boring), but was saved by a good collection of French impressionism, and an excellent temporary exhibition on "wanderlust", with a great 3D animation by Björk. The latter is impressive despite its military glorification, but the fact it features in Wings of Desire was the main reason caseopaya wanted to visit. It is also a fine place to find a cafe where you can be charged $7AUD for a glass of cold water.

The following day was a trip to the famous Berlin zoological gardens and aquarium (which also includes the reptile house, insects etc). It is really worth putting aside a day for this trip, and getting tickets to both venues. Without a doubt the highlight creature was the quasi-tropical Humboldt penguins, which displayed great levels of playfulness. I suspect it is from these birds that David Attenborough derived an inkling for his famous flying penguin video. After that we took a trip to the Eastside gallery, a long remaining stretch of the old Berlin wall which seen over a hundred street artists around the globe express their views on the matter. It was (along with the tagging) mostly disappointing.

Thursday started with a visit to the offices of Die Linke on Rosa Luxemburg Platz where I had a chat with some party officials, paid my membership, and appropriately purchased volume one of the collected works of Rosa Luxemburg. My midday we made it to Museums für Film und Fernsehen, which includes a great potted history of German film from its origins to contemporary productions. There was, of course, quite an emphasis on greats like Fritz Lang and Marlene Dietrich (especially the latter), and one cannot help but get the sense that the mass exodus of talent following the rise and fall of the Nazis and the splitting of the country did enormous damage to the early innovations. The day finished with going to see Blue Man Group with front row tickets. Part-band, part-performance art, BMG put on a family-friendly show with plenty of audience participation. My apparent enthusiasm resulted in being awarded one of the canvases, splattered with flurouscent pain from their drums.

Our final day was a visit out to the sprawling palace and grounds of Charlottenburg, traditional home of royalty of Prussia and Brandenburg. Much of it has had to be restored following WWII, but the restoration is superb. The interiors are an overwhelming assault of baroque and roccoco with almost every centimetre either gilt or convered in cherubs. The sprawling wings, additional buildings, and grounds (landscaped and otherwise) took pretty much four hours in their own to explore. The day ended with yet another visit to the Warschauer region of Friedrichshain which, in my considered opinion, is the finest and most human area of Berlin.

The past few days I have been in Enschede, a moderately-sized former industrial town near the border of Germany, staying at the deco-era Hotel Rodenbach, situated next door to the pleasant Volkspark. The final night we splashed out a bit and enjoyed a meal at their rather nice restaurant; most other evenings we spent in their rather sizable Oude Markt area. Overall Enschede is really pleasant town with a good mix of interesting architecture, with a good student community, and a moderate amount of industry. It has managed to rebuild itself quite well following a rather dramatic decline in its traditional manufacturing base in the 1980s, reminding me of some the New Zealand towns of a similar vintage (e.g., Cambridge).

The purpose of this visit to a such a relatively obscure place has been for a philosophy of technology conference at the University of Twente. My own paper, Transparency and Immersion in High Performance Computing basically argued that (a) the command-line interface will always be necessary for speed and capability and especially for HPC and that (b) it also needs to be updated in terms of syntax, structure, and linguistic scope for greater intuition, although I did have a fairly pessimistic conclusion on the chances this would occur. As once remarked: "We think an act according to habit, and the extraordinary resistance offered to even minimal departures from custom is due more to inertia than to any conscious desire to maintain usages which have a clear function" (Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology).

For a conference that was expecting 50 people and ended up with over 200, it was quite stimulating. I made a couple of relatively important contacts, including Don Ihde, whose phenomenology of technology was extremely influential in my own thinking on the subject, and Rosi Braidotti who gave an absolutely firey presentation on the current state of critical theory and post-structuralism. In addition there is at least three other people whom I am hoping to have further collaborations with in the future across the disciplines of Habermas' critical theory and technology, cultural studies, and Internet privacy. Overall, it was a really good event and a credit to the organisers. Nearly all the speakers I heard were very knowledgeable about their respective subject matter and raised important issues on human-technology interactions, and many were from backgrounds that knew the technical details intimately. But as stimulating as it was, it was also a reminder on the discipline: "if you want to be a philosophy graduate, you'd better get a taxi license as well!". Philosophy as a profession is rarely the path to a secure or even moderate income.

The first leg of the trip to the low countries was from Stuttgart to Luxembourg via Koblenz which pretty much followed the Rhine, with all its old-world beauty. Contrary to expectations, accommodation and dining at Luxembourg was very reasonably priced; a hat-tip to the superb value-for-money Empire Hotel and the cheap-and-cheerful Italian restaurant next door. There was sufficient time to tour select landmarks of the old city and remains of the historic fortifications, as well as taking the Skylift which provided a panorama of the city. One thing particularly of note was that few people in Luxembourg speak the national-language Luxembourgish (which, for all intents and purposes, is a dialect of German). Whilst French is listed as a "working language" of the Grand Duchy, almost every conversation is in French first. The reason is quite clear when one views the demographics; Luxembourg is essentially a migrant city, and of the locals and migrants, close to 100% of the population is French-speaking.

The next city was Brussels, the journey from Luxembourg through the traditional Walloon territory, alternating between small towns, deep forest in hilly areas, and green fields, where the cows are so fat and happy that most have decided that they don't need to stand anymore. Staying at the Hotel Des Colonies was quite a historical experience; built in the early 1900s it is lusciously designed numerous art nouveau effects and was occupied by in both the first and second world wars by various powers as a headquarters. It is believed that Field Marshal Montgomery wrote his Christmas speech in the hotel itself. In the attempt to continue historical contributions the new shower system was designed for contortionists. Despite all this the opportunity was taken to visit the old city centre region and stand in absolute awe of its imposing and lavish 17th century wrought and gilt guildhouses. The day finished with quiet dinner at the peaceful Place des Martyrs, where bodies of the 1830 Belgian revolution lay. Again as another example of the northward march of the French language, it was only here that I overhead any Flemish spoken at all, which is a significant demographic shift.

Following Brussels the next stop was Ghent, a small and compact city steeped in medieval and early modern history. The opportunity was taken to visit the local university and in particular Kenneth Hoste, the main organiser behind EasyBuild, who provided lunch and a tour of the data centre which hosts the regional HPC system. I was also alerted to a couple of job opportunities. Late in the afternoon caught up with Qassem and his friend Salah. I have established a long-standing friendship with Qassem, a Syrian refugee from Da'ara, whereas his friend is from Aleppo. Qassem has written a number of articles for the Isocracy Network, and it just so happened to be his birthday on the date of our arrival. He and Salah gave us a tour of major features of the city (including Gravensteen, St Michaels' etc), along with dinner with the sole small Syrian restaurant. Afterward we went to Salah's apartment where we watched the unexpected win of Belgium over Brazil. The latter had many more opportunities at goal, but the Belgian defense was really quite impressive - and when the Belgians did attack, they did so very quickly. It is, of course, almost impossible to visit Europe at this time of year without making some observation on the World Cup.