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A major activity in the past week has been the substantive start to the Isla Bell Charity fundraising campaign from the RPG Review Cooperative; it's mostly my efforts at this stage, but others are also getting involved in the new future. The canonical list of games for sale and description is available on the RPG Review Cooperative website. This will be updated pretty much every day. The aim was originally to raise at least $5K by the time that Conquest is held; we're well over 20% complete in pledges just after the few day, so maybe that was a bit pessimistic on my part. Further, I have already had discussions outside the Cooperative with other organisations about further potential fundraising activities.

On a related matter, I received a ticket to Knotfest from the Charitable Fund under the proviso that I had "to party as hard as Isla". Whilst a full review is being composed for Rocknerd, I can mention in advance that the festival was absolutely superb, tens of thousands of people. I was particularly impressed with "Within Temptation", "Slaughter to Prevail", and especially "Babymetal". Of course, headline act "Slipknot" themselves really put on an impressive and energetic visual show at volume. On a vastly different scale, the night previous, I went out with Carla BL to see "Buddhadatta", a Japanese Buddhist punk band (yes, you read that right) supported by all-women "Curlers" with their punk-synth, and the experimental noise of "Paul Kidney Experience". More reviews for Rocknerd! Finally, on such social events, I went out with Liza D. last night to a comedy taping show featuring Nicky Black and Jez Watts.

But that's not all! It really has been quite a diverse week. Early in the week, I had two workshops to run, "High Performance and Parallel Python" and "Regular Expressions with Linux"; the former was quite engaging, with a large turnout. Further, this weekend, I also joined a panel to discuss the future of wages and incomes in the age of automation with Adam Ford's "Future Day". Unlike other times in the past when technology has provided productivity and new job opportunities, I think current technologies are largely job replacing, and only a change in the political economy will fairly distribute the productivity gains. Finally, because I haven't mentioned it for a little while, I should say that I'm powering along in my PhD studies and am looking toward an early finish to the introductory unit in Argumentation and Critical Thinking, which I believe I have plenty of experience. The next step will be getting prior credit from my master's degree.
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Visited the David Bowie exhibition with Liz B., Karl B., and [livejournal.com profile] caseopaya on Sunday on a special event organised by the Australian Sex Party. Spent a fair bit of time chatting with Fiona Patten, the party's leader and member in the Victorian parliament. They've done very well over the past six years as a minor party and have managed to succeed well beyond their representation. The exhibition itself was quite a delight, with quite a collection of ephemera, clothing, music, and videos. As an example of the imperfections of memory, was reminded how abundantly political and very Australian the "Let's Dance" video clip was (for someone who has three copies of the album on vinyl, the lapse is quite impressive). Entry also included a free album, albeit tied to Google services.

Other heroes, which I have already mentioned in passing on FB, are the hero rats of APOPO who, in Mozambique, have finished their contribution of making that country land-mine free. For the civil union [livejournal.com profile] caseopaya and I had that as our charity of choice, so it is very pleasing to see their remarkable success. There is of course plenty more work for these small but mighty noses to do in the detection of land mines in other countries and early detection of tuberculosis. Journeyman Pictures has a great short documentary on their mine-clearing activities.

Spent last night with a small group having dinner with futurist Jamais Cascio, and quizzed him on a few matters of the matters of dangerous climatic changes, the possibility of geoengineering to resolve these problems, and the political impediments to such action. Also as an item of discussion that night was the heroic research success of NASA's media announcement of having found liquid water on mars. Yes, 'heroic research' - courageous, audacious, doughty. We need to see some more of that in this world.

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