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This morning sat the mid-semester exam for my Introduction to Psychology MOOC and received a satisfactory grade (96.61%), and most usefully, I understand what parts I got wrong. Overall, I am continuing to power my way through this subject which I have had a lot of interest in for many years but have never formally studied, despite having several thick (albeit old) textbooks in my library. After all, I only started it eighteen days ago, and I'm now well into what is supposed to be week five of the course. It has been a sufficiently interesting learning activity for me thus far, and I have gained an appreciation of the subject matter and even motivations of some of the schools of thought, even if I grimace at what comes across as cruel experiments (e.g., yes, I am looking at you, behaviouralism). There's a peer-reviewed essay to be written next, and I am thinking (for aesthetic reasons) of doing it on consciousness in rats. Squeak.
The past few days has also witnessed me delving into the Italian side of my personality, with Friday night "uncontrol day", witnessing the successful invention of a new cocktail, "Il Novecento", with Frangelico, Amaretto, Vermouth Rosso (or Campari) topped with chinotto and layered with Galliano autenico. It's red and a bittersweet, like it's inventor. This was matched with gnocchi con patate americana and torta di mele tusciole. Naturally enough, I've also been revising my frankly terrible (albeit with a completed tree) Italian in Duolingo, although I have discovered that I haven't finished the Italian to French tree, and I am finding that easier than English to Italian. Even musically I have found myself drifting into that EBM tangent, "Dark Italo"
On Friday completed and submitted my second essay and final piece of coursework for my MHEd, an essay on leadership in relation to university funding in Australia. Made the point that what we're calling neoliberalism was a type of transformational leadership for the sector, which lacks sufficient power to makes its case (governments are, at best, only partially swayed by facts and reasons). In these circumstances, universities have to widen their participation rates by lowering entrance costs via new technologies and thus acquire a larger base for transactional power. On the other side of the lectern, also on Friday, I gave a workshop presentation on From Spartan to Gadi, for those researchers who may need to move from the Tier-1 supercomputing facility that we offer at UniMelb to the Tier-0 level with Australia's most powerful public supercomputer at the National Computing Infrastructure. This time, because the content was now available, I could spend more time discussing the National Merit Allocation Scheme application process.
The past few days has also witnessed me delving into the Italian side of my personality, with Friday night "uncontrol day", witnessing the successful invention of a new cocktail, "Il Novecento", with Frangelico, Amaretto, Vermouth Rosso (or Campari) topped with chinotto and layered with Galliano autenico. It's red and a bittersweet, like it's inventor. This was matched with gnocchi con patate americana and torta di mele tusciole. Naturally enough, I've also been revising my frankly terrible (albeit with a completed tree) Italian in Duolingo, although I have discovered that I haven't finished the Italian to French tree, and I am finding that easier than English to Italian. Even musically I have found myself drifting into that EBM tangent, "Dark Italo"
On Friday completed and submitted my second essay and final piece of coursework for my MHEd, an essay on leadership in relation to university funding in Australia. Made the point that what we're calling neoliberalism was a type of transformational leadership for the sector, which lacks sufficient power to makes its case (governments are, at best, only partially swayed by facts and reasons). In these circumstances, universities have to widen their participation rates by lowering entrance costs via new technologies and thus acquire a larger base for transactional power. On the other side of the lectern, also on Friday, I gave a workshop presentation on From Spartan to Gadi, for those researchers who may need to move from the Tier-1 supercomputing facility that we offer at UniMelb to the Tier-0 level with Australia's most powerful public supercomputer at the National Computing Infrastructure. This time, because the content was now available, I could spend more time discussing the National Merit Allocation Scheme application process.
It's been a while (over a year), but I have completed another Golden Owl on Duolingo, this time in Italian, which wasn't even on my list of priority languages. I basically just want enough to order food on Lygon Street, although the course did seem to emphasise food, death, love, and some cosa nostra implications. Many decades ago I did some at junior high school and didn't really grasp it at all. This time however, I found it a lot easier - Duolingo is apparently a better teacher than Mr. Rousseau was, and certainly language acquisition theory has improved a lot since then as well. All I really recall is the expectation that we would read and translate Le Avventure di Pinocchio. All said, whilst there is still a sense that I would like to get a good grasp of at least 
