Lev Lafayette's journal

A good portion of this weekend has been spent updating my article for the Polish Journal of Aesthetics on "Bullshit Art", where I target my pet loathing of "Abstract Expressionism". Funded by the CIA as a successful weapon against Socialist Realism (bullshit is more powerful than lies), it attracted a movement of immature and individualistic wankers who produced works of little to no aesthetic value. Indeed, it was willfully and deliberately anti-aesthetic. It is an act of beauty that, in the course of this revision, that the universe through Jens Hanning has provided "Take the Money And Run", two blank canvases for which the Kunsten Museum of Aalborg paid $116K AUD, which I claim is the ultimate ironic negation of the abstract expressionist logic. You really cannot get better than that. Well, perhaps next time if someone is funded for an installation piece and hands in an utterly invisible and insubstantial piece. I might even hire some space just to do that. See, I have been inspired by ironic abstract expressionism!

In a more substantive manner, I spent a good portion of yesterday in the company of caseopaya at Westgate Park, a substantial corner of inner-city Melbourne that I had not yet visited in my almost thirty years here. Nestled under the Westgate Bridge, a pretty substantial engineering project, the Park consists of a saltwater lake (which turns pink in summer), a freshwater lake (with plenty of birds), and wetlands that are the home of green growler frogs. Frogs I tell you! It's been years since I've seen or heard frogs in the wild. It dove-tailed quite well with the arrival the day previous of a small collection of plants, seeds, and potting mix that I've purchased to add some greenery to the apartment. It has long been part of my personality that I find myself desiring a foot in each of the sublime experiences of nature and the prosaic artifacts of the polis. Of course, I've hardly purchased enough I can see myself in a few months surrounded by as much foliage as I am by books.

Recently, I posted some sadness in the passing of Steve Perrin, an original author of RuneQuest and the Society for Creative Anachronisms. Now I sadly have to make similar remarks for Terry K. Amthor, who was a co-author for original Rolemaster, the science-fantasy setting Shadow World, and some acclaimed Middle-Earth supplements. He was very inspirational to me in my teenage and early twenty years with Rolemaster in Shadow World resulting in a three-year Rolemaster game at the Murdoch Alternative Reality Society (MARS), all of which led to the publication of Rolemaster Companion VI. Many years later I had the pleasure of having him as an interview subject for RPG Review. I hope the RPG community can keep Shadow World alive as an ongoing project. I think he would have liked that.

Last week received results for my first two MBA assignments; Management Perspectives 67.5% (meh), Financial Management 88% (woot!). In the former, my marks were lower because I left out perspectives such as "Porter's Five Forces", the "McKinsey 7-S model" and so forth. If this sounds like management-babble that's because it is. I am somewhat horrified by how intellectually lightweight management theory actually is. There is a lot of influence from the latest popular psychology and material from actually practising managers who seem to owe their position more to luck, gender and school connections. In any case, exams are next week I've I've started putting together study notes from the course material. For my next two courses (and thus completing the Grad Cert level) I'll probably be taking Marketing (which should be a doddle with my background) and Managing Information Systems, which should be more challenging.

With the release of a playtester version of Rolemaster Cyradon I've been running scenarios with the three groups that I do regular face-to-face gaming with. Cyradon is pretty much generic fantasy, in many ways reminiscent of Rolemaster's old default game-world, ShadowWorld. That means there is a science-fantasy background in the distant past (thus one can integrate components of SpaceMaster), plus a reduced number from the standard set of fantasy 'races'; elves, dwarves, gnomes and lizard-men are all present. There is a group that physically resembles orcs, the gryx, but with a more peaceful outlook. Added to the mix are gryphons as potential PCs. The system is, well Rolemaster with some slight modifications, with both the benefits and problems of that game. Character generation still takes too long, the skill system is simple, combat is colourful with random deadliness, and the magic system certainly requires experienced players.

On Friday night went to an MS-Windows "7" (more marketing nonsense; it's actually NT v6.1.7) launch party (parody available) that was hosted at our work. A substantial number of our rusted-on pro-Linux systems team were present and, in all honesty, I cannot see any real advantages to Microsoft's latest release. Yes, it's better that Windows Vista, but that's hardly a great achievement. Big selling features supposedly include virtual folders, some user interface changes, and keyboard shortcuts - none of which are exactly great (or particularly new) improvements. It would be interesting to see if Windows 7 is still tied to DRM as its predecessor. Overall, there is no good reason to upgrade from Windows XP especially at the price tag that Windows "7" comes with; and I suspect the market will respond in kind.

GetUp! are currently running a very sensible campaign concerning some serious problems with the government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. On a related note, I have joined the Labor Environmental Activist Network, which is one of the more positive things I have seen in that party for sometime; I intend to develop some material for them around eco-taxes and the like based around the simple (but oft-ignored) principle that it is far better to drive government funds from the resources people use, rather than the production they engage in.

Unitarian service on Sunday wasn't very good. It came under the title "The Truth Will Set You Free", and I gave the speaker the benefit of the doubt that perhaps they would actually discuss the nature of truth. Instead, as I suspected, they gave yet another espousal of a truncuated and old version of historical materialism; criticism of the presentation by younger members of the congregation was noted. Afterwards I gave a presentation at the Philosophy Forum on "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast", which investigated the problems that philosophy has whilst it is tied to metaphysics (and particularly theology) and expanded verification theory to incorporate the rational dimensions of universal pragmatics. Last month's notes on Dark Matter/Dark Energy is now available.

My review of Summerland is up, including some pretty bad editing errors on my part; I really should be more careful in this regard. On Sunday our RuneQuest group went truly retro with the integration of the 1978 scenario Balastor's Barracks into our storyline; it went really well but I had to make some modifications so it made sense. Have found myself working on another project for ICE; NDA forbids me from discussing the details (bleh).