thudthwacker

"Jurgen Habermas is the most influential thinker in Germany today". Thus begins Thomas McCarthy's 1975 translator's introduction to "Legitimation Crisis" ("Legitimationsprobleme in Spatkapitalismus", 1973), and he wasn't wrong. Whilst he may have fallen a little off the radar a bit in the last decades (especially after his attempted "post-secular" rapproachment with religion), fifty years as Europe's most important and serious philosopher is a fairly good innings. Habermas dies last month, aged 96, and I was fortunate enough to be offered to give a presentation to the Existentialist Society this weekend on his philosophy of universal pragmatics and communicative action, which was both well-attended and had many excellent questions. The video, alas, missed the first couple of minutes, but everything is available in the transcript.

The weekend was not only an afternoon of deep and complex emancipatory German social philosophy in the idealistic tradition, however. Marc C., joined me for dinner on Friday before we ventured to The Old Bar to see some music; opening act "Trappist Afterland" was a subtle one-man band with Indian sub-continent backing tracks and songs about dogs, Star/Time provided quasi-improvised space-funk, and headline act The Gruntled accurately describe themselves as "avant-medieval psychedelic noise combo"; it all helps when you know several of the band members. The following night, I caught up with Liza D., and we made our way to "Impossiblistic: A Night of Surreal Performances, which was poetry, theatre, music, costume, puppetry, clown shows, and more. It was less surreal than enjoyable nonsense and was just fine.

Between all this, I also managed to visit the "Creative Antarctica" exhibition at RMIT on its last day, on Australian artists and writers who visited that grand continent. Of course, my own emotional and intellectual attachment to said continent is very strong; not too many people can say that they've spent New Year's Eve there. The exhibition was quite delightful. I really like Janet Laurence's "Ice Remembers" and Sally Robertson's "Atlas Cove". But the standout image for me was Frank Hurley's photograph of 1916 of Shackleton and Worsley leaving Elephant Island on a tiny lifeboat that would somehow make it to South Georgia Island over a thousand kilometres away and would lead to the rescue of the crew of the Endurance. It is one the greatest stories of survival against all odds and, for what it's worth, Elephant Island was the last location of my own trip to Antarctica this year. As Sir Raymond Priestley, Antarctic explorer and geologist, poetically put it: "For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton."

As predicted, this entire week I've been buried in work and study, a stark contrast to the week prior, when I engaged in a myriad of artistic engagements. As part of my doctoral studies, I've powered my way through the University of Chicago's content on climate modelling. The professor, David Archer, understands the physics, the modelling, and even the trickier issues involved in translating one to the other, especially given the handful of uncertainties and modelling challenges at scales. His book, "Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast" is a worthwhile introduction to the subject. I have not yet decided what my major paper will be for this study; although I must mention that my paper "Energy Production Under The Paris Agreement: Options for Developing Pacific Island Countries" from the course "Global Energy and Climate Policy" has been accepted for The Intergovernmental Research and Policy Journal; I just have to clear up some formatting issues (one day, we'll all use Markdown).

One fortunate side of my work in supercomputing is the access to some particularly big iron, which might be useful in these situations. The University's own system, Spartan, has grown from being an innovative experimental system on a shoestring budget to become one of the world's top supercomputers. But another part of my role is working with the West Australian Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, home of Setonix, Australia's most powerful system (named after the quokka, you know). This week, we had a visitor from WA, from Pawsey, to discuss the system, and I was involved in wrangling a lecture theatre full of Spartan researchers to come along and hear about how to get access to this grander system. It was a bit of a highlight for the week, as I'm also organising a major project which includes a couple of major transitions which I strongly disagree with on a technical level, which I know will come back and bite us in the future. But I have long been an advocate of not letting work decisions upset me, and I am all too familiar with people acting as if technical limits are negotiable.

I rather suspect that next week is going to be a bit like the past week; the combination of full-time work and full-time study often means there are periods when my social life suffers quite a lot, and this is one of those times when the pointy end of multiple deadlines is looming. It is times like these that I feel a great deal of gratitude for the especially calm and studious Rookery I've built for myself, and for finding myself in a profession where extended periods of solitude are highly beneficial for output. I guess in the past people found themselves in a secluded hermitage; instead, I find myself in the midst of a vibrant city with the plentiful beauty of art and nature, and it takes some willpower to stay focused.