Carbon tax shenanigans

It's been a little strange watching all the debate at home about the incoming carbon tax. The commentators on the right are getting so frothy-mouthed and vicious about the whole thing. Hardly a surprise I suppose.

The weirdest thing is the loss of perspective. I think it's best summarised in this blog post (tip to Elliot):
http://www.heathenscripture.com/you-shut-your-goddamn-carbon-taxin-mouth/
It's a great shot of perspective there. And I have to agree - if you can't afford $10 a week out of your $100k+ income for something for your kids' futures like this, my heart bleeds. Really.

I also wanted to share something I saw on the BBC news this morning. After a story on the impending (real) Italian financial crisis, they reported that consumer confidence in Australia had reached a low point, noting with unhidden incredulity that this was despite (and I paraphrase) "near zero unemployment, strong growth and record standard of living" but seemed "related to fears about a carbon tax". It's difficult not to feel embarrassed about that.

I must start writing again ...

Well it's been a while, and a lot has happened since I last wrote.

In the last 18 months or so, I've submitted my PhD thesis, worked some more hours in my software engineering job, wrote up a few papers, graduated, moved to Leipzig, Germany and started as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences.

Life hasn't exactly settled down, but I am planning on writing about all of the above in the near future ...

Tweeting

So I've been seduced by micro-blogging lately instead of doing much writing over here. It makes me think of the trend away from test match cricket towards the twenty-20 variety ...

Anyway. I have to say that I've been enjoying getting into it. Follow me over at twitter: @jlizier

Writing up

Well, that came around much more quickly than I was expecting. The last three and a half years doing my PhD have been really enjoyable, so on one hand writing up my thesis makes me a little sad to be finishing up. On the other hand, it's quite exciting and I'm looking forward to seeing the bound, finished product.

Anyway, I'm well on the way at the moment, with about 4.5 chapters out of the 6 technical chapters done. And I'm only just hitting the writer's block stage; well that's an overstatement, I'm just having a little trouble getting the right tone on this chapter. Nothing serious. I'm still on track for a pre-Christmas submission. As I said to my supervisors, the only risk is that they won't provide the feedback fast enough :).

I'm looking forward to a nice holiday over Christmas and January, then who knows where I'll end up next year. I put my first post-doc application in last week, I'm working on another one, and planning to put in a local application early next year. Watch this space.

Neural Computation discussion group

Today I'm just going to run a quick advertisement for a new series we're starting in our discussion group on"Neural Computation". It's on Fridays @ 2 pm at CSIRO Marsfield (north-west Sydney), but is open to anyone from outside who is interested.

More details, including the schedule of talks, is available at http://www.prokopenko.net/entropy.html

As it happens, stumbling upon a link for these talks and subsequently coming along to them is how I met Mikhail which led to me starting my PhD. So if you're interested in the area, do come along as you never know where it might lead you!

Funny stunt

Here I was thinking that I was procrastinating about writing up my PhD. Not as much as these guys:
http://dataphiles.blogspot.com/2009/09/machine-learning-protest-at-g20.html
One of the funniest things I've seen for a while ...

Apology to Turing

Not mine, the British government's.

Better late than never.