The thoughts on randomness in this video were very interesting, thanks. I have to confess I was slighly dreading watching it, as I also have strong ideas about this area. To me, being able to ask the machine to make arbitrary decisions – agreed, let's not call them random – is fundamental to the business of algorithmic composition. I like to be able to create a high level structure and let the computer fill in the details: I see that as a fascinating way to discover 'what works' in music. James McCartney talks this somewhere, sorry I can't find the exact reference, as being able to create a class of compositions and then listen to various instances of the class.
To take an rather wonderful example from your worksheet:
d1 $ sound "bd*8? clap:4"
To me, this is asks and answers an interesting musical question, something like: 'What about… half a bar of arbitrarily syncopated kick drum hits followed by an offbeat clap? Would that work?' And yes, it does.