Dunedin, Tooth, Wikileaks, Opportunity Costs

[tcpip]

Regular readers would know that I have a certain fondess for a small city in The South Island of New Zealand. Early this week I went to Dunedin to look at an investment property (i.e., place to retire in). I received notification today that the current owners (the Dunedin Chinese Methodist Church) are happy to accept my offer for the delightfully deco former Maori Freemasons Lodge, built 1933. Images (ravensbourne00.jpg .. ravenbourne09.jpg, follow the obvious sequence) available.

Second visit for root canal therapy this morning. The prognosis is not good. Despite having a fine set of fangs in most instances, it seems that my poor cracked tooth (bottom right molar) is beyond the abilities of medical science (at least within reasonable cost) and will have to be removed.

There is much to be said about Wikileaks and the recent arrest of its founder, Julien Assange. A large protest is looming in his home town of Melbourne. I have had brief email conversation with him in the past around the founding of the Isocracy Network; and (arranged prior to this recent major media event) will be speaking about Wikileaks at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on January. Also conducting the service this Sunday on Lyle Allen's address on local democracy.

Finally, macabre explanation of opportunity costs (hat-tip to Brendan E) "I think dead children should be used as a unit of currency. I know this sounds controversial, but hear me out."

Comments

[br3nda]

Dunedin is nice. A friend of mine is MP of Dunedin south -- also Metiria Turei, list MP and head of Greens is based there.. gosh there are many brilliant people who left Dunedin AND THEN CAME BACK TO DUNEDIN. Speaks highly for the town.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Owning a former Maori Freemasons Lodge is, indeed, a very cool thing. You should start a secret society or something.

[lifedistilled.livejournal.com]

I'd appreciate some kind of bullet-point or notes-taken from the speech you give about Wikileaks. My feelings about Assange and about WikiLeaks' stated vs. acted-upon goals are pretty conflicted at the moment, and it'd be nice to have something I can use as an anchor.

Congratulations on the property. It looks swell. :)

[sebastianne.livejournal.com]

Nice purchase! That place would be an interior decorator's dream :)

Very interesting article, and certainly parallels some of my beliefs around the ethics of consumerism and out societies fiscal priorities, be they in the public or personal arena.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fustian/]

Maori Lodge 105: awesome. If first impressions are anything to go by, we may well retire to Oamaru, so we'll be just up the road.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Wouldnt you like to buy a cute small house with a big yard rather than a building like that? Just an idea :)

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the acquisition! It's an intriguing-looking building - lots of interesting possibilities for that space.
(Though I imagine that you don't get to keep the two grand pianos, alas...)

Good luck with the dentistry, too.

As for the Dead-Children-as-currency idea, maybe I'm just cynical, but I think that without a way to overcome the Dunbar Number/"Monkeysphere" issue, the framing wouldn't help any more than The Starving Millions evoked at dinner tables persuade children to eat their dinners...

[ferret-otaku.livejournal.com]

The Lodge:

I guess you don't want to maintain a garden? No homegrown organic veg?

Assange Issues:

We'll be talking about this issue over the fires made from the last drop of oil on earth.

Dead Children as Currency:

How many DCs for a Big Mac?
How many for a bag of crack?
How many for a cure for AIDS?
And what price in DCs to make nukes into spades?