Anarchists, Unitarians, Gaming and Study Updates

[tcpip]

Attended the Anarchist Book Fair on Saturday, and took the opportunity to sign up for candidates from the Eight Pointed Star Movement. Also, whilst walking the grounds of the Abbotsford Convent we had the opportunity to meet a very nice goat named Aristotle. On Sunday, visited the First Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Melbourne this morning to hear Rob McPhearson from the Adelaide Church talk about the history and metaphor of the Flaming Chalice symbol.

Following that went to a session of Leagues of Adventure Space 1889 run by Karl. On that matter, had a couple of slow days on the online store so I posted images of a couple of choice items (RuneQuest first edition and Cyberpunk first edition to Facebook and Google Plus - results were very positive). Also, my review of AGON has been published on RPG.net; really enjoyed playing this independent game and would like to see more come from it. Finally, have submitted an offer to run Credo: The Game of Duelling Dogmas at Sheepcon

This weekend also saw the end of Week Two: Lifelong Learning reached for the Tertiary and Adult Education Policy course. Beginning to wonder whether Foucault has any normative positions whatsoever. Currently up to week nine of the readings and, as a result, will be starting the major project early as well.

In completely unrelated news very excited to discover that Blue Man Group are touring Melbourne. Very amused by a 'best of' collection by people who think Onion articles are real.

Comments

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Credo sounds hilarious and I would play the heck out of it.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Every time I've played it satisfied all the requirements of a good game; it has a high level of player-to-player interaction, some clever competitive opportunities, and it was highly educational. The creeds that you end up with can look very strange, but it also provides a realisation on how strange the one we've ended up with is - and how it could have been very different.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Now I'm sad that my religious friends and my board gaming friends are not an overlapping demographic.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Surely this is exactly what would be required for the two groups to meet?

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

If that ever happened, I'd also make everyone play Dune, purely so somebody could shout "For I am the Kwisatz Haderach!" halfway through.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

The eight pointed star movement looks interesting, the only thing that bothers me is this:

The Australian states need to be replaced by a Federation of 50 Regional Councils based on direct democratic principles who use the common wealth for the common good, not private profit. - See more at: http://www.isocracy.org/node/167#sthash.PeiVya6B.dpuf

The thing that always bothers me about this desire to undo the states is what happens to the police force? We either have to have a federal police force, which means the same laws across all the states, which really defeats the purpose of the whole enterprise, or we go to having 50 local police forces under the control of essentially a local council. This looks way too abusable for me. Also, do hospitals and schools go federal or do we get 50 school systems? What about roads? We'd end up with the situation where Canterbury Rd would be the responsibility of four different states, and the inner states have to pay to maintain a road that most people in their state don't use.

The desire always seems to be to have more democracy, but it seems it would be easier, not harder, for the property developers to own a government if there were 50 of them.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The debate between regionalisation of the states and the role of such regions has been around for quite some time (c.f., http://www.beyondfederation.org.au/) ; I am not sure specifically what roles that the regional councils would have in this particular case. Something to raise with Joe Toscano, I guess. I imagine he's talking about similar powers to the Melbourne City Council.