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Good one guys... The first four people on my friends list have the same story about JoHo's son being paid to spam.
News in brief. I've deferred by CCNA exam because it clashes with classes for my Cert in Small Business Management. I'm now doing the CCNA on September 23, which gives me more than enough time to get my head around some of the more obscure concepts (such as IPX, Frame Relay configuration, Dial on Demand Routing). I've also put in my intention to submit at the Uni of Melbourne. I now have three months (i.e., to the end of November) to complete and hand in my PhD.
The Cert IV in Small Business Management is proving to be a real dream run as it (a) will mean a nice government grant at the end of it (b) I'll continue doing what I'm doing already, except more so and (c) it's a pretty damn easy course to be honest. Also, unlike the "other" RMIT course the people doing the teaching are actually interested in giving out some knowledge in a friendly and effective manner. One other nice little benefit is that it seems that I'm the only person in the class whose concentrating on the range of IT services that I offer.
In the past few weeks I've taken time out to contact and see a few interesting people. One was Carmela Barenowska, a filmmaker and reporter who I befriended in East Timor (I think my extremely positive comments about her film "Scenes of an Occupation" won favour). After she went recently missing in Afghanistan, but later contacted SBS I shot off an email expressing how concerned we were all back home. She replied with the tale of what she'd really been doing - undercover investigation of
more abuse of civilians by the US occupiers.
Jose Ramos-Horta was in Melbourne recently and I caught up with him briefly after his well attended speech (some 350 people) organized by the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at the Parliament of Victoria. The topic was on whether East Timor could be considered a UN success. In general he said it was, particularly considering they really didn't have much experience with nation-building per se. One other matter that he commented on at length was the rebirth of civil society over the past fifteen years, especially emphasizing how quickly the public - and not the governments of the world - reacted to the militia riots of 1999.
A few days later it was the first Jim Cairns Memorial Lecture organized by Race Matthews of the Australian Fabian Society and the RMIT, Melbourne, Monash and La Trobe ALP clubs. The speaker, Julian Burnside QC, gave some devastating examples of the horrific conditions that detainees in Australia's concentration camps (and I don't use that term lightly) have to go through and their lack of legal recourse. He also brought up Cairns' point of view that laws are not an absolute moral force and indeed, it is an abdication of duty not to defy an unjust law (pretty interesting stuff from a QC!).
It does raise a whole range of interesting questions about how one determines right and wrong behaviour, not just between individuals, but also right and wrong behaviour by institutions, and also the limits of social democracy and personal liberty. I'll leave that topic for comments...
News in brief. I've deferred by CCNA exam because it clashes with classes for my Cert in Small Business Management. I'm now doing the CCNA on September 23, which gives me more than enough time to get my head around some of the more obscure concepts (such as IPX, Frame Relay configuration, Dial on Demand Routing). I've also put in my intention to submit at the Uni of Melbourne. I now have three months (i.e., to the end of November) to complete and hand in my PhD.
The Cert IV in Small Business Management is proving to be a real dream run as it (a) will mean a nice government grant at the end of it (b) I'll continue doing what I'm doing already, except more so and (c) it's a pretty damn easy course to be honest. Also, unlike the "other" RMIT course the people doing the teaching are actually interested in giving out some knowledge in a friendly and effective manner. One other nice little benefit is that it seems that I'm the only person in the class whose concentrating on the range of IT services that I offer.
In the past few weeks I've taken time out to contact and see a few interesting people. One was Carmela Barenowska, a filmmaker and reporter who I befriended in East Timor (I think my extremely positive comments about her film "Scenes of an Occupation" won favour). After she went recently missing in Afghanistan, but later contacted SBS I shot off an email expressing how concerned we were all back home. She replied with the tale of what she'd really been doing - undercover investigation of
more abuse of civilians by the US occupiers.
Jose Ramos-Horta was in Melbourne recently and I caught up with him briefly after his well attended speech (some 350 people) organized by the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at the Parliament of Victoria. The topic was on whether East Timor could be considered a UN success. In general he said it was, particularly considering they really didn't have much experience with nation-building per se. One other matter that he commented on at length was the rebirth of civil society over the past fifteen years, especially emphasizing how quickly the public - and not the governments of the world - reacted to the militia riots of 1999.
A few days later it was the first Jim Cairns Memorial Lecture organized by Race Matthews of the Australian Fabian Society and the RMIT, Melbourne, Monash and La Trobe ALP clubs. The speaker, Julian Burnside QC, gave some devastating examples of the horrific conditions that detainees in Australia's concentration camps (and I don't use that term lightly) have to go through and their lack of legal recourse. He also brought up Cairns' point of view that laws are not an absolute moral force and indeed, it is an abdication of duty not to defy an unjust law (pretty interesting stuff from a QC!).
It does raise a whole range of interesting questions about how one determines right and wrong behaviour, not just between individuals, but also right and wrong behaviour by institutions, and also the limits of social democracy and personal liberty. I'll leave that topic for comments...