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In the tradition of the "spring clean"
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caseopaya and I are hosting a garage sale. Fine and popular literature, delicious clothes, records and CDs... Come and join us atWas supposed to be at the SAGE-AU executive meeting last Saturday - but the rest of the executive wasn't there! I've tried corresponding with the Secretary, on the matter, but with no immediate success. In the meantime, I'm supposed to be hunting for articles for their journal, so I've interviewed Richard Stallman.
On a related matter, Red Friday Issue 6 has come out with a feature article on character encoding and another tutorial on mathematics for computer programming. The top news stories last week were certainly entertaining - like the ebay strike and the claim at a US Senate committee that "Internet pornography is more addictive that crack cocaine"! I'm getting lots of positive feedback on Red Friday - it now has about two hundred subscribers (heh, not including LJ readers), so all is good!
I've also been working like a trojan on my thesis (up to version 0.913) as I want to hand in another version to my supervisors within the next fortnight. This hasn't been such a hard process, because it's like a reverse of NaNoWriMo - I'm trying to reduce a product from 160,000 words to 100,000 words, so stripping it back has been quite a cathartic process. Currently reviewing Hannah Arendt's concepts of thinking and judging - the vita contemplativa - which was originally inspired by here "Eichmann in Jerusalem" experience. I wrote a
little rant on that piece after hearing of a moronic comment that used the phrase "banality of evil" to describe the Iraq invasion and the invaders as "evil" and "boring". There's nothing boring about war or the people who carry it out!
Went to the Australian Arabic Council Media Awards on Friday night. Some five hundred people, with Jon Faine presenting. Encountered several people there whom I hadn't seen for some time, so thoroughly enjoyed the food and entertainment, along with a couple of after-award drinks. Was introduced to Federal Labor MP Laurie Ferguson and spent the rest of the night wiping my hand (due to his disgusting recent comments about asylum seekers).
Apparently I have had a letter published in The Age last Sunday on land "tax" (in reality, a rent) where I pointed out it's supported by almost every economist in history from Adam Smith, to John Locke, to Karl Marx, to Milton Friedman, to George Monboit. Trying to get that collection of people to agree on anything is no easy task.
Finally, work is treating me well. I'm almost finished on the New Community Quarterly website (just a few cross-referenced links to go) and will be seriously working on James Nicholson's hairdressing site this week. Borderlands endemic DHCP problems have been overcome by assigning static IPs until I find out what the hell's wrong with the DHCP server.
Recent event which I completely forgot to record a couple of weeks back was encountering Tim Flannery at Readings Hawthorn doing a presentation on his new book "Country". Quite a good presentation and purchased a copy for
caseopaya in my unending quest to convert her to urban ecology from working in an loss-adjusting firm. On a related topic, our lethargic Harlequin rat with the dodgy back leg has become a lot more active following regular doses of vitamin B complex and a recent trip to the beach went swimming of his own preference.I'm sorry to report that
paula_angela was not elected to Moreland council by a narrow margin, mainly due to a rogue ALP candidate who split the ALP vote and helped an Assembly of God member get over the line instead.Brainbreaker of the week is a just-reported livejournal murderer. The Sixteen-year old
smchyrocky organized for her mother to be murdered. Articles on the issue have been published in the Anchorage Daily News and the Juneau Empire State News.