The War, Rat Obituary, OO-Management?, RQ - for kids! and other Gifted Children. Quantock & Beowulf.

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The Howard government's decision to send another 450 soldiers to Iraq shows the increased need to rebuild the anti-war movement.

Anti-war teach-in
Sunday, March 6
Melbourne University Student Union, Parkville
Registration 1pm for a 1.30pm start
Workers $5, others gold coin

Speakers include:
Waratah Gillespie -- human shield in Iraq, 2003
Kim Bullimore -- recently returned from the West Bank
Michael Hyde -- novelist and anti-Vietnam War activist
Safa Alkhafaf -- Iraqi Shia community activist
Ray Harris -- former convenor, Greens' Global Issues Group
Hillel Friedman -- Nuclear Free Australia activist
David Glanz -- Moreland Peace Group

Troops out of Iraq -- rally
Part of the global weekend of action against the occupation of Iraq
Friday, March 18, 5.30pm
State Library, corner of Latrobe and Swanston streets, city

Speakers include:
Andrew Wilkie -- Australian Greens
Kevin Bracken -- state secretary, Maritime Union of Australia
Lev Lafayette -- president, Labor for Refugees

Contact the Stop the War Coalition: melbournestopthewar@yahoo.com.au.
Phone Margarita 9639 8622; James 0438 869 790; Mick 0413 932 435.

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Wow. I get to share a platform with Andrew Wilkie!

Harlequin the rat died on Saturday. It was very sudden and he was a very well-loved rat. caseopaya was distraught and his life-long partner, Monte, has been sniffing about trying to find him. I'll miss the little Buddha, but one must accept these things are part of the tragic inevitability of unstable biological systems.

I'm still working about 55 hours per week, which explains my lack of el-jaying. For Naturelinks, I've been assigned the task (apart from managing their IT system) of developing their procedural norms to something akin to ISO standards. I'm actually thinking of a bit of a twist - developing an "Object Orientated", rather than "Procedure Orientated" approach. For Webprophet's I'm still working on their various servers, with little exciting to report there. One thing that has gone into temporary hiatus is Red Friday. Finally, I've just submitted an abstract for the SAGE-AU on IT development among community organisations.

Despite all this, I'm still managing to keep the tempo up for Ten Thousand Islands, with Scene V and most of Scene VI having been played out. Makes a huge difference when you have a critical mass of active players.

On a related note on Saturday I went to Deb's 40th birthday party, which was full of the usual suspects. A number of them are now with kids of course, and they were looking pretty bored - until one lad approached me and proudly proclaimed "Before Dungeons and Dragons was on computer it used to be a book".

Heh. Talk about a rag to a bull. Within minutes I had my RuneQuest books out and the kids were developing characters. A German Elf, a Scottish Elf, a Scottish Wererat and a Hebrew Troll. All fisherfolk and sailors, mind you. They were based on Dunedin, but were called upon by the alderman to travel the North Sea to stop a dragon from eating all the fish. Oh, what fun they had! "Let's make this into a play", said one... Ahh, they got it straight away...

Following the tangent (see how this works?), an interesting recent visitor to the Unitarians was John Munro, speaking on his area of expertise Understanding How Gifted Children Learn". I have some correspondence to him concerning whether gifted children show neurological development in advance of Piagetian norms for physical development and what degree of inheritance, if any, is evident. Speaking of such people, the feature of the latest Beacon is my presentation on The Gifts of Providence and Common Wealth.

Edit. How could I forget? Easy I'm not updating el-jay enough. Went to the Green Left fundraiser on the comdedy debate "Is God Right-Wing" with Paula, her nearest and dearest and caseopaya. They had two members of the clergy (Catholic, affirmative and Uniting, negative) to add to the amusement with Rod Quantock as compere. Saw tabouli among the crowd. An excellent night.

Following eve finally managed to see Beowulf. Not a bad performance for a one-man-show. Did drive home the epic nature of the tale, although the faux Danish or Anglo-Saxon accents were almost embarressing at times. A few props would have helped a great deal. Left wondering why we seem to know so much about European mythology yet trying to find someone who has any idea of Malay mythology as rare as hen's teeth.