Labor Party Updates, Unitarians, LUV, Academia

There has been some progress on my appeal to the Disputes Tribunal with my claim that the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party is not following the Party Platform with the state branch (rightly so) declaring that it cannot deal with the matter, and with it now being handballed up to the National Disputes Tribunal and National Executive - who do have the power to direct the Federal Party. I honestly do not know how the FPLP leadership is going to get around this one. The Platform is very clear - the only way it can be prevented is by a completely new definition of the words. Apropos such things I attended a meeting of the SL on Thursday which dealt with the upcoming State Conference this weekend; I've nominated for the Agenda Committee, but due to my (lack of) party activism over the past few years I've been put 5 on the SL ticket (chances are they'll elect 4). Highlight of the conference (at least from my perspective) will be Senator John Faulkner hosting a Labor Renewal forum.

Last Sunday gave an address on Difficult Choices: The Morality and Politics of Humanitarian Intervention. I wasn't entirely happy with it as it was far from complete (there are certainly limits on what can be said in twenty minutes), but the reception from others was extremely good - one enthusiastic member exclaimed "This is why I come here!", which was certainly high praise. It was followed by another well-attended meeting of the Philosophy Forum on "The Irrational Mind: Individual Desire and Mass Psychology" (material pending). Tuesday night was the monthly meeting of Linux Users of Victoria which was very well-attended, after a few quiet months. Around forty-three people (yes, I count heads) were present to hear tau_iota_mu_c give a comprehensive talk on the use of Linux at the Anglo-Australian Observatory, which was well-supplemented by Bernie Schelberg talking about OpenWRT.

Received my first assignment for The New Seminary, a set of short answer questions on Hinduism, cleverly phrased so one can do the brief answer method or become quite elaborate; I suspect I will end up towards the latter. It is wide-ranging, covering the approaches of Jnana, Bhakti, Karma, Raja Yoga, the concepts of Samsara, Karma, Maya, Lila, Purusha, Atman and Brahman, along with the brief overview of the major texts (the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras). Also will starting the free Stanford course on Artificial Intelligence next week, along with the co-worker who sits next to me.