Petition etc, Europe Plans, and more

It's been a busy week for secular activities in my word. The petition I initiated, to de-register the Australian Christian Lobby and end "advancing religion" as a charitable category, has reached over 17,000 signatures, although it has slowed down in the past couple of days. In upping the ante, the Federal government is raising the prospect of "religious freedom" bill which almost certainly would enshrine the power to discriminate. I have offered the alternative that "religion" should be removed from the statute books entirely, following the clause of the Australian constitution, "Commonwealth not to legislate in respect of religion". The Victorian Secular Lobby had a committee meeting as well, to confirm our banking details, given that we might actually need to use it now. Finally, just on the verge of finishing the association's submission to the Victorian government's Royal Commission on the Mental Health System.

In other news, caseopaya have booked our tickets for this year's trip to the other side of the planet. Of course, part of this is due to necessity as I have a residency in Zurich to complete as part of my MSc in Information Systems. At least most of this journey will actually be a holiday. Naturally enough, the plan is afoot to visit friends and family, all of whom are within a few hours of each other in the central-west region; thus the plan is Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Freiburg, Zurich, Paris, Ghent, Deflt, Amsterdam, and then back to Frankfurt. The journey will take pretty much most of the month of October; I would rather like to take a bit of a journey to the south and east (Venice, Vienna, Bratislava, Prague), but alas time does not permit such an opportunity this time around. Next time for sure, right?

In other news, things are mostly normal, as much as they are in my life. Have had a few support successes at work with the various interesting user issues, which is kind of unavoidable with scientific software. I've had a good discussion making comparisons between war and business in international business strategy in the MSc discussion forums. In gaming news, an issue has been raised in RuneQuest circles about the relative value of shields vis-a-vis two-handed weapons, which has generated some discussion on the RuneQuest rules mailing list and on the Facebook group. Currently playing Megatraveller, where we've "kidnapped" a despot who is paying well to have some medical treatment on another system.