tcpip | Garage Sale, SAGE/Red Friday, AAC, Thesis, Livejournal Murder

In the tradition of the "spring clean"

caseopaya and I are hosting a garage sale. Fine and popular literature, delicious clothes, records and CDs... Come and join us at

40 Eildon Road, St Kilda, Saturday December 4, starting at 9 am

Was 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Family First are running in the councils now?

I don't think this one was an endorsed member, just an independent who "happened" to be a AoG..

Really interesting to see people's reaction to the murder. The venom of the comments is something else. One wonders if that's how those people react to every murder they read about, or if they feel like they have more of a "say" or a "voice" in this one because it touches on their "community."

That's a very good point. I guess part of the nature of livejournal is that the intimacy makes moral transgressions seem all the more outrageous. One would read such things in a newspaper and simply shake their head at how sad the world's become... When you find the person's online journal however....

Exactly. Particularly when you can interact with the online journal with a lot less effort than, say, writing a letter to the editor of your local paper.

Plus, humans are so quick to join in a feeding frenzy when they get to point the finger at someone else. What better way to feel good about yourself than to loudly condem someone else.

I think, in general, people like black and white situations. It's easy for people to feel "right" and therefor "good" in situations like this. You can feel in the right without having to use your brain at all, and you can join in the herd of righeousness by pointing and laughing and sneering.

I guess this is what we've got in lieu of locking people in stocks and throwing rotten food at them. :)

You don't have to convince me to convert to urban ecology it's just I'd like to see a bit of the world first, figure out what area to specialise in and then there is the study - all of which require $$$ which I don't have ;P

As for the brainbreaker - well, it broke mine!!! eeepppp

Start from the general and then to the specific... That's the best way to do sciences.. (Arts are the reverse - particular to general).

Nasty story wasn't it?

Still doesn't cover the financial issue though ;P

Yes it was a nasty story, wonder how it will develop.

BTW Good luck on getting that thesis edited!

Still doesn't cover the financial issue though ;P

Eh... Worry about that once you've worked out whether you actually (a) can do it and (b) want to do it.

I'm sure I could do it, it now just requires me to do some searching and finding out where offers such courses

i will be interested in reading it.
we go back a long long ways...

I'll send him your regards...

appreciated.

Have a great sale - will be away, otherwise I'd have stopped by...

A list, a list! Dammit I need a list!

Ooh, garage sale! Damn that weekend working business :/

hey, i'll be 2600km closer to you for your sale!
still too far away to drop by and see what you got, but closer...

Hmmmm... Maybe I should post a list ;-)

That does it! I am posting a list!

Hurrah List!

Interesting you mention Hannah Arendt. I don't know much about her work, but we have been doing a lot of talking about her, and the Eichmann work in my history of political thought course this semester. It comes at me from many angles. I should really read more. I think the universe might be sending me an omen.

I have a lot of time for Hannah Arendt. A critic of both Marxist and liberal-democratic traditions, as the two political theories that arose from the Enlightenment, she has a novel and insightful analysis. Of course, she has her problems. On occassions she's empiricially incorrect - and she does tend to gloss over objective material circumstances for her favourite issue - the creation of local authentic political involvement.

But there's no questioning her analysis of Adolf Eichmann. That was a piece of genius.

I heard about the girl, I had no idea that she was a LJ-er. Cripes.

OMG! An AOG member got in? As a religion it's actually one of the ones I respect a great deal more than many others, but as a political platform ...!? Of course, this is not to say that their religion will form a large part of their political platform, but the mere fact that you can tell me they are AOG suggest that it probably will.

You know, I read this on an el-jay somewhere and now I can't find it... So take my claim with a grain of doubt.

(I hate stating things that I can't back up.. Damn, should have linked it).

But the other part of the claim is true. A rogue labor person split the ALP vote - that much is obvious from the VEC website.

Nice to have on the list btw ;-)

Garage Sale, SAGE/Red Friday, AAC, Thesis, Livejournal Murder

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Richard Stallman interview

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