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tcpipThe ANZUA conference in Christchurch went well. Discovered that there is a conservative side to them, mainly based in Sydney and Adelaide. The New Zealanders (Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland, Blenheim, Nelson) seem to be the real cutting edge. An interesting public presentation on "great ape" intelligence was given on "All Heretics Day" by Drs Debbie and Roger Fouts, who, whilst I am very sympathetic to their point of view, seemed to overstate the case a little. The following day, another public lecture was given by Dr. Debra Haffner on religion and sexual morality. Haffner is a former President of SIECUS and is now a Unitarian-Univeralist minister. Her comments (about the anti-sexual emancipation attitude of mainstream religion) was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel from my perspective and she really didn't address the institutional factors. One other speaker worthy of note was Tim Barnett, the member for Christchurch Central and the main force behind laws for same-sex civil unions and prostitution law reform. His topic, on effective lobbying, was very useful and even a seasoned political operator such as myself picked up a few ideas.
Following a few days in Christchurch, which included my now standard visits to the art centre and the botanical gardens,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya and I also took the opportunity to get a bit of a view of Lylleton and the Banks Penisula from a gondola-high vantage point. Douglas Adams once remarked that New Zealand has the sort of landscape that makes you want to spontaneously applaud nature, and he's not wrong. From Christchurch we went up the east coast to the picturesque port town of Picton to ferry across. In an effort to be contrary to expectations, the Cook Straight was flat and peaceful. Upon reaching Wellington quite late, beagl and kimeros acted as our hosts for the next couple of days and they are certainly deserving of high praise providing excellent conversation, drinks and games of five hundred. I also predict a future business relationship ;-) As usual, the Wellington Museaum of City and Sea was up to its superb standard, with an excellent exhibition of microscopic photographs, which certainly double as modern art.
From Wellington, which poured with rain, wind, cold and magnificant views, it was the long road through the Wairarapa region (including Masterton, home of 20,000 humans 3,000.000 sheep) to Palmerston North, home of my estranged family. Mama was in fine spirits having sorted out her finances and is now operating her own real estate business and driving a BMW sports car. She's one classy lady ;-) After Palmerston North we took the long road through Wanganui and the national park a journey which included interruptions and blockages from herds of sheep, cattle, a couple of pigs, wild goats and an eagle. After that it was through the central plateau, with the dominant view of the active volcano Mt Ruapehu and staying overnight in the town next to that incredible Lake Taupo. Finally, it was Auckland, a highlight beingcaseopaya's birthday dinner and staying at the old railway station and then home again.
One great concern was condition of our pet rat, Monte. He'd been thoroughly depressed after Harlequin died and it seemed that he'd given up on any enthusiasm for life. I seriously entertained the possibility that he would not survive the nine days at the rat-sitter. Instead he was bright and active on our return. It seems that the company of 150 or so other rats cheered the old fella up a bit. So we picked up two young ones so he can mentor them in the skills of being a rat in St Kilda. True to the theme, they are named Rogue and Vagabond.
One downside on my return is discovering that my largest client is going through some rough financial waters, so my work for them is on ice. This is a great pity as I was deriving about 1/2 my income from them. I can either look at as losing over $600 pw or gaining 25 hours pw of time. Oh well, such is the life of a self-employed contractor. At least it has given me the opportunity to update - after almost two months! - my own website and patch up a few others. One part I'm particularly keen on building is the games section and the retro - both mostly empty, but the draft version is filling up fast!
Whilst not wanting to push my own recent circumstances onto others, the economy is on the way down and underemployment is beginning to look like the norm and consumer confidence dives. A situation not helped by governments that just don't invest in infrastructure. My prediction? By the end of 2005, the Australian economy will be in serious trouble. There will be a collapse in land prices, interest rates will be significantly higher, unemployment up, our current account deficit will be bigger and household debt will be at its highest level ever. You read it here first.
Oh, and I caused a stir on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
convert_me recently. All because I actually want, for the first time, to interact in a newsgroup which doesn't collapse into schoolyard name-calling. So far my complaints have led to the banning of a evangelical Christian who swore that the bible foretold the future (and didn't take kindly to me suggesting that metaphors are not literals), a fundamentalist atheist who was simply rude and abusive and now, the strangest of breeds, a fundamentalist secular humanist!
Following a few days in Christchurch, which included my now standard visits to the art centre and the botanical gardens,
caseopaya and I also took the opportunity to get a bit of a view of Lylleton and the Banks Penisula from a gondola-high vantage point. Douglas Adams once remarked that New Zealand has the sort of landscape that makes you want to spontaneously applaud nature, and he's not wrong. From Christchurch we went up the east coast to the picturesque port town of Picton to ferry across. In an effort to be contrary to expectations, the Cook Straight was flat and peaceful. Upon reaching Wellington quite late, beagl and kimeros acted as our hosts for the next couple of days and they are certainly deserving of high praise providing excellent conversation, drinks and games of five hundred. I also predict a future business relationship ;-) As usual, the Wellington Museaum of City and Sea was up to its superb standard, with an excellent exhibition of microscopic photographs, which certainly double as modern art.From Wellington, which poured with rain, wind, cold and magnificant views, it was the long road through the Wairarapa region (including Masterton, home of 20,000 humans 3,000.000 sheep) to Palmerston North, home of my estranged family. Mama was in fine spirits having sorted out her finances and is now operating her own real estate business and driving a BMW sports car. She's one classy lady ;-) After Palmerston North we took the long road through Wanganui and the national park a journey which included interruptions and blockages from herds of sheep, cattle, a couple of pigs, wild goats and an eagle. After that it was through the central plateau, with the dominant view of the active volcano Mt Ruapehu and staying overnight in the town next to that incredible Lake Taupo. Finally, it was Auckland, a highlight being
caseopaya's birthday dinner and staying at the old railway station and then home again.One great concern was condition of our pet rat, Monte. He'd been thoroughly depressed after Harlequin died and it seemed that he'd given up on any enthusiasm for life. I seriously entertained the possibility that he would not survive the nine days at the rat-sitter. Instead he was bright and active on our return. It seems that the company of 150 or so other rats cheered the old fella up a bit. So we picked up two young ones so he can mentor them in the skills of being a rat in St Kilda. True to the theme, they are named Rogue and Vagabond.
One downside on my return is discovering that my largest client is going through some rough financial waters, so my work for them is on ice. This is a great pity as I was deriving about 1/2 my income from them. I can either look at as losing over $600 pw or gaining 25 hours pw of time. Oh well, such is the life of a self-employed contractor. At least it has given me the opportunity to update - after almost two months! - my own website and patch up a few others. One part I'm particularly keen on building is the games section and the retro - both mostly empty, but the draft version is filling up fast!
Whilst not wanting to push my own recent circumstances onto others, the economy is on the way down and underemployment is beginning to look like the norm and consumer confidence dives. A situation not helped by governments that just don't invest in infrastructure. My prediction? By the end of 2005, the Australian economy will be in serious trouble. There will be a collapse in land prices, interest rates will be significantly higher, unemployment up, our current account deficit will be bigger and household debt will be at its highest level ever. You read it here first.
Oh, and I caused a stir on
convert_me recently. All because I actually want, for the first time, to interact in a newsgroup which doesn't collapse into schoolyard name-calling. So far my complaints have led to the banning of a evangelical Christian who swore that the bible foretold the future (and didn't take kindly to me suggesting that metaphors are not literals), a fundamentalist atheist who was simply rude and abusive and now, the strangest of breeds, a fundamentalist secular humanist!![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-04-04 09:53 pm (UTC)Learn to LJ Cut!
no subject
Date: 2005-04-04 11:12 pm (UTC)I do, I do... That's just not what I consider to be a long post ;-)
no subject
Date: 2005-04-04 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-04 11:38 pm (UTC)Ahh, Aristotle's "the good is the mid-range" theory ;-)
I thought I was making up for it by posting only once a fortnight, unlike some who seem to post three times a day..
OK, I'll either cut or cut-down (but post more often).. Heh.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 05:35 pm (UTC)Oh no! Now I have competing opinions! At this rate I'm going to have to put up a poll or something. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2005-04-04 10:00 pm (UTC)Well someones a bright little ray of sunshine today, aren't they ;-)
no subject
Date: 2005-04-04 11:13 pm (UTC)Hey, the scoreboard tells the story. It's not quite bunkers, canned food and shotguns, but I can't see the economy having a smooth ride over the next twelve months. Too many warning signs.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 05:45 pm (UTC)Only if I get a signed agreement that you can't use them on me ;-)
no subject
Date: 2005-04-04 10:31 pm (UTC)That would be nice, but experience has made me cynical.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-04 11:14 pm (UTC)Ah, well, that's what the rules are for... and it seems that they largely work.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 04:26 am (UTC)2/. Spent a short amount of time on
Convert Me
Date: 2005-04-05 05:31 pm (UTC)It is a high volume group, which is part of the reason I get narky when people start engaging in insults. I mean there is nothing wrong with the art of flaming, but there's a time and place for it - and it ain't in convert_me, no matter how whacky a person's ideas are.
Of course, part of a person's interest really depends on how interested/important the topic really is. People can be a little confused when person A says "Your immortal soul depends on this!" and person B says "I'll worry about that after I die".
Convert THIS!
Date: 2005-04-06 12:55 am (UTC)I abandoned the Convert Me long ago. I don't even bother looking in on it anymore, as I did for a while. Oddly, I have seen of late a number of other posts in private journals expressing unsoliciting dissatisfaction with the whole thing. I suspect it is because the entire enterprise is, really, intractable from the beginning.
Of course, most people expressing the dissatisfaction seem to be dissatisfied only with the vitriol and sanctimony. Neither vitriol nor sanctimony were things that I thought anything of, for the simple reason that I always took it for granted that they came with the territory. You cannot argue, let alone argue about religion and not expect self-indulgent rancor and self-righteous snobbery.
No, the trouble is that argument is a fundamentally destructive pursuit, and this has come to make me feel it is all rather hollow. Ideas are ideas. They are insubstantial, rootless. It makes no sense to pit them against one another. It is not that people necessarily are vicious, it is that the activity they have taken up is a vicious one. There is simply nothing to be gained by going around casting dispersion on others. We don't find truths; we build them.
I could talk about my distaste for scholarly trivia (If fundamental truth really were about dead languages and nuanced transcriptions, I would gladly throw up my hands and declare myself a nihilist.), for fixed notions and conventions, for addictions to labels and stereotyped, go-nowhere ideas, but that, I suppose, would be nothing but more of the same old bitching about nothing of which the world has quite enough.
I'm happy just to tend to my own journal and writings and to see what I can build. The things I have written there are immeasurably more expressive my spiritual view than any sermon I ever pitched at
I was fortunate enough to make a few acquaintances there, you among them, and so it is with a heavy heart that I abandoned the whole affair, feeling perhaps there was still some way to purify the evil of it. This is perhaps just as you would like to proceed without running into crude slanders and abuses amidst rational discourse. It's as I said, though, I cannot wonder if the whole idea was bad from the start.
You know what they say: You can't polish a turd.
Sorry you don't hear from me more often. Honestly, I take no small amount of satisfaction in hearing the news from the other side of the world discussed with such erudite attention. The mundane becomes the exotic and the exotic the mundane. That's about it.
Take care,
[give or take]
Re: Convert THIS!
Date: 2005-04-06 02:38 pm (UTC)It is a difficult task, particularly if one starts from a position of demeaning their opponent.
Assuming of course, that the alter is genuinely interested in testing their own ideas. If not, the project fails once again.
We don't find truths; we build them.
Exactly.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-08 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-08 11:25 pm (UTC)You will, you will... I think we have stuff to talk about between now and then as well!
no subject
Date: 2005-04-09 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-12 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-12 10:02 pm (UTC)No problems, I kinda like what you've been saying as well.
Those poor people... They're being attacked by reasoning individual from all sides! Such tests to their "faith"!
no subject
Date: 2005-04-12 10:55 pm (UTC)"evidence" and "reason"... how difficult it truly must be.