Lectures and Tests, Games and Magyar Pagans, Intelligent Design, Hidden Agendas and Vested Interests

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Second workshop on market segmentation and geodemographics for Prosper Australia was a success. Tomorrow is marketing for the media. After that organisational planning. Then comes the big test of implementation. Cisco classes went well last week. For the two module tests my results were 96% (WAN technologies) and 83% (router commands). I confess to not paying much attention to the latter.

Have been hard at work with the Mimesis RPG and will have a lengthy new draft on said work in progress at the end of today. Sunday (after a dull Unitarian Committee of Management Meeting) was Outbreak of Heresy where the noble troupe discovered a surviving Magyar pagan village and discovered the fiendish plan of the pagans to smash the neighbouring Christian counties through the Sword of God. It's all getting quite exciting.

Ahh, I'm giving the service for next Sunday's extended service:

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Theories of Evolution: Intelligent Design versus Natural Selection

A special extended service to discuss this issue to be held at the Melbourne Unitarian Peace Memorial Church, 110 Grey Street, East Melbourne at 11 am on Sunday October 23.


Dr. Bill Hall, PhD in Evolutionary Biology, Knowledge Management Systems Analyst for Tenix Defence Engineering Pty Ltd and Nigel Sinnot, Rationalist and former editor of the British journal "Freethinker" (world's oldest freethought journal).

Plus speakers from ICAST (Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology) and the University of Melbourne (Department of History and Philosophy of Science).

Special thanks to the Livejournal community convert_me for their contribution to this debate.

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Why are business and economic spokespeople so ignorant of basic economic matters? Here's an example of the Executive Director of the Business Roundtable who doesn't know what GDP is or how it is calculated. Here is an example (courtesy of zey) of the spokesperson for the Australian Industry Group who doesn't know what productivity is. Are we supposed to have confidence is this people? Anyone with even high school economics would be rolling in the aisles at the sheer stupidity of these claims. Perhaps, (he asks rhetorically in the third person), they have another agenda?

Speaking of other agendas and vested interests Dr. Major Fernandes has gotten himself into the news again. Seems that the senior figures of the Australian military are less interested in intelligence and security but more interested in protecting the reputation of the Howard government. Want the evidence? Read the book, Reluctant Saviour.

Oh, and the_siobhan? Thank you. This game rocks.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Will you be mentioning His Noodly Appendage?

(There was an interesting BBC feature on Intelligent Design. I'd never heard of the Wedge Document (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html) before. Who would be so stupid to leave that lying around?

Their response?
So what? (http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&program=CSC%20Responses&id=2101)

[darkstardeity.livejournal.com]

Just to make sure I understand correctly - GDP is purely a measure of money spent, isn't it? So post-Katrina cleanup and rebuilding will increase America's GDP. The loss of capital caused by the damage and the fact that in spending money on rebuilding they won't be ablt to spend it on "more productive" things (is that called opportunity cost) is irrelevant to GDP and covered in other metrics (if at all). Is this correct?

If that is the case then I think this guy's problem is that he is a rabid free-marketer (look at how he accuses the Greens of refusing to admit that market forces will solve all environmental woes, not realising the utter irony of his accusation), and in that mindset, a higher GDP is always a good thing. However, obviously Katrina is a bad thing that will drain money from the country. He can't reconcile this contradiction in his ideology, so he claims that GDP is measuring something different, that expenditure accompanied by losses is not included.

[severina-242.livejournal.com]

What time do you finish up at Prosper?

The thing is...

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

...about the Creationism / Intelligent Design vs Evolution debate (and whether or not one or both should be taught in school) is:

Is it science?
Can the idea be tested, and proven false if incorrect?

If it can't (and most religious ideas can't be tested) then it ain't science. Of course I'm not so sure that Evolution is, either...

[lardarsegreg.livejournal.com]

The link to "this game" doesn't seem to be working...

[antayla.livejournal.com]

Can I be a guest player in one of your games when I come visit Melbourne? I'll have a character built and everything before I get there, if you tell me how to build one :). I'm a good roleplayer. And I've played GURPS before.

I won't be offended if you say no; I've seen too many games go rotten because there were too many players, or something like that :).

Productivity

[erudito.livejournal.com]

AIG has never been a group I have been very impressed by. Indeed, I am a bit surprised to see them endorsing IR reform. But what is your specific complaint about the comment? (It is certainly possible for changing institutional arrangements to raise productivity. Indeed, it is well known to happen.)

[dream-wind.livejournal.com]

You know, you sound like the reason that John Howard wants to remove student unionism... and the reason it needs to continue.