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Prosper, Cisco, Uni IP, Weekend Events, Singing Mice
Prosper Australia planning day went well. Organisation has a new mission statement, objectives and means of implementation - all that is needed now is acceptance by the executive. On a related subject, the great Aussie home boom is over. John Symonds of Aussie Home Loans is telling residential property investors to sell, because their property value will go down in value over the next couple of years; a position supported by a spokesperson Australian Property Monitor (who advise the Reserve Bank).
CCNA modules tests this week were not good. My ISO management test received a paltry 82.5% and my Access Lists an unacceptable 71.4%; not my worst result, but pretty bad. I really need to review both those chapters. In fact, I really need to work more on my semester 2 material - the sheer diversity of my grades (from 71.4% to 96.2%) is unacceptable. In other Cisco related fun, I engaged in some password recovery on the Catalyst switch I just bought on the cheap and discovered the joys of minicom. Reminds me so much of Telix, my favourite DOS dialup.
Dramatic news of the week; Cameron Jones, who has fungus based music, has had his website pulled by Swinburne University (most of it is still available under archive.org). Why? Well on Wednesday his work on using CD technology to detect pathogens (e.g., anthrax) was screened on Beyond Tomorrow. Suddenly the University, having steadfastly ignored his work (and grant applications) for months flipped and saw dollar signs. Chances are they weren't terribly impressed when Cameron suggested that the software he's developing should be released under GPL. (Either that or our good doctor is about to go missing under the new terrorism legislation).
Weekend consisted of Labor for Refugees meeting on Saturday where Simone Elias of the Fitzroy Legal Service gave a presentation on the experience of refugees and the racial/religious vilification act. I expressed my criticisms of the bill (that is, truth is not a defense, loosening up defamtion law would be a better direction and you can't oppose the anti-sedition laws unless you also oppose this law). Following thi a very late night for Denny's return to Melbourne visit. Spent a great deal of time chatting to Robbie who I hadn't seen for some three years and her little daughter Nyssa (not so little at all now - eight to twelve is a big jump!). Managed to drag myself up after noon on Sunday to run Outbreak of Heresy. The valiant troupe managed to convince the pagans not to launch war on the neighbouring Christian lords and cure Count Magnus of the insanity that he could actually win said war; even if all this did include manipulating some very trippy iconographic prophetic cards.
Cute link of the week: from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
usekh mice sing. Kinks are getting very specific. The latest spam of amusement I've received has the subject: "Two wet lesbians playing water soccer". They've finally admitted it; Vietnam War incident 'faked'. So how many millions of lives were lost on that lie? That earthquake in Pakistan (which everyone seems to have forgotten about) now has an official death toll of over 73 000. Finally, the left finally gets it's act together in Europe.
CCNA modules tests this week were not good. My ISO management test received a paltry 82.5% and my Access Lists an unacceptable 71.4%; not my worst result, but pretty bad. I really need to review both those chapters. In fact, I really need to work more on my semester 2 material - the sheer diversity of my grades (from 71.4% to 96.2%) is unacceptable. In other Cisco related fun, I engaged in some password recovery on the Catalyst switch I just bought on the cheap and discovered the joys of minicom. Reminds me so much of Telix, my favourite DOS dialup.
Dramatic news of the week; Cameron Jones, who has fungus based music, has had his website pulled by Swinburne University (most of it is still available under archive.org). Why? Well on Wednesday his work on using CD technology to detect pathogens (e.g., anthrax) was screened on Beyond Tomorrow. Suddenly the University, having steadfastly ignored his work (and grant applications) for months flipped and saw dollar signs. Chances are they weren't terribly impressed when Cameron suggested that the software he's developing should be released under GPL. (Either that or our good doctor is about to go missing under the new terrorism legislation).
Weekend consisted of Labor for Refugees meeting on Saturday where Simone Elias of the Fitzroy Legal Service gave a presentation on the experience of refugees and the racial/religious vilification act. I expressed my criticisms of the bill (that is, truth is not a defense, loosening up defamtion law would be a better direction and you can't oppose the anti-sedition laws unless you also oppose this law). Following thi a very late night for Denny's return to Melbourne visit. Spent a great deal of time chatting to Robbie who I hadn't seen for some three years and her little daughter Nyssa (not so little at all now - eight to twelve is a big jump!). Managed to drag myself up after noon on Sunday to run Outbreak of Heresy. The valiant troupe managed to convince the pagans not to launch war on the neighbouring Christian lords and cure Count Magnus of the insanity that he could actually win said war; even if all this did include manipulating some very trippy iconographic prophetic cards.
Cute link of the week: from
usekh mice sing. Kinks are getting very specific. The latest spam of amusement I've received has the subject: "Two wet lesbians playing water soccer". They've finally admitted it; Vietnam War incident 'faked'. So how many millions of lives were lost on that lie? That earthquake in Pakistan (which everyone seems to have forgotten about) now has an official death toll of over 73 000. Finally, the left finally gets it's act together in Europe.
Re: Goring Quote
Remember the US President standing in the ruins of the WTC in late September 2001? "U S A! U S A!" They wanted war.
Remember the papers before Australia went into East Timor? There was speculation that our intervention could lead to war with Indonesia. Letters to the paper, people I spoke to, all said, "then so be it! About time we dealt with the Indons." I had an old Army friend who worked at the recruiting centre in Melbourne... he told me applications were down. Plenty of civilian war fever, though.
Goering's words resonate with us not because of their great truth, but because they speak to a comfortable illusion we have of ourselves - that we're all innately peaceful and kind people, and only the madness or evil of some Leader will drag us off into war. We conveniently forget that even a dictator's power is not absolute. Hitler couldn't have, say, declared that Germany had converted to Islam.
In the end, wars happen because someone thinks he can win. Enthusiasm is almost always great for a victorious war. The moral qualms tend to come when you're losing.
Which is not to say that I believe that people are all bloodthirsty freaks. But I do believe that we are not all dragged along kicking and screaming into war by some Evil Overlord. Many of us trot along to war quite happily and enthusiastically - though we're usually reluctant to volunteer personally;)
Re: Goring Quote
I think Goring is referring more with what you do to people who raise any criticism of war.