Whilst the world falls apart, I'm actually enjoying myself.

[tcpip]

greylock informs us that if you're a fundamentalist Christian the latest invasion of Lebanon by Israel is cause for celebration because the Rapture is coming! zey provides this image of the special love that Israeli children are being enculturated with. Let's sort this out. Hezbollah kills eight and captures two Israeli soldiers. Israel responds with an invasion of Lebanon, killing almost three hundred civilians, wounding a thousand and displacing half a million. Strikes on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure include Beirut airport, ports, grain silos, bridges, roads, factories, medical and relief trucks, and the country's largest dairy farm Liban Lait. If Israel wants to deal with Hezbollah they should offer military and police support to the Lebanese government, not launch an invasion of a sovereign state that has a tenuous religious balance and semi-democracy. As Antony Lowenstein points out, this action will to generate more terrorists.

Back at home, Wealth gap in Australia. Latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that almost 60 per cent of Australian households' wealth is owned by the richest 20 per cent of households, while the bottom 20 per cent own just 1 per cent. I'd bet my meagre dollars it's even more disproportionate in land values too. Appropriately from the cream of society (the rich and thick) Young Liberals chant "We're racist, we're sexist, we're homophobic". Malcom Fraser's takes Trotsky's dictum of equating the head of a facist with the pavement. "Where people are being racist or discriminatory in their comments or policies, wherever they are, they ought to be clobbered," he said..

So whilst all these disasters are happening I've been having a great time. Work this week at both Borderlands and Naturelinks has been interesting; the former involving some great hardware repairs and the later required moving and re-establishing a network and associated remote desktop requirements and so forth - there's even a 80 metre trench being dug to connect two buildings. Further, I've been working on yet another website this time for a PR company who pay quite well indeed. Off-hours, The Norman Britian RetroAD&D game continues to be great fun and this Sunday we're playing Cybernoia, which imajica_lj has been saying very nice things about. Also on Sunday, a person of no less greatness than claudine_c is speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on her rural health work in India. Finally, the bunny, Astaroth from the second summoning, is doing well. And whoever the anonymous stranger who sent me a dozen virtual red roses, thanks!

Comments

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

Ya know, I don't worry about it too much. I do what I can to make it better, but there's no point being miserable about something I've got no control over. Being in NZ has helped a lot, since my adopted govt is quite a bit less obnoxious.

Completely off topic, but you still interested in doing web design for unitarians.org.nz? I'm thinking I really should get off my ass and do something about it. :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Good advice... And yes you're quite correct about the NZ govt.

Still quite interested in doing the unitarians.org.nz website. I believe there are four congregations now... two in Auckland, Blenheim and Christchurch?

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

Not real sure about AKL; there's been a lot of sturm und drang up there with Roger getting canned. But CHC is strong, and BHE seems to be, though I've not visited them myself. And the WLG group is still weakish but showing some signs of possible growth. We've maintained at about 5 regulars for the past 2 years, but we've had a few keen newcomers in the past few months. So maybe we're about to cross the threshold and start growing a bit more quickly. Anyway, what I'm thinking is a vmware box; having 1 machine hosting 3 vmware hosts; hintz.org, pvfb.org.nz, and unitarians.org.nz (I can put the physical box at my office, which is on Citylink, I'm currently running test.pvfb.org.nz from there). I know I could go the shared hosting route but if I can pull it off I prefer the VH. Probably mostly dependent on having hardware grunty enough to pull it off. Anyway, if you've got some ideas for a framework on site design, go for it. Will give me the appropriate kick in the tushie to get someplace setup to host it. Or hit me up on mail if you want to discuss concepts...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Cool; that sounds fine. I reckon simple is the way to go ;-)