Meetings, Usual Life Stuff, News

[tcpip]

Tomorrow evening I am speaking at the Melbourne Existentialist Society on "Autonomy and the Phenomenology of Nature and Property", which relates to an interest some fifteen years old in my persective; developing a political and economic outlook to existentialism. Next week (same location, same time) is the Melbourne Atheist Society, with Russell Blackford speaking on "Religious Vilification and Freedom of Speech", on which I've already stated my point-of-view in various forums (simply put: many racial and religious practises and beliefs and the people who espouse them are deserving of ridicule, contempt and even hatred; I encourage and incite others to express the same).

Work has mainly consisted of more server hardware builds and Xen installs along with transferring sites and mail to a new server. Jon Oxer is back onboard giving presentations and tutorials at OsCon. Social life has struggled a bit with caseopaya not being the most well critter this week. Played Ars Magica Festival of the Damned courtesy of Michael and ran Stormbringer Rogue Mistress.

Well-paid stupidity: Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments (from begedel). Paid users now can't avoid "ads" in livejournal (just call it 'sponsorship'. Welcome our new (armed) robot overlords in Iraq (from mundens). Russia is getting very serious about claiming the North pole (with some justification I may add). Finally, vale, Dr. Ellis, another hero of the human species.

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I'm getting that impression about Russell the more I read of him. It'll be very entertaining.

As for Festival of the Damned, it's probably going to be a one-off as it's part of our Friday night group, which playes a half-dozen sessions of a game and then moves on to something else... Still, I'll see if I can convince Michael to turn it into something larger.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Russell is a good friend of mine, as well. He is both a lawyer, a philosopher, and an SF fan and futurist, so he should have some interesting thoughts.

Festival of the Damned works great as a one off as well (I chose to run the prequel scenario the Ghoul of St Lazare first, but Festival is the real gem). Just a great bit of RPG writing.

My problem with Ars Magica is that for me it just begs for long, complex, and in depth games, which I seldom have the time to follow through on.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I'll send my regards. The research I've done on him suggests we have a fair amount in common.

I have to say, I'm not even sure whether it's my copy of the module or not... I have a small mountain of Ars Magica material, and I've loaned some to the GM to the point I'm not sure what's mine and what isn't...

I really need to make a list.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I have at least two different editions of the module.