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Liberal Religion and Neo-Astrology, Champagne Breakfasts, Clusters and CMSs
Gave an address at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on Sunday on Reverend Stephen Fritchman, a radical liberal in the U.S. who caused a great deal of trouble for the political establishment during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. On a vaguely related topic I found myself debating on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
convert_me last week with astrologers, of all people. Intrigued to discover that some of that ilk now claim (or rather, admit as the statistics and science is beyond reasonable doubt) that it has no predictive value whatsoever, but rather can only be used as a metaphorical and instrospective approach. So, after all those centuries it is finally acknowledged to be fiction.
Last Saturday the deco-apartment of Das Hoehnhauss/Casa di Lafayette held a champagne breakfast with various teas, Timorese coffee, lots of pancakes, almond shortbread, silverware and fine china. In attendence were![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya's new workmate and partner along with imajica_lj. We're hoping to turn this into a semi-regular event as it's a delightful way to waste away a Saturday morning and most of an afternoon and catch up with a small group of people as well. We're gradually building a list of people to come along, but if anyone is particularly keen to attend in the next couple, please drop a line below.
Work-related matters have been quite busy of late and we've been somewhat short-staffed. Upgrading the dual-core Opteron systems to quad-cores on Tango is a necessity if we wish to reach at least somewhere close to the c7 Teraflop peak but (as one would expect) it hasn't entirely been smooth sailing. On a completely different tangent, I've been investigating the relative competitive benefits of Drupal vs Plone CMSs for ARCS. Having some experience with both does lead me towards the former for the sake of simplicity, but I'm interested to hear contrary views.
convert_me last week with astrologers, of all people. Intrigued to discover that some of that ilk now claim (or rather, admit as the statistics and science is beyond reasonable doubt) that it has no predictive value whatsoever, but rather can only be used as a metaphorical and instrospective approach. So, after all those centuries it is finally acknowledged to be fiction.Last Saturday the deco-apartment of Das Hoehnhauss/Casa di Lafayette held a champagne breakfast with various teas, Timorese coffee, lots of pancakes, almond shortbread, silverware and fine china. In attendence were
caseopaya's new workmate and partner along with imajica_lj. We're hoping to turn this into a semi-regular event as it's a delightful way to waste away a Saturday morning and most of an afternoon and catch up with a small group of people as well. We're gradually building a list of people to come along, but if anyone is particularly keen to attend in the next couple, please drop a line below.Work-related matters have been quite busy of late and we've been somewhat short-staffed. Upgrading the dual-core Opteron systems to quad-cores on Tango is a necessity if we wish to reach at least somewhere close to the c7 Teraflop peak but (as one would expect) it hasn't entirely been smooth sailing. On a completely different tangent, I've been investigating the relative competitive benefits of Drupal vs Plone CMSs for ARCS. Having some experience with both does lead me towards the former for the sake of simplicity, but I'm interested to hear contrary views.
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That's two shows I was supposed to watch last night (the other being the 40th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey).
Instead I ate pizza and drank wine :-)
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The second part will show next week - on alternative medicine.
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Like inkblots, ya?
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One of the interesting discoveries I found during the discussion tho' was a split in the middle ages between natural astrology and judicial astrology.
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OK, so not the next one but perhaps the one after that...
We intend to have a few :-)
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Hmmmm.
Re: Hmmmm.
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Looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks at Chez Pop. Menu is underway & not at all what I was expecting, but I think it should be nice all the same.
:)
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If basically what you want is to simply roll out fairly straightforward CMS functionality I'd go drupal, if you need to develop your own data types etc I'd go Plone.
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Drupal and Joomla only require PHP and MySQL (or, more recently, PostgreSQL) and are not only commonly available as a provider installable (through somthing like Fantastico) but can also often be dropped in as the raw scripts so long as you can give them a database username and password on the installation run. You should also be able to lock the site down to password protected access only until you've got everything installed.
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One other issue with Plone (I don't know whether it's been fixed in more recent versions) I've read is conflicts between modules and the advantages with Drupals taxonomy system.
cf., http://www.hofmockel.org/content/drupal-vs-plone
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It still seems Plone probably still has some things in its favour for quite heavyweight development, but it seems as if Drupal might have significant advantages for modest customisation.
Though I admit I've never been that big a PHP fan, so that still weighs against it somewhat.
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as for the Tarot..ehhh, sure its the symbols if someone interpets this and nothing more. BUT there is more to this, I can't account for the strange taste sensations in my mouth, or the visual flash in my head suddenly detailing the aspects of a person's life. or the squirrelly goosebumps I get and suddenly blurt out something I couldn't possibly know..So I guess you could say I read from the gut. I NEVER EVER ask questions OR obtain information from the one seeking a read. I've done phone reads, email reads WITHOUT ever meeting the person.
I've also met people and shook their hand, before they started to tell me everything, I'd just tell them NOT to say anything because I HAVE to read this cold..too much information and the feelings I get are just murky as hell.
Seems I do pretty well. Even made a living from this. I've been reading cards since I was 14, well over 30 years. the deck HAS to have imagery from at least the 17th century, I just dial right in. The Boi (My son) doesn't read cards, but has an unflinching sixth sense about people which will serve him well in law enforcement. Its damned uncanny how he pegs people.
so for what its worth, I have fun with this and try to raise the bar on my talent every chance I get.
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I remember once, many years ago one afternoon in some rather lovely natural surroundings, when I was having "relationship issues" and "work issues" and so forth, I conducted a tarot card reading. As each card fell into place I marvelled at how astoundingly accurate the reading I could derive from the placement of the cards. It was incredible, everything fell into place!
It was only after completing the reading that I realised that the Empress had been accidently left in the box.
A strong guest of wind came in from nowhere and blew over me, and I laughed out loud that ultimately the Tarot was still keeping secrets from me.
A profoundly mystical experience? Total coincidence?
The atheistic empiricist in me prefers the latter interpretation, the pagan aesthete prefers the former. (And the normative agnostic will make no judgement at all).
This sort of thing happens to me a lot
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you always seem to have these interesting topics on your LJ (some of which i'm too cautious to be talking about in my own LJ), you even talk about work, they're all public, you're not exactly anonymous online when you write what you write. and yet you never complain about getting bullied offline for expressing your thoughts. or do you get into trouble offline and not talk about it? i seriously envy you...
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Some people do object a great deal to my opinions and I have discovered that they prefer to attack me "behind the scenes" as it were, or with smears, rather than being upfront and debate the issues themselves.
I suspect because they ultimately lack the arguments or the conviction in their own opinions.
After all, there is a difference between deeply ingrained prejudice and deeply considered conviction. I like to think that I've made the effort to reach my opinions through the latter avenue. It requires a hell of a lot of doubt in oneself, and a certain intellectual humility to investigate a subject knowing all the time that the things you believe to be true might be completely wrong.
But once you start down that path, not only will you gain a great deal of confidence and happiness. Yes, happiness; as Virgil said "Happy the man who has been able to learn the causes of things."
One other side effect is that the people who end up being in your inner circle or invite you into theirs will be of a similar ilk. It does takes time.
An elderly member of the Labor Party, after listening to what I had to say, nodded sagely and tapped me on the head and the back. "Watch your head, and watch your back". It was sound advice. Keep your sense of humility, and remember that there will be those will will try to stab you in the back.
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Thanks. Keep blogging anyway. I love to read from you. I mean I could've just abandoned by LJ account, but i still use it to read my friends. =)
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thanks =)
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Then again, for my own personal stuff I'm more interested in Joomla! (although another visit to the doctors' is a bit more pressing right at this moment) so I'm more on the outside looking in where this is councerned.
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Namaste
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Even as a "full and frank discussion", it stands in stark opposition to a lot of other online discussions, doesn't it?
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