Lev Lafayette's journal

The better part of the past two days I've been at Management Development Program courses organised by the University, the first on Managing Mental Health in the Workplace and the second on Building Sustainable Relationships, which are being undertaken as part of my KPAs and probably a necessity of team leadership. Both were pretty good, with the former in particular providing good theoretical grounding with practical solutions, and the latter providing some immediate opportunities for implementation, although inevitably there is a good amount of content which I rather wish more senior managers were attentive to. It is, of course, two days that I'm not doing "real work", but I have an extraordinarily productive day on Friday when I worked from home, which fits a lot of current research, caveats on types of tasks etc.

The big activity of the weekend was going to see two children's films from the 80s at The Astor, The Princess Bride and The Never Ending Story. The former of course is very quotable and has a great narrative although one cannot say that Princess Buttercup (my god, that name) serves as a good role model for women. As for the later, it was actually the first time I'd seen it. Whilst the narrative is not exactly a strong point, the fundamental premise is truly excellent, although the main female character in this film is but a knowledgeable McGuffin. Whilst both break the fourth wall, the latter does in a much deeper level and, from what I've seen about the book, the second half appropriately follows the opposite direction where reality falls apart in favour of fantasy.

Was pleased to catch up with, unexpectedly, at The Astor with Darren A., and Dr. Francesca Collins. Darren had been a treasurer once of the Victorian Secular Lobby, and Francesca was a candidate for the Sex Party. The Party, of course, has recently changed its name to the decidedly more sober Reason, which alas I don't think will attract as much attention. It was quite a coincidence as that morning I have been to a service at the Unitarians where Fiona Patten was speaking on her time as a MP, and her frankly astounding list of achievements as a cross-bencher. We've worked together a lot in the past, and I'm rather glad to have contributed in a small way to her success. Her latest effort is to ensure that commercial religious organisations are not classified as charities.

Last Tuesday went to the Melbourne Atheist Society to hear Alex McCullie talk on "Progessive Christianity: A Secular Response". Alex claimed the theoretical and practical elements of progressive Christianity is really little different to an active secular humanist with the exception that they have a sense of a personal religious experience; so in other words he didn't have much of a response to offer! This Tuesday the Melbourne University Secular Society is holding an excellent forum on The Problem of Evil, with so absolutely top quality local speakers on the subject. Next month I am presenting at the Melbourne Atheist Society on "Atheist Support for Religious Freedom?" and this Sunday coming I am speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on "The Other Half: The Universalist Tradition" (the Melbourne Church, coming from an English rather than American Unitarian tradition doesn't really have much Universalist influence). Last Sunday week at the same organisation I gave the service for Denis Fitzgerald, executive director of Catholic Social Services; I cited Óscar Romero and Populorum progressio.

Lateline reported last Thursday that Australian scientists are developing a new chemotherapy treatment, using a diamond-encrusted skin patch which slowly releases drugs into the body. Yes, that is me showing Dr. Amanda Barndard from CSIRO around the VPAC machine room. Have almost finished by first MBA assignment; a 3,000 word document on how VPAC is going to provide high-performance computing services in the future (actually, not that easy given item 2 of the organisation's constitutional objectives). Next assignment, due on Wednesday, is a Financial Management analysis. Apropos to this is an excellent article gaining wider circulation on how to manage IT staff; it's all about respect (hat-tip to certifiedwaif). The analogy with medical staff was particularly well put.