Lev Lafayette's journal

I have dived into several secular related projects in the past several days. The first was speaking at the Sunday Assembly, a friendly godless congregation of people who like "church activities" but without a diety. My presentation ws Everyone Should Be Secular which, of course, is a rhetorical statement because everyone is secular. The issue is whether they are a secularist or support secularism - which is carefully distinguished from atheism, which many assume.

A practical example of how state atheism, effectively a type of theocracy, differs from liberal secularism, is the issue of the recent (failed) ban of the burkini in France. A debate with a former union leader (whom I discovered is perhaps not so good at cognitive flexibility) led to my writing an article for the Isocracy Network, Burkinis, Bigotry, and Beyond, which has received a very good response on Facebook and has been crossposted on the LJ community talk_politics.

"Let's be blunt about it. If you support the burkini ban, you're not a feminist or a secularist, you're a misogynistic bigot."

Tuesday was also the AGM of the University of Melbourne Secular Society. As a staff member, I am extremely sensitive of my degree of involvement in the club and try not too heavily involved, whilst at the same time wanting to assist and encourage, because they really are doing a valuable job. On being asked by the president I took on the heady role of returning officer, and that really is as far as I'm prepared to go.

Following on from this, I've arranged a meeting of the Victorian Secular Lobby has a meeting at Parliament on September 13th with Harriet Sing, MLC on The Future of the Safe Schools Programme (FB event). On September 17th, I've organised a meeting of the Isocracy Network on Paths to Marriage Equality (FB event) with speakers from Equal Love. This Sunday I'm speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on Changing Definitions of 'Marriage' : Past, Present, and Future. Are we detecting a theme yet?

Have prepared a brief presentation on Why Heresies Fail for All Heretics Day, with the realisation that most former heresies have been rather comfortable in the communities and have rather given up the grand debates that lead to their formation (in strategic management, this is considered a failing trajectory). Apropos, I have also joined the organising committee for the Sunday Assembly for this city, following its success in the United Kingdom. The first meeting is planned for Sunday the 21st of April with Luke Ryan, a "hilarious cancer survivor". Some of this does sound like Alain de Botton's Religion for Atheists.

Much of my free time this week has been spent working on my Graduate Certificate in Adult and Tertiary Education; although it is week 6 of the 14-week course, I have completed all the readings, the thematic paper, the moderation questions, and the major project plan. I rather wish there was some way I could have done both required courses in a single semester to finish it quicker. Then I could start on my fifth degree instead! Apropos to this I'll be conducting a second set of courses for April has been set up for Introduction and Intermediate High Performance Computing and Linux due to demand, with a fair part of last week spent on rewriting the course manuals, along with preparation and conduct for our ISO 9001:2008 audit.

Gaming news this week consists of working on the next issue of RPG Review; dedicated to the theme and setting of the apocalypse, and still looking for an article or two. Appropriately on Sunday will be playing the last session of the Pirates of the Vistula scenario for Twilight 2000. Also in a post-apocalyptic setting on Thursday played our second session of Eclipse Phase, which does remind me a great deal of Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix. Last weekend's game was Space 1889, where my sharpshooting yellow-skinned delusional Martian saved the day; my Martian character named is generated by pwgen (obviously by mechanical computers).