Surviving without internet (yesterday’s post!)

Easy-peasy – opportunity to clear the desk and the other backlogs.

Let me just clear some meeting dates first – uh, no access to calendar.
Well, how about ordering that printer ink that’s due – oh, can’t logon to supplier.
OK, I need to get that info on the solar panels – darn, web page not cached.
What about that research for tonight’s meeting, Where’s that book? – in some pile somewhere – how much easier if I could just Google what I want.
I need to phone David – and I’ve ditched the hard copy white pages in favour of the IT version which, of course, is now not available to me until tomorrow.
The electricity bill is due today but I can’t transfer the funds.
Postaday deadline approaching but can’t load it up!

Nah – I can get by without the internet!

Speaking (or Blogging) too soon

That will teach me. Brag about posting every day and approaching day 80 and my internet goes down! won’t be up until the end of the week. Who would have thought swapping an ISP belonging to the same company could be so complicated. Anyway, made it today with this gripe having found a wifi hotspot that is very slow. So that’s it for today and I’m still on track!

Bleeding hearts or bleeding minds?

Today’s Eureka Street article spells it out so plainly.
The remote detention regime that has given rise to the Christmas Island riot is born of a policy that has become stupid to keep defending.

Blame detention centres, not detainees – Eureka Street

We need politicians courageous enough to make a bilateral stance to remove the wedge on this issue and restore a humane system of processing asylum seekers.

Reflecting on Postaday2011

Let’s blog on blogging. Day eighty of meeting the WordPress “write a post a day” challenge has so far left me unphased. Sure there are times I’ve had to scratch around a bit to find something to write about, but, even on the deadline, something has usually appeared, even if quite innocuous. Surprisingly, the stats show that these are the posts that receive the most hits. Ironically, the most carefully polished and well argued posts receive little attention. One of my biggest surprises is the daily number of hits continuously received by a reference to a news report on geothermal energy in Perth from December 2009. Some of my more self-indulgent posts, like my recent agonising over whether to get an e-reader are also rating comparatively well.

Blogging gurus have often advised to keep blog themes and subject matter confined to a narrow field of interest in order to gain a dedicated following. I have gone in the opposite direction. This blog is similar to aiming a shotgun at a shed and firing off, hoping that some pellets might hit something. It has been far ranging and diverse – probably inviting one-off readers according to whatever tags are searched. No matter – large audiences are not the only reward of blogging. For me the delight is engaging the act of casting one’s bread upon the waters and waiting for whatever returns.

This is a minor blog in the crowded blogosphere, and it has nevertheless led to some interesting connections and conversations from places in the world that would otherwise have remained rather obscure to me. Wisdom has come from unexpected quarters and this is reward enough in itself.

So will I make it through with a daily post to December 31, 2011?

Let’s see what happens tomorrow.

Happy Super Moon Night

Full Moon view from earth In Belgium (Hamois).
Image via Wikipedia

It’s very bright out there tonight – a super moon, they tell us. It seems so close you can reach out and touch it. How many love songs have the beau reaching up and plucking the moon from the sky for his SO?  “Full moons come in different sizes because of the elliptical shape of the moon’s orbit — one side of the ellipse is about 31,000 miles closer to Earth than the other. When the moon is closest to Earth (at its perigee), it is 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than when it’s farthest from the planet (at its apogee).” (ABC News)
Apparently tonight the moon is at the nearest point to earth since 18 years. This, of course. is probably “ho hum!” for astronomers but fascinating and awesome for lay folk like myself. Happy Super Moon Night!

Christmas Island – chickens come home to roost

The location of Christmas Island
Image via Wikipedia

PM – Police poised for more violence on Christmas Island 18/03/2011.

Asylum seekers locked up indefinitely behind gates in overcrowded quarters on a tiny and remote Indian Ocean island.
Some have been there 20 months with no knowledge of expected outcomes.
A plot from “Lost”?
Nope, its what Australia’s Border Protection Policy looks like and there is no evidence that its architects have any regard for humanitarian care, mental health and agreed international conventions on the treatment of asylum seekers.

So they pull a McMurphy and attempt to make a break. Is anyone surprised?

I thought good news was supposed to be palatable…

St. Isaac the Syrian (ortodox icon)
Image via Wikipedia

YouTube – MSNBC Host Makes Rob Bell Squirm: “You’re Amending The Gospel So That It’s Palatable!”.

Rob Bell squirming? I guess it depends on your perspective. I find the polemical and propositional tone of the interview embarrassing at its source more than its reception. I’d be squirming in my effort to remain polite. I haven’t read Bell’s book yet, but I recognise in his argument a proximity to the Eastern Orthodox stance – an understanding that I suspect many of his detractors have no clue about.

Many are the ancient pioneers of the church, along with Augustine, who thought about and reflected on the nature of God’s love revealed and experienced through Jesus. Why the west dips its lid only to Augustine is beyond me! Origen, Irenaeus and a host of others are well worth listening to. St. Isaac the Syrian in the sixth century writes “Paradise is the love of God” and he also writes “…those who are punished in Gehennah, are scourged by the scourge of love”. So the “fire” is the love of God, and we experience His love as either divine love, or as painful “scourge”. See an article from the Orthodox point of view at Heaven and Hell in the Afterlife, According to the Bible.

It would be a good exercise to compare/contrast Rob Bell’s thinking  alongside sound eastern Christian views that have withstood 2000 years of faith and practice.

Disaster fatigue? Donors keep dipping into their pockets

John Donne, one of the most famous Metaphysica...
Image via Wikipedia

Disaster fatigue? Donors keep dipping into their pockets.

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald was written after Christchurch but before Japan! Every indication is that the phenomena of generous responses to sufferers of an unprecedented string of natural disasters continues.

Why is it so? Is it that the depths of sheer collective human empathy run so deep that we will never completely plumb the depths? If so, that’s an encouraging sign for the human race, especially the more well off side often castigated for its self-centredness.

Is it that on this planet ark we feel such a precarious hold on existence that a threat of annihilation to part is perceived as a danger to the whole, and that acts of generosity should be construed to be motivated by an unconscious urge for self-preservation? If so, and depending on one’s predisposition, this could be a heartening sign of the will and drive of the human species to survive. On the other hand, some might perceive this as a selfish motivation and a reduction of the human spirit to mere pragmatism.

So what’s the answer? Some will go into caves to contemplate – others will roll their sleeves up and get stuck into helping whatever way they can. Most will simply try to live their lives according to familiar routines, because this is the best way we know how to cope.

But John Donne was right: “No man [sic] is an island.” No-one remains unaffected. And we will continue to choose our responses.