Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Last weekend I set up a community radio station on Facebook. Called it Adelaide Community Tubes, invited folks to create their own playlist.  How easy to create, on a Saturday night, a "radio station" of people, however isolated in the own homes, sharing music together?   It's the combination of words and pictures and thoughts, and perhaps by sharing music at the same time being on similar frequencies.. and maybe a bit of what cyberspace could do with a bit more of?

Since then it's been a thousand years
a hundred lands of joys and tears
In every generation's eyes
I look for her, to apologise

What’s driving this show of meanness? You might say it’s just what the electorate—or some loud part thereof—wants. It seems like there are some seriously angry voters out there these days, and I’m sure the recession is taking a toll on people’s patience and generosity. And yet, I suspect this is no fleeting trend, but something with deeper ideological roots. In short, I sense Ayn Rand. (Firmin DeBrabander)

Personally, I don’t think productivity is all that important a goal – the world is plenty productive enough. Much better to focus on other things such as (i) improving our happiness; (ii) saving the environment; and (iii) helping the destitute.

The taste of her kiss a memory mist in a cloud of love swirls above and around, a silent sound that sings across time like a long-lost rhyme that beguiles the riddler and drives the fiddler to play the tune from beyond the moon.

People Power has come a long way since the initial London riots early this year- revoltng populations, communicating via social networks, have appeared all over the world as humanity learns it doesn't have to tolerate what it'sbeen told to.  The earlier anarchy in the UK has travelled, mutated and returned in a new, more virulent form.

My only hope is that this Full Moon at Perigee doesn't add the emotional push that causes someone who shouldn't to do something stupid. If you've seen lots of people do lots of peculiar things in bright moonlight, you begin to wonder what people in already-intense situations might do if given an extra dose of what's in the moonbeams.

Their argument is not that we now have the technology to live forever. Their argument is that we now have the technology (and knowledge) to live twenty years longer. In twenty years, we will have breakthroughs that prevent and cure most illnesses.

It was always a long shot but it is dispiriting seeing the same old obstacles and smoke screens as the last time and the time before and the time before right back to the very start.. Ultimately the peace talks, if they are about anything at all, are about one big real estate deal. 

The theory of evolution provides an ideological support for thiseconomic theory, naturalising it, making what is actually a product ofa specific human culture into an independently existing state ofaffairs – in other words, making it into a myth.

Then ... then ... does anyone really care about these issues of contrasting and unprovable faiths until they face the reality of old age and its infirmities? Until they find themselves waiting, waiting for death, but not allowed to die yet - by God, the medical/surgical professions, and the priesthood?

There are many good human beings amongst us; human beings like my Dad and The Flying Dragon Ghost who did good and were motivated by the right stuff. There are also many people who have contributed to Webdiary who are decent and understanding human beings – passionate. These are the people we need, people who will play the game in the interests of all; or even better – not play games at all. On that note it’s now time to withdraw from this little game and disappear into the ether ...

As a ghost of China’s living past lay in fading silence I could see my Pumpkin had reconnected with someone she loved and a country they both cared for. It was wonderful to see Pumpkin get her wish and meet her special Ghost who in spite of everything stood the fiery test of virtues held true. He was a good Ghost, a humble Ghost who worked as one of the team and did good things for the people he loved.

Mona welcomed us both with nie hao/s and hugs then escorted us towards the back room as the girls chattered in crescendo. I wondered why the girls where getting excited but then I got distracted – by now the room was humming harder. I tried to do cartwheels across the floor – but I can’t do cartwheels – so I hopped up and down on one leg.

On an earlier stay at the abode of Mona I attempted in vain to explain to her the English term “harmony”. I had to resort to song (which is bloody obvious when you think about it) and began singing Frère Jacques – she immediately laughed and then spontaneously harmonised in Mandarin.

Probably two significant moments in my career that I hadn’t really thought about until around, funnily enough, the semi-final in the World Cup in 2003 after the well-documented walking incident in that match. That was the catalyst for me to start thinking and thinking why have I got this approach. (Adam Gilchrist on "walking")

When I think of Kath I think of children, for Kath is a loving and devoted mum and it shows big time. But she is not alone, for most parents love their kids. To love your children is catholic and reflects the very simple but universal truth of Christianity. We love our kids and would die for them.

On a more serious note allow me to return to my childhood and share something that is now indelibly tattooed in my brain; something that had almost faded away. Nothing profound, nothing really important to me personally but it is, and was to millions of human beings, Geoff included. It’s a ghost, harmless to me personally but a ghost of the nasty kind that does mean something to many. One degree of separation.

Let’s go back to the where the ghost tale began (for me); in that hotel room in old Shanghai. Pumpkin wanted to tell me a story, a special story about a Ghost known only to a few. As such, in the wee hours of a balmy Shanghai night Pumpkin told me the tale of the Magical Flying Dragon Ghost.

I decided to go and have it out with Mr M and waddled off in the general direction of the mausoleum. But all of a sudden I got a bloody great big chill down me back and my feathers stood on end. It was hard to be sure whether it is the poor dead dear lying in that somewhat solemn and stately design or the cop car just behind me.

Come dear friends, let me take you by the hand, and lead you through the streets of Zhong Guo; a dialectical magical mystery tour into the dungeons and dragons deep in the heart of the Middle Kingdom reaching all the way back to the Tang Dynasty. Enjoy a few postcards as truth turns into fantasy, while fantasy turns into truth; if only in a small way.

A very important message from the Middle Kingdom ... and keep watching this space.

This is Halbbildung: it is not half-education but the denial of education. Each step in the dismantling of the system through which I was educated, each step in the process from education to Halbbildung, has been marked by the rhetoric of standards and testing. With the implementation of each review standards plunged further into the depths of Halbbildung. Good luck! Get all the private education for your kiddies that you can. It’s not going to make any difference.

Camaraderie, altruism, singing, mediation, a belief that things will turn out well (even if only after death) are all techniques confirmed by science. However, we felt betrayed by religion and turned away. We realised that not only is there no God, but that religious institutions were often as venal and corrupt as secular institutions.

'You've MADE it!' That's the message that's used to sell everything, from clothes to diets to holidays. You've made it, you're worth it – we want to shout to the rooftops that we are successful! But the moment of triumphalism is always short-lived, and always followed by a hollowness – the void that waits for the next purchase, the next triumph.

There is nothing like the prospect of a radical life change to concentrate the mind on things that really mater. So I want to identify, if I can, the most important thing that we discover in life. At least, it is the most important thing that I have discovered. I will share it with you, like a precious jewel, fit for this occasion. I refer to love. Love for one another. Love for our community. Love for others everywhere in the world. Love transcends even scholarship, cleverness and university degrees. It is greater than pride and wealth. It endures when worldly vanities fade.

Forests pump salt back down into the ground. They retain water to minimise flooding and feed the water into the water-table over a much longer period of time, as well as through condensation contributing further to precipitation, thus pushing back desertification. They stop erosion and rebuild soil. They lock up millions of tons of carbon, provide habitat and corridors for creatures of foot and wing, deal with all manner of toxins in highly creative ways, and produce oxygen. They keep rivers alive.

A capacity for imagining different conditions is the hallmark of a capacity for freedom, individual and collective agency, citizenship. The absence of that capacity signifies the existence of state or other forms of terror and oppression. Worse still it can signal the internalisation or naturalisation of inequality such that those whose interests lie in change do not seek change.

Remember, the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.(Randy Pausch)

Why should any religion hold copyright on the intertwining aspects of human nature? Why should abilities that are disciplined and learned through the focus on a deity be disregarded (or worse) if they aren't developed or practiced as part of a "sanctioned" doctrine? There's lots of things people do that are regarded as inexplicable, and yet in our temples we're required to take a "leap of faith."