Desmond Tutu, one of the great living human rights campaigners and the outstanding Anglican cleric of our time, turns 75 today, 7 October 2006.

The SABC website has some local reportage of the Archbishop Emeritus' birthday. The BBC has a new interview in video.

This is the text of a birthday message to Archbishop Tutu written by World Council of Churches chairman, Rev. Samuel Kobia:

Julie Bishop is one of the brighter hopefuls in the ever-depleting talent pool of the federal Liberal Party. Alternatively, she has been pushed to the forefront by the Howard Government as the Anti-Gillard. Certainly she is one of the few female members of cabinet the JWH era who is neither (a) in the mould of Jeanette Howard, or (b) Amanda Vanstone. (Or indeed c, the unrelated Bronwyn Bishop).

Pakistan earthquake one year on: 1.8 million people still in temporary shelter as snow falls - Date: 04 Oct 2006
Source: Oxfam [Reliefweb]

Peter Norman died in Melbourne yesterday at the age of 64. He should be regarded as one of Australia's greatest sporting legends. He probably won't be.

At a time when Australia's prowess on the athletics track was in decline, Norman's crowning achievement was to win the silver medal in the 200 metres at the Mexico Olympics in 1968. The gold medallist in that event was Tommie Smith, the bronze medallist John Carlos.

Ranjan Madugalle's verdicts in the Inzamam ul-Haq hearing last week were no surprise to me. I expected the ball-tampering charge to be chucked out, and likewise I expected Inzi to be found guilty on the disrepute charge of not returning to the field. The four match suspension seems reasonable enough. The full text of the judgment can be found on the ICC website.

Madugalle dismissed the charge, saying:

Life is full of ironies. An AFL grand final without a Melbourne team, and an NRL grand final without a Sydney team. In a year when I have become more and more apathetic about rugby league, today I am going to my first-ever Sydney rugby league grand final.

I should say, however, that it's really the Premier League fixture, the second curtain-raiser of the day at Telstra Stadium, that is my main attraction. Newtown (who, to be fair, is a glorified Sydney Roosters Reserve Grade this year) take on Parramatta. A remarkable comeback for a club that was kicked out of the NSWRL comp in 1983, went broke, re-emerged through minor competitions and became something of a cause celebre for the anti-Super League true believers.

Wordpress has been (and continues to be) very good to me. However, after two and a bit years, I am deprecating the now.rickeyre.com brand and freezing its blog. There's a lot of great reading there, but from October 1 my blog address will be www.rickeyre.com/blog.

I'm now using Drupal, which offers a more comprehensive range of features than Wordpress, which is a great program if you only want to blog. Drupal is also the CMS I use for the two church websites that I have worked on recently.

Bear with me as I work out the new navigation and theme.