Festival of Dangerous Ideas

Tomorrow (5:45pm, Sunday 4 October) I will be giving a talk at the inaugural Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FoDI), at the Sydney Opera House. My topic is that “the old should pay for themselves”, and specifically I’ll be talking about getting rid of the old-age pension and other aged care. Click on the below image for more details.

I first heard about FoDI back in May when Simon Longstaff (Executive Director of the St James Ethics Centre) e-mailed me to see if the Australian Libertarian Society could nominate a controversial speaker for the newly formed Festival. After a few discussions, I ended up not only as a speaker, but also as a member of the steering committee.

The Festival is a joint effort from the Sydney Opera House and the St James Ethics Centre and will be an annual event aimed at challenging people’s everyday assumptions with “dangerous” and innovative ideas. Other talks this year include “religion poisons everything” by Christopher Hitchens, “freedom is dangerous” by Germaine Greer, “yes to child labour” by Ray Evans, “why polygamy is good” by Keysar Trad, “bring back conscription” by Admiral Barrie, “genetically enchance humans” by Julian Savulescu, “end african aid” by Dambisa Moyo and many other interesting talks.

If you have some spare time this afternoon or tomorrow, get along to the Sydney Opera House and join the discussion. Most tickets are $20 (Student price $10), with Hitchens, Greer & Moyo costing a bit more.

I’ll be going along to the “polygamy” and “yes to child labour” talks today, and the Christopher Hitchens talk tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be giving my talk, and also introducing the talk by Admiral Barrie on conscription. If I have time, I’ll also try to get along to Germaine Greer and the “genetically modify humans” talks before going to the “dangerously funny” comedy night.

I have spent much of the last week preparing for my talk, and with one day to go I’m starting to get nervous.

I don’t think I’m a bad public speaker, but neither am I a particularly good one. As I’ve said to friends, if I just started ranting at a pub and 100 people showed up, that would be fine. But if you put 100 people in a room and ask me to go in and rant, I’m nervous. My mind slows down and I have to follow my script instead of talking freely. I forget to smile. But the only solution is to just keep doing it, and hopefully over time I’ll become more confident.

Liam masturbation scandal… authorities to investigate

Shocking news has just come to light that suggests the “wanker-gate” episode may in fact by the work of one Liam Tjia, aka Maxwell Woldseth.

The incident began at 12:10pm on Friday 25 September when a suspicious e-mail was allegedly sent from the e-mail account of the teeth-clenching philanthropist Dr Joseph Clark, esquire. The e-mail read:

“Hi everyone. I just wanted you all to know- I am a complete w*nker”

Sources close to the Liberal party say that Malcolm Turnbull considered exposing the e-mail in parliament, until warned that it may indeed be a fraud, fake, fabrication and various other words starting with “f”.

Authorities at first suspected Godwin Grech as the author of the forgery, but during the course of their investigation they shifted their focus to the shadowy underworld figure known as Maxwell Woldseth. Little is known of Mr Woldseth except that he appears to be a dog, and he denies the allegation that he has been involved in drug smuggling, money laundering, male prostitution, cross-dressing or terrorist links. Asked to comment on these most recent allegations, Mr Worldseth responded by barking and then peeing on a tree.

This reporter can now reveal that Mr Woldseth is none other than the award-winning neuro-scientist, pool shark and vagabond Liam “the stud” Tjia. The exact nature of his “dog-man” existence remains unclear, though may explain his why Tjia has been seen in public licking his balls and humping people’s legs.

Mystery remains surrounding the exact meaning of the original e-mail. Is it a code calling on the rise of the dog-men for the inevitable march on parliament? Was it a case of e-mail tourette syndrome? One linguist pointed out that the acronym from the e-mail (HEIJWYATKIAACW), when translated from sanskrit, means “kill the infidels, and buy some milk on your way home”. At the moment nothing is clear, except that someone, somewhere is probably masturbating right now. Think about it.

Did you know?

Technology is a beautiful thing…

Easter & after

Thurs 9/4 — flew to Brisbane, went to the Sunshine Coast

Fri 10/4 — went swimming at Mooloolaba beach

Sat 11/4 — Lunch with family, packed up & drove to Brisbane  (stayed @ Pinky’s house)

Sun 12/4 — breakfast @ west end, then started the road trip to Sydney

Mon 13/4 — arrive in Sydney in the morning. Tired. Sleep.

Tue 14/4 — back to work

Not much exciting to report from life. Played poker on Thurs (16/4), but played badly and lost early. Have started playing rugby for Chatswood and played wing/flanker last Sat (18/4) in our bad loss to Liverpool. Swam 100 butterfly in 1:59. Been doing a bit of partying. Watched P.J. O’Rourke give an excellent speech at Luna Park yesterday (Tue 21/4). Planning a trip to Cambodia in June/July.

The hobbies that weren’t

In a little blue book I have written down all of the hobbies and activities that I want to pursue. While the list is always far too long to seriously pursue all of them at the same time, I generally am able to make some progress on a handful of hobbies. But not lately.

Learning chinese? Haven’t done a lesson or learnt a new word in months. Poker? Haven’t played a game for money since I left Queensland. Flying? Haven’t had a lesson or even a flight in a year. Sailing? Haven’t even found a sail-school, let alone started lessons. Couchsurfing? My status is set to ‘away’. Firedancing? No. Latin dancing? No. Astronomy? No. Left-handed writing? No. Guitar? No. Scuba diving? Harmonica? Martial arts? Tennis? Surfing? No, no, no, no & no.

Each time I look at my list I feel a bit guilty and tell myself that I’ll start doing more soon. But as I looked at my chinese language book this evening it occured to me that I simply don’t have the time or energy to pursue this many hobbies. A rationalisation is needed. I need a short-list. Maximum of three.

(1) Gym; (2) Rugby; (3) ???

I like Chinese

I am sometimes accused of being partial to our oriental comrades (or more crudely, of having “yellow fever”) and I fear I must plead guilty. Below, the Monty Python crew explain why we should all like the Chinese.

Busy

I’ve been busy

Tandoori Nights

When in Mumbai, Claire & I were a part of a bolllywood production which involved a day of standing and dancing and standing and standing and dancing and standing. It was for the movie “Karz” for the scene where the main characters are singing the song “Tandoori Nights”.

I couldn’t find myself in the video… but I promise that Claire & I are in there somewhere.

Merry Christmas

Christmas again… a time for family and ham and presents and santa. And of course we should remember the reason for the season: the summer solstace.

My “silly season” has been as relaxing as you would expect from an unemployed mystic hippy. Claire came to the Sunshine Coast on Sunday (21 Dec) and we went to the beach with some of her housemates. On Monday (22 Dec) we went to the movies (Madagascar 2 — blah), on Tuesday (23 Dec) we went shopping and on Wednesday (24 Dec) we went up to Coolum for lunch on the beach.

And now Christmas day. Hope you have a good one.

Passive society

I was on the train today on my way from Central Brisbane to Toowong. On the way I was doing a Chinese lesson (Zher de gongyipin hen hao, mai de ren hen duo) and not really paying attention to the world.

The train had been stopped or a bit too long when I heard a women call out “could somebody keep that door open”. In a train full of people, nobody (including the lady who said it and the people next to the door) made any effort to keep the door open. So I did.

The reason the door needed to be kept open was that about 10 other passengers were standing at door at the other end of the carriage trying to get out, but that door wouldn’t open. Instead of going to a different door or opening the door with their hands, they had just been staring at it for the past 10-15 seconds.

Eventually one of them opened the door and they left. But then the door wouldn’t shut. Nobody did anything.

After a while, the lady closest to the door tried to push it closed. But the “door open” beeping continued, and the carriage full of people continued staring with bewilderment at this unsolvable problem. The lady shrugged. Other people shrugged and looked at each other, clearly waiting for an “authority” to come and save them.

Finally I walked up the other end of the carriage and closed the doors fully. The beeping stopped. And the train could go. Given the amount of learned helplessness it is no wonder that people look to the government to make their decisions for them.