IQ2 live debate: #Feminism Has Failed #Melbourne #geekgirl

As Australia assesses the vote for its first female prime minister, Intelligence Squared tackles its most controversial debate yet: Has feminism failed?

After generations of effort, women still bear a disproportionate burden of domestic labour. Women are under-represented in the senior ranks of politics, business and the professions. If the minority government doesn’t hold, Julia Gillard’s prime ministership may be the shortest in our history. What role did her gender play at the ballot box? Statistics show women continue to be denied equal pay for equal work and young women are less likely to identify as feminists than their mothers. What does this say about feminism? Has it failed to mobilise and inspire? Or should feminists be celebrating a deeper victory in which a new generation of young men and women take equality for granted?

Intelligence Squared is a provocative and informative series of live debates on hot-button issues, offering a sometimes fiery, often controversial and always entertaining forum for healthy argument. The format is the traditional Oxford-style debate, with one side proposing and the other opposing a sharply framed motion. Three speakers argue on each side of the motion. After the formal rguments, the debate is thrown open to the floor for moderated questions. The live audience votes both before and after hearing the arguments, so each debate has a clear measure of how far people have actually been swayed.

Intelligence Squared in Melbourne is a project of the St James Ethics Centre and the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas.

More about the speakers:
Virginia Haussegger is a journalist, author and social commentator. Her writing includes a seminal article on feminism and childlessness, and the book Wonder Woman: the myth of “having it all” She currently presents News on ABC TV, Canberra.

Gay Alcorn is a Walkley award-winning journalist who joined The Age in 1989.  She was Washington correspondent from 1999-2002 and was appointed editor of The Sunday Age in 2008.

Stephen Mayne is a Walkley award-winning journalist, shareholder activist and founder of Crikey and the Mayne Report. He has also run as an independent in State and Federal elections.

Jennifer Byrne has 26 years experience in television, radio and print journalism and over this time, has interviewed many world leaders, international thinkers and writers. She is currently presenter of the First Tuesday Book Club on ABC TV.

Monica Dux is a Melbourne writer. She has published widely on women’s issues and co-authored the book The Great Feminist Denial. She is currently working on a book about modern motherhood.

Wendy McCarthy was a founding member and co-convenor of the Women’s Electoral Lobby in 1972. She has been an educator, advocate and social commentator, and a company director for the past forty years.  

Debate date: 22 September 2010
http://tinyurl.com/333mmfq

Kurt Vonnegut Explains Drama

I always knew Kurt Vonnegut produced incredibly awesome fiction: turns out he’s also a truly pragmatic behaviouralist/visionary [+ yup the two *can* go together]. Take, for instance, his reasoning on how the average joe [+ jane] may just form a slightly whackjob set of perceptions centred around interactions with others + associated notions of “drama”:

“People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories…because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think are lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”

Read more [with spiffo graphs] @ Derek Sivers’ blog.

Coolant Green ideas for a greener future

‘Coolant Green’, WWF is appealing to creative thinkers from all over the world to look at our lifestyles and make sustainable living a reality by presenting ideas. These aspirational ideas need to be adopted easily by those who can physically and financially afford it, and should help individuals or communities move to a greener way of life.

You’ll pitch your ideas along side creatives from all over the world. The best idea to  stimulate a low carbon or low-waste mindset will win a $1500 Bounty – and an exclusive feature on the WWF’s website.

• Bounty (for winning idea): $1500.00 USD.
• Deadline: 20 August 2009

WWF website

Melbourne City Wiki

Tell Melbourne what you hope for it’s future. Write a message or add a drawing; be its voice and imagination. Help craft a future for Melbourne’s next generations.

City Wiki is based on the concept that the future of design for cities will be strongly centered on human interaction supported by multimedia and technology. The interactive installation is a means of recording collective ideas and personal responses. Photos, video footage and comments of City Wiki are posted online daily, promoting ongoing discourse and further involvement in creating a future for our city.

17 – 24 July, 24 hours
Location: Higson Lane, Melbourne
Phone: +61 3 9654 3644
Cost: Free

Source: State of Design

Brain Pickings – a curious mind at large.

Picking culture’s collective brain for innovation, inspiration & brilliant ideas.

Check out Maria’s Wordle of every TED talk ever = 9,306 hours of culture’s biggest brain cloud, condensed into a tiny word cloud.

Brain Pickings is the brain child of Maria Popova, a curious mind at large with a passion for behavioral psychology, innovation, design and good conversation.

Brain Pickings is about picking culture’s collective brain for tidbits of stuff that inspires, revolutionizes, or simply makes us think. It’s about innovation and authenticity and all those other things that have become fluff phrases but don’t have to be.

Source: www.brainpickings.org

Artsource Industry Night Idea | Form – Perth

Need to find new ways to present your ideas? Then be sure to book ahead to one of the hottest nights in town. Yes the Artsource Industry Night is on again and this year we have an even sweeter line-up such as; Edward Khoury, Managing Director, Form Designs Australia who are a local industrial design company with the ability to translate artists™ ideas into 2D and 3D forms.

Magic!. Their wide range of services includes design documentation, engineering drawings, 3D modelling, rapid prototyping and model making. Hear how this company and the others in our mini-expo can help give shape to your ideas.

8  April, 6 – 8 pm,
Cost: $11 Artsource members, $17 non-members, MAX members FREE. Bookings essential.  
King St Art Centre, 357 Murray St, Perth
For further information, email: perth@artsource.net.au
http://www.formdesigns.com.au/

Parallax – 2009 National Architecture Conference

A line-up of leading international designers and thinkers is assembling for Australia’s foremost architecture conference in April, 2009.

Parallax is this year’s Australian Institute of Architects national conference, under the creative direction of  TERROIR directors Gerard Reinmuth (Sydney), Richard Blythe (Melbourne) and Scott Balmforth (Hobart).

TERROIR’s provocative program invites the profession to take a ‘parallax’ view of the conditions in which it practices, heartily fuelled by contributions from leading international designers, philosophers and cultural commentators.

Confirmed conference guest, the controversial public intellectual Slovoj Žižek (Slovenia/UK), uses parallax to refer to situations where the same thing, when viewed from two different perspectives, presents itself in two completely irreconcilable ways.

“Žižek’s confronting assertions will make us think much harder about what we are willing to believe and accept. His interrogative perspective will stir our thoughts about the choices we make as practitioners and how we determine what becomes privileged in our selections,” said Reinmuth on behalf of the creative team.

Other confirmed guests are: Aaron Betsky (USA), Tatiana Bilbao (Mexico), Sou Fujimoto (Japan), Bijoy Jain (India), Jeff Kipnis (USA) and Peter Wilson (Australia/UK/Germany).

Describing their program as the “writers festival of architecture”, the creative directors have designed six main thematic sessions – Studio, Politics, Media, Young Guns, Collaboration and The Cosmopolitan. Each is built around two key speakers exploring a specific issue, followed by a facilitated panel for extended discussion and debate. The Parallax format promises free flowing discussion with regular crossovers during the event.

“The best conferences build momentum as they unfold over a few days, as key topics emerge in response to the particular cocktail of speakers present and the opportunities they are given to unpack these topics over an extended period,” said Reinmuth.

In the 12 workshop sessions a keynote guest will discuss issues of particular local relevance of contemporary practice in conversation with an Australian speaker.

Early bird registrations: March 2nd, 2009

Parallax – 2009 National Architecture Conference
30 April – 2 May, Melbourne
architecture.com.au/parallax

More info on Žižek – http://www.ff.uni-lj.si/oddelki/filo/english/staff/zizeka.htm
Žižek’s Facebook page: –  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Slavoj-Zizek/8406557479

Rubik’s Cube inventor is back with new Rubik’s 360

A new game by Professor Erno Rubik, inventor of the iconic Cube, is tipped to become a best-seller when it goes on sale.
 
The Rubik’s 360 is set to repeat the success of the maddening Cube, which became an overnight sensation almost three decades ago and remains the world’s fastest-selling toy.

Now the reclusive Hungarian inventor hopes to recreate the buzz of Rubik’s Cube with his new game, featuring six balls trapped within three transparent plastic spheres.

The puzzle, shown to the Sunday Telegraph is being unveiled at a toy industry fair in Germany on February 5; the toy confronts users with the same frustrating challenge – a task that is simple to understand, with only one possible solution, yet extremely difficult to execute.

Players must get the coloured balls from an inner sphere into matching slots on the outer sphere by shaking them through a middle sphere that has only two holes.

Read more of the story at The Telegraph, UK.

Mechano Brutalists take a rough and ready approach to the plastic arts

Collaborating as the Mechano Brutalists, Sumugan Sivanesan & James Gulliver Hancock take a rough and ready approach to the plastic arts.

For Troubled Justice (2009) they combine assemblage, illustration and illumination – using milk crates, clip lamps, scrap car parts, abandoned bicycles and other debris, to recall the incidents surrounding the “Redfern Riots” and the death of a local aboriginal teenager, TJ Hickey in February 2004.

The work is part of an ongoing and multifaceted project, in consultation with Ray Jackson of the Indigenous Social Justice Association and TJ’s mother, Gail Hickey.
http://thetroublewithtj.blogspot.com/

Thanks to Jap World Spares, St Peters and the Nunnery Bike Workshop.

http://www.sivanesan.com/
http://www.jamesgulliverhancock.com/
http://www.grantpirrie.com/

Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 6:00pm
End Time: Saturday, February 28, 2009 at 12:00am
Location: GRANTPIRRIE | WINDOW
Street: 86 George Street, Redfern
City/Town: Sydney, Australia

Flopfest

Have you ever been at the pub & after a few drinks – Bingo! You’ve got it. An absolute cracker of a business idea. You share it with your mates, you explain it to the barman, and you even tell the janitor who kicks you out at the end of the night. The next day, you wake up and realise it maybe wasn’t the best idea, it was just the beer talking. Those are the ideas we’re after! We want wacky, way out ideas for a new business. No concept is too crazy, anything from Potato Peelers R Us, to Hire- a-Hamster, the limit is your imagination.
The winner will be crowned by the people. The Short Film that receives the most online votes will win the $500 prize.
 
THE BRIEF: Create a short film pitching your idea for a new and novel business.
FILM LENGTH:  2 minutes
THE PRIZE: $500
 
Deadline: 30 January, 5pm
To enter, and for more information, visit the website at:
http://www.topfranchise.com.au/Site-Info/filmfest.html