Thursday, September 21, 2006



Why didn't anyone tell me about this?

Jared Diamond, author of The Third Chimpanzee, Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel, is speaking at Auckland University tonight and tomorrow night:

  • Thursday, September 21st: "Collapses of past societies, and their lessons for today"
  • Friday, September 22nd: "The reappraisals of values by individuals and groups",

Both lectures are held in Lecture Theatre B28, Library Basement, 5 Alfred St, starting at 7pm. Just for once, I wish I lived in Auckland...

4 comments:

I went last night. He's a very good and entertaining speaker and well worth living in Auckland for.

Friday night will be the most interesting, he's going to give a bit of an outline on how he sees the next 50 years unfurling.

Not well advertised, but this annual lecture series generally isn't. Pinker was here a few years ago. It's a great opportuniy to see very talented people in action.

Posted by Anonymous : 9/21/2006 07:02:00 PM

I'm glad to hear that he's a decent public speaker, because there was a TV doco oh here that was based on one of his books, and was uninspiring. Now if Dan Simberloff was doing a talk, that I would clamour to see...

Posted by Chris : 9/22/2006 12:00:00 PM

If any readers go tonight, could they provide a summary for those of us "down south" here in the comments? Cheers

Posted by Anonymous : 9/22/2006 05:27:00 PM

He gave a lecture on Wednesday night as well, and so far the lectures have been very popular - the main lecture theatre overflowed, and the overflow rooms overflowed so even more overflow rooms were needed (>1200 people I'd say). The lectures were actual videoed and streamed to the other rooms - would be good if they could stream them over the internet as well.

Posted by Anonymous : 9/22/2006 06:04:00 PM