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...
I went last night. He's a very good and entertaining speaker and well worth living in Auckland for.
ReplyDeleteFriday 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.
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...
ReplyDeleteIf any readers go tonight, could they provide a summary for those of us "down south" here in the comments? Cheers
ReplyDeleteHe 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.
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