Change of address

Shaken and Stirred Events has now completed its move to the Thought Broker website. We’re still holding events, so look out for upcoming events here.

Binge Thinking can now also be read online. Find the articles here.

To find out more about about what Thought Broker does, follow this link.

Or if you just want to have a sticky-beak inside our heads, check out the Amuse Bouche blog here.

We look forward to sharing a glass and a gasbag with you soon.

Best,

Leonie & Parnell

Sex, Science and Profits

Shaken and Stirred

Supper Club

Dr Terence Kealey

Vice Chancellor University of Buckingham

On

Sex, Science and Profits

Why publicly funding science and research

is limiting our capacity to innovate

Wednesday 13 October 2010
6.30pm for 7pm start

Pazzo Restaurant
583 Crown Street
Surry Hills

$65 including two courses, wine and convention rattling

RSVP essential: shakenandstirred@thoughtbroker.com.au

Dr Terence Kealey is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham in the UK and a clinical biochemist specialising in human skin cell biology. In his first book The Economic Laws of Scientific Research he argued that, contrary to convention, governments need not fund science. His second book, Sex, Science and Profits presents an evolutionary and economic history of humanity, showing how the roots of barter, trade and contract are embedded in human nature and how markets work on the evolutionary principles of natural selection.  Dr Kealey writes regularly for the Spectator and New Scientist.

Discussant: Higher education expert, Andrew Norton, from the Centre for Independent Studies will provide commentary on the Australian experience of bureaucratised research funding which was recently described as suffering from “bias, favouritism and a lack of transparency and process” by UNSW Deputy Vice Chancellor Les Field.

Upcoming event: Is the housing boom a bursting bubble?

Is the Housing Boom a Bursting Bubble?

Join the Binge Thinkers for a debate with two diametrically opposed economists on Sydney’s favourite topic – house prices.

Date: Tuesday 6 July
Time: 6:30pm for 7pm
Venue: Cochin, Fouveaux St Surry Hills
Cost: $50 for food, wine and dissent.
RSVP essential: shakenandstirred@thoughtbroker.com.au

Dan Denning is the author of 2005’s best-selling The Bull Hunter (John Wiley & Sons).  He’s the managing editor of resource newsletter Diggers and Drillers and the editor of The Daily Reckoning Australia.

Binge Thinking – Issue 2

The editors at Binge Thinking are currently accepting submissions for the second issue of Binge Thinking, due out in the second half of this year.

Once again, the theme will be contrarian, opinionated, unorthodox and FUN – so if you have an article on a Shaken and Stirred event, some lucid thoughts on an under-exposed topic, or a response to the articles in Issue 1 (now available on http://www.thoughtbroker.com.au under Binge Thinking in the left hand menu), we’d love to hear from you.

Email your contributions to bingethinking@thoughtbroker.com.au

Read Issue 1 here http://thoughtbroker.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=6

Binge Thinking at the Sydney Writers’ Festival

The first issue of Binge Thinking has been very well received and our next event will be Binge Thinking at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. The theme of the discussion is ‘dissent’ and Caroline Overington will chair. There’ll be a dinner booking at pizza restaurant Ventuno nearby from 7pm – we’d be thrilled if you could make it to one or both parts of the evening.

Date: Friday 21 May
Time: 5:30 – 6:30pm
Venue: Bangarra Mezzanine, Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay

Dinner, drinks and debate
Time: 7:00pm onward
Venue: Ventuno Pizzaria, 21 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay
RSVP: shakenandstirred@thoughtbroker.com.au

Upcoming event: Government Anarchy on Tuesday 27 April

Government Anarchy

with Nev Kennard

All life and all society is in fact “anarchic”, including democratic nations and governments. The big difference between the calm order of a declared anarcho-capitalist society and the semi-chaos and unpredictability of our democratic constitutional nation-state is the rule-by-whim which parliamentarians and congresses try to keep power and their cosy jobs.

Date: 27 April 2010
Venue: Mahjong Room
Time: 6:30 for 7pm
Cost: $40 including dinner and wine
RSVP: thoughtbroker@gmail.com

About our speaker:
Neville Kennard is a Sydney-based businessman, and is an ardent advocate of individual freedom, free markets, to the degree that he now thinks that people can do without [compulsory and coercive] governments altogether, and our societies will be much calmer, safer and more predictable. He was an early supporter of the Centre for Independant Studies, and its first Chairman, but now despairs of the effectiveness of think tanks, which he believes have become part of the Establishment and help to legitimise coercive government.

Binge Thinking – Issue 1

On 5 December 2009, Shaken and Stirred launched Binge Thinking, a collection of articles expanding on and refuting the positions put forward by speakers at Shaken and Stirred Events.

The first issue of Binge Thinking is available on request through Thought Broker, contact email thoughtbroker@gmail.com

Contents:
Introduction – Parnell McGuinness and Leonie Phillips
It’s time to put the par-tay back into the political – Cass Wilkinson
If it offends you, switch it off – Dee Madigan
It’s OK to pay – Elena Jeffreys
Let people be free to choose independence from the State – John Humphreys
Baby it’s cold outside! – James Morrow
The year is 13PK – Jessica Brown
What makes Great cities? – Oliver Hartwich
The death of post-modernism and the return of reason – John Montgomery
Death to the Avant Garde – Ben Hourigan
Surviving a post-modern marriage – Andrew Pettinger
Cargo Culture – Dubossarsky and Samild

A bit about our contributors:

Jessica Brown is a policy analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies

Eugene Dubossarsky and Stephen Samild are the directors of Presciient, a data analysis, forecasting, and collective intelligence consultancy

Dr Oliver Hartwich is an economist and author, as well as Research Fellow at the CIS

Ben Hourigan is principal of writing and editing consultancy Sabertext and regular contributor to the IPA Review

John Humphreys is an economist and a nuisance

Elena Jeffreys is the Chair of the Scarlet Alliance

Dee Madigan is an advertising creative and panellist on ABC TV’s The Gruen Transfer

Parnell McGuinness works in advertising and is the co-organiser of Shaken and Stirred

Dr John Montgomery is an urban planner, author and academic

James Morrow is a journalist and author

Andrew Pettinger has a PhD in Ancient History from the University of Sydney, and will thus be working for the Department of Finance and Deregulation from 2010

Leonie Phillips works as a publicist and is the co-organiser of Shaken and Stirred

Cassandra Wilkinson is a Director with Deloitte Economics. She is a founder and President of FBi FM and author of Don’t Panic: Nearly Everything is Better Than You Think

Introduction to the first issue of Binge Thinking
The working title of this first issue of Binge Thinking was “Fauxho hates proho and PoMo” and that more or less sums up the main themes of our first collection of thoughts.

The basket bingers up for a Caxton

Palme Publishing  (publisher of Binge Thinking, Shaken and Stirred’s demi-annual essay collection launched last weekend in basket-weaving Balmain) has just received news that the ad with which the book fair was promoted is up for a Caxton, Australia’s most prestigious newpress advertising award. We’re not surprised – one attendee at the event was so taken with the ad she suggested entering it in the Archibald. There were reports of the posters being stolen from the pubs which displayed them.

Thanks again to Whybin TBWA for an amazing ad which captured the essence of my father using his books (zoom in and read the titles for all the jokes we planted) and adding to the crowds who queued outside for hours before doors opened, eager to “own the books that made PP”.

You can see the ad again and read the kind words of Tim Hall at Campaign Brief.

Binge Thinking Launch – Saturday 5 December 2009

Shaken and Stirred presents

Why it’s more important to offend than be offended:

The triumph of larrikinism in Australian culture

with Tony Moore
and

Launch Party for the first issue of

Binge Thinking:

a collection of relfections and refutations by Shaken and Stirred participants

Date: Saturday 5 December 2009

Time: 6:30 for 7:00pm start

Venue: Garden of bohemian delights, 437 Darling Street, Balmain

Cost: $35 (includes food, drinks and a copy of Binge Thinking)

RSVP essential: thoughtbroker@gmail.com

About Tony Moore

Dr Tony Moore is a cultural historian who lectures at Monash University. His career spans publishing, journalism and documentary making at the ABC. His first book The Barry McKenzie Movies analysed the cultural significance of the ‘Ocker’ cinema genre of the 1970s and his most recent film was Bohemian Rhapsody: Rebels of Australian Culture. He is inaugural commissioning editor of the new Cambridge University Press series Australian Encounters. A self-confessed libertarian social democrat, Tony is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and former president of the NSW Fabian Society.

Own the books that made Paddy McGuinness – 21 Nov 09

Photos from the event and the ad created by Whybin TBWA (Paddy’s face built entirely out of his books, shot 100% in-camera – nothing added or changed in post-production! Immense thanks to Steve Dodds, Janelle Shearer, Garry Horner, Matt Kemsley, John Curnow and Paul Bradbury).

All images can be enlarged by clicking on them.