…is to make espresso with very light roasted coffee.

Why? I dunno, it’s what all the cool kids in Melbourne are doing. I think it might be some sort of reaction against the dark-roasted coffee of the commercial brands.

Everyone’s raving about it, but I think it sucks.

People say it has a ‘lemon citrus’ flavour. They’re almost right, because it does taste a lot like sucking on a lemon.

As Shaun Micallef would have said, “Light roasted coffee – in to the bin!”

Last time I explained why populations grow. Now I’m going to look at what happens next.

When we left our story last time, we were all having ten kids who were having ten kids. What happens next might not surprise you: we start having fewer kids.

Yep. We suddenly realise that it’s not that awesome having so many kids around.

Some people say it goes a bit like this: the kids were great when you needed them to work the farm. But when everybody started moving into big cities they became a little less handy, although they could still contribute to family income by working at the factory. Then eventually they just became too expensive. Child labour was oh so last century and suddenly all those children are really expensive with all their food and education.

In reality it’s probably a little bit more complicated than that, but even if we’re not sure why it happened, it still happened: we started having a lot less children on average.

The important point here is that we took a while to figure out we wanted less children: life expectancy improved first (less babies dying) and sometime later fertility fell (less babies been born). In the time in between the population grew at a phenomenal rate.

So how come we’re still growing? Well, although some countries are towards the end of this process, others (particularly developing countries) are still part way through. They haven’t quite corrected for the fact that their children aren’t dying anymore. They’ll get there, but it takes quite some time.

If you want to read more about this process (by people who know what they’re talking about) look up “The Demographic Transition”.

First up, let me say that I didn’t particularly like John Howard as PM (although I warmed to him slightly more after watching Q&A). Furthermore, I think invading Iraq was a very bad idea.

That said, I think it was highly inappropriate for that guy to throw his shoes at him. I’ve been a bit disappointed to hear comments like “It’s a shame he missed”.

What you don’t see on the video above is that the man asking the question (who later threw his shoes) was clearly never interested in hearing John’s response. John hadn’t got five words out before the man was shouting back at him.

It’s called Q&A not just Q. If you ask a question, you should expect to listen to a response. That’s how the show works. If everybody started throwing their shoes at the people they disagreed with a lot of people would have very sore heads. Eventually no one would actually go on the show anymore. And that would suck, because Q&A is one of the best things the media has come up with in the last 10 years.

I may lean slightly left of centre (politically), but I’m just as frustrated by the extreme anti-war and anti-logging campaigners as I am by the “immigrants take our jobs” crowd. These people are never interested in hearing informed debate or embracing the complexity of issues. But the joys of democracy means that they get a say, and we let them speak.

But please just speak, don’t throw your shoes.

I’ve spent five long years at University, and done alright for the most part. So I thought I’d share some tips. These are my thoughts on how to do well at University.

Tip # 1: Limit your Reading

You’re unlikely to hear any lecturer give you this advice, but I would argue that it pays to limit the amount of reading you do. I’ve seen a lot of unit outlines that say things like, “You are expected to spend 8 hours a week reading and revising the relevant material”. I think some people actually might do this.

My advice is to figure out what the important information is, and just read that. Use the lecture notes as a guide to what is important. Don’t fill your head with information you don’t need to know. Focus your efforts on what is assessed.

Read the chapter summary, not the whole chapter. Read the abstract of a paper, and maybe the discussion if it’s interesting.

A couple of caveats: (a) you should probably read more thoroughly for essays, (b) this advice does not necessarily apply well to all disciplines – I suspect doing all the reading might be necessary for some science subjects.

More tips to come…

This section always includes a photo of someone they accosted in the street whom they deem ‘fashionable’. They ask them a few questions about what they’re wearing and where they like to shop.

I’ve noticed a pattern that goes something like this:

I shop at vinnies and other op-shops.

I’m currently wearing a top from Valley Girl, shorts from Cotton-On, and a vest from Myer.

Some examples here, here, here and here.

Conclusions: (a) it is cool to say you shop at op-shops, (b) it is less cool to actually wear clothes you purchased from op-shops.

But I’ve struck a problem.When is it necessary to put your umbrella down? Or when is it okay to leave it up?

Inside a building? Easy. Yes, down it goes.

Briefly walking under a single shop awning? It’s dry for a second, but probably okay to leave it up.

What about several shop awnings that form continuous rain protection for several metres? Do you leave it up knowing you will shortly encounter more rain on the other side?

At what length does shop awning coverage mean you look like a twat for leaving your umbrella up for so long when it’s clearly dry?

The shop awning quandary is complicated further by the arrival of sideways rain. In that case, it’s okay to leave your umbrella up to protect yourself, regardless of shop awning length.

What about a roadway underpass? It’s raining either side, why not just keep your umbrella up? Do people walk past thinking, “What a twat; it’s not raining inside the underpass, but he’s got his umbrella up”?

Society needs some clearer rules on this one. How about some signage:

This could be placed at the entrance of suitably long underpasses such that no one is left wondering whether umbrella up or down is appropriate. Brilliant.

Who thought associating chocolate with a grotesque mutant hand was a good idea?

This ad repulses me every time… and somehow I’m supposed to want to buy these chocolates?

Sure, the ad stands out, but more in a “Ah! Where the heck is the remote?!” kind of way.

Marketing fail.

The reason for the ban is that it supposedly promotes suicide. I don’t really think it does, and the regulators probably need to come up with a better excuse if they want to ban it.

But that’s an aside. I wanted to write some of my thoughts on the argument used by the advert.

According to the man on the bed, it’s all about choice. He’s chosen everything in his life – what course to do at uni, how hard to party at uni, his wife, how many kids to have, what car to drive, the clothes he wears, and even his haircut.

He then says the only thing he hasn’t chosen is to be terminally ill and have his family watch him go through it. He states his case that he has a right to a final choice of ending his life.

Well that’s all very well, but how much do we really choose? Let’s take a look a couple of his ‘choices’:

Do we choose to go to university or not? Well, sort of. But it’s got an awful lot to do with whether our parents and friends value education. In fact, it’s got a lot to do with how well off your parents are. If you have poor parents (not your choice), then you’re very unlikely to go to university.

What about kids? Surely it’s your choice to have kids or not? Well firstly, a lot of people have kids when they don’t intend to (even with the most careful of contraception), and a stack more can’t have kids no matter how hard they try. Secondly, the number of kids you have is shaped largely by societal expectations. Not so long ago, women used to have stacks of kids; things changed and now everybody has a lot less. Yes, I know some people still have lots, but I would hazard a guess that even they’re shaped by those around them.

Surely he chooses his t-shirt and his haircut? Unlikely. Fashions change fast. Whether you try to keep up with fashions or not, they still dictate what you wear. Maybe our fictional character had long hair when he went to university in the 70s? He couldn’t get away with that now, it’d be too hard to get a job.

The ‘choices’ we make in life are shaped in part or whole by society. I challenge you to think of any choice that isn’t.

This idea that we are free to choose everything in life stems from the high importance we place on ourselves as individuals. In our society the needs and wants of the individual are superior to those of the collective.

I think the advert makes a poor argument. An appeal to ‘choice’ overlooks the degree to which our choices are shaped by those around us. It’s also worth considering how this might relate to abortion (pro-choice?).

As for euthanasia itself? Honestly, my mind’s not entirely made up. That might seem a bit strange considering my conservative-Christian values, but I think the issue is more complex that some on the far right would make it out to be.

But just don’t try and tell me it’s all about choice. As Arcade Fire said, “Now who here among us still believes in choice? Not I.”

He went further saying: “If we keep growing by 2.1 per cent a year in population, that doubles our population in 30 years, it means in 220 years’ time we would have over one billion people here and no one believes we could feed one billion” (as quoted here).

He has rather insultingly called this prize the Wilberforce award, after the bloke who wanted to end slavery. Yep, end slavery; reduce population growth – definitely on par with each other.

So opportunity knocks for me to make a fortune. Here’s my radical suggestion:

Do nothing.

I’m already planning what to do with my fortune.

Okay, some more detail might be needed.

This could take a while but I’ll say this upfront: there is no chance of Australia reaching a population of 1 billion people.

Here’s part one: Why populations grow.

This is simpler than you might think. It’s really just a case of addition and subtraction. For most of human history the population has either been stable or grown very gradually (certainly not exponentially). In fact, during times of disease and disaster it probably even shrunk a little bit. This occurred because the number births (addition) approximately equalled to the number of deaths (subtraction).

Now obviously this isn’t the case anymore. For the population to grow there must be more additions than there are subtractions. Surprisingly enough, initially it wasn’t the number of additions that changed, but the number of subtractions.

Due to broad improvements in public health, heaps less people were dying. Importantly, this also included babies and children. Before this era (which occurred at different times across the world) a lot of babies were born, but most of them died before their first birthday.

These extra children who survived then made it to be old enough to have kids of their own. And as health continued to improve, their kids also survived and had children. This equals lots of children and a growing population. If everybody has ten kids and they all survive and have ten kids, population will start growing exponentially.

“But wait a minute” I hear you say. “Not everyone is having ten kids these days”. Good point I say, but we’ll come to that in part two.

The other thing that happened at the same time is life expectancy increased (and not just life expectancy at birth, but also in the older age groups). So if everybody suddenly (or gradually, but suddenly is way more dramatic) starts living to 80 instead of 40 you keep a lot more people in the population for a lot longer.

One last note on this part: I’ve only considered population growth on a global scale. At a local level population growth is also affected by migration. Migration can be an addition or a subtraction depending on whether more people enter or leave your country/state/city/town. Migration can have an interesting (and unexpected) effect on population growth depending on who comes and goes – but we’ll discuss that more later.

So in summary: the world population started growing when we figured out that washing our hands was a good idea (or something like that). We all lived longer and had stacks of kids who also had stacks of kids.

Coming up: part two – Who wants babies anyway?