On Tuesday night I attended the Nerd All Star Comedy Gala in Marrickville. Four academics and three comedian's took to the stage and entertained us for the evening.
They alternated between comedian and academic which made for frequent refreshing changes of pace. I think I enjoyed the academics more than the comedians (there was slightly too much anti-hipsterism and haha-men-and-women-are-different-isn't-that-hilarious (nope) for my taste. But much less of that than I expected, which was nice.)
One of my favourite talks was from Nalini Joshi (Mathematician), we watched a short documentary all about how how she got into maths and then she solved the Tower of Hanoi puzzle for us. I failed second year maths at uni and I felt like I only just followed her equations on the board. But I did and it all made sense and was interesting! Hurrah.
But I think my actual favourite was Tom Denson talking about aggressive tendencies and self-control. It turns out that you can make people nicer by getting them to use their non-dominant hand for stuff. It turns out that by increasing people's self-control they become less aggressive. I found that pretty interesting, anyway.
Anyway the other talks were good but I'm embarassed by the fact that I don't remember which white male comedian was which so I am not going to tell you about all of them.
For less than $30 I thought it was a pretty good value evening and I recommend it if it shows up elsewhere or becomes an annual event at the Sydney Comedy Festival.
Sounds like a good night!
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