Why I do not have a job: Reason #1 - The Best of Office Space

Sometimes I get a little de-motivated from the apathetic, non-productive and wageless existence I live. I get crazy ideas, like maybe I'll type in 'www.seek.com.au' into the address bar and see what comes up.
But no. With steely determination, I force browser back to youtube and watch clips from Mike Judge's 1999 masterpiece 'Office Space', and I remember, this is why I don't work.

Political Buzzwordgasm

Stephen Dann has mapped last night's budget speech as a tag cloud on his blog.

Biggest tag? 'Government'. Second biggest? 'RuddGovernment' lolz.

A budget for working families - what does it mean for the unemployed?

You might think the populist rhetoric espoused by our newly minted treasure (still fresh and smiling out of the plastic cling wrap) in his maiden budget speech would be detrimental to the likes of TWiU listeners. Afterall, a policy of favouring 'working families' in the zero-sum game of divvying up the public pie has that mutually exclusive effect of burdening everyone else, and form our point of view, those that don't quite like that bit about 'working'.

But then I had a thought - how much emphasis is really put in that 'working' bit?

Let's take means testing the baby bonus as an example.

Wayne has capped it at combined household incomes of $150, 000.

The real criteria here, it seems, is that you have to be a family, not even working, and in fact, not working too hard.

The crux of social engineering schemes such as the baby bonus seems to me to simply be that of the family, not the honest working life. We at TWiU have thus no qualms with this, perhaps even advocate it if it's going to produce a greater legion of offspring with the unemployed ethos genetically imbued within them.

I, for one, welcome our new economic populist, productivity hampering overlords.

Job Spotlight - human guinea pigs

It's been getting increasingly harder syncing times for new podcasts, so I'm introducing a new feature onto the blog to encourage more of our listeners to read our commentary instead of just downloading content from itunes.

I had this idea a while ago, after watching Woody Allen's Bananas, to eek a living out of testing products for companies and the government. The attraction is obvious - get paid not for actually doing anything, but have something done to you.

1. Is it a living?

There isn't much of a market in Australia, but travel to the US where commercial and government scientists are requiring a total of at least 10,000,000 healthy subjects. Lengthy and involving medical studies can pay thousands of dollars each. One drug trial in Baltimore, typical of its kind, paid US$6,500 for four 12 day stints of blood samples, echo cardiograms, and physical checkups. Professional guinea pigs do exist. Nick F (anonymous to protect his earning capacity - researchers are weary of serial testers) participated in over twenty studies throughout the US in 2007, netting him around $80,000 for the year - equivalent to most middle management office and retail jobs requiring tertiary qualifications.

2. Is it dangerous?

There is an obvious element of risk being the first person to try anything. In March 2006, eight male volunteers checked into London's Northwick Park Hospital for a weeklong study of TGN1412, an experimental treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and leukemia to be manufactured by Boehringer- Ingelheim. Within minutes of receiving the first dose, six of them began to writhe in pain, vomit, and lose consciousness, according to news reports. Nurses rushed them to the hospital's trauma unit, where doctors treated them for multiple organ failure. The test subjects lived, but all suffered permanent damage to their immune systems and internal organs. One lost fingers and toes. Another developed signs of cancer possibly triggered by the drug.

The liability waivers that must be signed before being accepted as a subject are extensive, it's simply a case of fingers crossed and hope for the best.

What's involved?

A major qualification to the idea of getting paid to not do actual work is that there is a fair bit of work involved, primarily, in finding the 'work' itself. Pros spend much of their 'free' time scouring the internet for medical trial notices, air fares, car rentals and short term accommodation. It's important not to miss the big tests which can each form 20% of more of a guinea pig's yearly salary.

The Bottom Line

Once you get the process of sorting out new trials, it's a breeze - just sit back and let a bespectacled man in a white lab coat inject an unknown purple serum into your neck. Collect paycheck. Repeat.

Episode 5 - Our Apologies to Mr. Putin

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Do you like the black embeddable player? I chose it to represent our solidarity with the people of Tibet and TWiU's boycott of the Beijing Games.

This week we're talking about our new Sydney studio, my foray into the 2020 Youth Summit, and Jesse's gatecrashing of the grown up's summit. Our sincere apologies to Vladimir Putin (or Vlad as we call him), but our recorded interview with him was forced to cut short due to some stuff ups by our new sound engineer who didn't know how to work the switches in our new studio. We've fired him, so hopefully we won't have to experience that kind of embarrassment again, and Mr Putin has agreed to come back on the show the next time he is in Canberra.

Stay tuned next week as we record live from tomorrow's Torch relay in Canberra where the TWiU team will down on the ground, asking what local Canberrans think of the Beijing Games.

Status Update

Dear loyal fans and visitors.

The podcast has been put on temporary hiatus as I attended the 2020 Youth Summit last weekend and Jesse has been held up with a backlog of issues at the Commonwealth Ombudsman's Office due to some serious fups from Immigration.

Not to pre-empt our next show, but we have received a number of emails from listeners concerned the show had been cancelled, whereas I can assure this is in no way the case, Rumours have been circulating lately in the media and various blogs on TWiU's new direction and all I'm saying at this point is that yes, there will be a new direction from the show, and no - none of the existing members are leaving.

We're moving into a new studio too, by the way. Not that this really matters to you, our lowly listener, but one our bigger sponsors, Sony BMG, has leased out one of its professional recording studios in Sydney for the next year. Personally, I'm very excited, though this is going to mean more trips back and forth whereas I don't see anything wrong with our portable mic and laptop set up. Here's some shots of the new crib.


Tune in next week for details on a competition for one lucky listener to win a guided tour with the TWiU crew of the new studio and podcast guest.

Episode 4 - End of an Era?

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Hello TWiU fans, we're back in canberra where some of us have found employment. The podcast has been in turmoil as such but we'll definitely be back on our feet by next week. This week's podcast discusses a summary of our travels and speaking tours, my conversion from Agnosticism to Christianity and our new running training regime.

On an egotistical note, this blog has hit the Technorati top 400 for best blog of the year! Thanks to all those who voted and backlinked us! Sadly, we can't do the same for some of our sister blogs.

Episode 3 - View from the 85th Floor

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Broadcasting this week from the Burj Dubai Hotel - the world's tallest free standing building. It wasn't cheap booking a room this high but definitely worth it. Here is a peak out Jesse's room window I took before we headed out for a night on the town.


Before we did the set up for the podcast our producer Tim Boyke (Boyky) and I took a walk around the city and of course he had to be 'that guy' that does the funny perspective shots. I wasn't too keen on wasting valuable blog space for the sake of his sense of humour, but I made a promised this would go up.
This week we talk about global warming and Jesse's recent offer to become the Commonwealth ombudsman, succeeding John McMillan. Of course, should he take such a role, he will have to relinquish his panelist position in TWiU - an important decision and I for one am happy to not be in his shoes.

As per popular request, here is the first of many in our new Bloopers! & Extras series... At this stage it's only a streaming audio. If you would like to have the entire Bloopers! & Extras series, it will be availible this June on the TWiU DVD and DVD collector's edition box set as an easter egg. Keep your eye on the blog for clues on accessing more clips.

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Episode 2 - Unemployment and Globalisation

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Hello listeners! Lots of traveling around this episode - we talk about Jesse's recent fact-finding mission to Crown Casino in Melbourne (gambling, apparently not a good alternative to work) and we're broadcasting directly from Simi Valley, California - home of the Reagan Library. Here's a quick snap of the hotel we've been put up in I got from the outside with my cell (sorry about the quality)

Other topics of discussion include unemployment in Zimbabwe (and the third world in general), my acceptance and upcoming attendance to the annual CIS liberty and society conference (will have live blogging at the event on April 11-13th) and we respond to some viewer emails (including one from surprise celebrity listener Camilla Belle).

We also talk about the human capital project - issuing students loans not backed against existing securitisations, but future income capacities (equity, not debt based). An interesting concept, but still with many holes to iron out, I believe.

Simi Valley, by the way, is awesome and I highly recommend any listeners coming out this way to drop by the area. Sadly, however, our time is limited and we are literally catching a plane back to Canberra an hour after recording the podcast. I'm a little peeved for not being able to go out much but such is the nature of these shows that you can't have everything at one time.

A bit of trivia for this week's episode - we did actually see Camilla Belle on our way to the airport - apparently she's still doing a bit of the promo circuit around Europe for 10,000 BC, and just on her way to the UK. Anyway, she didn't recognise us immediately from the show until she matched up our voices (she had episode 1 on her Ipod). Well she said she was keen for an interview later down the track but to be honest I think it was just a polite way of giving us the thumbs down. We'll see.

Episode 1 - How to be Happy

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Our debut podcast, featuring regular panelists Winston and Jesse. RY and my housemate happened to be in the studio at the time and decided to add a few words too.

Topics discussed include the new CGI blockbuster 10 000 BC, the US election, the works of Aldous Huxley and sham marriages for fun and profit.

Jesse thought the girl from 10,000BC was played by Lindsay Lohan (she wasn't). Listeners, let us know what you think.

In other news, Jesse may be getting a public service job and thus might not be appearing in next week's podcast. In any case, I'll keep you up to date with his employment progress. RY and my housemate Chris were sitting on the couch on the other side of mic which explains why they might not be too audible at times. They were also making occasional inappropriate hand gestures and decided to have a game of pool in the middle of the podcast which was just rude.

On listening to the podcast again, I realise we needed more direction on set issues instead of just saying whatever comes to mind, so I've decided to just have at least a couple of things to talk about beforehand. We'd like to open this up to our listeners on this - let us know what you want to hear.

Toward the end of the podcast you will hear Jesse whisper 'sponsers' to me. Now, I didn't forget, I was just making sure we had wrapped up the show before plugging our supporters, but in any case I'd like to apologise formally right now to Vanguard, AOL.com and Audible.com.

Oh and finally we mentioned a nifty little website that let's you compare your face to which celebrity you most resemble. I look like Jackie Chan and Jesse looks like Ehud Olmert. As promised, here is the site : www.myheritage.com. Perhaps Camilla might want to give this a spin.

Pre-Production and a look at our set-up

Here is a quick look at our studio. We are using two apple powerbooks -  a 12" aluminum model running Audacity to record our podcast and a 15" titanium for on the spot research and when we need to bring up cnn.com really quick. 

We chose Audacity for the show because it's free, open source and advanced enough for what we need. If we went out and bought a $300 professional sound editing program I don't think we'd be able to figuire what half the controls do anyway.

On the advice of Kevin Rose from Diggnation, we went out and bought a Logitech desktop USB microphone on eBay for $49.95. I wanted to just use the internal mic in my laptop but there was some disagreement as to the sound quality being inputed.