Below is a transcript of the audio file.

Host: Good evening Jonar, now what are we going to talk about? Crime and punishment?

Jonar Nader: Yes. Someone alerted me to the fact that we walk the streets; we share the world but we don’t know who we are standing next to. We have no idea what that person is capable of. We transact in business but we don’t know if the person has been a con-artist in the past. We don’t know their credit rating. So you wonder if that person in the street who once stabbed somebody, or is a car thief, ought to wear something around his or her neck. Yellow to represent something, red to represent something else, just so you know whether to deal with these people or not.

Host: Hang on you’re going back to Nazi Germany with those suggestions. That is what Hitler did to the homosexuals and the Jews and Gypsies; he made them wear different colours.

Jonar Nader: Well hang on I don’t care what Hitler did. I mean if you were going to do business with someone wouldn’t you want to know that he was a con-artist, bankrupted his company 5 times and been to court 60 times for whatever.

Host: Wouldn’t there be a better way, some sort of record to access rather than have a brooch or something that was a different colour?

Jonar Nader: Well you go out with your family to see a movie and the person standing next to you has had aggravated assault charges 5 times…

Host: I can see your point but he is not going to wear his brooch and be proud of it is he?

Jonar Nader: Great, that is the whole idea. Either keep them either off the streets, or shame them out of what they are doing. Now do you believe in rehabilitation, are we saying that this person will never do it again?

Host: I think people can be rehabilitated, yes, don’t you?

Jonar Nader: I think some who choose to be can be, but I have spent some time in courtrooms and when you hear the litany of 5 times this and 20 times that, 30th count of… you think my goodness child, and we still let them out the front door!

Host: Well that is correct you know, some can be rehabilitated but what of the many that can’t be!

Jonar Nader: Well a data base is one thing but I remember ages ago a friend of mine was getting married and we had suspicions about her would be husband… well aren’t we entitled to know if that person has been in jail for something. Forgive and forget, but here we have people who bash and steal and yet they are rubbing shoulders with you at the cinema smiling at you.

Host: But you see that is something that is inbuilt in human nature. We will never get rid of any of those traits from any of our nature. We are lumbered with it so that if you have done a crime, you have to live with it, whether you are rehabilitated or not. I have to take you on face value.

Jonar Nader: Yes, but some people make it their profession to con you. Don’t you hear it every day? Even the biggest of banks are conning people and saying we are giving great returns when they are not.

Host: Again that is human nature you will never obliterate it

Jonar Nader: No you won’t but I think that we poor law abiding citizens need to have a right to know if the person next door has a gun for example. If I knock on the door and say ‘Hey mate can you stop you dog barking’, what am I in for? I have no idea!

Host: Yes but if after 5 years for a felony and I am out and I have been released and I am back in the world again, I don’t think I should have to wear a plackard that said I was in jail.

Jonar Nader: But if that felony happened 7, 8 or 9 times don’t I have a right to know about it when you come and knock on my door.

Host: Well I suppose it is up to the corrective services to say yes you are worthy; you are cured; you are rehabilitated go out. But Jonar if I was going to invest 10,000 dollars with you, I would do some research before I gave you my money that would be up to me.

Jonar Nader: Yes but even if you do research legitimately… I mean, I called the police regarding that friend’s husband. I called all sorts of places and they said ‘No, sorry, due to privacy we are not allowed to tell you’. So you can do all the research you like. Unless you go underground and pay someone like $2000 to get the dirt on me through the back door, you are not going to be able to find out anything.

Host: Under that argument, we don’t trust anyone.

Jonar Nader: No well I think that is a pretty good rule to begin with but even if you have to, you just can’t find out anything because of this thing called privacy. I think someones privacy ought to be shut out the window the moment they have the audacity to go out and rape someone. You know raping someone is not this accident where, oh I swerved, I was a bit, and I didn’t mean to kill you. When you rip someones clothes off there is no question of it was an accidental. What is this Austin Powers?

Host: I think you have to take people on face value and have a certain amount of trust but also believe even in a marriage it takes years and years to really get to know your partner.

Jonar Nader: Yes but wouldn’t you rather know now that your partner had 6 sexual assaults before you go into it and later find out?

Host: I don’t think you can ever find out Jonar there is no way. You would have a Nirvana, a perfect world if you had that. You would have a world where we would trust each other; we would never have any disputes; there would be no wars; it would be paradise. People are not going to own up to their crimes. It is not possible Jonar.

Jonar Nader: Why isn’t it possible. The records are there in court. Why isn’t there a database so I can look up Bruce Mansfield and see this guy sold 50 homes pocketed the money and people are up the creek.

Host: Sure have a database but I’m not going to wear a brooch with a red insignia saying beware he is a con-artist.

Jonar Nader: Well it is not your choice if you have violated civil rules of life I don’t think it should be your choice like it is not your choice to go to jail, if you have been sent to jail, that’s just the way it is.

Host: Yes but a database is the closest you will come to it. I don’t think a brooch is the answer.

Jonar Nader: Well it wasn’t my idea, a caller last week made this suggestion and I’m pushing it forward.

Host: I think it is a good topic and very interesting but it does take me back, with respect, to Nazi Germany where you had to wear a yellow triangle and 3 stars. Thank you Jonar at least he makes us think, but the privacy laws are such in this country that it is very hard to get any information on anyone. There are the civil libertarians and the privacy act. Even the policeman who go to their computers and seek knowledge about speeding fines without authority are in hot water too.

Here is a transcript of the audio file.

Host: Jonar Nader tonight poses some thought provoking questions about society. Good evening Jonar

Jonar Nader: Yes I thought we would ask people some tough questions like I heard just recently that in some parts of Africa the aids epidemic is so great that for every 10 adults 4 are infected which leads me to think at what point should they make testing mandatory in the same way they made SARS testing mandatory when certain people hopped off an aeroplane. So I am wondering then would Australians ever tolerate a mandatory HIV test and if so how would we cope?

Host: Well maybe we’ll get to the point where we will have to?

Jonar Nader: Yes good question. We have breath testing if you are behind the wheel of the car should we perhaps have breath testing if you just happen to be in the street because there is just as much drama that happens with hoons walking the street throwing bottles at people, or apprehending people and aggravating issues.

Host: and domestic violence too.

Jonar Nader: Yes so breath testing is not just if you are going to drive.

Host: Jonar what do you think of a P plate curfew. There was a curfew proposed in America and in New Zealand it works very well say from 10pm at night until 5 in the morning where P platers are not permitted on the highways and freeways. It could save lives couldn’t it Jonar.

Jonar Nader: Well yes it could,I just wonder though whether this is the minority dictating the majority. I, as you know, left school at 14. I had to go from one end of town to the next where trains were not available and busses stopped after a certain time, so does that mean that I have to be penalised because other people drink, I don’t drink so we have this fine balance between do we all suffer for the good of the all or should the minority louts be locked up at first sight. I have people down the road here, as I am near a park, who love to congregate and we all know what they get up to. Unless you post a policeman there 24 hours a day you’ve got hoons but I’d rather have a vigilante group go down and lock their cars up and deal with the idiots who are actually causing most of the trouble. You generally find it is one or two or three people who cause most of the trouble in the neighbourhood.

Host: Yes that is very true.

Jonar Nader: other questions like ‘should voting be at 16 rather than 18 or should voting be optional altogether like in the US?’

What about violent crimes and the question of bail being prohibited, should we just say ‘Bail should be prohibited on all Violent crimes’?

And should students after year 10 stop going to school and scrap years 11 and 12 and make them vocational years rather than just prolonging the sentence?

Host: Yes that’s a good point you should be Prime Minister Jonar.

Jonar Nader: Oh who is going to agree with me on non popular questions?

Host: Jonar Thank you so much you have written ‘How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People’ and How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss’, and he is on the world wide web www.LoseFriends.com.

You know if you have nothing to hide why would you object to having a breathalized or having an aids test. It’s like asking why should I go through that threshold at the airport, I’ve got nothing on me! Well we all do we all have to and soon it will be compulsory to do a lot of things. You can’t smoke now in a hotel or restaurant, 20 years ago you could light up wherever you liked. When I see a booze bus I don’t get terrified. I’m proud to think I am not a booze artist and driving a car. So I think we are all there protecting each other.

Here is a transcript of the audio file.

Host: There was a review done recently of a book in which they got a group of scientists around to predict what things would be like in 2020, 2040, 2050. One of the suggestions in there was that you would have your own virtual reality sex partner by 2024. It’s interesting isn’t it that when we talk about virtual reality in creating something that seems real, sex partners come straight to the fore. Does that cheapen the process, and the use of virtual reality?

Jonar Nader: Well it is only a small part of it but because it is a sensational one it gets the headlines when there is tons of stuff happening in almost every field from finance to medicine to architecture but cyber sex at it is known (or teledickdonics) is an interesting one because people say what do you need that for? Don’t forget that today the 0055 and the 1900 numbers which were introduced so you could call your solicitor and he can charge you per minute, are mostly used for phone sex. We are quite happy with the idea that you can have magazine sex, which is a very 2D thing, it is only a piece of paper.

Host: So the idea isn’t new just the technology allows you to change the idea.

Jonar Nader: Yes, and from that you will have things like data suites that can give you feel and touch. Sight is the most important factor in virtual reality because you can really trick people with their eyes. You can actually be standing at a train station and you can see the train next to you move forward but for a split second you are adamant that you moved backwards, now that split second is a virtual reality, your eyes took in some pulsars faster than your brain could process, you believe what you saw and reacted to it. Well similarly, why can’t we have data suites that can give you pulsars and sensations whether it be on the hand or physically attached to your neurons or whatever else makes you tick so cyber sex is a big industry as is telephone sex as is video sex as is publishing sex, and then the questions of ethics and censorship come up.

Here is a transcript of the audio file.

Jonar Nader: Each of us has a huge lot of power on our desks yet we ought to combine those and say why buy a $5000 computer in the future when I can buy something less and have the computing power somewhere else just like we have the electricity generator somewhere else or the gas generator…

Host: Is this going to happen?

Jonar Nader: Yes, in fact we see pockets of it in industry but it won’t happen until we have open systems and open standards.

Host: And what will that depend on?

Jonar Nader: Well, first, co operation. Often times the person who controls the industry does not believe in open systems. When you are the king pin of a particular architecture you are hardly going to let go and say alright then let’s become open.

Host: Who controls the industry now?

Jonar Nader: The players, one day they are up and the other day they are down. You have major players in software and you have major players in hardware, chip manufacturers, hard disk manufacturers, and cable manufacturers, satellite telecommunications.

Host: and they are all different.

Jonar Nader: Well take the issue with cable TV. Why did cable TV take such a long time? First there was the argument about should we use the fibre optics we have already invented? Should we use cable? Should we use microwave? Should we use satellites? Quite frankly some are better than others but in general terms let’s just get on with it and use any of them but no, there had to be years of debate. So, often, the person who controls is the person who has the most to lose, and who is currently on top. For example, if I invented a car than runs on water tomorrow, I bet you that the very next day I would be shot because there is a whole oil industry that says hey who is this guy from Sydney… So there are controls, and that is the environment that I was talking about before. But there is now an understanding and collaboration within industry that says yes it is about time we move to the network computing model but we will have to chop a few trees first to get there.

Host: It is an amazing area that you are in, and you say that you love technology and you love every aspect of it but you are obviously putting up flags saying we have to be cautious about the way we are going. I presume you think we’ve got control over our future? We can map it out rather than being carried along by some inexorable force.

Here is a transcript of the audio file.

Host: Jonar we are talking about immigration and what benefits Australia has had through our migration policies.

Jonar Nader: The statistics today coming from the Labor party for example says that every new business that starts as a result of somebody coming from overseas, creates 5 jobs. So jobs are being created if business immigrants are coming here and the numbers by the way are increasing, apparently there was an increase in applications around 30 to 40 %. That is not because Australia is such a popular place but because the Olympics are creating opportunities, Hong Kong’s move had people thinking about coming here and setting up business, tax laws changing in overseas countries like Canada etc.

One of the benefits is in fact that we do have an increase in jobs. Now it is like weighing yourself on scales if you are trying to lose weight. If you weigh yourself everyday then you go into ups and downs and then you go into arguments about the ups and downs, but in the bigger picture, and we do need to look at the bigger picture, then bringing people into this country who have skills is a wonderful thing. Even those who don’t have skills have contributed marvellously by contributing to labour which we need. I have business people who tell me it is very hard for them to get people to do labouring work, because we are all so jolly well spoilt aren’t we.

Host: I know that was certainly the case when for instance BHP benefited from the influx of migration here in say the 50’s, the people who already lived here were able to move up one or two notches, the newly incoming people were the ones that did all the nasty jobs that the existing inhabitants didn’t want to do.

Jonar Nader: I dare say the opera house was built by Italians and Greeks and so was probably the Harbour Bridge but just because we are eating and we are full doesn’t mean that we should lock the fridge door. Just because now people are at an age where things are going quite nicely in Australia thank you very much, we want to shut it off. One would benefit from it now but our children will be disadvantaged because you are not allowing the same formula that we used in the last hundred years to re-exist if we are creating the notion that we don’t want people here.

Now are we saying we want criminals here? No, shut them at the door. Do we want corruption here? No, do something about it. Governments know where corruption exists it’s whose got the guts to get rid of it. So don’t carry on about people who come here bringing all sorts of corrupt ways about them, no way the people at our ports and our governments know what is happening they can deal with it they just don’t.

Host: Just thinking while we talk Jonar migration has been going since just after the days when we used to live in our own little valley in central England and you’d think of someone who came from the neighbouring valley as a migrant. So if you are going to talk about turning back the clock how far do we take it? Do we say we don’t want Queeenslanders in New South Wales or do we say we don’t want people from Sydney coming to the Hunter?

Jonar Nader: That’s right especially when our laws are so varied and I notice also with kids in the playground it used to be the Irish (supposedly Aussie kids) were teasing the Greeks, Lebanese and Italians. I remember that vividly and then just recently walking through a school yard I saw the Lebanese kids teasing the Asians would you believe. I mean what are we building here? Do we ever learn? We just need that level of tolerance to understand that when you go to the gym today it is not so that you wake up tomorrow morning with muscles it is so that you wake up in 5 months time with muscles and when you allow people into this country it is not so that tomorrow things are fantastic, it is so that in 50 years they are fantastic in the same way that over the last 50 years things have become fantastic. So, like it or not, we do need migrants for population reasons, for economic reasons, for social reasons and for reasons that I can’t even tell you. They create the environment for better things to happen, so long as the basic infrastructure of law and order is not disturbed and all the other nasty things don’t overtake us then no matter how many more people we allow into this country, I’m not saying open the flood gates and I’m not saying everybody is welcome, what I am saying is if you can contribute or we can help you a little bit; some people who come into this country can’t speak a word of English yet over time they become major contributors to this country.

Host: Well you yourself were unable to speak English when you got here from Lebanon weren’t you?

Jonar Nader: Yes absolutely, not a word of English and I hope that I have been, and continue to be, a contributor both to the taxation system and to the general society by creating jobs and other such things.

Below is a transcript of the audio file.

Host: So Jonar how about more mundane things like our houses and life at home, how do you think that will evolve in 100 years?

Jonar Nader: At home, for example, we do things just because we do them. We water the garden now because we think it needs it. We should have more intelligent devices that really know whether the soil needs watering or not, then waters it. We turn the air conditioner on when we think it is hot. Maybe the airconditioner can be plugged into cyberspace where the weather forecast is known 3 hours ahead, and the air conditioner will turn itself on 3 hours before you think of it, so your environment is always just right. I was talking about this to someone overseas and I said wouldn’t be great if when you are in your car, you could call home from the car and turn on the jacuzzi, the air conditioner and the coffee machine. He said, ‘What do I need that for I’ve got a maid!’ In some countries where everyone can afford a maid, they don’t need that kind of intelligent system. The reason that find it hard to believe some technological advances is that in the past, we had whole generations before a major change took place so there was a long time to warn people, and tell them what’s coming. Today, change occurs in months. It took 30 thousand years for humans to turn a rock into a sharp axe, yet in one century (between 1800 and 1899) the technological progress was equal to the 10 centuries before it. In the years 1900 to the year 1920 we matched the entire previous 100 years advancements.

Now we are advancing that fast, that quickly. When we say to people that pretty soon we will be able to perform a head transplant or a brain transplant, they may not believe it. Yet we have seen it with hearts and kidneys and liver and all sorts of other parts. However, it will get to the point where you will have to deal with ethics creep into it and that will tend to slow us down. For example nuclear warfare research has slowed down a lot. This is dangerous actually because we don’t even know if the systems already developed work well enough, because the social environment prevents us from doing further research. Ethical dilemma means that if you want to grow yourself a special heart because your heart is not doing so well, someone will say but hang on does growing a heart mean you have another body? What about the ethical questions involved in growing another head? Does it matter if the head has a brain? Will it be a different consideration if it has eyes? These are the kinds of issues being discussed at the moment on a world scale to see whether scientists will become mad scientists. Already, by the way, the US last year approved a living skin compound for people with burns or ulcers that just won’t heal. There is now a company that can make a living skin. You can graft it and so forth. That is officially known as a ‘living’ skin. Now you can use that, but soon you might be able to grow other organs from your own cells, just like Dolly the sheep was grown from the udder of a ewe. Dolly has since given birth to I think 2 or 3 more sheep. Anyway, the ethical questions are beautiful. We’ve also got smart furniture and things like that, smart shoes…

Host: What are smart shoes Jonar?

Jonar Nader: Well at the moment you carry so much information on you, in your smart card, on your mobile phone. all over your body. Why not carry it all in your shoes?

Host: We are going back to the Maxwell Smart shoe!

Jonar Nader: And the Dick Tracey watch, and the James Bond this, and the Jetson that. Is it possible that the cartoonists of old are the ones who have actually been designing our future?

Host: Don’t scare me!

Jonar Nader: What would be interesting to look at are the modern cartoons and what how they see the future just like Dick Tracey did back then.

Host: Well that is worth thinking about. Jonar let’s talk to some listeners. This is Tony on the line.

Tony: Hi how are you? Can I just compliment Jonar on his recent book, I think it is absolutely fantastic.

Jonar Nader: Tony I don’t know who you are but oftentimes people ring me and say have you rigged these people to ring you, and I’ve got to say I don’t know you.

Host: Yes they’ll think you are a set up, you are a plant Tony.

Tony: I actually read the book a few times and it ties back into what you’ve been talking about, futuristic. Apart from the nano thing, the fear factor. How do you think the fear factor will be handled through computers in 100 years?

Host: What is the fear factor Jonar?

Jonar Nader: Yes, not only do you have the fear factor but you also have the social greenies for example. I love greenies but back then can you imagine when someone invented the telephone and said we need 50 million power poles let’s chop 50 million trees to make the telephone power poles and telegraphic poles. Today that does happen quite to the same extent. You my have one or two people protesting to stop some development. But the fear factor is always there. I heard on the new tonight that there is some issue with blood, and the red cross might stop taking blood from anyone who was in London in the last few weeks. One little tiny incident like that will now stop hundreds of people from getting blood transfusions that they desperately need.

The other thing I feel about technology is that the more people understand it, the more slowly it will develop. This is because they will begin asking questions and posing problems that may have no solutions. Back then when someone wanted to chop 50 million trees for 50 million poles… can you imagine the committee dealing with that!

So Tony the fear is that everyone will be an expert.

Below is a transcript of the audio file.

Host: Imagine this scenario: it is the year 3095 and the United Nations is about to launch Solar 1 – the first mission to the sun. By then, robots will be indistinguishable from humans, and time travel will be due for legislation. So wrote our next guest, writer and futurist Jonar Nader, in a business magazine. Jonar joins us now to have a look at what life on earth could be like a century from now. Hello Jonar welcome back.

Jonar Nader: Hello Angela

Host: You also wrote that anyone who harboured a seed of doubt about your predictions was among the masses who suppressed creativity and quashed innovation. Do you still stand as solidly behind your predictions?

Jonar Nader: Yes. You see if you look at all major predictions and inventions, they either happened by accident or they happened like giving birth to an elephant… no one would believe it… who would have thought! Things we take so for granted now if you go back in time you’ll experience the drama and the terror that their inventors had to go through to put their ideas across. Back when Pythagoras was talking about mathematics, they banned him from having a mathematics club because it was considered evil. That was the scenario. The people who argued that the earth was not flat, or that somehow the earth was not the centre of the universe, were jailed. Some of them died in jail. So although we are so well developed and so well advanced, to this day you say to someone we will soon send a mission to the sun and they will say, you are crazy, not possible, it is so hot nothing can get near it. Well that is true because we are using the current knowledge. It was also true that we could never get to the moon. They also said you could never develop a computer to rival the human brain. They said if you did, you would need so much electricity that you would melt the earth, but they were thinking of the computers they used to have . Computers the size of football fields that could hardly calculate the 2+2. So they were right, but they had no idea about micro electronics

Host: Ok Jonar I take your point. Tonight we are going to look at life on earth 100 years from now. Are you convinced the earth will still exist then.

Jonar Nader: Why are you predicting gloom and doom? Actually, 100 years isn’t that far away. It is only a few generations, but in computer language that is a long time because we talk about web years and a web year in the technology cycle is 4 months so really we are talking about 400 years. Just like cats years is 7 to one (7 years of cats life is equivalent to one year of a human life), 4 months in technology equates to 1 human year.

Host: So where do you think the greatest changes will take place Jonar? Is there any one issue or one industry which you think will see a disproportionate rate of change compared to anywhere else, in medicine for example or military hardware?

Jonar Nader: The military one is fascinating because that is where a lot of technology came from. It is slowing down a little bit and we will go into that in a moment. Medicine is what I call fusion – when we start to fuse the technology into things that we take for granted. When you take an Aspirin pill you don’t really know what is going on. When you take a blood pressure pill, there is just so much happening behind that. So I am predicting that when we fuse the beauty of technology, the speed, computerisation, nano technology and more microscopic style of nature (moving away from silicone chips and going into biology chips where the chip is a living organism rather than just this dead silicone) then we are moving into an area where we can start to really shape human life. The whole function of technology in business is to create an advantage but the function of technology in the human is to extend the bod. People are just so desperately trying to do that aren’t they, they go from hair transplant to teeth whitening… almost everything today can be artificial can’t it? You don’t even know if you are shaking hands with the same person you shook hands with 10 years ago.

Host: What do you think our life expectancy will be in 100 years from now? Do you you actually think we will reach a point where death can be postponed indefinitely?

Jonar Nader: Many an author has written about this subject. They have written novels about the uncle that just will never die, and they say would you hurry up and die. When I was writing that futuristic article for a business magazine I interviewed so many people, and one of the groups of people said that we might have to have a voluntary code of death where if your name ends in a certain letter of the alphabet it is your turn to die.

Host: Or you live in an odd or even number!

Jonar Nader: Yes because now they are predicting that you could live to be 200 but you see our biology is such that we are designed to give birth and die. A lot of the biological processes of life dictate that you are there to reproduce and then die, yet here we are hanging on for dear life. In fact, certain lab technicians have put two worms together and have forbidden the worms from having sex. They report that worms can live up to 4 times longer if they don’t have sex and if eat fewer calories. Could that be the answer? Stop having sex, eat less and you could live 4 times longer? If that sounds unreal and people don’t believe that you could live to be 200 all you have to do is go back and look at the history of human life. Humans used to die at the age of 20. We have gone from dying at the age of 20 to now having a western world average of 80 – look at that! Therefore, it is not inconceivable that in a short period of time we can move beyond 80. For example if you fix heart disease you save 8 to 15 years. If you fix other cancers you save 5 years. With maybe a single twitch in a technicians accidental lab experiment to get rid of blood clots you can add 30 years to someone’s life. You can further add to that by replacing human body parts and so forth.

Host: Jonar what about, with all these humans around, do you think we will all be living here on the earth, or do you think humans might have reached a stage where they can live on other planets or someplace else?

Jonar Nader: Sure self sustained eco systems are possible of course it’s just a question of who would want to do it except for the novelty factor. I always find it fascinating. As much as I am an advocate of space research, I find it funny when news reports say that we might be able to live on Mars. What does that mean? We take a ticket and if your name begins with a certain letter or you live in an odd numbered house or whatever, you somehow get sent to Mars. As if that is going to help the population problem. Yes, of course you could live elsewhere but I don’t think that solves anything. People move from Sydney to Melbourne so now they think they can move from the Earth to the moon to escape. Human nature being what it is, anything we are trying to escape from will probably follow us. Especially as we move towards world governments and world tax systems, and with cyberspace now demanding that laws catch up and become even more uniform than they are today.

Today laws are such a mess from one country to the next, from one state to the next, that you do not know which jurisdiction it is or whose authorised to come in with a gun and say you are under arrest. We’ll have the comic scenario, ‘No, I’m the sherif here!’, ‘But I’m the FBI so I’m in charge’, followed by, ‘But I’m the CIA so I have seniority!’ Who’s in charge here? I don’t know. The fireman maybe. So you’ll go to the moon and some goon up there will start a new world government. That would be the way to go wouldn’t it? Why don’t we say all the Liberals can go to the moon, all the Labor party can go to Mars, and the Democrats can stay here! I think Laurel and Hardy did that once. They found an island and decided that on this island there are no rules. Then the thugs turned up. That meant that they had to introduce the first rule ‘no one will be a thug’ and then… you know… talk about George Orwell and Animal Farm.

Here is a transcript of the audio file.

When did the millennium begin

Host: Jonar Nader is with us as he is every Monday at this time, Good evening Jonar we have to get to this question which we have put off many times. When does the Millenium begin and there was a choice
1. 1st January 2001
2. 1st January 2000 or
3. between 2005 and 2010 why would it be so late anyway

Jonar Nader: Well because of the calender. You know the Romans the Greeks and the Babylonians used to run the calendar on both the moon and the sun and they found out that it actually didn’t work that way so they dropped the moon and they went with the sun. Then the Romans at that time had a 10 month calendar and that is why December is called December as Deci means 10 and it was the last month but 10 months is obviously wrong so they used to have each year so many hours late so they dropped a day here and there. The point of all of this is that the calendar was so wrong and in a matter of a few years the whole thing was out by months. In 46BC Julius Caesar decided he would have leap years and you know July was named after Julius and August was named after Augustus, well they decided to insert those 2 months to make up for these many months that were lost which meant that all the names were wrong, October is actually the 8th month not the 10th month. Octo means 8 and November Nove means 9 in actually the 11th month. February used to be a 30 day month and July was 31 day month and August was 30 but Augustus got jealous and said how come Julius can have 31 days, I want 31 days too so we stole a day from February and put it into August to make Augustus happy.

Now Julius’ calendar went on for 16 decades and then pope Gregory 13th adjusted it in 1582AD by which time it was out again by so many days so every now and then they dropped 10 days off just to even things out and then they started working out all these mathematical equations that never worked. Then the Gregorian calendar, which is still in use today, operated on 365.2425 days which is opposed to the Julian Calendar which is less by a few seconds so the English speaking world thought hang on we are out by a few seconds and in 1752 AD they dropped another 10 days and thought OK that should catch things up. Now the actually solar year is approximately 365.2422 days so we gain 26 seconds a year or 1 day every 3,323 years. So when does the millennium begin? Back in the 1920’s it was decide that a year be divisible by 4000 would not be a leap year so in summary if we take all that into account we are really out by a few days not 5 or 10 years as people are suggesting and technically the 1st January 2001 is the correct start of the new millennium that is if you take the meaning of millennium as the period of 1000 years of Christ’s awaited reign on earth as opposed to a period or cycle of a thousand years. So the correct answer is the millennium starts the 1st January 2001.

Host: HONG DONG WAH.

Here is a transcript of the audio file.

Host: Let’s look at email. I guess it is still evidence, it is still things that can be read like the old carbons in the bin.

Jonar Nader: Yes, well email is sitting right there on your hard disk and even if you think I’ll go and delete it, it is on 30 hard disks because every day they back up and usually good companies back up every day for 30 days and then they recycle the tapes so if you have some evidence left behind tonight it will take you 30 days to flush it out of the system.

Host: I think carbon might have been better because you could tear them up into tiny tiny tiny bits.

Jonar Nader: and then all the shredders came in you see, but then what some funny people did with the shredders is they disengaged the chopper inside so when you put it through it makes the noise and you think it is gone but all it’s done is plonked into the bin and the blades did not activate.

Host: Gee you would have been good to have around the office.

Jonar Nader: I remember one secretary rushing to me and she said ‘I’ve got this saucy message for the MD, how can I open it without him knowing I opened it?’ I said I don’t know. Anyhow I did know and she finally worked it out but what she did was she forwarded it to herself and in those days again there were a lot of faults with emails and by forwarding the copy to herself, the original copy was untouched because she didn’t have to open it to forward it.

Host: So nobody would have known that she had done it.

Jonar Nader: No and then she knew all the sauce. I just wonder how much of that was legal! Then they started to say let’s save money let’s bring in a computer system that tells us every single phone call, who called whom or when you receive calls etc. So staff began calling themselves through the phone line downstairs so that their log would look big and someone would say oh gee poor Jonar he had 100 calls today, or you could say ‘what is the boss doing calling all these numbers?’ Because they left a log of every single number that left the office. They still do that today but how secure it is….?

Host: It was like the girls on the exchange, I guess they heard everything in the old days when they had that plug system.

Jonar Nader: I was around then and there was no beep beep when you listened in you just flicked the switch. You could hear the whole thing going. In fact, moving from that to the dial telephone was a result of one undertaker. In the local town in Kansas the operator controlled everything so if you called and said give me the florist, she would put you through to her cousin who was a florist; give me an undertaker, it was her husband. This operator who was so angry that her husband was getting all the calls invented the direct dial telephone and the direct dial exchange. Isn’t that a fascinating story.

Here is a transcript of the audio file.

Jonar Nader: I was around in the carbon copy days and the funny thing was they left so much evidence behind and no one wanted to touch them because they were so dirty so they used to put them straight in the bin and the inquisitive used to go at 5 and 6 o’clock at night and read the entire story. Today, although people lock the evidence, lock their pcs with a password, they send them to the central printer to the print room. So today if you want something you go and get the original copy off the lazer printer and beat someone to it or just photocopy it and put it back.

Host: Inter-office gossip and interpersonal message systems are deadly too, if you are conducting a romance with someone in the office it can certainly be around the whole office in just a few seconds.

Jonar Nader: What happened in the early days when we had those commander systems and the telephones where you had flashing lights and you had up to 6 lines or so and you had the new innovation called intercom where you could ask if someone was in the room. Well the boardroom always had one of those phones so what you did before they all assembled to have a board meeting is you buzz the board so the line was now open and the entire board meeting could be heard right down the corridor or wherever you initiated the conference from. Then someone at the telephone company thought we will improve this we’ll put a flashing light but then all the secretaries did was get that liquid paper and they actually put it underneath the light so you couldn’t see the flashing light it just looked dead. Also in the olden days people used to go to the telex machine you know the old strips of tape, they too were evidence left behind. Today what some people do is they go to your expense form because when you stay in hotels around the world they actually itemise every single phone number to bill you properly but when you come back to submit your expense form it shows where you stayed which hotel what number you called at what time, and I’ve had many a girl come up to me to say guess what, the MD was talking to so and so at 2am in the morning!

Host: nothing is secure in the office of the future or the past. I bet you can’t remember tea ladies though.

Jonar Nader: Oh I do. They knew which biscuits I wanted. Tea ladies were like mothers.

Host: Do we still have tea ladies in Sydney or anywhere around the NSW?

Jonar Nader: I saw them just recently on what was called the top floor where the execs are. They were more servicing the board rooms because it is cheaper to have your own tea ladies than to bring in those caterers, but I guess the foreign caterer is your tea lady these days. You dial a number they charge it to your department and they come on up, but they don’t have the sense… the tea ladies virtually knew everything.

Host: They were like the office email.