1. Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd started his TED talk with his unbelievably terrible catchphrase AND PEOPLE ACTUALLY CHUCKLED. GODDAMN.
2. The camera panned out and WHOAH... it was apparent this was the closest we'd come to the Star Wars galactic senate.
Like this...
3. The second slide from Mr Rudd was a huge picture of Napoleon and the irony of the whole situation was too much.
4. Mr Rudd also brought along his trademark hand signals. Like here we have "AFL goal" then "jedi mind trick".
5. And he of course compared himself to Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.
"I have 15 minutes to walk through war or peace which is a little less time then they gave this guy to write a book called War and Peace."
6. Then DJ Rudd wanted to show off his Chinese handwriting skills on his iPad.
7. And what would a Kevin Rudd speech be without dropping some Chinese on the audience?
8. Mr Rudd expressed deep concerne about potential conflict between the US and China...
9. And the irony meter exploded: "Chinese have this feeling in their heart of hearts… those of us in collective West are too damn arrogant.”
10. He then told the audience about the lessons of the apology to the Stolen Generation.
"I have a little experience of the question back home of how you try to bring together two peoples who frankly haven't had a whole lot in common in the past. That's when I apologized to Australia's Indigenous peoples"
11. "There was a new beginning… because we’d gone not just to the head but to the heart”.
12. tl;dr US and China need to work together to achieve peace. And if you want some advice please ask me.
The full 20 minutes of TED talk is available here. Put it on, brew some tea and drift off into a deep sleep.
