Starting small with electoral reform

I saw a TED talk by Paul Romer last night. In it, he suggested that policy changes need a solid example that people can look to and that these examples are best served in the context of city-sized environments. Watching this talk, I couldn’t help but think about election reform and BC-STV. Perhaps one of the reasons it failed was that people didn’t have a proven local example.

Given that Vancouver and Victoria had the highest concentration of support for electoral reform, maybe the best place to start is at the municipal level in regions of strong support. If we can get things going in a couple of large cities, it might prove a strong example for the rest of the province.

Recent TED talks I liked

Adam Savage

At EG’08, Adam Savage talks about his fascination with the dodo bird, and how it led him on a strange and surprising double quest. It’s an entertaining adventure through the mind of a creative obsessive.

Dan Gilbert

Dan Gilbert presents research and data from his exploration of happiness — sharing some surprising tests and experiments that you can also try on yourself. Watch through to the end for a sparkling Q&A with some familiar TED faces.

Robert Wright

Author Robert Wright explains “non-zero-sumness” — the network of linked fortunes and cooperation that has guided our evolution to this point — and how we can use it to help save humanity today.

Some of my favourite TED talks

TED has become one of my favourite replacements for television. They get a whole bunch of awesome folks together and give presentations to each other. This talk about synthetic happiness by Dan Gilbert is one of my favourites. It’s something I didn’t know before, but am glad to know now.

Some other talks worth looking at:

• Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce
• Juan Enriquez: Why can’t we grow new energy?
• Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen
• John Rives: A mockingbird remix of TED2006