Cognitive Sandbox » TED http://cognitivesandbox.com Vegan cooking, unix tidbits and other minor discoveries Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:23:21 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Starting small with electoral reform http://cognitivesandbox.com/posts/starting-small-with-electoral-reform/ http://cognitivesandbox.com/posts/starting-small-with-electoral-reform/#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:45:28 +0000 Brad Beattie http://www.cognitivesandbox.com/?p=1802

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.

]]> http://cognitivesandbox.com/posts/starting-small-with-electoral-reform/feed/ 0 Recent TED talks I liked http://cognitivesandbox.com/posts/recent-ted-talks-i-liked/ http://cognitivesandbox.com/posts/recent-ted-talks-i-liked/#comments Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:51:08 +0000 Brad Beattie http://www.cognitivesandbox.com/?p=1470

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.
]]> http://cognitivesandbox.com/posts/recent-ted-talks-i-liked/feed/ 0 Some of my favourite TED talks http://cognitivesandbox.com/posts/some-of-my-favourite-ted-talks/ http://cognitivesandbox.com/posts/some-of-my-favourite-ted-talks/#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:21:45 +0000 Brad Beattie http://dev.cognitivesandbox.com/?p=22 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:

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