My Favourite TED Talks
I am a TED Talk crack-addict and have watched every single one. Below is a list of Ted Talks, my top five which blew me away, followed by some other favorites. Enjoy!
Top 5:
Zander on music
Hans Rosling on World Development
Bolte on Strokes
Lessing on Creative Commons
DNA Folding
Some other favourites (full list here):
Putting photos together – magically
Design of the Universe
Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote
John Francis – Planet Walker
Theory of everything
Evil
Liberal vs Conservative Brains
How Kids Learn
Why I Support the Extremists.
Today is Blog Action Day, a day when a central group tries to get tens of thousands of blogs to discuss poverty issues. I volunteered, so here is my topic: Why we must support extremists.
TB – Mutating and Deadly
Published on October 5, 2008
Global Warming, True?
Just watched a great interview between Charlie Rose and Michael Crichton. He has some interesting view on global warming (which I agree with). His idea mainly boils down to this:
The global climate is a chaotic non-linear system that cannot be predicted (as stated by the UN). He also claims the models the UNFCC have made are not very good and not verified by third parties. He claims that the global warming issue has been politicized and is no longer science, it is consensus science. He states very clearly, “No one knows what the future holds” – so why should Al Gore?
P.S. This also fits with Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s philosophy of Black Swan’s and unpredictability – check him out.
Published on September 22, 2008Liberal.ca, here is what you need!
UPDATE: Just came across a very good comparison between Obama and Mcain’s websites. Check it out.
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After some interesting feedback from my last post on the liberal party’s online efforts, I met with a volunteer. He explained that each MP, under law, has no more than 80 000 $ for his campaign. As such, funds are closely monitored and any request for work by an outside firm is very difficult.
That being said, great websites can be done for little cash. Take a look at the Green Party and their Westmount Ville-Marie Candidate – both are very solid sites they certainly do not have the same funds as the Liberal party. This reflects that it is not the resources of the party, but rather their mentality. The Liberals are old dogs who need to learn new tricks, fast.
Simply put, the liberal party should offer all their MPs a:
- Simple Blog Software (with some pointers on how why they should blog)
- A Simple content management software for their sites (videos, comments, …)
- Some basic training on the online world
The liberal party itself needs to digitize its existing database of members and voters, create an online community, and promote donations online. The leaders of the party should be making short videos specifically for the online world. Barack Obama does a great job at talking to internet users and getting in their wallet.
These solutions should be open-source (i.e. WordPress for blogging and Joomla for CMS), which ensures that when the MP wants to modify the site, it can be done in house by a volunteer. These open source solutions have millions of contributors with free extensions for user tracking, videos, community building… With these tools and a bit of cash, we could build something better than the existing liberal sites in 2, maybe 3 days.
This could be a powerful tool and help bring about some grassroots support – which Dion got a lot of at the last convention.
I would love to help with this effort, so, Dion, if you are interested – send me an email.
Published on August 26, 2008