Ending structural blackmail?

Ending structural blackmail?

Epstein: None of the measures being considered will end "too big to fail"

Wolfram Alpha

While walking around the conference floor during SXSW recently, I happened across the Wolfram Alpha booth. Their long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. Wolfram Alpha's goal is to deliver to you answers that are definitive. It has an amazing inventory of numbers and facts known in the world. It has an engine on top of that which allows it to make new calculated facts based on that already-known information.

Omar Ahmad: Political change with pen and paper

About this talk

Politicians are strange creatures, says politician Omar Ahmad. And the best way to engage them on your pet issue is a monthly handwritten letter. Ahmad shows why old-fashioned correspondence is more effective than email, phone or even writing a check -- and shares the four simple steps to writing a letter that works.

One of the things that defines a TEDster is you've taken your passion, and you've turned it into stewardship. You actually put action to the issues you care about. But what you're going to find eventually is you may need to actually get elected officials to help you out. So, how do you do that?

One of the things I should probably tell you is, I worked for the Discovery Channel early in my career, and that sort of warped my framework. So, when you start to think about politicians, you've got to realize these are strange creatures. Other than the fact that they can't tell directions, and they have very strange breeding habits, how do you actually work with these things? What we need to understand is: What drives the political creature? And there are two things that are primary in a politician's heart. One, is reputation and influence. These are the primary tools by which a politician can do his job. The second one, unlike most animals, which is survival of the species, this is preservation of self. Now you may think it's money, but that's actually sort of a proxy to what I can do to preserve myself.

Now, the challenge with you moving your issue forward is these animals are getting broadcast to all the time. So, what doesn't work, in terms of getting your issue to be important? You can send them an email. Well, unfortunately, I've got so many Viagra ads coming at me, your email is lost. It doesn't matter, it's spam. How about you get on the phone? Well, chances are I've got a droid who's picking up the phone, "Yes, they called, and they said they didn't like it." That doesn't move. Face to face would work, but it's hard to set it up. It's hard to get the context and actually get the communication to work. Yes, contributions actually do make a difference, and they set a context for having a conversation, but it takes some time to build up.

So what actually works? And the answer is rather strange. It's a letter. We live in a digital world, but we're fairly analog creatures. Letters actually work. Even the top dog himself takes time every day to read 10 letters that are picked out by staff. I can tell you that every official that I've ever worked with will tell you about the letters they get and what they mean. So, how are you going to write your letter? First of all, you're going to pick up an analog device, a pen. I know these are tough, and you may have a hard time getting your hand bent around it, but this is actually critical. And it is critical that you actually hand write your letter. It is so novel to see this, that somebody actually picked up an analog device and has written to me. Second of all, I'm going to recommend that you get into a proactive stance and write to your elected officials at least once a month. Here's my promise to you. If you are consistent and do this, within three months the elected official will start calling you when that issue comes up, and says, "What do you think?"

Now, I'm going to give you a four paragraph format to work with. Now, when you approach these animals, you need to understand, there's a dangerous end to them, and you also need to approach them with some level of respect and a little bit of wariness. So in paragraph number one, what I'm going to tell you to do is very simply this: You appreciate them. You may not appreciate the person, you may not appreciate anything else, but maybe you appreciate the fact that they got a tough gig. When animals are going to make a point, they make the point. They don't spend a lot of time dicking around. So, here you go. Paragraph number two, you may actually have to get very blunt and say what's really on your mind. When you do this, don't attack people, you attack tactics. Ad hominem attacks will get you nowhere. Paragraph number three: When animals are attacked or cornered, they will fight to the death, so you have to give them an exit. Most of the time, if they have an exit strategy, they should take it. Obviously, you're intelligent. If you had the right information, you would have done the right thing. Lastly, you want to be the nurturing agent. You're the safe place to come in to. So, in paragraph number four, you're going to tell people, "If no one is providing you with this information, let me help."

Animals do displays. They do two things. They warn you or they try to attract you and say, "We need to mate." You're going to do that by the way you sign your letter. You do a number of things, you're a vice president, you volunteer, you do something else. Why is is this important? Because this establishes the two primary criteria for the political creature, that you have influence in a large sphere, and that my preservation depends on you.

Here is one very quick hack, especially for the feds in the audience. Here's how you mail your letter. First of all, you send the original to the district office, so you send the copy to the main office. If they follow protocol, they'll pick up the phone and say, "Do you have the original?" Then some droid in the back puts the name on a tick bar and says, "Oh, this is an important letter." And you actually get into the folder that the elected official actually has to read.

So, what your letter means? I've got to tell you, we are all in a party, and political officials are the pinatas. (Laughter) We are harangued, lectured to, sold, marketed, but a letter is actually one of the few times that we have honest communication. I got this letter when I was first elected, and I still carry it to every council meeting I go to. This is an opportunity at real dialogue. And if you have stewardship and want to communicate, that dialogue is incredibly powerful. So when you do that, here's what I can promise: You're going to be the 800 pound gorilla in the forest.

Get writing.

(Applause)

Tom Wujec: Build a tower, build a team

About this talk

Tom Wujec presents some surprisingly deep research into the "marshmallow problem" -- a simple team-building exercise that involves dry spaghetti, one yard of tape and a marshmallow. Who can build the tallest tower with these ingredients? And why does a surprising group always beat the average?


Several years ago, here at TED, Peter Skillman introduced a design challenge called the marshmallow challenge. And the idea's pretty simple. Teams of four have to build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and a marshmallow. The marshmallow has to be on top. And, though it seems really simple, it's actually pretty hard, because it forces people to collaborate very quickly. And so I thought that this was an interesting idea, and I incorporated it into a design workshop. And it was a huge success. And since then, I've conducted about 70 design workshops across the world with students and designers and architects, even the CTOs of the Fortune 50, and they're something about this exercise that reveals very deep lessons about the nature of collaboration, and I'd like to share some of them with you.

So, normally, most people begin by orienting themselves to the task. They talk about it, they figure out what it's going to look like, they jockey for power, then they spend some time planning, organizing. They sketch in and they lay out spaghetti They spend the majority of their time assembling the sticks into ever-growing structures and then, finally, just as they're running out of time, someone takes out the marshmallow, and then they gingerly put it on top, and then they stand back, and Ta-da! they admire their work. But what really happens, most of the time, is that the "ta-da" turns into an "uh-oh," because the weight of the marshmallow causes the entire structure to buckle and to collapse.

So there are a number of people who have a lot more "uh-oh" moments than others, and among the worst are recent graduates of business school. (Laughter) They lie, they cheat, they get distracted, and they produce really lame structures. And of course there are teams that have a lot more "ta-da" structures, and, among the best, are recent graduates of kindergarten. (Laughter) And it's pretty amazing. As Peter tells us, not only do they produce the tallest structures, but they're the most interesting structures of them all.

So the question you want to ask is: How come? Why? What is it about them? And Peter likes to say that, "None of the kids spend any time trying to be CEO of Spaghetti Inc." Right. They don't spend time jockeying for power. But there's another reason as well. And the reason is that business students are trained to find the single right plan, right. And then they execute on it. And then what happens is, when they put the marshmallow on the top, they run out of time, and what happens? It's a crisis. Sound familiar? Right. What kindergarteners do differently, is that they start with the marshmallow, and they build prototypes, successive prototypes, always keeping the marshmallow on top, so they have multiple times to fix ill built prototypes along the way. So designers recognize this type of collaboration as the essence of the iterative process. And with each version, kids get instant feedback about what works and what doesn't work.

So the capacity to play in prototype is really essential, but let's look at how different teams perform. So the average for most people is around 20 inches, business schools students, about half of that, lawyers, a little better, but not much better than that, kindergarteners, better than most adults. Who does the very best? Architects and engineers, thankfully. (Laughter) 39 inches is the tallest structure I've seen. And why is it? Because they understand triangles and self-re-enforcing geometrical patterns are the key to building stable structures. So CEOs, a little bit better than average. But here's where it gets interesting. If you put you put an executive admin. on the team, they get significantly better. (Laughter) It's incredible. You know, you look around, you go, "Oh, that team's going to win." You can just tell beforehand. And why is that? Because they have special skills of facilitation. They manage the process, they understand the process. And any team who manages and pays a close attention to work will significantly improve the team's performance. Specialized skills and facilitation skills, and the combination leads to strong success. If you have 10 teams that typically perform, you'll get maybe six or so that have standing structures.

And I tried something interesting. I thought, let's up the ante once. So I offered a 10,000 dollar prize of software to the winning team. So what do you think happened to these design students? What was the result? Here's what happened. Not one team had a standing structure. If anyone had built, say, a one inch structure, they could have taken home the prize. So, isn't it interesting that high stakes have a strong impact. We did the exercise again with the same students. What do you think happened then? So now they understand the value of prototyping. So the same team went from being the very worst to being among the very best. They produced the tallest structures in the least amount of time. So there's deep lessons for us about the nature of incentives and success.

So, you might ask: Why would anyone actually spend time writing a marshmallow challenge? And the reason is, I help create digital tools and processes to help teams build cars and video games and visual effects. And what the marshmallow challenge does is it helps them identify the hidden assumptions. Because, frankly, every project has its own marshmallow, doesn't it. The challenge provides a shared experience, a common language, common stance to build the right prototype. And so, this is the value of the experience, of this so simple exercise.

And those of you who are interested, may want to go to marshmallowchallenge.com. It's a blog that you can look at how to build the marshmallows. There's step-by-step instructions on this. There are crazy examples from around the world of how people tweak and adjust the system. There's world records on this as well.

And the fundamental lesson, I believe, is that design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task, and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand. And, sometimes, a little prototype of this experience is all that it takes to turn us from an "uh-oh" moment to a "ta-da" moment. And that can make a big difference.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Stephen Wolfram: Computing a theory of everything

About this talk

Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, talks about his quest to make all knowledge computational -- able to be searched, processed and manipulated. His new search engine, Wolfram Alpha, has no lesser goal than to model and explain the physics underlying the universe.

Why you should listen to him:


Stephen Wolfram published his first scientific paper at the age of 15, and received his PhD in theoretical physics from Caltech by the age of 20. Having started to use computers in 1973, Wolfram rapidly became a leader in the emerging field of scientific computing.

In 1981 Wolfram became the youngest recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship. He then set out on an ambitious new direction in science aimed at understanding the origins of complexity in nature. Wolfram's first key idea was to use computer experiments to study the behavior of simple computer programs known as cellular automata. This allowed him to make a series of startling discoveries about the origins of complexity.

Wolfram founded the first research center and the first journal in the field, Complex Systems, and began the development of Mathematica. Wolfram Research soon became a world leader in the software industry -- widely recognized for excellence in both technology and business.

Following the release of Mathematica Version 2 in 1991, Wolfram began to divide his time between Mathematica development and scientific research. Building on his work from the mid-1980s, and now with Mathematica as a tool, Wolfram made a rapid succession of major new discoveries, which he described in his book, A New Kind of Science.

Building on Mathematica, A New Kind of Science, and the success of Wolfram Research, Wolfram recently launched Wolfram|Alpha -- an ambitious, long-term project to make as much of the world's knowledge as possible computable, and accessible to everyone.
"Whether or not Wolfram's revolution ultimately gives us the keys to the universe, his new science is absolutely awe-inspiring."
Therese Littleton

4/17 租屋不合國情?買房就一定幸福?

根據最新調查報告，全台六大都會近7年房價平均漲幅10％，首善之都台北市高達79.1％，北縣33.1％。高房價下，上班族只有 22.1﹪有殼。台灣，房子越建越多，出生人口卻越來越少，政府想蓋平價住宅，一句「不符國情」跳不出以往國宅的老思維，為什麼閒置的荒地一定得靠蓋屋才有價值？為什麼經濟發展的成果小老百姓嚐不到？NGO觀點破解買房就是幸福的迷思，提供你除了價格之外，買(租)屋的多元指數！


與談人

政大台灣房地產研究中心主任 張金鶚
住展雜誌房屋網總監 陳韻如
無殼蝸牛聯盟代表 呂秉怡（崔媽媽基金會執行長）
台灣房屋執行長 邱太煊

北二高大走山 公共建設總體檢

北二高大走山 公共建設總體檢

來賓：
東南科技大學環境管理系副教授 陶翼煌
中華民國土木技師公會全國聯合會理事長 余烈
中興工程顧問公司總經理 周南山

Video: The Great Firewall Of China

Video: The Great Firewall Of China

The following video was produced by Hungry Beast, and the Chinese captions are provided by a new volunteer-based Chinese translation service: Translator:

Bill Gates tackles controversy over genetically-modified crops

Bill Gates tackles controversy over genetically-modified crops

At a talk in front of students at University of California at Berkeley, the Microsoft chairman and philanthropist is quizzed about his views on genetically modified food. Gates recommended the book "Tomorrow's Table" by Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak, and believes that improving resistance to drought with new seeds is important to feeding people in developing countries.

***************************************************

Bill Gates speaks at UC Berkeley about global inequities in food security
Category: Bangladesh • Bill Gates • GMO • Genetically engineered crops • agricultual policy • denialism • genetics and society • health • india • plant breeding • scientific leadership

For a short 5 minute tour of Bill Gates tackling the controversy of GE crops, please see the blog ERV. Thanks for the plug ERV

If you have 45 minutes, watch the entire video here. Bill is serious, sincere and a good speaker with important concepts to convey:

Documentary: China’s New Faces Marrying into Her Family

Documentary: China’s New Faces Marrying into Her Family

This documentary film investigates a Chinese tradition’s change in Zhejiang province – men from other provinces marrying into women’s families in Zhejiang. Beside longing for love, young people in Zhejiang think realistically to pursue a win-win situation: a woman wants new hope and energy to safeguard her family’s future, in the meantime a man doesn’t have to worry about the housing pressure while developing his career. The film concludes that such a phenomenon is the result of the One-child Policy, the fast growing economy in Zhejiang, and the strong sense of lineage continuity. From Youtube:
The one-child policy has left some families with only one daughter. Feeling the need to carry on their family lineage, women now look for men who are willing to marry into their families so that their children could take up the mother’s surname. Meanwhile, men from other provinces are finding it hard to make ends meet in the cities, not to mention supporting a family. Because of this, some men are willing to do what it takes for a better life. With supply and demand in place, matchmaking agencies dedicated to this type of marriage are a thriving business.

990418part-1看見府城未來! 尋找大台南願景?!

民進黨大台南市長初選，4月18日舉行電視政見會，有意參選的許添財、蘇煥智、賴清德、葉宜津及李俊毅在會中，都將提出政見與大台南未來發展的遠景。

今年大台南市長選舉，藍營遲遲提不出適當的候選人，反而綠營在地的精銳盡出，民進黨的初選內戰，甚至被視為市長選舉的決定戰，綠營誰能出線，就幾乎確定未來台南市呼聲最高的市長人選。這次的政見發表會，不只是民進黨內的初選活動，更攸關大台南未來市政發展的政策發表。尤其不只綠營，大部分的台南人都希望民進黨的初選，不應該只是選舉口水戰，希望能透過政策辯論，討論出未來大台南的發展。我們該用什麼方式看待這場初選政見會？距離民進黨初選民調還有一個多月時間，這些政治人物能否提出大台南發展的遠景？而這些遠景，只是為了選票？或是大台南的規劃？人民要如何解讀這些政見？


除了選舉政見之外，縣市合併還有許多重要的議題，包括行政區劃、城鄉規劃、財政問題等等，需要未來的台南市長處理。目前台南縣市合併的效益與問題，民眾了解了嗎？台南縣擔心未來可能被邊緣化，台南市擔心城鄉的落差，阻礙都會的發展；兩個縣市的舉債都臨界上限，未來直轄市的自付財務還會更嚴峻，候選人只提縣市合併的優點，卻忽略了合併之後的龐大問題。人民要從哪些觀點，好好瞭解大台南合併的機會和隱憂？如何檢視候選人的政見？是芭樂票？

尤其大台南在台灣國土利用的定位在哪？和其他都市的競合關係為何？南部有兩大直轄市，高雄和台南要如何重振南部的經濟、文化？面對中國的城市崛起，台南在兩岸，甚至全球的都市競爭中，可以扮演什麼角色？文化立都的承諾，如何達成？農業大縣的成就，如何延續？我們對於大台南市，可以有什麼願景？大台南，可以為台灣未來的發展，帶來什麼機會？



播出時間：4月18日(日) PM 19:00-20:00（Live）

來賓介紹
成功大學政治系教授 丁仁方
中正大學政治系主任 謝敏捷
台南藝術大學視覺藝術學院院長 曾旭正
台南社區大學校長 林朝成