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Columnists

Learning from nature's design

Admit it, it's been quite a summer. Epic rains flooding swaths of Pakistan and China, fires ravaging Russia, while on this continent the plague of viscous black death has seeped into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's barely capped Deepwater Horizon, its true toll unlikely ever to be fully tallied.

Tragedy poses the basic questions: What is life really all about? Is nature trying to tell us something?

Funny you should ask.

The young discipline of biomimicry is coming into being based on a deep biological read of exactly these two questions. The good news is that this approach opens the door to radically hopeful new solutions to profound human problems.

Columnists

Boosting Canadian trade vs. free-trade deals

Harper highlights trade at the Wilson Center. Photo: Embassy of Canada/Flickr

As soon as it won its coveted majority, the Harper government put the pedal to the metal on the trade front, with a stampede of new free-trade deals. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade currently lists 18 different deals in play, ranging from puny (Panama and Jordan) to gargantuan (Europe, Japan and India).

Anyone who stands in the way of this juggernaut clearly must oppose trade in general. At least that's how the Conservatives portray the issue, attempting to brand its New Democratic opponents as economically illiterate dinosaurs.

Columnists

Invisible hand has failed Canadian innovation

When it comes to Canada's lousy record in productivity and innovation, the standard prescription of economists is both clear and predictable. They believe unregulated markets are the best way to allocate resources and determine the composition of output. Therefore, to improve efficiency and innovation, simply improve markets: Eliminate "distorting" taxes. Eliminate regulations. Sign more free-trade agreements. Cut "red tape." That will unleash the full potential of the private sector to innovate and optimize, and Canada will become a northern tiger.

Federal R&D Panel releases report

| October 20, 2011

The art of invention

hand levitating a light bulb
Sep 8 2011 - 7:00pm
Sep 8 2011 - 9:00pm

Location

Rosebrugh Building U of T
164 College Street Room #208 - close to Queen's Park TTC station
Toronto, ON
Canada
Phone: 416-726-2823
43° 39' 35.0964" N, 79° 23' 27.7872" W

Don Garb takes you on a wild trip into evolutionary biology, synesthesia, gestalt psychology, the nature of truth, finally ending up at the peak of Metaphor Mountain where logic meets irrationality. You will never change the world the same way again!

All of us have the mental machinery to create new ideas. In some the parts work correctly and they're very good at inventing. Other people haven't got a clue. In this lecture we explain how it's done, from cramming with data, to meditating, and finally conjuring forth the burst of inspiration. No matter what level of creative expertise you are at you will benefit from learning these techniques.

 

Contact name: 
Don Garb
Contact email: 

rabble.ca does the Webbys!

Reporter Roz Allen goes behind-the-scenes on the red carpet at the 2011 Webby Awards in New York City. Featuring interviews with Ira Glass (This American Life), Mike McCue (Flipboard), Damien Kulash (OK Go) and Antoine Dodson (Bed Intruder). Awesome camera work by Lee Hillman of Hillman Media! Congratulations to all the Webby 2011 winners!

Columnists

Of makers, hackers and activists

It's a Tuesday night in Hamilton, Ontario, and I'm sitting with Myrcurial (aka James Arlen) talking about makers, hackers' activism and hyperlocal journalism. Myrcurial is an online security consultant, a dyed-in-the-wool hacker and the wise-old-man of think|haus, a hacker/maker workshop that's being constructed around us as we sit in an ex-autoparts outlet in the northend of town.

Columnists

Ignatieff and Harper fail report card test

Sure, Michael Ignatieff whipped up election panic this week over Stephen Harper's accountability summary, but let's be clear: the Tories and Liberals get nothing but failing grades on their report cards.


The exam is on the economy, and they are both way off the mark.


They'd better bone up, because like it or not, we are in a transformational time. For god's sake -- we just acquired a 12 per cent ownership stake in General Motors and paid inconceivably big money for it. Why? Head-in-the-sand denial of new realities and lack of innovation did in the industry.

Columnists

Corporate Canada's enemy lurks within

It was enough to send a personal fashion stylist over the edge. Several hundred mostly nerdy economists recently undertook their annual pilgrimage to the spring conference of the Canadian Economics Association, held at the University of Toronto. They bustled from session to session, calculators in hand, enthralled by presentations with titles like "Comparisons of Linear Item Pricing Methods for Iterative Multi-Unit Reverse Combinatorial Auctions" or "The Economic Analysis of Blackjack: An Application of Prospect Theory."

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