
Vienna TEDx Talk - October 2017
Here's the YouTube, the PowerPoint, and the text of the speech (more or less).

2025-11 CHINA - the grand tour (part II)

From 2025-03.
Next is Guǎngxī, the Zhuàng Autonomous Region; the Zhuàng are a minority - just 14 million of them; some villages are mixed, Hàn and Zhuàng, others are one or the other. Then comes Húnán, Jiāngsū and Shāndōng, before a visit to Tiānjīn and lecrures in Nánkāi and Tiānjīn Universities with my old friends 杨龙 Yáng Lóng and 徐警忆 Xú Jīngyì. My visa lasts for only 90 days, so I then go to Mongolia to renew the paperwork, and two more lectures in the National University of Mongolia before...
Ah, the kindness of strangers. We met on the train from Huhhot (Hūhéhàotè 呼和浩特)to Ulaanbaatar, and she, Zora, organises my tour of Inner Mongolia - she's trilingual: hence my visit to the vast expanse near Sonid ..... where another new friend, Nominhas (and yet another linguist) is my guide; so off we go to the outback; brilliant.
After seeing the old Buddhist hill-side monastery near Dàtōng, I go to Xīnjiāng, near Tekes 特克斯, the city of YīnYáng, in the foothills of the Tiān Shān mountains - where one of the villages had seven minorities and no majority at all, (so they use a form of PR) - and then my young old friend Bo in Zhāngyè in Gānsù.
Next stop: Tibet, 西藏, xīzàng, བོད.
2025-09 INNATE: So what IS democracy?

There was rightful reason yesterday – majoritarianism was certainly better than many a minority diktat – but today, there is little or no justification for the use of binary voting and its consequence, majority rule.
2025-08 Mongolia: deliberative democracy

13/15th May, the National University of Mongolia debated traffic pollution in Ulaanbaatar, with an MBC analysis. Here's the report. TWO MODIFIED BORDA COUNTs, MBCs, on the question of: “pollution in Ulaanbaatar.”
2025-07 CHINA Deliberative decision-making

In a role-play in Tiānjīn University, participants (debated and) voted on the optimal size of Tiānjīn's population, and here's the report: A MODIFIED BORDA COUNT MBC on the question: “What should be the size of Tiānjīn’s optimal population?”
2025-06 NÁNKĀI (the speech)

BINARY VOTING: MAYBE WE ALL GOT IT WRONG “Yin and Yang, a cosmic duality of opposing but complimentary… forces… lie at the centre of Chinese mystical thought.” 2 I arrived in Yúnnán....
2025-05 TIĀNJĪN, NÁNKĀI UNIVERSITY

Our patron, Professor Yáng Lóng introduced a talk on 'Majority Voting - Maybe we all got it Wrong' on 22nd April. For the talk, see 2025-06.
2025-04 The Ecologist 7.3 2025

Good COPs and bad COPs. For an Asian perspective on decision-making, see the latest in https://theecologist.org/2025/mar/07/voting-consensus
2025-03 CHINA - the grand tour (part I)

My journey starts on 30th Jan from 香格里拉 Shangri-La, visiting villages and talking about their way of life, on my way to Dàlǐ, where I meet an ethnic minority, and another village or two.
Next is a traditional Tibetan wedding in a village in the mountains of Sìchuān. Then it's back to the bicycle, now in Guǎngdōng, where I base my countryside tour on the town of Chunwan, from where I go to some of the villages nearby, one of which is celebrating a granny's 70th birthday! (Great logistics; I leave all my luggage in the hotel, and cycle off for the day, out to the sticks.)
While here, I spend a few days in Hong Kong to renew my visa, and then I'm off to Húnán.
Later on, I hope to go Nánkāi University in Tiānjīn, before then heading to Beijing for the Fourth 'International Forum on Democracy,' run by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 中国社会科学院 (tbc). {Continued on 2025-11.}
2025-02 India

The Pahlé India Foundation hosted a demonstration of decision-making, with all present using the de Borda software: www.debordavote.com Here's the report: PAHLÉ INDIA FOUNDATION: A PREFERENTIAL VOTE ROLE-PLAY ON REFORMING INDIA’S PARLIAMENTARY ELECTORAL SYSTEM 16th January, Delhi. www.debordavote.com “the nonduality of right and wrong [is] the state of a buddha.” Longchenpa, a Buddhist monk of the Nyingma tradition. BACKGROUND It seems the human being is naturally binary, with two eyes,