TED Community » Jacques Vroom

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Educational possibilities; Strange loops; Zimbardo's good folks doing bad things; extensions of Helen Fisher's hormonal-archetype ideas; Archie Brownlee/Jesse Winchester/Buddy Flett/Jill Sobule.

An idea worth spreading

a) Children can learn much more complex material than is generally thought. b) Helen Fisher's four-part division into archetypes dominated by dopamine, estrogen, testosterone, or serotonin obsoletes about 90% of all personality theories currently in books. c) Contrary to what our parents told us, running with scissors is the best...

Talk to me about

Archie Brownlee?

People don't know that I'm good at

Brief responses—primarily because I am not.

My TED Story

TEDActive 2013 is my 21st TEDxxx event. Ginger Reeder encouraged me to sneak into the Mickey Hart drum circle on the beach at Monterey on Friday evening of TED2005. I did. They started requiring picture ID's after that. Too late, I was hooked—three Monterey TED's, one Long Beach TED, a TEDGlobal in Oxford, a TEDGlobal in Arusha, four TEDxSMU's, four TEDxSMU/KIDS, one TEDxRADED, one TEDxCollegeMound, and a TEDXRADED2 coming the weekend after TEDActive.

Comments

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• +1

  A comment on Talk: Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong

  Mar 12 2013: I have long thought there are several life-experiences which change and separate people in profound ways difficult to verbalize. Some are obvious. Having a child, losing a parent, divorcing seem to me to change most of those who've had the experience from most of those who haven't.
  
  Since 2005, TED (including TEDx), for me, has been one of those things. My experiences at three Pallotta AIDS Rides were ABSOLUTELY AT THE SAME LEVEL AS TED FOR ME,. Though they probably exist for both entities, I have yet to meet or even hear of anyone who participated in any AIDS Ride who doesn't feel it created a profound change in his or her sense of possibility.
  
  Many comments below sound like they come from people on different sides of certain experience lines.
  
  Best wishes to all.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong

  Mar 11 2013: Adam: I didn't think Dan impliied high overhead is better because it is high, it's better because it usually is more effective—in the impact-measurement way you want. His syllogism isn't about high-is-better overhead, it's about effective-is-better overhead—measured in amount of contribution created. Did I miss something key?

• A comment on Talk: Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong

  Mar 11 2013: PS Shouldn't it be "Fewer than 5 minutes ago"?

• A comment on Talk: Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong

  Mar 11 2013: Marco: What checks and balances seem most important in the for-profit sector? Any sense which of them might be most important in the "Pallottized" humanitarian sector?
  
  John: What else might "we" need beyond everyone's ability to judge individually if Dan's Alaska AIDS Vaccine Fundraiser gets my $6,400 (which it did) or a thousand bake sales get my $6.40 each?
  
  Best wishes to all.

• A comment on Conversation: What's the overlooked gem, the book I haven't read that I must?

  Feb 17 2011: Seems to me that these "gems" are most often opportunities for free association on topics we are processing somewhere in the back—opportunities trapped in the body of a book. Their value to others may or may not be similar. Nonetheless, my nominal gift to this august throng is a variation on the Steve Pressfield theme of defeating resistance: Jupiter's Travels, by Ted Simon. Story of a man ill-equipped in most ways to spend 4 years travelling around the world alone, on a '70s Triumph motorcycle—who does just that [in the '70s]. Unincluded coda: Simon did it again a few years ago, in his own mid-'70's! Best wishes to all.