tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-150883053232752442024-03-08T07:20:01.761-08:00TEDxClassroom ProjectThe TEDxClassroom Project was created by Christian Long and used in my grade 10 Academic English class. This project that will have students analyze TED Talks and blog about them. Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-63717641720336095202010-06-11T18:48:00.000-07:002010-06-11T18:50:23.192-07:00Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory<div style="text-align: right;">By Darby A.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><!--copy and paste--><object height="326" width="446"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/DanielKahneman_2010-embed-medium.mp4&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DanielKahneman-2010.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=779&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory;year=2010;theme=a_taste_of_ted2010;theme=what_makes_us_happy;theme=unconventional_explanations;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=new_on_ted_com;event=TED2010;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/DanielKahneman_2010-embed-medium.mp4&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DanielKahneman-2010.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=779&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory;year=2010;theme=a_taste_of_ted2010;theme=what_makes_us_happy;theme=unconventional_explanations;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=new_on_ted_com;event=TED2010;" height="326" width="446"></embed></object><br /></div><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">Everyone loves the idea of happiness. People go to great lengths just to grasp its understanding and existence. Some people think money can make them happy, where others believe that happiness is created just by living. Could both be true? Daniel Kahneman goes into as much detail as he can to explain the complexities behind happiness, and the effects that it has on the decisions we make in our daily lives.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;"> </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">Daniel begins his TED Talk with introducing us to our two selves: our experiencing-self and our remembering-self. He explains that our experiencing-self is about living in the present, the here and the now, and that are remembering-self is about the stories that our experiences have created. Each self generates its own happiness, making the word happiness a little more complex. An example Daniel gives for this is about a vacation. Say you're on a two week vacation. The first week was a blast and both of your selves are happy. Let's say the second week was just as good as the first. Your experiencing-self registers that it had twice the amount of fun, but your remembering-self thinks the exact opposite because the second week was no different from the first, meaning the story didn't change. The most important things in a story are the changes, the significant moments, and the ending. He gives a few examples of how important the ending is to one's remembering-self. One of the examples was of a man listening to a symphony. For the first 20 minutes he thought it was the most glorious music he had ever heard, but right at the end there was a screeching sound. He believed that the screech had ruined the experience, but Daniel corrected him by saying that the screech had ruined the memory. The man had still experienced those glorious twenty minutes, but it was the memory of the screech that made him dislike the memory. Another example he gave was of two colonoscopies. Patient B's surgery was longer than Patient A's. When looking at the charts, you could clearly see that Patient B had suffered more. When asked how much they thought to have suffered Patient A responded with a higher pain level. This was because the pain of the surgery was at its peak when the operation ended, leaving Patient A with a worse memory of the experience. Daniel makes the point that both selves need to be seen as distinct entities and not as one, for when this happens, the whole idea of happiness gets confused.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;"> </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">The remembering-self does not only recall your memories, but helps you to make future decisions. When we make decisions, we look back out our memories to help us choose. Daniel gives an example where a patient, who has gone through two colonoscopies with two different doctors, is having yet another colonoscopy. To help the patient decide which doctor to choose, they will look back at the memory of each surgery, seeing which one they enjoyed more, and then make their decision. He goes on about how the two selves bring two different concepts of happiness into our world. There is always a different choice when concerning the two selves depending on if you're thinking in terms of time, or in terms of memories The remembering-self is how satisfied a person is when they think about their life. The experiencing-self is how happy the experience is. In recent years, researchers have started to recognize this distinction. The main lesson that they have all learned is that the two are really different. A person could tell you how satisfied they are with their life, but you would never know how happily they are living it. Daniel gives a few more examples to further explain the two selves concept before he concludes his TED Talk.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;"> </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">The topic that Daniel Kahneman explained was quite complex and tricky to grasp, if you weren't listening the whole time. He knew what he was going to say next, other than the casual glance at his computer screen. He spoke with clarity and an understanding that kept the audience with him throughout his TED Talk. He was able to communicate many ideas about the topic, making you wonder if what he was saying was just the basics, and maybe even wanting to know the rest of it.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;"> </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">After watching this TED Talk, my idea of happiness has been changed. There are times in all our lives where we feel unhappy, but look at our lives and see no reason to be unhappy. I didn't really understand why that happens until now. I would recommend this video because it is extremely informative, and the idea of the topic is completely unique. I suggest watching it when you're not tired because it's hard to follow. Daniel Kahneman did a great job in the way he presented his information, by keeping eye-contact with his audience and giving examples, so that everyone understood what he was saying. Happiness holds many complex meanings, and when the clarification behind those meanings is not distinct, then we will lose the true meaning of the word happiness.</p> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-33274326384939221112010-06-11T18:31:00.000-07:002010-06-11T18:35:25.727-07:00Robert Sapolsky: The uniqueness of humans<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: right;">By Darby A.<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hrCVu25wQ5s&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hrCVu25wQ5s&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT">Every species is unique in one way or another, but how are we defined as unique? What makes our species more unique than any other? Through a variety of examples, Robert Sapolsky gives us a better understanding of the qualities that make us unique, and also the ways in which those same qualities don't.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">To get us acquainted with his experience, Robert talks about his 30 years of experience of being around baboons and the like, and how it starts to change the way you look at other human beings. By working with these monkeys he has come up with the basic building blocks that define all species as unique. These building blocks are; aggression, theory of mind, the Golden Rule, empathy, pleasure in anticipation and gratification postponement, and culture. For each block, he goes into an in depth explanation of what makes us no longer unique and the part in which humans are unique. He emphasized the point that to see our uniqueness we must come to the understanding that there is nothing different about us, and that we are like every other species out there. Our uniqueness does not come from our genes, which some believe, and he shows us with the example through fruit flies. Fruit flies have almost exactly the same genes, meaning that is we based our uniqueness on genes, there would be no such thing as unique.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><u><b>Aggression:</b></u> The ways in which we are no longer unique is that we are not the only species who can kill a member of the same species, organize violence, or conduct genocides. He gives us an example using chimps, where there is this one male chimp who is harassing all the high ranking chimps in a group. Robert shows us a picture of what is left of him, which is mostly his face and a few scraps of skin. The other example he gave was of chimps making border patrols, so they can not only protect their clan, but attack anything that came near. How humans are unique is that we can be passive aggressive, or we can look the other way. We are capable of many subtle things. He gives us an example to show us how humans can damage each other unlike anything ever seen before. A man goes to work everyday outside of Las Vegas. He's reminded to pick up the dry cleaning, to take out the trash, and then leaves for work. His job is to drop bombs on the other side of the world all day long. Once he's finished this, he just makes it to his daughter's ballet performance, and tells her how much he loves her, and then repeats the whole process the next day.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><u><b>Theory of Mind:</b></u> is when you realize that somebody else has different thoughts and information than you do. What makes it no longer unique is its very existence. He goes into an example that includes a high ranking monkey and a low ranking monkey, each on the opposite sides of a room. There is a banana in the room, but there is also a mirror. In one case it is opaque and in the other it is transparent. He shows us how the two monkeys use theory of mind of whether to go for the banana or not. Where humans come in is that we use secondary theory of mind. This is when we realize that person A has information that person B does not, and that person B thinks that person A is doing this, when they are really doing something else. A better representation of this is that humans are the only species that are able to sit through a play like a Midsummer's Night Dream, and are able to understand it.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><u><b>Golden Rule:</b></u> What is no longer unique is the tit for tat rule. This is the rule that follows the 'do unto others what they would do to you' line. Robert gives two examples of this, one using vampire bats and one using fish. In each case, if the others think that the one is cheating they in turn will cheat the next time. Humans are unique in this case because they have the capacity to understand that the circumstances in which someone else's reward may not be the reward that they would have.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><u><b>Empathy:</b></u> An example is how we are no longer unique is in the observations of de Waal's (primatologist) chimps and the innocent bystander. In one scenario, you have a chimp that harasses a high ranking chimp, and gets pummeled because of it. The rest of the clan feels that he deserved the beating, and do nothing about it. In a second scenario, you have an innocent bystander, who gets beaten up by the high ranking chimp for no reason. Within an hour, the rest of the chimps will comfort the innocent bystander by grooming him. By doing this, they are acknowledging the fact that they understand motivations and what victims are. What makes humans unique is the extraordinary measures we go to when we show empathy. Robert shows pictures and explains with each one how we empathize with the creatures in the picture. He shows us that we go to the extent where we feel empathy for a painting of a horse.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><u><b>Pleasure in Anticipation and Gratification Postponement:</b></u> What is no longer unique is when dopamine is released into the brain as we are problem solving. He shows us that dopamine levels rise in the anticipation of the reward, and not during the work or the time of the reward, using monkeys. When maybe is added into the equation, dopamine levels sky-rocketed through the roof. How humans are unique is the amount of time in which we can hold onto the dopamine between work and the reward. We have quite the capacity that enables us to hold onto it even beyond our deaths.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><u><b>Culture:</b></u> Chimps are just one species that show us how we are no longer unique in one way. They pass down their own cultural transmission of tool-making and the like, vocalizations, and group temperament. There is this one chimp group where half of the males were killed. The males that were killed happened to be the most aggressive ones in the group. Due to the fact that there were more females, and the males that were left we the more gentler ones, you would see that the adult males in the group groomed each other, which is not seen anywhere else. The young ones of the group would take up this tradition and pass it down themselves to the younger ones that came after them. Humans are unique here because of the complexities of human culture.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">After the basic building blocks came the ways in which we, as humans, are different from any other known species in the world. One of the things that we do is we are able to go through the same routine everyday for 30 days without changing it. His example of this is of a couple who comes home from work, talk, eat dinner, talk, go to bed, talk, have sex, talk, and then go to sleep. Apparently, a giraffe would be repulsed by this kind of behaviour. The one quality, above all others, that makes us the most unique species out there, is the contradiction that we live by. The contradiction being that the more something is impossible to be, the more it must be. The most irrational and magnificent example of this that he has ever come across is that of a Catholic nun, who works at a maximum security prison. She minsters the most horrible and dangerous men that are on death row. When people ask her why she works there she simply says that the less forgivable the act, the more forgiveness must be given, the less love there is, the more love is needed. What it all comes down to is that the "harder it is to take the impossibility of something to be the very proof that it must be possible, and must become a moral imperative, the more important it is." Robert Sapolsky ends his talk with a strong finish as he connects all that he has said to his audience. They would be officially educated soon and wise enough to know that one person cannot make a difference, but because of this impossibility it must be possible, and is the importance that they, and everyone alike, recognize it in that way.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> Robert Sapolsky is an outstanding speaker. He uses humour throughout his talk and delivers it in a way that flows with the rest of what he's saying. He uses connection from his topic to himself, mentioning his children in a specific building block, and connects his overall conclusion to the circumstance of his audience. He maintains a steady pace while sharing his knowledge, talking with non-stop enthusiasm and experience. By the end of his talk, you can come to the conclusion the Robert Sapolsky is a very dedicated and intelligent man.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">We have all been told one time or another that we are unique. Robert Sapolsky takes us into a different realm of unique, giving us the basic understandings of where our uniqueness comes from. I would recommend this video to everyone with high commendation. He gives us the details and proof into our uniqueness that would surely enrich everyone's minds.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-48170467390396406032010-06-09T10:12:00.000-07:002010-06-09T10:16:35.704-07:00Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy?<div style="text-align: right; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">By Samantha K.<br /></span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><object style="font-family: times new roman;" height="326" width="334"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/DanGilbert_2004-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DanGilbert-2004.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=97&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy;year=2004;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=what_makes_us_happy;event=TED2004;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/DanGilbert_2004-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DanGilbert-2004.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=97&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy;year=2004;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=what_makes_us_happy;event=TED2004;" height="326" width="334"></embed></object></span><!--copy and paste--><div style="font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />Dan Gilbert begins his talk by stating that "... </span><span style="font-size:100%;">in two million years the human brain has nearly tripled in mass, going from the one-and-a-quarter pound brain of our ancestor here, Habilis, to the almost three-pound meatloaf that everybody here has between their ears." He carries on to explain that the human brain not only tripled in size, but was restructured with a new part called the frontal lobe. Now he draws more attention to the pre-frontal cortex, which most importantly acts as an experience simulator. He describes this by explaining that "Human beings have this marvelous adaptation that they can actually have experiences in their heads before they try them out in real life." Apparently, this is a skill our ancestors did not possess. </span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">He says he is going to run a quick "diagnostic" before he continues. He explains to the audience: "</span></span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Here's two different futures that I invite you to contemplate,and you can try to simulate them and tell me which one you think you might prefer. One of them is winning the lottery. This is about 314 million dollars. And the other is becoming paraplegic." Then he displays some statistics that show how happy lotto winners and paraplegics are after one year. As expected, the lotto winners are happier. He then states that he made these statistics up. He finally reveals the real outcomes and states that after one year, lotto winners and paraplegics are equally happy.</span><div style="font-family: times new roman;"> </div><div style="font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />He explains that "The research that my laboratory has been doing, that economists and psychologists around the country have been doing, have revealed something really quite startling to us. Something we call the impact bias, which is the tendency for the simulator to work badly. For the simulator to make you believe that different outcomes are more different than in fact they really are... In fact, a recent study showing how major life traumas affect people suggests that if it happened over three months ago, with only a few exceptions, it has no impact whatsoever on your happiness." Why? He asks. "Because happiness can be synthesized." He goes on to talk about Sir Thomas Brown and what he wrote in 1642: "I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity. I am more invulnerable than Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me." He says that human beings have something that we might think of as a psychological immune system. "A system of cognitive processes, largely non-conscious cognitive processes, that help them change their views of the world, so that they can feel better about the worlds in which they find themselves." Like Sir Thomas, we have this machine. Unlike Sir Thomas, we seem not to know it.</span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" > "We synthesize happiness" He states, "but we think happiness is a thing to be found... we believe that synthetic happiness is not of the same quality as what we might call natural happiness. What are these terms? Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we don't get what we wanted."</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> He did an experiment with a group of patients </span><span style="font-size:100%;">who had anterograde amnesia. These are hospitalized patients. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Most of them have Korsakoff's syndrome, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">a polyneuritic psychosis that basically means they</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> can't make new memories. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">They remember their childhood, but if you walk in and introduce yourself, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and then leave the room, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">when you come back they don't know who you are. They took some Monet prints to the hospital. And asked these patients to rank them from the one they liked the most to the one they liked the least. They then gave them the choice between number three and number four. Like everybody else, they said, "Gee, thanks Doc! That's great! I could use a new print. I'll take number three." They explained we would have number three mailed to them. They gathered up their materials and went out of the room, and counted to a half hour. Back into the room, they say, "Hi, we're back." The patients say, "Ah, Doc, I'm sorry, I've got a memory problem, that's why I'm here. If I've met you before, I don't remember." "Really, Jim, you don't remember? I was just here with the Monet prints?""Sorry, Doc, I just don't have a clue." "No problem, Jim. All I want you to do for me is rank these from the one you like the most to the one you like the least." What do they do? Well, they check and make sure they're really amnesiac. They ask these amnesiac patients to tell them which one they own, which one they chose last time, which one is theirs. And what we find is amnesiac patients just guess. These are normal controls, where if they did this with you, all of you would know which print you chose. But if they do this with amnesiac patients, they don't have a clue. They can't pick their print out of a lineup.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">He explains; "Here's what normal controls do: they synthesize happiness. Right? This is the change in liking score, the change from the first time they ranked to the second time they ranked. Normal controls show 'The one I own is better than I thought. The one I didn't own, the one I left behind, is not as good as I thought.' Amnesiacs do exactly the same thing. Think about this result. These people like better the one they own, but they don't know they own it. What these people did when they synthesized happiness is they really, truly changed their affective, hedonic, aesthetic reactions to that poster. They're not just saying it because they own it, because they don't know they own it. Now, when psychologists show you bars, you know that they are showing you averages of lots of people. And yet, all of us have this psychological immune system, this capacity to synthesize happiness, but some of us do this trick better than others. And some situations allow anybody to do it more effectively than other situations do. It turns out that freedom -- the ability to make up your mind and change your mind -- is the friend of natural happiness, because it allows you to choose among all those delicious futures and find the one you most enjoy. But freedom to choose -- to change and make up your mind -- is the enemy of synthetic happiness."</span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">He gives another example of another experiment he did at Harvard: "</span><span style="font-size:100%;">We created a photography course, a black-and-white photography course, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and we allowed students to come in and learn how to use a darkroom. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">So we gave them cameras, they went around campus, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">they took 12 pictures of their favorite professors and their dorm room and their dog, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and all the other things they wanted to have Harvard memories of. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">They bring us the camera, we make up a contact sheet, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">they figure out which are the two best pictures, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and we now spend six hours teaching them about darkrooms, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and they blow two of them up, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and they have two gorgeous eight-by-10 glossies of </span><span style="font-size:100%;">meaningful things to them, and we say, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">"Which one would you like to give up?"</span><span style="font-size:100%;">They say, "I have to give one up?" </span><span style="font-size:100%;">"Oh, yes. We need one as evidence of the class project. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">So you have to give me one. You have to make a choice.</span><span style="font-size:100%;">You get to keep one, and I get to keep one."</span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Now, there are two conditions in this experiment.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> In one case, the students are told, "But you know, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">if you want to change your mind, I'll always have the other one here, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and in the next four days, before I actually mail it to headquarters, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">"I'll be glad to swap it out with you. In fact, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">I'll come to your dorm room and give </span><span style="font-size:100%;">-- just give me an email. Better yet, I'll check with you. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">You ever want to change your mind, it's totally returnable." </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The other half of the students are told exactly the opposite: </span><span style="font-size:100%;">"Make your choice. And by the way, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">the mail is going out, gosh, in two minutes, to England. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Your picture will be winging its way over the Atlantic. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">You will never see it again." </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Now, half of the students in each of these conditions </span><span style="font-size:100%;">are asked to make predictions about how much </span><span style="font-size:100%;">t</span><span style="font-size:100%;">hey're going to come to like the picture that they keep </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and the picture they leave behind.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Other students are just sent back to their little dorm rooms </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and they are measured over the next three to six days </span><span style="font-size:100%;">on their liking, satisfaction with the pictures. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">And look at what we find. First of all, here's what students think is going to happen. They think they're going to maybe come to like the picture they chose a little more than the one they left behind, but these are not statistically significant differences. It's a very small increase, and it doesn't much matter whether they were in the reversible or irreversible condition. Wrong-o. Bad simulators. Because here's what's really happening. Both right before the swap and five days later, people who are stuck with that picture, who have no choice, who can never change their mind, like it a lot! And people who are deliberating -- "Should I return it? Have I gotten the right one? Maybe this isn't the good one? Maybe I left the good one?" -- have killed themselves. They don't like their picture, and in fact even after the opportunity to swap has expired, they still don't like their picture. Why? Because the reversible condition is not conducive to the synthesis of happiness.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">So here's the final piece of this experiment. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">We bring in a whole new group of naive Harvard students </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and we say, "You know, we're doing a photography course, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and we can do it one of two ways. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">We could do it so that when you take the two pictures,</span> <span style="font-size:100%;">you'd have four days to change your mind,</span><span style="font-size:100%;">or we're doing another course where you take the two pictures </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and you make up your mind right away </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and you can never change it. Which course would you like to be in? </span><span style="font-size:100%;">" Duh! 66 percent of the students, two-thirds, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">prefer to be in the course where they have the opportunity to change their mind. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Hello? 66 percent of the students choose to be in the course in which they will </span><span style="font-size:100%;">ultimately be deeply dissatisfied with the picture. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Because they do not know the conditions under which synthetic happiness grows."</span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">He says that that "The Bard said everything best, of course...</span><span style="font-size:100%;">'Tis nothing good or bad / But thinking makes it so.' </span><span style="font-size:100%;">It's nice poetry, but that can't exactly be right. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Is there really nothing good or bad? </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Is it really the case that gall bladder surgery and a trip to Paris </span><span style="font-size:100%;">are just the same thing? That seems like a one-question IQ test. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">They can't be exactly the same." He then continues; "In more turgid prose, but closer to the truth, was the father of modern capitalism, Adam Smith, and he said this... 'The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life seems to arise from overrating the difference between one permanent situation and another ... Some of these situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others, but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardor which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice, or to corrupt the future tranquility of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse for the horror of our own injustice.'" In other words: yes, some things are better than others.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">He thinks that we should have preferences that lead us into one future over another. But when those preferences drive us too hard and too fast because we have overrated the difference between these futures, we are at risk. When our ambition is bounded, it leads us to work joyfully. When our ambition is unbounded, it leads us to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value. When our fears are bounded, we're prudent, we're cautious, we're thoughtful. When our fears are unbounded and overblown, we're reckless, and we're cowardly.</span></p> <p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">He presents his entire talk very well. He effectively communicates by using hand gestures, eye contact, and walking around the stage. He also uses a slideshow to provide a visual for the audience. His tone of voice is comfortable and he does not use notes of any kind, showing that he is very knowledgeable about his topic. This helps the talk run smoothly.<br /></span></p> <p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Dan Gilbert closes his talk by stating; "The lesson I want to leave you with from these data </span><span style="font-size:100%;">is that our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity </span><span style="font-size:100%;">we are constantly chasing when we choose experience."</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-23009718236598011832010-06-08T19:00:00.000-07:002010-06-08T19:02:10.743-07:00Swami Dayananda Saraswati: The profound journey of compassion<div style="text-align: right;">By Mike B.<br /></div><br /><!--copy and paste--><object height="326" width="446"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/Saraswati_2009P-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/SriSwamiDayanandaSaraswati-2009P.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=674&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=swami_dayananda_saraswati;year=2009;theme=the_charter_for_compassion;event=Chautauqua+Institution;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/Saraswati_2009P-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/SriSwamiDayanandaSaraswati-2009P.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=674&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=swami_dayananda_saraswati;year=2009;theme=the_charter_for_compassion;event=Chautauqua+Institution;" height="326" width="446"></embed></object><br /><br />Dayananda Saraswati is a Hindu teacher of Vedanta and Sanskrit in the tradition of Adi Shankar. He is well known as a very wise, and intelligent disciple of Swami Chinmayananda. He is a 'whole ' man. By whole, I mean he has discovered his meaning in life; he has found purpose for himself and is contented. He is strong and he is solid. He is solid in his beliefs and his words. He speaks what he will, and moves others as he does. The Swami is very motivational; he is an idol.<br /><br />In his talk the Swami gives his views on many things; compassion, love, empathy, and happiness. He elaborates on how they are interdependent -which is how they must rely on each other to be present in a person. He starts out by speaking on the helplessness of a child and how it needs it's mother to survive. The baby is a consumer; it takes without the ability to give back. The baby believes the world surrounds them and that everything is dependent on it, but as the child grows up, its trust in its mother is violated and so it blames itself, "A wordless blame, which is more difficult to really resolve, the wordless self-blame."<br /><br />The baby must overcome this as it becomes an adult. It must also find a way to contribute. The ability for a human being to grow depends on their ability to contribute. They must give. In order to give, one must feel, "Secure, one feels big, one feels: I have enough." Once a person is stable, then that person can give. Once you are secure, then you can feel compassionate and can act in that way. The Swami then gives an example of empathy. He describes a scene from a Wimbledon final tennis match. The two opponents fight to the finish with one man eventually prevailing. Then the crowd cheers, the man celebrates and all is joyous for him until he sees his opponent with their head down. Then the victor comes to the net and, "You see, his whole face changes. It looks as though he's wishing that he didn't win." The reason why the man's face fell, is empathy. He sees how crushed his opponent is and he feels his pain. This is empathy and everyone has it. The Swami tells his crowd about the eminence of empathy, "No culture, no nation, and nationalism, nothing can touch it because it is empathy."<br /><br />The next topics he speaks of our love and happiness. Love is not something you do, but something you discover. As the Swami says, "You can't say, 'Please love me.'" He also says that you cannot make someone act a certain way, but you can act compassionately or conduct yourself with empathy. The Swami encourages 'oneness' which is very hard to understand and harder to explain. It is somewhat of accepting everything around you, and by doing so he says that you will be accepted. He tells us that happiness is found on the way to becoming compassionate. He says that you find yourself in happiness and you are accepting of yourself, "even for a slapstick joke, accepts himself, and also the scheme of things in which one finds oneself."<br /><br />He finishes his talk speaking about the, so called American manta, "You fake it and make it," He encourages the audience to do this if you don't have compassion. He says that after a while of 'acting it out', you gradually discover it will come naturally. The last piece of Swami Dayananda Saraswati advice will result in you discovering "compassion is a dynamic manifestation of the reality of yourself, which is oneness, wholeness, and that's what you are."<br /><br />The Swami's speaking style was very confusing and somewhat contradictory at some points. I am not sure if he just struggled to find some of the correct words or if he has trouble in English; at times I had difficulties deciphering what he was trying to get at. One of the worst parts comes as he is trying to explain limitations. He speaks as follows, "Compassion is going to be limited. Everything is going to be limitless. You cannot command compassion unless you become limitless, and nobody can become limitless, either you are or you are not. Period. And there is no way of your being not limitless too." After hearing this part I had to pause and go back a few minutes to try to find context. Then I called up the transcript and still could not understand it. It was somewhat frustrating. I found this talk frustrating in other aspects as well. The Swami's… speaking style… is… spaced out as if… he is in deep…thought. At the start of his talk he will say about four words, then pause for about eight seconds. I might just be too impatient, but this was annoying to me. The Swami's persuasiveness was not the best I have ever heard. This was because he failed to stay on a straight topic path. He tended to speak for a little while on one thing then link it to another idea that linked to something about another thing, that linked to the thing he said first that linked to what he was now talking about. His train of thought was like a spider web, very confusing and random if you look at it up close, but all ties together when finished.<br /><br />I liked the idea of this talk, however it was hard to find what that was, in most parts. I believe that the main message of it was that compassion will make your life better and will lead you to become 'whole', letting you become happier in the end. The Swami says "everything becomes meaningful. I have no more reason to blame myself." I really would not advise people to watch this video. I found that the Swami was very intelligent and carried a great message, but it would be better if someone else had edited it and presented it for him.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-69192166227888505922010-06-08T18:31:00.000-07:002010-06-08T18:33:51.404-07:00Rives controls the Internet<div style="text-align: center; font-family: times new roman;"><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size:100%;">By Stephen M.<br /></span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><!--copy and paste--><span style="font-size:100%;"><object height="326" width="446"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/Rives_IfIControlledtheInternet_2006S-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/Rives-IfIControlledtheInternet-2006S.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=26&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=rives_controls_the_internet;year=2006;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=master_storytellers;theme=whipsmart_comedy;theme=art_unusual;theme=spectacular_performance;theme=presentation_innovation;event=TEDSalon+2006;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/Rives_IfIControlledtheInternet_2006S-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/Rives-IfIControlledtheInternet-2006S.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=26&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=rives_controls_the_internet;year=2006;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=master_storytellers;theme=whipsmart_comedy;theme=art_unusual;theme=spectacular_performance;theme=presentation_innovation;event=TEDSalon+2006;" height="326" width="446"></embed></object><br /></span></div> </div><div style="text-align: left; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">John Rives is a poet often featured on HBO's Def Poetry Jam and a large TED contributor. In this poem he describes the changes that would be made if he controlled the Internet and how these are possible if desired. Following a summary of this piece I will provide an overview on the speaking tools used by Rives and my own opinion of the talk.</span></div><div style="text-align: left; font-family: times new roman;"> </div><div style="text-align: left; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />John commences his poem by telling the audience of his inspiration for it: </span><span style="font-size:100%;">"</span><span style="font-size:100%;">I wrote this poem after hearing a pretty well-known actress </span><span style="font-size:100%;">tell a very well-known interviewer on television, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">'I'm really getting into the Internet lately. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">I just wish it were more organized.'" He goes on to tell us about how one could sell a broken heart on e-bay and use the proceeds to purchase a foreign phonebook on Amazon. Rives then connects the real world to the computerized one with another unrealistic fantasy "If I were in charge of the Internet, you could Mapquest your lover's mood swings." His magical Internet would allow Monster, Friendster and Napster to coexist as one site "That way you could listen to cool music while you pretend to look for a job and you're really just chatting with your pals." Delving even further into the improbable Rives begins his next subject "Heck, if I ran the web, you could email dead people." He says that you wouldn't receive an email back, but would get a reply saying "I miss you". After several other unrealistic topics including the Emperor of Oranges, .moms and .dads along with his deity like Internet presence he reaches the purpose of the talk. This is summed up in two sentences "<a class="transcriptLink" href="http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/rives_controls_the_internet.html#" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-decoration: none;"> </a>It is not a question of if you can. It's, do ya? We can interfere with the interface." All of the before stated implausibilities can be achieved if we want them to be. To fulfill the presentation he conjures the final image of his Internet bliss "<a class="transcriptLink" href="http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/rives_controls_the_internet.html#" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-decoration: none;"> </a>We can make "You've got Hallelujah" the national anthem of cyberspace every lucky time we log on." </span></div><div style="text-align: left; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The message that John is giving us is that we can make the Internet whatever we want it to be. His poem is about how he would like the Internet but at the concluding statements he uses "we" and not "I" to tell us that it isn't just him who wants to change the "it." Throughout the talk Rives demonstrates impressive public speaking ability to the audience. He never relies on either a teleprompter or cue cards and speaks with changes in tone and dynamics throughout the talk along with excellent gestures. He has good eye contact and keeps the audience entertained with both humorous and ridiculous propositions. Overall, the public speaking skills he employs are superb.</span></div><div style="text-align: left; font-family: times new roman;"> </div><div style="text-align: left; font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />The audience in the room loved the poem and Rives received a standing ovation from them. The comments on the TED site are similar and praise his ability to make the Internet seem so friendly and not like the complex and depersonalized image we ourselves conceptualize. My own reaction was not, in fact one of amazement. Though he spoke well, used gestures and vocal expression I did not find it enjoyable to watch. This is due entirely to the fact that my interests do not include poetry. As a TED performance I would give this an 9 out of 10 based solely on the speaking skills.</span></div> <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">I would recommend this video to anyone interested in humorous poetry or any kind for that matter. If you have no interest in poetry like myself, this is not for you. I can say that on the basis of a presentation it was very good.</span></span><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-16501714127896521382010-06-08T18:16:00.000-07:002010-06-08T18:19:33.256-07:00Arthur Ganson makes moving sculpture<div class="ecxMsoNormal"><div style="text-align: right;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >By Luke D.</span><br /></div><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><br /><!--copy and paste--><object height="326" width="446"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/ArthurGanson_2004-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/ArthurGanson-2004.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=267&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=arthur_ganson_makes_moving_sculpture;year=2004;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=the_creative_spark;theme=art_unusual;event=TED2002;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/ArthurGanson_2004-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/ArthurGanson-2004.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=267&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=arthur_ganson_makes_moving_sculpture;year=2004;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=the_creative_spark;theme=art_unusual;event=TED2002;" height="326" width="446"></embed></object><br /><br />Normally when one thinks of moving art, animation, be it traditional hand-drawn or CGI, comes to mind. However, with Arthur Ganson’s “Ted Talk”, we’re shown fantastic moving sculptures, given motion by an ingenious use of gears and pulleys. But what really makes his art fantastical is not the use of the machines but his humorous vision that goes into them. The humor is subtle but nonetheless, fun and inspirational. Also, Ganson has a lot of interesting things to say. </span></div><p class="ecxMsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Ganson starts off telling of how he first became interested in art due to a fascination with movement. He used to make flipbooks as a hobby when he was a child and even displays one of them, entitled “Great Race” to the audience. It depicts a rather brutal scenario in which two cars are racing. One of them hits a rock in the middle of the road, which results in both cars crashing into each other and going flying. One of them explodes, while the other one, driverless from the previous accident, collides with an ambulance resulting in more, as Ganson puts it, “<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/arthur_ganson_makes_moving_sculpture.html##" target="_blank"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">gratuitous violence”.</span></a> The flipbook is a very entertaining part of the Ted presentation. It also provides good insight into how Ganson’s mind worked when he was small. The fascination with movement is quite evident as is his willingness to do what he can to bring a concept to life. </span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">He then recalls his days in high school when he thought about becoming a surgeon as it would require him to work with his hands in a very intense situation. However, in college he took art courses. This is when he began to make his strange moving sculptures. These contraptions are made up of many different gears and found objects, all simultaneously in motion. The visual style reminds me slightly of clock-punk fiction with the continuous turning of the gears and wheels. </span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >One of the first sculptures we’re shown depicts a small plastic figurine of a man perched upon the top of a skeletal building structure. As one turns a handle at the bottom of the sculpture, the man “walks” across the roof. His jittery, humorous movement patterns recall that of the animated characters of South Park. Ganson uses this piece to explain that most of his works include “found objects” such as the figurine in this piece. This is because he’s constantly thinking about how an object would move if given the ability to do so. “</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >…it's almost like doing visual puns all the time,” he explains.</span></span><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > “</span><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/arthur_ganson_makes_moving_sculpture.html##" target="_blank"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >When I see objects, I imagine them in motion;</span></span></a></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">I imagine what can be said with them.</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;">” I’ve found myself thinking such thoughts before as well. </span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The next sculpture features a walking wishbone that Ganson found himself playing with after dinner one night. He was intrigued with how the structure of the bone served as its own locomotion. He created a machine that assisted the wishbone in its walking. The final image that is created is a haunting but still slightly humorous one, of a small beast of burden (the wishbone) pulling a turning, industrial machine many times its size across an endless landscape. It’s quite a surreal and, although somewhat sad, inspirational image. </span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">He also shows us a very bizarre film of a conceptual piece called “Cory’s Yellow Chair”. This is a small model of his sons yellow chair. The model chair falls into several pieces due to machines and gears pulling it apart. The pieces are all pulled out farther and farther away until, as if by some gravitational force, they come back together in the complete form of a chair. It’s quite wonderful to behold. Only in certain shots can we see the gears of the machine moving, so it really looks more like some cool retro stop-motion animation. </span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Those are but a few of Ganson’s fantastic conceptual sculptures that we’re shown in the Talk. The imagination and artistic talent that Ganson exhibits with his creations is quite wonderful. He not only has an interesting and original artistic vision, but his ability to manifest his ideas with spinning wheels and gears so effectively is quite fascinating as well. </span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">He also spends some time talking about some colorful life experiences he has had thanks to his works of art. These include inventing a tool to help bend wires for his projects and one to help hold them in place as he did so (before he came across a spot welder…) and joining a group in Boston called the “World Sculpture Racing Society”. </span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >The group’s goal was to publicly display art. Ganson’s creation was quite interesting and once again, very conceptual. “</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >So I made -- this is my first racing sculpture,</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >and I thought, ‘Oh, I'm going to make a cart,</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >and I'm going to have it --</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >I'm going to have my hand writing 'faster,'</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >so as I run down the street, the cart's going to talk to me</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >and it's going to go, 'Faster, faster!' "</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >So that's what it does.</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >But then in the end, what I decided,</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >was every time you finish writing the word,</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >I would stop and I would give the card to somebody on the side of the road.</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >So I would never win the race because I'm always stopping.</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >But I had a lot of fun.</span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">”</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Ganson ends off the talk with a final sculpture. This piece has something about it that makes it very moving while at the same time awfully subtle. It’s a wheeled machine moving in a straight line, back and forth continuously, rotating (or as Ganson more accurately puts it, “dancing with”) a chair high about itself, as very tranquil music plays in the background. Eventually the chair is gently returned to the ground. The whole atmosphere that the video created was very enjoyable to experience. Something about it was very reassuring. </span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Ganson has a very poetic view on how he creates his work. His own words themselves offer the same sort of strange but comforting vibes. It is very clear from the following statement that he’s not only passionate about his work but he has an excellent enlightenment on his art.</span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >When I'm making these pieces, I'm always trying to find a point</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >where I'm saying something very clearly and it's very simple,</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >but also at the same time it's very ambiguous.</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >And I think there's a point between simplicity and ambiguity</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >which can allow a viewer to perhaps take something from it.</span></span> </span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >And that leads me to the thought that all of these pieces</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >start off in my own mind, in my heart,</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >and I do my best at finding ways to express them with materials,</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >and it always feels really crude.</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >It's always a struggle,</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >but somehow I manage to sort of get this thought</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >out into an object, and then it's there, OK.</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >It means nothing at all.</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >The object itself just means nothing.</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >Once it's perceived, and someone brings it into their own mind,</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >then there's a cycle that has been completed.</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >And to me, that's the most important thing</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >because ever since being a kid, I've wanted to communicate my passion and love,</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >and that means the complete cycle of coming from inside</span></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >out to the physical, to someone perceiving it.</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">”</span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">This “Ted Talk” was very interesting and I highly recommend watching it if you appreciate art. The works of Arthur Ganson may take a few seconds to fully understand, but many of them are both amusing and somewhat moving. The only real drawback of the video is that Ganson likes to use the word “Uh” and “Umm” a lot. I found it pretty noticeable and it did take away just a little from the effectiveness of his speech. However, this is a minor complaint and my only one. It hardly makes the rest of the presentation of the art any less brilliant. Arthur Ganson’s “Ted Talk” is still awesome! </span></span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-26646650393970732962010-06-08T18:03:00.000-07:002010-06-08T18:05:41.028-07:00Carolyn Porco flies us to Saturn<div style="text-align: right;">By Hannah W.<br /></div><br /><!--copy and paste--><object height="326" width="446"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/CarolynPorco_2007-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/CarolynPorco-2007.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=178&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=carolyn_porco_flies_us_to_saturn;year=2007;theme=to_boldly_go;theme=technology_history_and_destiny;theme=peering_into_space;event=TED2007;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/CarolynPorco_2007-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/CarolynPorco-2007.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=178&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=carolyn_porco_flies_us_to_saturn;year=2007;theme=to_boldly_go;theme=technology_history_and_destiny;theme=peering_into_space;event=TED2007;" height="326" width="446"></embed></object><br /><br />As the leader of imaging for the Cassini Mission, Carolyn Porco shares the immense progress that the space community has reached since the launch of the Huygens probe. There has only been assumptions when it comes to two of Saturn's moons, Titan and Enceladus. But with this new technology they are able to test the compounds in the air and in the soil. With all of this new information, they have realized that it is quite likely that there is other forms of life than just on Earth.<br /><br /><div> </div><div>Titan is Saturn's largest moon and has the same surface type as Earth. It has shores along large masses of fluids, thousands of kilometers of sand dunes and other landforms along those lines. Titan is covered in organic compounds and the "air" is made up of mostly nitrogen. Knowing this, they think that this moon might be able to sustain life. If this is the case it could mean huge things. Enceladus on the other hand is almost completely opposite of Earth. The hottest part of the moon is it's south pole, and its coldest along it's equator.<br /><br /></div><div> </div><div>The Huygens probe was built in Europe and when launched it took seven years to get to Titan. Huygens was a landmark moment for space technology, it brought countries together in celebration of their success. This moment should have had it's own parade.<br /><br /></div><div> </div><div>You can tell that Porco loves what she does and what she's discovered. As she talks and explains you can see that she has invested so much time into this project and she so wholeheartedly believes that her work will be the horizon of new and better outlooks for humanity. The fact that she actually believes in what she's talking about catches your attention, and once she has it she continues to surprise by making jokes and announcing these incredible discoveries.<br /><br /></div><div> </div>Thanks to Porco's team, humanity might have a fighting chance after all. If Titan is almost able to support human life, if not already supporting some kind of life, what's to say that our other planets could do the same. These discoveries are amazing and I have no doubt that they, along with Porco, will do great things.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-84986466769601667912010-06-08T17:57:00.000-07:002010-06-08T17:58:57.341-07:00Roz Savage: Why I'm rowing across the Pacific<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: right;">By Kayla H.<br /></div><br /><!--copy and paste--><object height="326" width="446"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/RozSavage_2010Z-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/RozSavage-2010Z.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=844&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=roz_savage_why_i_m_rowing_across_the_pacific;year=2010;theme=a_taste_of_mission_blue_voyage;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=to_boldly_go;theme=ocean_stories;event=Mission+Blue+Voyage;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/RozSavage_2010Z-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/RozSavage-2010Z.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=844&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=roz_savage_why_i_m_rowing_across_the_pacific;year=2010;theme=a_taste_of_mission_blue_voyage;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=to_boldly_go;theme=ocean_stories;event=Mission+Blue+Voyage;" height="326" width="446"></embed></object><br /><br />Roz Savage rows across oceans. Four years ago, she rowed across the Atlantic Ocean, and since then she's done two out of three stages of rowing across the Pacific Ocean - from San Fransisco to Hawaii, and from Hawaii to Kiribati and soon, from Kiribati to Australia. After she has accomplished this, she will have officially rowed over 8,000 miles, taken over 3 million oar strokes and spent more than 312 days alone on the ocean, on a 23 ft. rowboat. It's quite the accomplishment, but why did she decide to do this? In this talk, Roz Savage explains just that.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />"For 11 years, I conformed. I did what people from my kind of background were supposed to do. I was working in an office in London as a management consultant. And I think I knew from day one that it wasn't the right job for me. But that kind of conditioning just kept me there for so many years, until I reached my mid-thirties and I thought, 'You know, I'm not getting any younger. I feel like I've got a purpose in this life, and I don't know what it is, but I'm pretty certain that management consultancy is not it'". It's clear that Roz Savage was certain that she did not want to continue with the way her life was, but how did she put it into perspective that she wanted to row across oceans, starting with the Atlantic? She explains this by stating that "I sat down one day and wrote two versions of my own obituary, the one that I wanted, a life of adventure, and the one that I was actually heading for which was a nice, normal, pleasant life, but it wasn't where I wanted to be by the end of my life. I wanted to live a life that I could be proud of. And I remember looking at these two versions of my obituary and thinking, "Oh boy, I'm on totally the wrong track here. If I carry on living as I am now, I'm just not going to end up where I want to be in five years, or 10 years, or at the end of my life." And with this statement, and with logical thinking, Roz Savage decided to row across the Atlantic Ocean.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Roz Savage continues to explain how she crossed the Atlantic Ocean, notifying everyone that it definitely was not easy. The route she mentioned she took was from Canaries to Antigua, which is about 3,000 miles. She explains it was hard because she had to get out of her comfort zone, which is indeed a hard task to accomplish. Not only did she just have to struggle with her comfort zone, it was 2005 - the year of hurricane Katrina. Roz explains that there were more tropical storms then ever before, and that her oars had snapped numerous times, each time having to find a piece of material to help keep them together for as long as she could while rowing. After suffering from tendinitis on her shoulders, and salt water sores on her bottom, Roz Savage finally made it across the Atlantic Ocean, and after such an accomplishment, she was feeling pretty good. People cheering her, she mentions it made her feel like a movie star, and that it was worth all of the work. But Roz had to think..how do you top rowing across the Atlantic Ocean? Well, the answer is simple, just row across the Pacific.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />It sounds simple enough, but there is one slight complication that Roz advised to the audience. On the world map, the Pacific Ocean is on the left and right sides. Now if you look on Google Earth, it gives you a better perspective. Turns out the Pacific Ocean covers about half of the Earth, 65 million miles to be precise. So it's definitely more of a challenge, as Roz mentioned while showing the audience on Google Earth. Because it is quite impossible to row straight across the Pacific, Roz mentions that she split her journey into three pieces, until she will eventually make it to Australia. She mentions that she's already finished two of the three stages across the Pacific, and that she did have some difficulties, but she has still been successful. So, after all of this talk about herself and how difficult it is to row across these oceans, etc...why exactly is she rowing across the ocean?</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Roz Savage explains to the audience that naturally, she's doing it for the environment. "If I'm successful, I'll be the first woman ever to row solo all the way across the Pacific. And I try and use this to bring awareness to these environmental issues, to bring a human face to the ocean". "If the Atlantic was about my inner journey, discovering my own capabilities, maybe the Pacific has been about my outer journey, figuring out how I can use my interesting career choice to be of service to the world, and to take some of those things that I've learned out there and apply them to the situation that human kind now finds itself in". This line is shown through Roz Savages' idea to bring human face to the ocean, and how she is to launch a new initiative called "Eco-Heroes" where the idea here is that all Eco-Heroes will log at least one green deed every day. It's meant to be a bit of a game. There's going to be an iPhone app out of it. Roz says that "We just want to try and create that awareness because, sure, changing a light bulb isn't going to change the world, but that attitude, that awareness that leads you to change the light bulb or take your reusable coffee mug, that is what could change the world".</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />All in all, I found this presentation considerably encouraging. It makes you realize how someone can stand up and make a realization...that you are capable of doing something beyond what you are use to doing...it truly is inspirational. This is shown by Roz very well. She gives an understanding of peoples average lives, and when she shows how you can step outside of your box and make a difference, you really begin to understand what she's trying to say. Although, my only suggestion that I have is for about 3/4 of her presentation she talked mainly about herself, while the title of the video is <b>why</b> I'm crossing the Pacific Ocean, and giving reason to this statement. She did not talk very much about why she was doing it (which was for the environment) but more about herself, and how much of a struggle it was to realize she should step out of her comfort zone, and do something worthwhile. It is still an important message, but I felt that she could still talk more about why she was doing it, but overall still a well done performance.<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-45948024797199881342010-06-08T09:42:00.000-07:002010-06-08T17:47:34.813-07:00Helen Fisher studies the brain in love<div style="text-align: right;">By Sarah S.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><!--copy and paste--><object height="326" width="446"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/HelenFisher_2008-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/HelenFisher-2008.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=307&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=helen_fisher_studies_the_brain_in_love;year=2008;theme=how_the_mind_works;event=TED2008;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/HelenFisher_2008-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/HelenFisher-2008.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=307&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=helen_fisher_studies_the_brain_in_love;year=2008;theme=how_the_mind_works;event=TED2008;" height="326" width="446"></embed></object><br /></div><br /><br /></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">We all love. We love our family, our friends, and our partner. But why do we crave love so much? Helen Fisher takes a closer look at our physical need for romantic love in this TED talk, </span><i style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Helen Fisher studies the brain in love</i><span style="font-family:times new roman;">. </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br /><br />Helen Fisher and her colleagues have used the MRI brain scanner on 37 people, 17 were happily in love, and 15 who had just been dumped. She is starting a third study of people who have been married for 10 to 25 years, and still in love. </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> <br />"Around the world people love. They sing for love, they dance for love, they compose poems and stories about love. They tell myths and legends about love. They pine for love, they live for love, they kill for love, and they die for love," that's how Helen describes love. It is very true, most of the songs out there have something to do with love in them; most books and movies have love in them. </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> <br />Before starting to talk about the brain, Helen says one of her favourite poems, which she thinks is a very powerful love poem. Then she says that their first study of people in love was widely publicized so she will only say a little about it. They found activity at the base of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA), and activity in some cells that produce dopamine, a natural stimulant. The VTA is part of the area associated with wanting, motivation, focus, and craving. It is also the same place that becomes active when feeling the rush of cocaine. Helen says it's more then just a high, it's an obsession. And the obsession gets worse after you have been rejected. So that is why they then took a look at people who have recently been dumped. There was activity in 3 brain regions, one was in the VTA, so they were still in love, another in an area associated with calculating gains and loses, and the last part, where you feel deep attachment to another individual. Basically, you have been dumped, and you still love the other person, and are still deeply attached to that person. </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> <br />Helen learned a few things from her experiments that she would like to share with the world. The first is that romantic love, is a basic mating drive. This has you focus your mating energy on just one person at a time and then wanting to start the mating process with this person. She also believes that romantic love is an addiction. It is very good when it is all going right, but when its going wrong, it can be very bad. Love also has all the characteristics of addiction: the obsessive thinking about the person, the craving for that person. She wants the medical and legal community to understand that love is one of the most addictive things on earth. She would also like to tell the world that animals love too; shes looked at hundreds of different species to find this out. </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> <br />Helen and her colleagues have already started their third experiment on people who have been married for 25 years, and say they are still in love. For the first 5 people, they found that they to have the activity in the brain related to intense romantic love. Helen, herself, is working on the question of why we fall in love with one person, and not another. She believes our biology pulls us towards someone. </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> <br />Helen presents a very good argument that love does come from a part in our brain, and that after being dumped you seem to love the other person even more. She has science to back her up, as she has done all the experiments herself. It seems very logical, because our brain controls everything else we do, why wouldn't it control the way we love, and who we love. </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> <br />Helen speaks very well. She uses a few pictures to show the parts of the brain, and of people in love. She mixes some humour into her talk, to make it easy to enjoy for the audience. </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> <br />This talk was very interesting and quite good. I would like to know what the results were from the last experiment, and if Helen answered her question of why we fall in love with one person over another.<br /></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-57486252435844695722010-06-08T09:39:00.000-07:002010-06-08T09:42:22.273-07:00David Pogue says "Simplicity sells"<div style="text-align: right;">By Jason L.<br /></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br /><!--copy and paste--><object height="326" width="334"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/DavidPogue_2006-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DavidPogue-2006.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=7&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=david_pogue_says_simplicity_sells;year=2006;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=presentation_innovation;theme=spectacular_performance;event=TED2006;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/DavidPogue_2006-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DavidPogue-2006.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=7&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=david_pogue_says_simplicity_sells;year=2006;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=presentation_innovation;theme=spectacular_performance;event=TED2006;" height="326" width="334"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Being a New York Times columnist, David Pogue was given the opportunity to test, rate and write articles about the newest and top technological devices. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" >The tap counter is someone who counts the number of taps it takes to complete a task. This is a major part of the talk; David says that it takes too many taps to finish a task on a PC. However on a Mac and a Palm, they focus on keeping it simple, because simplicity sells. If you think of many of the different types of MP3's, they include many more features than the Ipod's; for example: voice recorders, and FM Transmitters, but the iPod won. This shows that industries may now be getting the message that simplicity sells. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" >What makes the newest edition of speech recognition software so good? Well as they released the newest version they didn't change anything. This has never happened before in software, where they do not add any new features. </span></span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" > For years people had bought this software, tried it out, and 95 percent accuracy was all they got, which means one in 20 words is wrong. The company got sick of that, so they said, "This version, we're not going to do anything but make sure it's very accurate."</span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br /></span><div style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" ><span style="font-size:100%;">To keep the audience alive, he incorporates comic relief. He broke out in three funny songs that he wrote, providing an overview of what he was just talking about. In addition to that, David made some excellent comparisons between Mac and PC. Being on Mac's side, David explains that PC's are to complicated, and Mac's simplicity, "Sells". He describes the "Print Page" on a PC as a look alike to a 747 cockpit, and "why would shut down your computer by pressing, Start ?" "Your call will be recorded for quality assurance, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Mm-Mmm. Your call may be recorded </span><span style="font-size:100%;">so that they can collect the funniest dumb user stories </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and pass them around on a CD," David explains, he adds funny quotes from real users that have called in to the Apple help centre. For example<a class="transcriptLink" href="http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/david_pogue_says_simplicity_sells.html#" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-decoration: none;">,</a> a guy called, his computer had crashed, and he told the technician he couldn't restart it no matter how many times he typed 11. And the technician said, "What? Why are you typing 11?" He said, "The message says, 'Error Type 11."</span></div><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><div style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" ><span style="font-size:100%;">The hard part is not deciding what features to add, it's deciding what to leave out. Companies need to focus on the important parts, and keep their software simple, and accessible for all users. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">T</span><span style="font-size:100%;">h</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e </span><span style="font-size:100%;">m</span><span style="font-size:100%;">o</span><span style="font-size:100%;">r</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e </span><span style="font-size:100%;">f</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e</span><span style="font-size:100%;">a</span><span style="font-size:100%;">t</span><span style="font-size:100%;">u</span><span style="font-size:100%;">r</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e</span><span style="font-size:100%;">s </span><span style="font-size:100%;">y</span><span style="font-size:100%;">o</span><span style="font-size:100%;">u </span><span style="font-size:100%;">a</span><span style="font-size:100%;">d</span><span style="font-size:100%;">d </span><span style="font-size:100%;">w</span><span style="font-size:100%;">i</span><span style="font-size:100%;">l</span><span style="font-size:100%;">l </span><span style="font-size:100%;">n</span><span style="font-size:100%;">o</span><span style="font-size:100%;">t </span><span style="font-size:100%;">m</span><span style="font-size:100%;">a</span><span style="font-size:100%;">k</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e </span><span style="font-size:100%;">i</span><span style="font-size:100%;">t </span><span style="font-size:100%;">b</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e</span><span style="font-size:100%;">t</span><span style="font-size:100%;">t</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e</span><span style="font-size:100%;">r</span><span style="font-size:100%;">, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">s</span><span style="font-size:100%;">o </span><span style="font-size:100%;">w</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e </span><span style="font-size:100%;">n</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e</span><span style="font-size:100%;">d </span><span style="font-size:100%;">t</span><span style="font-size:100%;">o </span><span style="font-size:100%;">r</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e</span><span style="font-size:100%;">m</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e</span><span style="font-size:100%;">m</span><span style="font-size:100%;">b</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e</span><span style="font-size:100%;">r </span><span style="font-size:100%;">a</span><span style="font-size:100%;">s </span><span style="font-size:100%;">a</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> motivation that: simplicity sells.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-54734792754856424082010-06-04T06:51:00.000-07:002010-06-04T07:07:28.845-07:00John Francis walks the Earth<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">By Sam T.<br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><!--copy and paste--><object height="326" width="446"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/JohnFrancis_2008-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/JohnFrancis-2008.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=391&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=john_francis_walks_the_earth;year=2008;theme=a_greener_future;theme=to_boldly_go;theme=unconventional_explanations;event=TED2008;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/JohnFrancis_2008-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/JohnFrancis-2008.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=391&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=john_francis_walks_the_earth;year=2008;theme=a_greener_future;theme=to_boldly_go;theme=unconventional_explanations;event=TED2008;" height="326" width="446"></embed></object><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">To begin, the video being analyzed is called "John Francis walks the earth." From watching this video, I have developed thoughts about the video to which I believe that the ideas and concepts used in the video can be seen differently. I strongly disagree with what John has stated throughout his presentation. In the duration, of this essay I will clearly demonstrate why I feel this way towards John’s speech. </span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">In summary of the video, John Francis starts off his speech by explaining why he started his action to develop a healthier and cleaner environment. John had experienced two oil tanks that collided together resulting in all the oil spilling throughout the water. John didn’t like what he saw, so therefore John had decided to not drive an automobile or talk for seventeen years. He felt by not talking or driving an automobile that he would be making a great change to the earth. John also believed that with his actions towards the environment he would be decreasing global warming and increasing the knowledge of society. John concludes throughout his speech that he has a great respect for the world and also respect for others. From John’s speech, the comparison between the respect to the environment and respect towards others is defined thoroughly throughout. In conclusion, by the end of John’s speech he concludes that he sees the worlds by if people have a great respect of others than people will also have a great respect for the environment. For example, if a citizen treated others with great respect then the citizen would be respectful to the environment. Also, John had concluded that we have to become activists in saving our Earth. </span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">Therefore, from making conclusions based on the video, I strongly disagree with John’s thoughts and results towards respecting others will result in having a great respect for the environment. For example, I feel that a person will respect others but will not have respect for the environment. In other words, a citizen will listen, support and communicate positively towards others but also not do good things to the environment. Some negative actions that a citizen would do to not respect the environment would be not recycle or vandalize public buildings or driving to a place when walking can be done. On the other hand, I believe John did a great job engaging the audience by playing his banjo. By John playing the banjo, he had the audience’s attention from the beginning and allowed for the audience to understand what John was saying. Also, John as a speaker, I felt was not interesting enough to keep my attention throughout the whole presentation. John did take a long time to get his views and thoughts across about saving the environment. From the presentation, John has talked more about his journey not talking or driving an automobile than the connection to the environment. To conclude, the presentation from John was not a clearly understood speech in relation to saving the environment. </span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">To illustrate, why I am strongly disagreeing with what John had talked about in his presentation four direct proofs from the presentation will be analyzed. First, John didn’t talk for seventeen years including to his family and friends. He had ended all his communication with his peers. Therefore, John would have not heard his own voice for seventeen years. Not talking for that amount of time would have not done anything for the environment in order to clean up the Earth. Second, John had discussed walking for the environment throughout his presentation. From John’s speech he thought that other people would have followed John throughout his journey to become activists in making the world a better place. John didn’t conclude in his speech that other people followed in his direction. Therefore, the actions that John accomplished didn’t develop a large population to respect the environment. Thirdly, John had taught a class without talking to the class and just using signs to teach the class a lesson. To me, that would be a very distracting class and I would not be able to develop a great knowledge on the topic being taught. As a teacher, teaching a class by speaking would allow the class to develop a great knowledge towards saving the environment. I don’t understand why John felt that not talking would allow the environment to become a better and healthier location for people to live in. Lastly, I believe that the metaphor, if no one is around to hear a tree falling does it make a sound clearly described the actions to which John portrayed throughout his journey to become an activist. As stated before, how does not talking enable people to have a greater knowledge for saving the Earth? To conclude, I feel that John wasted seventeen years trying to save the world and become an activist but really he didn’t have an impact on the environment. </span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> </p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">In summary, John Francis did do a great job grabbing the audience’s attention in the beginning with his musical instrument but was unable to keep the attention throughout his presentation. Also, the points that John presented throughout his speech I believe were not truly stated. I believe that a person can respect others and not have respect towards the environment, or a person can have respect for the environment but doesn’t have to have respect for others. I strongly believe that a person will act upon certain situations depending on how the person was brought up throughout their childhood. </span></span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-57340095348799588642010-05-30T18:50:00.000-07:002010-05-30T19:00:18.554-07:00Aimee Mullins on running<div style="text-align: right;">By Amber H.<br /></div><br /><!--copy and paste--><object width="334" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/AimeeMullins_1998-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/AimeeMullins-1998.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=443&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=aimee_mullins_on_running;year=1998;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;theme=master_storytellers;theme=ted_under_30;theme=medicine_without_borders;event=TED1998;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/AimeeMullins_1998-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/AimeeMullins-1998.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=443&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=aimee_mullins_on_running;year=1998;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;theme=master_storytellers;theme=ted_under_30;theme=medicine_without_borders;event=TED1998;" width="334" height="326"></embed></object><br /><br />Aimee Mullins is a remarkable young women who has achieved a great amount for having a disability. She expresses her difficulty in her running journey and explains how she overcomes it.<div> <br />Miss Mullins is a double amputee she was born without fibula's in both legs and overcomes surgery when she was a year old. During her years of growing up she was involved in softball and skiing. After she was finished high school she got accepted into Georgetown in the foreign service program. Since she had played sports through out her high school career she was getting a little edgy on not playing any sports in college. When she got to her college, she started getting a little bit interested in track and field. She had never competed on a disabled level even for having a disability. Since she had never run any distances before, she flew to Boston and ran a fifty meter run. After she was completely breathless. For the remaining of her legs she wore a leg that was made of wood and plastic attached with Velcro straps. Underneath the wooden/plastic leg she wore giant wool socks, the combination of wooden legs and wool socks isn't the most comfortable thing to wear when running but it's all she's ever known. When she approached the race, looking at her competition she thought "well, we all know who's going to lose this race", but still didn't give up her confidence. She saw something before her race that was completely remarkable. A man with one leg hoping towards the high jump and cleared it at six feet two inches, with one leg. Mullins compared herself to the man with one leg; with her heart pounding she lined up for her race and began to run. When she finished the race, she placed first. She beat the national record by three hundredths of a second and became the new national record holder on her first try-out. She continues about how she needs more training and calls the track coach in Georgetown who has coached many Olympians. She started training with him, and by the winter time of '95 she was invited to run on the women's track team. She ran in a competition which happened to be a championship - the Big East. Mullins explains that while she's running the sweat acts like a lubricant and almost launches her out of her leg. She begged her coach not to let her run the next race "so what if your leg falls off, you pick it back up and finish the race!" She showed the audience her different types of legs, which was actually quite interesting.</div> <br />In my opinion I think this talk was very well done except the volume of the audio. Anything they said was very hard to hear because the volume had to be turned up. Other than the issue with hearing the presentation, I found this talk very interesting. If this was me personally in her situation I would not have been able to overcome my disability and pursue a career in the field where I'm most disabled in. I thought she handled the loss of her legs exceptionally, even though it was something she was born with. Having to deal with the comparison of her to everyone else would have been hard for me to handle, but she dealt with her problem and even overachieved. Sometimes during her presentation she would involve the audience while telling her story. The only other thing she did to grasp the attention of the audience was showing them the different types of legs she has. One of the things that interested me the most was her different types of legs for different types of events. She had a leg that does not look anything like legs for running, and has one of the only pair of natural looking legs that actually look real in the world. Overall, I thought her presentation was rated a seven out of ten.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-86368347654531781862010-05-30T18:46:00.000-07:002010-05-30T18:48:51.542-07:00Lalitesh Katragadda: Making maps to fight disaster, build economies<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: right;">By Stephen M.<br /></div><br /><!--copy and paste--><object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/LaliteshKattragadda_2009I-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/LaliteshKattraquadda-2009I.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=736&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=lalitesh_katragadda_making_maps_to_fight_disaster_build;year=2009;theme=design_like_you_give_a_damn;theme=the_rise_of_collaboration;theme=a_taste_of_tedindia;theme=ted_in_3_minutes;event=TEDIndia+2009;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/LaliteshKattragadda_2009I-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/LaliteshKattraquadda-2009I.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=736&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=lalitesh_katragadda_making_maps_to_fight_disaster_build;year=2009;theme=design_like_you_give_a_damn;theme=the_rise_of_collaboration;theme=a_taste_of_tedindia;theme=ted_in_3_minutes;event=TEDIndia+2009;" width="446" height="326"></embed></object><br /><br />Lalitesh Katragadda begins his talk with a reference to Cyclone Nargis, a tropical storm that hit Myanmar in May 2008. He goes on to explain the meaning of his talk: that maps are an important part of disaster relief and economic growth. In this piece of writing I will summarize the talk, how it was presented, reaction and my personal opinion along with a recommendation.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />As I stated before, the presentation is initiated by a reference to Cyclone Nargis. He describes how maps could have played a crucial role in assisting victims of the disaster. Sadly, no maps were available for UN personnel. Katragadda describes the problems that this created "But there were no maps, no maps of roads,no maps showing hospitals, no way for help to reach the cyclone victims." He then states an astounding fact to the audience "When we look at a map of Los Angeles, or London it is hard to believe that as of 2005 only 15 percent of the world was mapped to a geocodable level of detail." This brings him to Google's response to the crisis "At Google, 40 volunteers used a new software to map 120,000 kilometers of roads, 3,000 hospitals, logistics and relief points. And it took them four days. The new software they used? Google Mapmaker." Google mapmaker allows people to map their local surroundings that is then added to the huge database of maps. He uses the ideals of Nobel Prize winner Hernado De Soto to emphasize his point that mapping land can still help people: " For example, a trillion dollars of real estate remains uncapitalized in India alone." He then shows some maps being created by Google mapmaker users at the moment of the talk. Lalitesh ends his presentation with a testament to the success of the program "This is an invitation to the 70 percent of our unmapped planet. Welcome to the new world."<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Katragadda's opening statements to his talk are related to his point that maps can be used to ward off the effects of a natural disaster. He describes how the cyclone's victims suffered due to the lack of accurate geographical documentation that would have allowed United Nation's aid into Myanmar. He then uses drastic percent of the world that is not mapped (85%) to ensure the audiences interest in the topic. This is followed by more figures proclaiming the effects of the 40 volunteers that illustrate how fast maps can be made with Google Mapmaker. He then moves on to his second topic: That maps can be used to build both developing and developed country's economies. Katragadda is a big fan of numbers as more of them prove his point here when he reveals the monetary potential for land in India (over a trillion dollars). Lalitesh ends his talk by referring back to his original statement that only 15 percent of the world was mapped in 2005 with a surprising new number "This is an invitation to the 70 percent of our unmapped planet. Welcome to the new world." This was the most tastefully done part of the talk in my opinion due not only to the reference of one of the opening statements, but also by the phenomenal increase in the sheer amount that was mapped in that time! </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />I believe that Katragadda presented with a fair degree of effectiveness though wasn't engaging enough with the audience and relied heavily on cue cards. The engagement was lost mainly though the absence of bodily movement, tone, and humor. On the contrary, the statistics were impressive and the slides that he used gave insight on not only the conditions that the victims face but how Google Maps look when being built. The online crowd seemed more interested in the technology than the actual talk so I estimate that his goal of getting people interested in the program succeeded. Overall I would rate this performance as a 7 out of 10 due to the stated reasons.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />To conclude this report, I would like to recommend this talk to someone who is interested in being part of a collaborative map making group or interested in them, anyone wanting to enhance their knowledge of geography, and people wondering how to assist in disaster relief efforts online. I think that the talk elaborated as well as it could on the point in its 2:55 span but would be greatly ameliorated by adding more gestures and humor.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-87177108295052283642010-05-30T18:36:00.000-07:002010-05-30T18:38:22.556-07:00Rives on 4 a.m.<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: right;">By Kayla H.<br /></div><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><!--copy and paste--><object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/Rives_4AM_2007-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/Rives-4AM-2007.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=148&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=rives_on_4_a_m;year=2007;theme=art_unusual;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=the_creative_spark;theme=spectacular_performance;theme=whipsmart_comedy;event=TED2007;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/Rives_4AM_2007-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/Rives-4AM-2007.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=148&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=rives_on_4_a_m;year=2007;theme=art_unusual;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=the_creative_spark;theme=spectacular_performance;theme=whipsmart_comedy;event=TED2007;" width="446" height="326"></embed></object><br /><br />Four in the morning... some people consider 3 a.m. to be the latest someone could stay up to, while to others 5 a.m. in the morning being the earliest someone would have to get up at during the day. So 4 a.m. being stuck in the middle; what really happens at that time? "Did you ever notice that four in the morning has become some sort of meme or shorthand?<span style="font-size:85%;"> It means something like you are awake at the worst possible hour. A time for inconveniences, mishaps, yearnings..." that line really says it all, as to what Rives has noticed about the time four in the morning.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:85%;">"I've crossed a lot of different media from a lot of big names.</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">And it made me suspicious. </span><span style="font-size:85%;">I figured, surely some of the most creative artistic minds in the world, really,</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">aren't all defaulting back to this one easy trope</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">like they invented it, right?</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">Could it be there is something more going on here? </span><span style="font-size:85%;">Something deliberate, something secret,</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">and who got the four in the morning bad rap ball rolling anyway?" Rives states. But really, after he says this, it does make you wonder even more than before. How did the mentioning of 4 a.m. really begin? Rives says</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">Alberto Giacometti, an artist known to have sculpted the famous piece, "The Palace at Four in the Morning" in 1932, which is found at <span style="font-size:85%;">the New York Museum of Modern Art</span>. Although, this is not the earliest piece of evidence that he has found involving four in the morning, but he explains that this piece of evidence, to his knowledge, is believed to be the key to other artists' relations to four in the morning, and he has called it the "The Giacometti Code, a TED exclusive".</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />It works a little something like this: "This is a recent Google search </span><span style="font-size:85%;">for four in the morning.</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">Results vary, of course. This is pretty typical.</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">The top 10 results yield you</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">four hits for Faron Young's song, "It's Four in the Morning,"</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">three hits for Judi Dench's film, "Four in the Morning,"</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">one hit for Wislawa Szymborska's poem, "Four in the Morning.""</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">So what is the relation between a Polish poet, a British Dame, a country music hall of famer </span><span style="font-size:85%;">besides this totally excellent Google ranking? "Well, let's start with Faron Young -- who was born, incidentally, in 1932. In 1996, he shot </span><span style="font-size:85%;">himself in the head on December ninth -- which incidentally is Judi Dench's birthday. But he didn't die on Dench's birthday. He languished until the following afternoon when he finally succumbed to a supposedly self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 64 -- which, incidentally, is how old Alberto Giacometti was when he died. Where was Wislawa Szymborska during all this? She has the world's most absolutely watertight alibi. On that very day, December 10, 1996 while Mr. Four in the Morning, Faron Young, was giving up the ghost in Nashville, Tennessee, Ms. Four in the Morning -- or one of them anyway -- Wislawa Szymborska was in Stockholm, Sweden, accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature. 100 years to the day after the death of Alfred Nobel himself. Coincidence? No, it's creepy. Coincidence to me has a much simpler magic. That's like me telling you, 'Hey, you know the Nobel Prize was established in 1901, which coincidentally is the same year Alberto Giacometti was born?'" This connection that Rives has made can not be taken as a coincidence. At first maybe, but when he shows solid evidence of how these 3 people are connected in relation to four in the morning, it's hard to disagree.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Throughout the rest of his presentation, Rives continues to give evidence towards four in the morning. One of his examples being a clip from the Simpson's. The clip showed the Simpson's family at a resort, and Homer asks the guy who is showing them around "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait -- let me see if I got this straight. It is Christmas Day, 4 a.m. There's a rumble in my stomach." Rives stops the clip and says to the audience that "When Homer Simpson needs to imagine the most remote possible moment of not just the clock, but the whole freaking calendar, he comes up with 0400 on the birthday of the Baby Jesus. And no, I don't know how it works into the whole puzzling scheme of things, but obviously, I know a coded message when I see one." This clip shows even more evidence towards four in the morning.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><span style="font-size:85%;">Overall, Rives demonstrates a strong ability to present in front of an audience. He sounds confident in what he is talking about, especially when it came towards "The Giacometti Code". He shows numerous pieces of evidence, making the audience wonder more and more about four in the morning. "The Giacometti Code" for example, is not something that you could just stumble across and find a connection between with all 3 persons, all linking back to four in the morning. It would require a lot of research, and when he presented this code, I found that the evidence was hard not to believe. With evidence such as this being presented, Rives makes the audience give off a mix of emotions, myself included. Mostly in curiosity, but laughter as well, because you've got to admit, "The Giacometti Code" does sound a little strange, but Rives does make the audience understand after he presents. </span><span style="font-size:85%;">In summary, I found that this talk had solid evidence, and it made me wonder more about four in the morning as well. I can also agree that even before this talk, I thought four in the morning really did seem like an odd time to be up at. And now that I've watched this talk, with the evidence behind it, I can agree even more.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-80580711672373838222010-05-30T18:20:00.000-07:002010-05-30T18:22:27.921-07:00Ron Eglash on African fractals<p style="text-align: right;">By Makayla L.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><!--copy and paste--><object width="334" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/RonEglash_2007G-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/RonEglash-2007G.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=198&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=ron_eglash_on_african_fractals;year=2007;theme=inspired_by_nature;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=architectural_inspiration;theme=numbers_at_play;theme=africa_the_next_chapter;theme=how_we_learn;event=TEDGlobal+2007;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/RonEglash_2007G-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/RonEglash-2007G.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=198&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=ron_eglash_on_african_fractals;year=2007;theme=inspired_by_nature;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=architectural_inspiration;theme=numbers_at_play;theme=africa_the_next_chapter;theme=how_we_learn;event=TEDGlobal+2007;" width="334" height="326"></embed></object><br /></p><p>Dr. Ron <span class="misspell" suggestions="English,Eyelash,Clash,Galosh,Goulash">Eglash</span> is a mathematician that studies how math and cultures from around the world are connected with one another. His profession is called <span class="misspell" suggestions="Ethan,ethane,ethanol,ethnic,Eton">ethno</span>-mathematics. In his presentation, Dr. <span class="misspell" suggestions="English,Eyelash,Clash,Galosh,Goulash">Eglash</span> starts by giving his audience some background knowledge of how “fractals,” which are mathematical patterns, were discovered. He tells the audience about how he, when doing research, noticed fractals exist throughout many African villages. Wanting to learn more about his discovery, he earned a year scholarship to travel around Africa and explore different towns' and villages' architectural structures, patterns, etc. On a daily basis he would travel village to village. He would ask people (in his very poor French) if he could stand on top of their buildings to catch a better glimpse of the structures for his research, and of course the nice African people would let him. He noticed the same patterns over and over again in every structure. Dr. <span class="misspell" suggestions="English,Eyelash,Clash,Galosh,Goulash">Eglash</span> started to ask himself how this was possible and he describes it as “absolutely mind blowing.” These buildings were built way before the late mathematicians had discovered any sort of fractal so how could this possibly be? What he did was he started to ask people in the African villages how they thought the patterns had started. He normally got the answer, “it just looks good that way,” or something along those lines. Another day, he went to the chief of a palace in a small village and asked if he could stand on the roof. The two went up to the roof and they started talking about how the rooms within the palace were fractals. The chief said, “Oh yes, we know all about the rectangles within rectangles.” Dr. <span class="misspell" suggestions="English,Eyelash,Clash,Galosh,Goulash">Eglash</span> later went on to find out that in the Royal Insignia, there is a path which is shaped as a spiral. To get closer to the middle, you have to become more and more polite, so not only are they using this for mapping the social scale, but it is also geometric scaling at the same time without knowing it when it was built. Dr. <span class="misspell" suggestions="English,Eyelash,Clash,Galosh,Goulash">Eglash</span> looked into other cultures and different parts of the world’s designs, but only Africa managed to have fractal patterns. He found out that these patterns were not made from mathematical sense, but from Self-Organizing Algorithms, which are very important in today’s life. He discovered that every little digital circuit of technology we use today, started in Africa through these Self-Organizing Algorithms. Things we use everyday like Google, <span class="misspell" suggestions="PAD,PD,DA,PA,PTA">PDA</span>’s, and cell phones. I think that this is a discovery Dr. <span class="misspell" suggestions="English,Eyelash,Clash,Galosh,Goulash">Eglash</span> should be very proud of and his name will for sure be going into the books for this. </p><p>I thought that Dr. <span class="misspell" suggestions="English,Eyelash,Clash,Galosh,Goulash">Eglash</span> delivered his presentation with a very clear voice. He stood by his computer and showed the audience a number of examples of fractals and discoveries he had come up with that were very effective. He gives an example to the audience so that they can connect to what he is saying by showing them that fractals exist within their fingers and other parts of the body. This is a very good way to get the audience involved and he did it at the start which hooked them into the rest of the speech. However, through his speech, he does not leave his podium once, which makes the speech boring and stiff. He does use hand gestures quite a bit as well. Other speakers I have seen really catch the attention of the audience by walking around while presenting and make eye contact with the audience throughout the presentation. His presentation lacked this. He also made too many references to discoveries of other mathematicians, which I found to be extremely boring. His word choice was very creative and structured and let me know that he is a very intelligent man. I felt that some of the mathematics he was explaining to the audience could have been explained more thoroughly. All in all, I think that Dr. <span class="misspell" suggestions="English,Eyelash,Clash,Galosh,Goulash">Eglash</span> had a fairly decent presentation in my mind, and I would like to see him progress in his research and listen to another amazing discovery being unraveled by him one day. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-22191928959333286092010-05-30T18:09:00.000-07:002010-05-30T18:12:19.802-07:00Nate Silver: Does race affect votes?<p style="font-family: Times New Roman; text-align: right;">By Jake Mc.<br /></p><p face="Times New Roman"><!--copy and paste--><object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/NateSilver_2009-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/NateSilver-2009.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=521&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=nate_silver_on_race_and_politics;year=2009;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;theme=ted_under_30;theme=unconventional_explanations;theme=how_the_mind_works;event=TED2009;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/NateSilver_2009-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/NateSilver-2009.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=521&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=nate_silver_on_race_and_politics;year=2009;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;theme=ted_under_30;theme=unconventional_explanations;theme=how_the_mind_works;event=TED2009;" width="446" height="326"></embed></object><br /></p><p style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In this talk, math whiz, Nate Silver, has answers and conclusions to controversial questions of how race affects politics. The stats from previous elections and myths collide in this talk that leaves you puzzled about how race affects votes? However it seems to bring another question out of this topic.</p><p style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Nate Silver opens by telling us that he wants to talk about the election involving John McCain and Barrack Obama. He presents stats from the election results; mostly about the victor, Barrack Obama. He compares <span class="misspell" suggestions="IBM's,Obama,ABMs,Asama's,Baum's">Obama's</span> results to the election of Democrat, John Kennedy, by showing us political maps of the victors of each state and also the election map of 1996 when the Democrats were last in power of the White House. He draws his first comparisons when he shows the 2008 election map is more controlled by the Democrats as the map is mostly blue, from the 2004 map that is mostly dominated by the red Republicans and the 1996 map controlled by the Democrats. He shows this comparison so later on in the presentation he can refer to it and make conclusions about why he believes that some factors could perhaps contribute to how race affects votes. Silver then tells us "We know that race was a factor." He backs this up by telling us that out of 50 states 37 conducted polls and ask,"In deciding your vote for President today, was the race of the candidate a factor?". This is a fairly direct question about race and overall many votes were directed towards either candidate because of race; however since Barrack Obama being the victor and an African American he was the focus of many votes being not directed toward him. Silver back this up by sharing with us: "In Louisiana, about one in five white voters said", "Yes, one of the big reasons why I voted against Barack Obama is because he was an African-American." So Silver does have primary sources from the people of Louisiana. Silver then starts to compares the 1996 election map results to the results of the 2008 map. He first tells us that the democrats both won the elections but he's more focused on the Southern States where Obama did slightly worst then the 1996 election. From this Silver pulls out many factors of why race in fact could affect Barrack <span class="misspell" suggestions="IBM's,Obama,ABMs,Asama's,Baum's">Obama's</span> running in the election. First he states <span style="font-size:100%;">"</span><span style="font-size:100%;">states like Arkansas and Tennessee is tha</span><span style="font-size:100%;">t they're both very rural, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and they are educationally-impoverished.</span><span style="font-size:100%;">" Silver backs up this statement by telling us that "</span><span style="font-size:100%;">you see the states with the fewest years of schooling </span><span style="font-size:100%;">per adult, are in red,</span><span style="font-size:100%;">" Silver <span class="misspell" suggestions="be lives,be-lives,believes,believers,beliefs">believes</span> that more rural <span class="misspell" suggestions="neighborhoods,neighbourhoods,neighborhood's,neighbourhood's">neighborhoods</span> with less diversified races are more likely to adapt these trends of racial based voting, and with neighborhoods that are more diversified, like a Smarties box, tend to most likely not adopt these trends. This brings Silver to his next question, "is racism really predictable?" Silver then tells us that this is great news that racism is as predictable as he stated. " You can start thinking about solutions to solving that problem." This is very encouraging for all races so everybody in America can live in harmony. Silver gives suggestions how we can solve the problem from the roots and solve the behaviour trends of racism based voting. Overall, Nate Silver uses past election results to compare to the most recent to see if there is a race trend.</span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">What I thought first about this talk was the question in the title, dose race affect votes? Yes it certainly affects votes. What I also agreed with was that racism base voting was found in the Southern States like Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana. What made me believe this is the history of those States, from the first Klan to the private organization's that still exist today expressing their beliefs of white supremacy. I also felt that Nate Silvers delivery of this presentation was quick to the plate as he tells us straight away " I want to talk about the election"</span></p><div style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:Times New Roman;" ><p><span style="font-size:100%;">Overall I felt Nate Silver had taken on a subject that didn't interest him like his favourite sport baseball, but he uses techniques and facts just like his baseball fantasy games to help him draw conclusions and watch myths collide in the exciting game of politics. If you are interested in politics and how one's race can effect the results of any election I suggest watching this video.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-76958576313582612112010-05-29T19:08:00.000-07:002010-05-29T19:10:04.682-07:00Jose Abreu on kids transformed by music<!--copy and paste--><div style="text-align: right;">By Evan T.<br /></div><br /><object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/JoseAntonioAbreu_2009-stream-Prize_xxlow.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/JoseAntonioAbreu-2009.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=464&introDuration=21000&adDuration=0&postAdDuration=0&adKeys=talk=jose_abreu_on_kids_transformed_by_music;year=2009;theme=rethinking_poverty;theme=speaking_at_ted2009;theme=spectacular_performance;theme=ted_prize_winners;theme=ted_under_30;theme=the_creative_spark;event=TED2009;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/JoseAntonioAbreu_2009-stream-Prize_xxlow.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/JoseAntonioAbreu-2009.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=464&introDuration=21000&adDuration=0&postAdDuration=0&adKeys=talk=jose_abreu_on_kids_transformed_by_music;year=2009;theme=rethinking_poverty;theme=speaking_at_ted2009;theme=spectacular_performance;theme=ted_prize_winners;theme=ted_under_30;theme=the_creative_spark;event=TED2009;" width="446" height="326"></embed></object><br /><p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">In this TED talk, Jose Abreu talks about his music program El Sistema, and what it has done for the poorer children of Venezuela and how music is so important in the life of a child.<br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Jose Abreu starts off by telling how he is overjoyed that he has been awarded the TED prize. He then begins talking about how in his childhood, he always wanted to be a musician and that he thanks God that he did make it as one. He had all the necessary support from his teachers, family, and his community; and that all of his life he has hoped that all children in Venezuela have the opportunity that he had. It was from that desire that the idea for the program and to make music a deep and global reality for the children of his country came from.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Jose then tells about the first rehearsal, and how he saw the bright future ahead because of the challenge that it meant for him. At the first rehearsal he had received a donation of 50 music stands to be used by 100 boys, but when he arrived only 11 children had shown up. At that moment Jose thought to himself whether he should close the program or multiply these kids, and he decided to face the challenge. He made a promise to those kids to turn their orchestra into one of the leading orchestras in the world. Jose remembered that promise when he read an article mentioning four great world orchestras and the fifth was the Venezuela’s youth Symphony Orchestra, which meant that art in Latin America is no longer a monopoly of elites and that it has become a right for all people. The talk then gives a clip of a member of the Orchestra saying that in this program there is no difference between classes and that the only things that matter are that if you have talent and vocation.<br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Abreu then talks about how he has seen in the recent tours, how their music has moved the audiences greatly, and how the public would greet the people in triumph and that it has been an artistic triumph and an emotional symphony between the public of the most advanced nations of the world and the musical youth of Latin America.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Jose then talks about how El Sistema helps kids improve their lives and who they are. Jose talks about how the orchestra and choir teach more than just learning artistic structure and they also are a place where kids can learn how to be more social. A quote I liked that Jose said was, “</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">to sing and to play together <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">means to intimately coexist</span> toward perfection and excellence.” He then talks about how it helps your self-esteem, which I agree with because I have noticed it in myself when I play in music class or when I jam with my friends; it helps you get rid of the nervousness you get around others, because each practice you have to play your instrument in front of everyone in the class, or when I am jamming with friends, I have to get over what they might think of my playing in order to play good music. I also agree with what he then says about music being important in the forging of values in the children, because I know from experience that from when I first started getting really into music to now, I would say I have better values than I did before.</span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Calibri;font-size:100%;" >Jose Abreu talks now about how each teenager and child in El Sistema has their own story, and particularly talks about two kids named Edicson Ruiz and Gustavo Dudamel. Edicson Ruiz came from a parish in Caracas. He was passionate about music and taking his double bass lessons at the San Agustin’s Junior Orchestra. Edicson had full support from his family and community and became an important member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Gustavo started as a young member of the children’s orchestra in his hometown and grew as a violinist and conductor, and today he conducted the finest orchestras in the world. “He’s an unbeatable example for the young musicians of Latin America and the world,” says Jose.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Calibri;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-size:100%;">Jose then goes on to talk about how El Sistema teaches the children to be a role model for even their parents. This is very important, because if the child realizes they are important to the family, they want to improve themselves and their community, which is a great thing. Also, when kids become good at something, in this case playing an instrument, they want to be better at other things, and help others get better and embrace their dreams and goals.</span><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Calibri;font-size:100%;" >One thing that I disagree with that Jose goes on to talk about and say is; “only art and religion can give proper answers to humanity.” I don’t agree with this because of the part about religion, because religion is the worst tool to use when seeking answers to humanity in my opinion because with the amount of beliefs in the world today, you can never know which is true or if any of them are true.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Calibri;font-size:100%;" >Jose Abreu finishes his talk off with another thank you and showing of his appreciation to TED for being awarded the TED prize. The talk then goes live to Caracas to get Jose Abreu’s TED prize wish. Jose Abreu said, “I wish that you help to create and document a special training program for 50 gifted young musicians passionate about their art and social justice and dedicated to bringing El Sistema to the United States and other countries.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Calibri;font-size:100%;" >Jose Abreu was a very good speaker, despite the language difference and that I had to watch the subtitles, I could hear that he spoke with emotion and showed passion for what he was talking about. Also, throughout the talk Jose uses great hand gestures which were effective in showing his passion for what he has done.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Calibri;font-size:100%;" >In conclusion, I think that what Jose Abreu has done and is doing with El Sistema is wonderful and I hope his TED wish comes true.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-86334934691782339942010-05-29T18:49:00.000-07:002010-05-29T18:51:40.800-07:00Marcus du Sautoy: Symmetry, reality's riddle<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >By Robert C.<br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><!--copy and paste--><object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/MarcusduSautoy_2009G-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/MarcusduSautoy-2009G.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=670&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=marcus_du_sautoy_symmetry_reality_s_riddle;year=2009;theme=inspired_by_nature;theme=art_unusual;theme=numbers_at_play;theme=architectural_inspiration;event=TEDGlobal+2009;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/MarcusduSautoy_2009G-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/MarcusduSautoy-2009G.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=670&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=marcus_du_sautoy_symmetry_reality_s_riddle;year=2009;theme=inspired_by_nature;theme=art_unusual;theme=numbers_at_play;theme=architectural_inspiration;event=TEDGlobal+2009;" width="446" height="326"></embed></object><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >In this Ted Talk, University of Oxford mathematician, Marcus du Sautoy, explains how the world connects all of its places and items through symmetry. Sautoy states the world revolves around symmetry, and he theorizes that our physical and mental desires are heavily influenced by symmetry. </span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Marcus du Sautoy claims that people instinctively desire to be symmetrical. One of his first examples is a picture of a woman and man, in their normal body. He proceeds to show and compare the normal picture to a revamped symmetrical version of the photo. The symmetrical version is much more attractive he claims, as it is closing in on mankind’s general desire to be perfect, or complete. He then dives into the math and science of symmetry, further divulging the main types of symmetry: reflective and rotational. Reflective symmetry is shown through a mirror, or water; it replicates an image through reflection. Rotational symmetry is when an object can be spun in any direction but still remains the same shape as before. However, he claims there is one other kind of symmetry. This other symmetry is “Zero Symmetry.” This is when the object is only moved in height; up and down, and does not change from its previous form. Sautoy finishes by acknowledging that non-symmetry makes buildings, places, and people more interesting, borrowing this knowledge from a Japanese proverb. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Marcus du Sautoy is overall a very effective speaker. He is obviously experienced in giving lectures as he is a professor at Oxford, one of the world’s most prestigious universities. The long, uninterrupted talk he gave was one he has either done a lot, or he is very charismatic, evidenced by the many strong talking techniques he used. Sautoy capitalized on illustrating exciting stories related to symmetry, such as opening with a story about a young mathematician who created the main theory of symmetry being shot in a duel. His stories and humour were apparently effective, shown through the audience’s obvious engrossment in his speech. Finally, at the beginning of his talk he gave the audience an idea to consider for the whole talk (an idea about how many symmetries a rubic's cube contained) and this just made the listeners happier to be involved. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"> <br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">To conclude, this talk proved to be very interesting and educational. Marcus du Sautoy did a wonderful job on giving insight on the very confusing subject of symmetry, and my view on the world’s layout will be changed forever. </span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-59719843911884465992010-05-26T06:39:00.000-07:002010-05-26T06:46:23.611-07:00Benjamin Wallace on the price of happiness<!--copy and paste--><div style="text-align: right;">By Carlee C.</div><div><br /></div><object width="334" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/BenjaminWallace_2008P-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/BenjaminWallace-2008P.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=419&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=benjamin_wallace_on_the_price_of_happiness;year=2008;theme=unconventional_explanations;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=master_storytellers;event=Taste3+2008;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="334" height="326" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/BenjaminWallace_2008P-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/BenjaminWallace-2008P.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=419&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=benjamin_wallace_on_the_price_of_happiness;year=2008;theme=unconventional_explanations;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=master_storytellers;event=Taste3+2008;"></embed></object><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman', sans-serif; font-size: medium; ">Can money really buy happiness? Is the most expensive item often the best? In most cases, no, but we are just now starting to realize how our brains connect happiness with money. This is the focus of Bejamin Wallace's TED Talk.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mr. Wallace began his speech by explaining his incentive behind doing this study. "I became increasingly, kind of voyeuristically interested in the question of you know, why do people spend these crazy amounts of money, not only on wine but on lots of things, and are they living a better life than me?" To answer this question of his he, "...decided to embark on a quest. With the generous backing of a magazine I write for sometimes, I decided to sample the very best, or most expensive, or most coveted item in about a dozen categories." Some of the things he tested were; beef, clothing, vehicles, lavish deserts, and expensive hotels rooms. He reported that several of the food products that were advertised to be amazing were simply a disappointment. This also goes for clothing. The magazine paid for a pair of $800 pants made in Japan from organic materials and he had not received one complement during the period of 8 months. This just goes to show that no matter what the price is, the final outcome could be very similar as something of that same nature.</span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The main focus of Benjamin Wallace's talk was emphasizing his opinion on the many different products he tried. He did not explain why we are automatically drawn to the higher priced items. At the very end of his speech he gave some statistics and a study that was done to explain briefly the reasoning behind the thinking of the more expensive, the better. "...study which came out earlier this year from some researchers at Stanford and Caltech. And they gave subjects the same wine, labeled with different price tags. A lot of people, you know, said that they liked the more expensive wine more -- it was the same wine, but they thought it was a different one that was more expensive. But what was unexpected was that these researchers did MRI brain imaging while the people were drinking the wine, and not only did they say they enjoyed the more expensively labeled wine more -- their brain actually registered as experiencing more pleasure from the same wine when it was labeled with a higher price tag." Overall, he spoke clearly and confidently. He used humour and gave an entertaining speech. However, it was not very informative and did not have serve much of a purpose. </span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In conclusion, I do not believe that you can put a price on happiness. There are many ways manufacturers portray items to the public to persuade them that the more expensive products are always better. As we can see through Mr. Wallace's experience trying out the most "exquisite meals" and "comfiest beds," happiness cannot be bought. Although, happiness can be heavily influenced by expensive and lavish items.</span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-72055885816764265012010-05-26T06:34:00.000-07:002010-05-26T06:38:56.032-07:00Evan Williams on listening to Twitter users<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><p style="text-align: right;margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">By Rebecca C.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(255, 42, 6); white-space: pre; font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><!--copy and paste--><object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/EvanWilliams_2009-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/EvanWilliams-2009.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=473&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=evan_williams_on_listening_to_twitter_users;year=2009;theme=speaking_at_ted2009;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=not_business_as_usual;theme=words_about_words;event=TED2009;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="446" height="326" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/EvanWilliams_2009-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/EvanWilliams-2009.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=473&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=evan_williams_on_listening_to_twitter_users;year=2009;theme=speaking_at_ted2009;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=not_business_as_usual;theme=words_about_words;event=TED2009;"></embed></object></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Evan Williams has helped create one of the most popular communication sources of the 21</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">st</span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> century. It started from such a simple concept, and grew from media, from need for communication at times of natural disasters, and from the Twitter users themselves. Twitter has become something that millions rely on to express to the world serious news and issues or one’s own thoughts and feelings. It has been one more thing to shape the world of technology and Evan wants to share Twitter’s potential and all it has to offer on TED.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Evan Williams started out on a TED stage discussing his company, ODEO. This led to an article in the New York Times and other media attention. He became CEO of this company and hired an engineer, Jack Dorsey. When trying to decide where to go with ODEO, Jack pitched an idea he had for a side project. It was based around sending simple status updates to friends. Turns out, in 2006, ODEO launched Twitter as a side project that did exactly that. Evan was skeptical on whether it was a good idea to start up with a side project but he had experience from doing the same with another side project “Blogger” with his previous company. Blogger ended up taking over his life and the company itself. Evan says, “So I learned to follow hunches even though you can’t necessarily justify them or know what they are going to do. And that is what has happened with Twitter, time after time.” (Evan William | Video on TED.com)</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Twitter can be used for a variety of different messages, whether they are special occasions (Evan shows an example of news of a child being born) or mundane messages (Evan shows an example of someone tweeting “My phone fell in the toilet!”). People can say what they are doing or feeling in 140 characters or less and it makes them feel more connected to the world around them. This was what the company saw as the primary use, to help people stay in touch despite distance. They did not, however, realize the many other uses Twitter would become beneficial for. Evan says, “When the wildfires broke out in San Diego, in October of 2007, people turned to Twitter to report what was happening and to find information from neighbors about what was happening around them.” (Evan Williams). Not only was it individuals who used Twitter for these purposes but the L.A. Times, as well as the Fire Department and Red Cross started using it to dispense information and updates. Politicians have even started "Tweeting," including 47 members of congress who have Twitter accounts. At events or occasions, thousands of people follow on Twitter because they want to know what it feels like to be there or know what’s happening. </span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">One of Evan’s fascinations is how users have shaped Twitter. In the beginning, you could send out updates, and receive ones from people you were interested in, but people started to respond to other updates by putting a “@username” before their messages. Evan gives an example of Shaquille O’Neal using this to respond to one of his fans. This became popular and was created by the users themselves. Twitter didn’t actually build it into their system to make it easier until after it became so popular. Another is the API. Twitter has created an application programming interface that goes into pieces of software to send twitter updates. Now they have these in Mac, Windows, iPhones, Blackberrys, etc. There are even devices that will let an unborn baby Twitter when it kicks or a plant Twitter when it needs water. One of the biggest developments based on Twitter though, came from a little company in Virginia called Summize. They created a search engine just for Twitter and what everyone on Twitter has “tweeted.”</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Twitter has gone beyond what they originally had thought it was going to be; just a way to communicate with family and friends, and it has become a way for people to help one another. When there was a gas shortage in Atlanta, people would tweet when they found good gas so others could go where they had gone. Also, people on Twitter have raised money for homeless people, or have dug wells in Africa. “It seems like when you give people easier ways to share information, more good things happen.” (Evan Williams). Evan tells us that he doesn’t know where Twitter will go next… but he knows to always follow the hunch. After Evan says “Thanks” to his audience and dismisses himself, Chris Anderson comes onto the stage and brings Evan Williams back on. During Evan’s talk, Chris had gone onto Summize and searched Evan Williams. Chris pointed out that as Evan was speaking, already 50 people had “tweeted” about listening to Evan William’s talk! He points out that there is almost no other way to get instant feedback like that, and what Evan has helped created is a great and interesting thing. </span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">As much as Evan’s talk was fascinating, it was also a little monotone. Evan didn’t talk with a lot of expression in his voice and had no facial expression. I don’t know if I saw him smile once, or even change the look on his face. He didn’t connect with the audience very well and I think that affected his talk. He had pictures and picked tweets that gave humour to his talk but I felt that he didn’t display them in a humourous enough way. His pictures and his tweets were funny, but he was not. Evan Williams had good facts, and an interesting story on how Twitter started out from just a basic idea, but I don’t feel, with his lack of facial expression and lack of enthusiasm in his voice, that he was selling his company very well. He stood still for most of the presentation and didn’t use gimmicks, or a hook to reel the audience in.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0cm; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">All in all, Evan, with his facts, proved Twitter to be a world changing phenomenon. People all around the world use Twitter, and you can communicate with anyone! Our world is changing so fast and technology is a big part of that change. If we don’t learn how to communicate over these systems and help one another out in serious situations, we are going to fall far behind the rest of society. People don’t always know what they can do to help, but with systems like these, it makes it easier to help and easier to communicate with the rest of the world.</span></span></p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-6907448931819387832010-05-26T06:22:00.000-07:002010-05-26T06:37:58.558-07:00Frans Lanting's lyrical nature photos<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="text-align: right;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">By Luke D.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(255, 42, 6); white-space: pre; "><!--copy and paste--><object width="334" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/FransLanting_2005-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/FransLanting-2005.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=40&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=frans_lanting_s_lyrical_nature_photos;year=2005;theme=media_that_matters;theme=inspired_by_nature;theme=evolution_s_genius;theme=art_unusual;theme=animals_that_amaze;event=TED2005;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="334" height="326" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/FransLanting_2005-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/FransLanting-2005.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=40&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=frans_lanting_s_lyrical_nature_photos;year=2005;theme=media_that_matters;theme=inspired_by_nature;theme=evolution_s_genius;theme=art_unusual;theme=animals_that_amaze;event=TED2005;"></embed></object></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Frans Lanting is extremely talented. Not only is his photography incredible in quality and artistic vision, but his writing and oral communication creates a very engaging atmosphere. His commentary in his “Ted Talk” is both scientifically informative and artistically romantic. He also displays incredible talent in sharing his vision with the world, using whatever resources he has. How? Set to a beautiful new-age soundtrack by Philip Glass, Lanting shows us the history of life on our planet by using only photographs taken within the last century. Time travel may not be possible physically, but trust me, when you see Lanting’s slideshow, a part of you will be there. It goes a little something like this…</span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Some of the first pictures shown in Frans Lantings slide show don’t look like they are of Earth. Any volcanic planet from </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Star Wars</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> maybe, but not Earth. It was a simpler time. It was a hotter time. Until the heat from within resulted in the eruption of geysers, leading to the birth of the oceans. And then, as Lanting explains to us in his narration, something emerges from all of this. Like lighting in a clear sky, life appears. At first, the most simplistic of bacteria and </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">stromatolites, living, breathing structures created by the coming together of microorganisms. Then, Lanting suggests that meteors crashed into our planet, delivering the chemistry needed for life to create membranes. Life needs a membrane to contain itself in order to replicate itself and mutate. This led to the origins of plankton.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In the shallow seas of the days that followed, life advanced. Defensive and armored coral evolved. Jellyfish and sea cucumbers learned how to move by themselves. And with the first predators, the trilobites, came the first eyes. Life could now see the world that it had been living in, blindly, for millions of years. Horseshoe crabs improvised upon this vision (no pun intended) when they crawled upon land to lay their eggs, as they still do today, in an age where they don’t have to worry about massive sea scorpions following them.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Plants such as lichen and moss took the leap from water to land, transforming the barren, life-less landscape into a green wonderland. Eventually true land plants emerged from this garden, in the form of primitive ferns and foliage.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The trend of leaving the water caught on. Predators followed curious prey. Prey left behind aquatic predators. This is the time when the iconic image of the fish leaving behind the water came about. Some fish eventually abandoned the sea and evolved into amphibians. Amphibians became just as at home in swamps and floodplains as they were in the ocean. Photos of frogs almost completely submerged in mud and water illustrate this time period for us.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Then came a leathery skinned class of animals called the reptiles. With them, life had turned tough, with shells, spikes and scales so it could venture farther inland. As Lanting tells us with his photos, today’s leatherback turtles and lizard-like tuataras are echoes from the era of reptile dominance. He also illustrates to us that land-bound life still sometimes wants to go back to the ocean with a photo of massive tortoises wading around in a pond. Several awe-inspiring pictures of lizards such as Galapagos iguanas, chameleons, and thorny devils are presented to show just how diverse life was getting.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It didn’t take long for reptiles to become kings of the Earth. When the dinosaurs finally evolved, the Earths landscapes had become a breathtaking sight. Lanting shows us pictures of modern day Madagascar and Brazil. The landscapes that we are shown here are breathtaking and evoke thoughts of a lost world. And to think, they were taken in this century. The picture shown of a plain in Madagascar looks as if a herd of sauropods (long-necked dinosaurs) could be grazing in it. One of a sunset in Brazil would not look strange with a pterosaur in the sky. As Lanting says, “Jurassic park still shimmers.”</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">As any natural history buff will tell you, birds evolved from dinosaurs. The missing link between the two was a creature called Archaeopteryx that looked like a small, meat-eating dinosaur but with the wings and tail of a bird. In the introduction to birds, Lanting shows us the iconic fossil of the Archaeopteryx and then beautiful images of birds on wing. Sea birds, flamingos, and water fowl are shown soaring and migrating across a sky that very well could have belonged to the late Cretaceous period. He also shows us flightless birds such as the kiwis of New Zealand and a flightless species of hawk from islands close to Antarctica.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Birds were followed shortly after by flowering plants. These began as water lilies but later evolved into thousands of different species. Some even became trees like the silver sword plant in Hawaii and a grass tree of Australia. Frans moves on to the breaking up of Gondwana, a super continent that had contained Antarctica, South America, Australia, Africa, Madagascar, India and New Zealand. With this continental shift, a new diversity of plants and fungi emerged. Amazing flowers had begun to grow and develop genitalia for luring insects. We are shown the largest one on earth, the Rafflesia. Lanting also tells us of the interdependence between birds and insects to flowers and pollination with some awesome shots of hummingbirds.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Then from this Eden comes an apocalypse. Something, an asteroid perhaps, has caused the planet to go up in flames. We see amazing pictures of a volcanic lava field and forest fires to see how devastated the world was during this time. But, even with the world on fire, there were survivors. Crocodiles are captured, huddled together in the dark, waiting for the storm to end.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">When the dust and ashes cleared, it was a different world. The mighty saurian dynasty had all but been erased save for the birds and crocodiles. There was more room now. But for what? The answer lay hidden in burrows, underneath bushes and in the branches of the recovering trees…mammals. At first in tiny forms like shrews and tenrecs. But it wasn’t too long before mammals became the new rulers of the world in as many shapes and sizes as one could imagine. Bats began to fly in the sky. Small creatures like civets developed in forests. Predators like the ones we know today began to develop. Images of hyenas and cheetahs illustrate what life was producing at this time.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Grasslands appeared all over the world and created new ways of life for mammals. Living in herds was a good way to develop sharpened senses. In the cases of giraffes and elephants, growing big was the answer. Some mammals, the most advanced form of life, went back to water. Hippos, walruses, seals and cetaceans all have returned to the cradle of life in some way or another. We’re shown how diverse mammals have become today with a series of pictures consisting of a kangaroo in Australia, a horse of Asia and an anteater of South America. To think, it all started with just one self-replicating cell in primeval mud. And here is life now.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Lanting saves the evolution of the strangest animal for last. At first it’s a photo of a very cuddly looking primate called a tarsier (the being looks like a cross between a kitten, a monkey and Dobby the house-elf), clinging to a tree. This is followed by pictures of lemurs, the tarsier’s decedents, exploring the world around them. Lanting tells of how, a million years later, the forests began to dry out, forcing advanced primates out into the open plain. It was there that the next landmark of life’s journey would take place. The ability to walk upright. The rest is the celebrated evolution of mankind.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Only one other time in my life have I seen such a brilliant, moving and captivating account of the history of life on our planet. This would be Disney's Rite of Spring from 1940's </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Fantasia. </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> That magnificent piece of art, like Frans Lanting's slide show shows the origins and chronology of diversity of life on our planet. What sets the two apart is that Disney's work, being animated, was able to show the viewer many majestic and fascinating animals that no longer exist on our planet.<br /><br />However, I don't think this makes Lanting's pale in comparison. If anything, it makes his presentation look even more amazing. The man is able to tell us the story of life on earth, right from its humble beginnings to what it is now, with just photos from our own time. It’s amazing. The photos may not actually have shown me dinosaurs or mankind’s ancestors but I still saw them very clearly in my imagination as I watched this amazing video. Only by looking at nature today and applying our human imagination to what it shows us, can we truly envision and appreciate lost species that we never saw. Lanting succeeds in giving us inspirational photos to spark the imagination.</span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Lanting closes with a very inspirational passage about humans, our planet and the force of life itself.</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background- background-position: initial initial; color:white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">So who are we? Brothers of masculine chimps.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Sisters of feminine bonobos. We are all of them, and more.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We're molded by the same life force.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The blood veins in our hands</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">echoed a course of water traces on the Earth.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And our brains -- our celebrated brains --</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">reflect drainage of a tidal marsh. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Life is a force in its own right. It is a new element.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And it has altered the Earth. It covers Earth like a skin.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And where it doesn't, as in Greenland in winter,</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mars is still not very far.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">But that likelihood fades as long as ice melts again.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And where water is liquid, it becomes a womb.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">For cells green with chlorophyll -- and that molecular marvel</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">is what's made a difference -- it powers everything.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The whole animal world today lives on a stockpile</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">of bacterial oxygen that is cycled constantly</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">through plants and algae, and their waste is our breath,</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">and vice versa.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This Earth is alive, and it's made its own membrane.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We call it atmosphere. This is the icon of our journey.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And you all here today can imagine and will shape where we go next.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">”</span></span></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background- background-position: initial initial; color:white;"> </p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background- background-position: initial initial; color:white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" color="white" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background- background-position: initial initial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">These words are very beautiful and inspirational. It’s a subtle but very powerful reminder that the planet gave birth to us, and we’re part of it. There is a force from within the Earth keeping everything we know going. This force, and what Lanting’s “Ted Talk” so wonderfully celebrates, is called “Life”.</span></span></span></p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-36404925355664744042010-05-25T06:25:00.000-07:002010-05-25T06:27:31.272-07:00Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><div style="text-align: right;margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">By Hannah W.</span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(255, 42, 6); white-space: pre; "><!--copy and paste--><object width="334" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/SirKenRobinson_2006-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/SirKenRobinson-2006.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=66&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity;year=2006;theme=how_we_learn;theme=the_creative_spark;theme=top_10_tedtalks;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=master_storytellers;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;event=TED2006;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="334" height="326" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/SirKenRobinson_2006-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/SirKenRobinson-2006.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=66&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity;year=2006;theme=how_we_learn;theme=the_creative_spark;theme=top_10_tedtalks;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=master_storytellers;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;event=TED2006;"></embed></object></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Sir Ken Robinson is an expert when it comes to creativity. He is trying to start a movement to make schools inspire creativity instead of squandering it. He whole heartily believes that every child is born creative. Yet the school system squashes their creativity and tells them it is wrong. They try to make us believe that being wrong is the worst thing that can happen, but Robinson believes that losing our creativity is the worst outcome. </span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">To get his point across to the audience, Robinson likes to tell stories about how children know that their creativity is a virtue and they will do it even if the teachers don't like it. One of the stories he told was about a little girl in a drawing lesson. The girl rarely paid attention to the lesson so the teacher went to see what she was was drawing. When she asked the girl she said that she was drawing a picture of God. "But nobody knows what God looks like." Without hesitation the girl said "They will in a minute." He loves telling that story because the girl cannot be persuaded out of what ever inspired her to draw God. Adults on the other hand would sheepishly throw the drawing away in hopes to forget such a foolish idea.</span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Robinson is right in that when children go through school they lose an aspect of themselves that makes them unique and special. It makes no sense to me for our children to learn from people who have lost a part of them that they can never regain. Having people like this teaching will only cause the same thing to happen to the generations to come. We need to encourage imagination and creativity so that the world will be a far better place than what we have today.</span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Ken Robinson is an incredible speaker; it is like he has spent his entire life up there. He has an air of confidence and likability that is contagious. He grabs your attention by speaking through personal experience and by using jokes. </span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">George Bernard Shaw once said "Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will." We have not lived like this in any recorded time, but imagine if we did. It would be a far better world for everyone, and Robinson knows it, so he is trying to start a revolution in hopes that the outcome will be a creative one.</span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-40584460345430840872010-05-25T06:18:00.000-07:002010-05-25T06:21:15.192-07:00Derek Sivers: How to start a movement<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:19px;"><div style="text-align: right;margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">By Crystal O.</span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(255, 42, 6); white-space: pre; font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><!--copy and paste--><object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/DerekSivers_2010U-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DerekSivers-2010U.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=814&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement;year=2010;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=the_creative_spark;event=TED2010;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="446" height="326" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/DerekSivers_2010U-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DerekSivers-2010U.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=814&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement;year=2010;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=the_creative_spark;event=TED2010;"></embed></object></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The fourth TED Talk I chose to analyse was "How to Start a Movement" by Derek Sivers. "Derek would like to talk about leadership and how to start a movement. So let's watch a movement happen, start to finish in under three minutes and dissect some lessons from it." [Derek Sivers: How to Start A Movement|Video on TED.com]<br /></span> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Who knew it would take two to actually be a leader. In this TED talk by Derek Sivers, he opens up leadership to the audience. Most people would think that a leader only takes one person, but Derek can show you the real truth. "First of coarse you know, a leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed." [Derek Sivers] Appearing on the screen behind him is a shirtless man dancing to some music. By now, you can see what Derek means when he says it takes guts to be a leader. "Here is his first follower with a crucial role. He's going to show everyone else how to follow." [Derek Sivers] Now what we see is the step to becoming a leader. The guy was first a lonely dancer and now has a sidekick by his side, showing everyone that the act is fun. "Now notice that the leader embraces him as an equal. So, now it's not about the leader anymore, it's about them, plural." [Derek Sivers] Originally as Derek Sivers showed in the video, it was all about the guy; the soon to be leader, dancing and making a scene out in the open. That is, until another person joins in and calls to his friends to merge in too. "The first follower, is actually an underestimated form of leadership itself. It takes guts to stand out like that. The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader." [Derek Sivers] As the video proceeds on, more followers begin to join the dancing couple. It now has gone from one person, to a couple, to a crowd. The newcomers are actually not following the leader, rather the follower who joined before them. "As more people join in, it's less risky. So, those who were sitting on the fence before, now have no reason not to. They won't stand out, they won't be riducled but, they will be part of the in-crowd if they hurry." [Derek Sivers] More and more people join in, as the crowd of dancers gets bigger and bigger. This turns the whole situation around because, now the people sitting there watching the movement, are the ones who will be ridiculed for not following in the movement. "Leadership, is over-glorified. It was the shirtless guy first, and yes he will get all the credit but, it was really the first follower that transformed the lone nut into a leader." [Derek Sivers] He ends off by encouraging people to make a "lone nut" into a leader by simply being brave, and following in the movement.<br /></span> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I think this talk is hilarious not just because of the funny video of the people dancing in bathing suits or shirtless, but because of the jokes Derek Sivers makes and the similes and metaphors he uses throughout his talk. Derek did a great job of keeping the audience's attention simply because his voice was clear, he had a projection of a video to support his talk, he was enthusiastic, and used humour to pull everything together. His hook was clearly taking a topic that many TED Talks are about - leadership, and dissecting lessons from the topic. His hook is rather simple then complicated as he just spits it right out at the start. With the video already up and running, people can tell the talk is going to be interesting, especially if it's of a man dancing shirtless. I know that I have always wanted to become a leader by changing the world and soon figured out that I couldn't do it alone, but I never really understood why. When I was thinking about how leadership works, I didn't even take in to mind the fact that a leader is nothing without a follower. Before Derek's talk, I just thought that a leader was someone who stands out and makes a difference. Derek explained his points in a fun and entertaining manner for everyone to enjoy. By addressing his topic I think Derek turned all of his audience, from lone nuts into leaders, as now he has processed the truth about leadership and has given his audience the encouragement to either make a leader, or become one.<br /></span> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In conclusion, there is no leader without a follower. So, you need one person to start the movement, and one person to follow to make the movement succeed. With the faith and belief to stand out and try, we can all become leaders one day.</span></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-20184044337232606482010-05-18T19:16:00.000-07:002010-05-18T19:23:34.355-07:00Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks<div><div style="text-align: right;">By Samantha K.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><!--copy and paste--><object height="326" width="446"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/JohnnyLee_2008-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/JohnnyLee-2008.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=245&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks;year=2008;theme=how_we_learn;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;theme=presentation_innovation;theme=top_10_tedtalks;event=TED2008;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/JohnnyLee_2008-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/JohnnyLee-2008.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=245&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks;year=2008;theme=how_we_learn;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;theme=presentation_innovation;theme=top_10_tedtalks;event=TED2008;" height="326" width="446"></embed></object><br /></div><br /></div>Technology such as Smartboards can cost about "two to three thousand dollars". In this talk, Johnny Lee demonstrates how you can use a whiteboard, wii remote, and infrared LED light to create the same interactive board.<br /><br /></div><div> </div><div>He begins his talk by explaining; " ...<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">as researchers, something that we often do is use immense resources </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">to achieve certain capabilities, or achieve certain goals.</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">And this is essential to the progress of science,</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">or exploration of what is possible.</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">But it sort of creates this unfortunate situation</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">where a tiny, tiny fraction of the world</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">can actually participate in this exploration</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">or can benefit from that technology.</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">And something that motivates me,</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">and what gets me really excited about my research</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">is when I see simple opportunities</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">to drastically change that distribution,</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">and make the technology accessible</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">to a much wider percentage of the population." This basically means that there is a push to improve technology and create more advanced options, yet very few people actually get to benefit from this.<br /><br /></span> </div><div> </div><div>This is why he is demonstrating a system to create a similar type of technology using a whiteboard, a Wii remote, and an infrared pen.<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> He has his<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> computer setup with the projector, and have a Wii remote sitting on top of it. So, </span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"what this means is that if I run this piece of software, the camera sees the infrared dot, and I can register the location of the camera pixels to the projector pixels. And now this is like a whiteboard surface." He has put the specific software on his website and he lets people download it for free. Another nice thing is that a camera can see multiple dots, so this is actually a multi-touch, interactive whiteboard system as well." </span>However, there are some limitations of this approach, but you get about 80 percent of the way there, for about one percent of the cost.<br /><br /></div><div> </div><div>He goes on to explain his second demonstration; "<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> I have this Wii remote </span>that's actually next to the TV. So it's pointing away from the display, rather than pointing at the display. And why this is interesting is that if you put on, say, a pair of safety glasses, that have two infrared dots in them, what these two dots are essentially going to give you is give the computer an approximation of your head location. And why this is interesting is I have this sort of application running on the computer monitor, which has a 3D room, with some targets floating in it. And you can see that it looks like a 3D room if you can see, kind of like a video game, it sort of looks 3D, but for the most part, the image looks pretty flat, and bound to the surface of the screen. But if we turn on head tracking, the computer can change the image that's on the screen and make it respond to the head movements."<br /><br /></div><div> </div><div>He explains that YouTube has really changed the way and the speed in which a single individual can actually spread an idea around the world. "<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I'm doing some research in my lab with a video camera,</span> and within the first week, a million people had seen this work, and literally within days, engineers, teachers and students from around the world, were already posting their own YouTube videos of them using my system or derivatives of this work." </div><div> <br />In conclusion, Johnny Lee is trying to encourage an alternate way to create expensive technology for a lower price. This way, more people will have access to it. He is also bringing attention to the speed at which information can travel over the internet and how we can use it to spread ideas such as his. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15088305323275244.post-43465674093367356162010-05-18T19:14:00.000-07:002010-05-18T19:16:49.661-07:00Sunitha Krishnan fights sex slavery<div style="text-align: right;">By Shelby F.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><!--copy and paste--><object height="326" width="446"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/SunithaKrishnan_2009I-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/SunithaKrishnan-2009I.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=704&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=sunitha_krishnan_tedindia;year=2009;theme=a_taste_of_tedindia;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;theme=rethinking_poverty;event=TEDIndia+2009;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/SunithaKrishnan_2009I-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/SunithaKrishnan-2009I.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=704&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=sunitha_krishnan_tedindia;year=2009;theme=a_taste_of_tedindia;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;theme=rethinking_poverty;event=TEDIndia+2009;" height="326" width="446"></embed></object><br /></div><br /></div>"I'm talking to you about the worst form of human rights violation, the third-largest organized crime, a 10 billion dollar industry." Sunitha Krishnan stands today as a survivor of modern-day sex slavery. At the age of fifteen, Sunitha was gang-raped by eight men. Today there are hundreds and thousands of girls who are victims of sex slavery. These girls are left emotionally and physically scarred, feeling worthless and without hope. Sunitha has dedicated her life to rescuing those children who are suffering because of the sex industry, and devotes her time to spreading awareness about the issue.<br /> <br />Sunitha opens her talk by sharing three alarming life stories of children who have been victimized by sex slavery. Pranitha, Shaheen, and Anjali all had been either raped, prostituted, trafficked, or forced into pornography. These children are as young as three or four years old and have been forced to do things that are not only far beyond their age, but are being, as Sunitha states, exploited by men who "we live among, and are silent about". From there Sunitha goes to a personal level, sharing with us her own experience of being raped as a child. This experience was the prime motive for her quest to make a change in the world and put a stop to sex slavery. She speaks of the trauma she endured and her process of healing that allows her to relate with every other victim she encounters. Sunitha explains further how society often fails to properly rehabilitate victims: "Two years I was ostracized, I was stigmatized, I was isolated, because I was a victim. And that's what we do to all traffic survivors. We, as a society, we have PhDs in victimizing a victim". Knowing that Sunitha pertains to the issue at hand encourages the audience to be more absorbed into her talk, and pay close attention to what she has to say. Strong points are made about where the victims of sex slavery end up, for example most turn up dead, brutally beaten or forever trapped in the industry. The majority also become infected with sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS or are exposed to substance abuse. Sunitha brings us to the harsh reality that: "the men who come to them (the sex slaves) are not men who want to make you your girlfriends, or who want to have a family with you. These are men who buy you for an hour, for a day, and use you, throw you", further more expressing the seriousness of the talk and issue at hand. She then explains the feelings of hopelessness that most victims undergo, and introduces cases where Sunitha and her crew have been able to rescue and successfully build up victims into a safe and stable environment. She then closes her speech with stating her intentions of what she wanted the audience to take with them after listening to her speak. Sunitha urges them to pass on her plea for salvation for the existing prisoners of the sex industry, in hopes of spreading awareness and putting a stop to the crime. In my opinion, she executed this perfectly, leaving the audience inspired to make a difference.<br /> <br />As I stated above, I believe Sunitha was successful in getting her ideas and message across. After listening, I was motivated to help the cause in some little way. One big tactic that really helped get the audience interested was displaying the graphic images of victims that were involved in the sex industry. The disturbing photos brought the importance of the issue to our attention and allowed the viewers to get a closer look at what Sunitha was talking about. The constant hand gestures, eye contact, and pacing kept the listeners eyes trained on Sunitha, restoring their focus to the speaker. Every once and a while Sunitha would pause. This kept the audience on their toes, and added great effect to her talk. At the end of her speech Sunitha raised her voice, which personally grabbed my attention and made me wonder what could have forced her to become so stern.<br /> <br />Overall I feel that after watching Sunitha's presentation, I am more informed and inclined to help fight sex slavery. The persuasiveness of her talk was extremely effective and well done. Although some may think that the slide show was too graphic and the information given was better left unsaid, I feel she was right to show us the explicit details, otherwise no one would care or feel motivated to do something about it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0