29 December 2007
Submit your film or video for Pangea Day
Hoping to submit your short film or video for Pangea Day? There's still a month and a half before the deadline -- plenty of time to get familiar with your new videocamera. From the Pangea Day site:
We're looking for films that will make us laugh, cry, and gasp. They can be fiction, nonfiction, real life, animation, or your own unique mixture. But they should hold our attention for every second. And above all, they should tell a story that someone else on the other side of the world will be able to relate to.
As you plan your film, try to imagine millions of people in different countries gathered around in the flickering light, waiting in hushed silence for your tale to start. What story will you tell? What images will you show them?
Submit a film. Share a story. The world will be watching. Deadline for submission is February 15, 2008. Find out here how to submit your short film or video >>
Then on May 10, 2008 -– Pangea Day -– join the worldwide film festival! Screens in Cairo, Dharamsala, Kigali, London, New York City, Ramallah, Rio de Janeiro and Tel Aviv will be videoconferenced live to produce a 4-hour program of powerful short film and video, visionary speakers and great music.
21 December 2007
5 dangerous things you should let your kids do: Gever Tulley on TED.com
Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, talks about our drive to overprotect our children -- and spells out 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do. Allowing kids the freedom to explore, he says, will make them stronger and smarter and actually safer. This talk comes from TED University 2007, a pre-conference program where TEDsters share ideas. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 9:20.)
Watch Gever Tulley's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Gever Tulley on TED.com.
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21 December 2007
Pangea Day trailer: Now in 20 languages
On May 10, 2008 -– Pangea Day -– we're throwing a worldwide film festival. Screens in Cairo, Dharamsala, Kigali, London, New York City, Ramallah, Rio de Janeiro and Tel Aviv will be videoconferenced live to produce a 4-hour program of powerful short films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music. Pangea Day grew out of the wish of 2006 TED Prize winner Jehane Noujaim, who made her wish to "unite the world through the power of film."
Watch the trailer now -- with subtitles in 20 languages! Working with dotSUB, a web-based translation tool, you can choose subtitles in Arabic, French, Chinese, German, Hindi, Korean ... and register on dotSUB to translate it into even more languages.
Pangea Day taps the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion, while uniting millions of people to build a better future. There are many ways to get involved:
Submit your own short film
If you had the world's attention for just a few minutes, what story would you tell? On May 10, 2008, the opportunity is yours. Submit a film. Share a story. The world will be watching. Deadline for submission: Feb. 15, 2008. Find out how to submit your short film >>
Host a screening
People are signing up to host screenings all over the world -- in homes, parks, schools, and more. More than 200 screenings in 46 countries are listed on our Google Map, and we've just begun! Sign up to host a screening >>
21 December 2007
John Maeda named next president of RISD
John Maeda (watch his 2007 TEDTalk) has been named the next president of the Rhode Island School of Design. An artist and a coder, Maeda is an enthusiastic connector of art and technology. In his supercool announcement video, he gives a sense of where he hopes to lead the school, saying:
Technology has outpaced humanity, I wouldn't say tenfold, I'd say a millionfold. ... Meanwhile, we're still trying to figure out, what is this stuff for? I think that arts have to advance the culture of knowledge around technology. It hasn't happened yet, but it has to happen.
Maeda will take over in June 2008 from fellow TEDster Roger Mandle, who led the school for 15 years. Aside from growing the school and its endowment, and thus creating opportunities for more students around the world to get an arts and design education, Mandle worked to link RISD with the world, dovetailing with -- and driving -- the design boom of the past two decades. RISD's deep civic engagement with its hometown of Providence has led to both economic and artistic benefits -- showing a generation of students how design and the arts can be socially engaged.
20 December 2007
DVD: "The Future We Will Create" now on sale
In 2006, filmmaker Daphne Zuniga came to TED and made an independent movie about it -- the talks, the hallway conversations, the connections and unmissable moments.
Her film, The Future We Will Create, was released on DVD exclusively via NetFlix, where it became a hit, with more than 12,000 reviews so far. "I've kept it altogether too long," one viewer wrote to us, "because I find myself watching it again and again ... "
This week, the DVD has been released for sale, in a package that also contains a DVD of 12 full-length TEDTalks. Which is great news for your queue, if you're a serial NetFlixer. And it's still available for rent on NetFlix, of course.
20 December 2007
Andrew Mwenda launches independent newspaper in Kampala
This week, journalist Andrew Mwenda (watch his TEDTalk) launched a weekly newspaper, The Independent, in Kampala, Uganda. His journalism has been critical of the Ugandan government, and he writes in an email that the president warned off his first printer. From his email:
we have been through a lot of hell. our launch was supposed to be friday last week with the maiden issue of the newspaper. then, president's office called our printers and asked them not to print us on thursday morning for our launch issue of friday morning. we ran desperately to other printers all of whom told us that they had been warned against printing us.
however, we finally managed to get someone beyond state control and the paper is out. the lesson is that we need our own printer to be independent. the other, is that the road to freedom and liberty is a tough one. however, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. and we are marching on that road with greater confidence now.
Reporter Tim Cocks, writing for Reuters, confirms this report, speaking to the printer in question; a spokesperson for the Ugandan president said he knew of no such order.
20 December 2007
The lost art of letter-writing: Lakshmi Pratury on TED.com
Lakshmi Pratury talks about letter-writing, and shares a series of notes her father wrote her before he died. This short talk may inspire you to set pen to paper too. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 4:09.)
Watch Lakshmi Pratury's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Lakshmi Pratury on TED.com.
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18 December 2007
Why aren't we all Good Samaritans? Daniel Goleman on TED.com
Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, asks why we aren’t more compassionate more of the time. Through psychological experiments and a story of the Santa Cruz Strangler, he shows how we are all born with the capacity for empathy -- but we sometimes choose to ignore it. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 13:13.)
Watch Daniel Goleman's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Daniel Goleman on TED.com.
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13 December 2007
Why we should teach philosophy to kids
Via the BPS Research Digest: A recent study on the long-term benefits of the Socratic method. In a study of 105 children, all around 10 years old, teachers spent an hour a week for 16 months teaching lessons based on philosophical inquiry.
The philosophy-based lessons encouraged a community approach to "inquiry" in the classroom, with children sharing their views on Socratic questions posed by the teacher.
The result? At the end of 16 months,
Compared with 72 control children, the philosophy children showed significant improvements on tests of their verbal, numerical and spatial abilities
And two years later, when the philosophy children were tested again, their higher scores persisted -- while the lower-scoring control group were, in some cases, declining further. Researchers Keith Topping and Steve Trickey point out that these gains persisted even though the kids had switched schools as well, from primary to secondary, showing that the influence of philosophical inquiry works across contexts and over time.
Or in the words of Socrates, "If this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed."
Socrates image from Wikimedia
13 December 2007
"Mathemagics": Arthur Benjamin on TED.com
In a lively performance, "mathemagician" Arthur Benjamin races a team of calculators to figure out 3-digit squares in his head, performs a massive mental calculation, and guesses a few birth days. How does he do it? He'll be happy to tell you. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, California. Duration: 15:14.)
Watch Arthur Benjamin's performance on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Arthur Benjamin on TED.com.
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12 December 2007
William Kamkwamba in the Wall Street Journal
William Kamkwamba, a young Malawi man who designed and built a windmill for his family when he was 14 -- and who spoke so memorably at TEDGlobal Africa this June -- is profiled on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal in a story headined "A Young Tinkerer Builds a Windmill, Electrifying a Nation." Writer Sarah Childress adds detail to the story that Kamkwamba told onstage in Tanzania:
Mr. Kamkwamba's wind obsession started six years ago. He wasn't going to school anymore because his family couldn't afford the $80-a-year tuition.
When he wasn't helping his family farm groundnuts and soybeans, he was reading. He stumbled onto a photograph of a windmill in a text donated to the local library and started to build one himself.
There's also a great 2-minute video that shows the updates Kamkwamba has made to his family's home power system, and talks about what's next for him:
Video: Writer Sarah Childress from the Wall Street Journal talks to William Kamkwamba, a 20-year-old Malawian who built a windmill to power his family's home. Image courtesy Wall Street Journal
11 December 2007
Winning the oil endgame: Amory Lovins
Energy guru Amory Lovins lays out his plan for weaning the US off oil and revitalizing the economy in the process. It's the subject of his book Winning the Oil Endgame, and he makes it sound fairly simple: On one hand, the deadly risks of continued dependency, and on the other, some win-win solutions. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, California. Duration: 19:38.)
Watch Amory Lovins's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Amory Lovins on TED.com.
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10 December 2007
The Whale Hunt: New work from Jonathan Harris
Artist Jonathan Harris (watch his TEDTalk) just launched his latest piece, The Whale Hunt. In this visionary, documentary work, Harris joins a family of Inupiat Eskimos on their annual whale hunt:
I documented the entire experience [in] 3,214 photographs, beginning with the taxi ride to Newark airport, and ending with the butchering of the second whale, seven days later. The photographs were taken at five-minute intervals, even while sleeping (using a chronometer), establishing a constant "photographic heartbeat." In moments of high adrenaline, this photographic heartbeat would quicken (to a maximum rate of 37 pictures in five minutes while the first whale was being cut up), mimicking the changing pace of my own heartbeat.
Read Harris' full statement on the piece, watch the highlights, or just dive in -- to watch the passage of time, space and life under the Alaskan sky.
Photo: "May 6, 11:10pm Hauling up Joe Ahkivgaq's whale"
Courtesy Jonathan Harris, The Whale Hunt
06 December 2007
Primordial soup -- and a sandwich?
Philippe Starck talks about how life began in the soupe primordiale -- but this week, researcher Helen Hansma of UCSB hypothesizes that molecules might have first turned into cells -- life -- while sheltered between sheets of mica dunked in that soup. Hansma's "soup and a sandwich" theory was presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in Washington, D.C.
The space between two mica sheets, held together by potassium and bathed in salty seawater, is chemically very similar to the space inside a cell, Hansma says. And, she points out, the confined spaces formed by mica layers would have provided the isolation needed for Darwinian evolution. What's more:
The heating and cooling of the day-to-night cycle would have caused the mica sheets to move up and down, and waves would have provided a mechanical energy source as well, according to the new model. Both forms of movement would have caused the forming and breaking of chemical bonds necessary for the earliest biochemistry.
Image: Biological molecules in spaces between mica sheets. Credit: Helen Greenwood Hansma, UCSB
06 December 2007
Beauty and truth in physics: Murray Gell-Mann on TED.com
Wielding laypeople's terms and a sense of humor, Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann drops some knowledge about particle physics, asking questions like, Are elegant equations more likely to be right than inelegant ones? Can the fundamental law, the so-called "theory of everything," really explain everything? His answers will surprise you. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:07.)
Watch Murray Gell-Mann's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Murray Gell-Mann on TED.com.
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04 December 2007
Why design? Philippe Starck on TED.com
Legendary designer Philippe Starck -- with no pretty slides behind him -- spends 17 minutes reaching for the very roots of the question "Why design?" Along the way he drops brilliant insights into the human condition; listen carefully for one perfectly crystallized motto for all of us, genius or not. Yet all this deep thought, he cheerfully admits, is to aid in the design of a better toothbrush. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:07.)
Watch Philippe Starck's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Philippe Starck on TED.com.
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04 December 2007
Nokia and Pangea Day combine efforts, to connect people around the world through film
At Nokia World in Nokia today announced its global partnership with Pangea Day, a unique event that will bring together millions of people around the world through the power of film on May 10, 2008.
Pangea Day will be broadcast globally to millions on television, in digital theaters, online and via mobile devices. It will be a live 4-hour program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music. The goal of Pangea Day is to create greater understanding among different people and cultures, and to form a global community focused on improving the future for all people.
"From the earliest days of movies, film has had the power to bring people together. But today, Internet technology is allowing film to bring together not only neighbors, but an entire global community," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia president and CEO (pictured at right). "Nokia is proud to work with Pangea Day as we embark on this important shared mission of connecting people across the globe."
For many people today, especially in developing markets, the mobile phone is providing their first Internet experience.
"Perhaps Nokia's greatest contribution to Pangea Day is the ability of our technology to give a voice to people who previously were unable to take part in the global community that is the Internet," Kallasvuo said. "By integrating the power of wireless technology into Pangea Day, we can help it meet its goal of bringing together people from around the world."
Nokia and Pangea Day will work with aspiring filmmakers in disadvantaged areas and conflict zones to make it possible for their stories to also be told. By distributing video-enabled mobile devices to these filmmakers, their works can be captured and shared globally, demonstrating how wireless technology can not only provide a platform for people of diverse backgrounds to express themselves, but also to bring them together.
"Pangea Day was created by TED Prize winner Jehane Noujaim. One of the core goals of the TED Prize is to recognize a new generation of global citizens," says Chris Anderson, Curator of TED. "Jehane's work has shown how powerfully film can help us understand and connect with other people.
For more information on Pangea Day, visit www.pangeaday.org.
About Nokia
Nokia is the world leader in mobility, driving the transformation and growth of the converging Internet and communications industries. Nokia makes a wide range of mobile devices and provides people with experiences in music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games and business mobility through these devices. Nokia also provides equipment, solutions and services for communications networks.
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