09 May 2009

The week in comments

This week's comment round-up is a tribute to TED.com's spiffy new commenting system, that lets you rate others' statements up or down and have threaded conversations! Rather than using our own editorial tastes to select comments, today we've let you, the community, pick your top 5. Here are the highest rated comments on each talk at the moment:

On Louise Fresco's TEDTalk:How to feed the whole world (the case for white bread):
I am a fan of permaculture. However, I think the important thing to note is the shades of grey being discussed. Everyone has an axe to grind. she is not really promoting big agribusiness per se, (in fact she explicitly stated how destructive it is) but she is instead talking about the use of high and low tech. Most people only seem to listen for there own key words and hot buttons. Even though I actually had the privilege of learning about permaculture back in the early 90s by living and working on a collective farm and eating the incredible produce, I still think that saying RAH-RAH PERMACULTURE is still as pointless as saying GO GO AGRIBUSINESS. Think of it as mental monoculture. People are starving and that kind of narrowness is one of the main reasons. -- Brock (+5)

On Al Gore's TEDTalk: Alarming new slides depict a worsening climate crisis:
"I was simply pointing out that if the earth has been cooling for over 7 years, the term "global warming" is presently inaccurate."
By that logic global warming is inaccurate every night and accurate every day. -- Markku (+3)

On Tom Shannon's TEDTalk: Gravity-defying sculpture inspired by the sun, the earth, the moon:
This guy is a genius, reminds me of a modern day da Vinci. I really like the idea of an artistic "conscious" orb. -- Eli (+4)

On Mae Jemison's TEDTalk: A bold vision for teaching arts and sciences -- together:
Fabulous, my favorite quote from this, "Science provides an understanding of a universal experience, and arts provide a universal understanding of a personal experience." Love it! -- Nathalie (+7)

On Sean Gourley's TEDTalk: The mathematics of war:
My only comment as a first time TED poster is that he is strictly rating effectiveness of an attack based upon the casualty figures. Would an attack on power substation that causes no casualties be ineffective? Furthermore, major news organizations tend to share source data so I am not sure how effective using multiple media outlets would be. Without access to the original source data you will have no real idea on how many sources are really producing your base data. -- Jason (+4)

Here's to a new system and more conversation!

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