TEDBlog August, 2010 Archive
31 August 2010
Let the environment guide our development: Johan Rockstrom on TED.com
Human growth has strained the Earth’s resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine “planetary boundaries” that can guide us in protecting our planet’s many overlapping ecosystems. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 18:11)
Watch Johan Rockstrom’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 700+ TEDTalks.
30 August 2010
Super foods superheroes
Guest piece from TEDster Katy Klassman, via the TED Prize blog:
“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families tocook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.” –- Jamie Oliver
As I sat in the audience listening to Jamie Oliver make his wish, I had the same reaction that I did in 2008 when I heard this one:
“I wish that you — you personally and every creative individual and organization you know — will find a way to directly engage with a public school in your area, and that you’ll then tell the story of how you got involved, so thatwithin a year we have 1,000 examples of innovative public-private partnerships.”-Dave Eggers
On a mission to do something small that could have a big impact on kids who have a great desire to learn to write well through the exploration of something they think is cool, I decided to spend this summer doing my part to try and fulfill both wishes at the same time.
Partnering with 826CHI in Chicago, as I have for the past three years with the Travel the World Through Chocolate workshops, I created Super Foods Superheroes, a workshop that would band together the newest type of Superheroes: kids on a mission to make and eat healthy food! As a team they would learn recipes to share with their friends and family, learn the history of various Super Foods, how to use them in creative ways and eat their way through their own delicious adventure.
With my colleague and partner in TEDPrize wish fulfillment, Gabrielle Kammerer, we set about creating a curriculum that would explore the healthful possibilities at breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert (after all we work for THE most magnificent chocolate company in the world, Vosges Haut-Chocolat, so we couldn’t deny our troops the pleasure of a bit of dark chocolate.)
Along with fifteen curious Superheroes, we spent our Saturdays making yoghurt parfaits, gazpacho, tofu stir-frys (kids love a bit of fish sauce if you hide it!,) whole wheat pancakes, healthful quesadillas (you can add squash and lo and behold, they will eat that, too) and cabbage salad with black sesame seeds, amongst other sweet and savory delights.
The kids cooked, ate, and each week spent time writing.
They critiqued their own culinary capabilities and shared recipes:
Written by Skye, Fifth Grade
“I liked the guacamole best. It smelled and tasted really good. I also liked the quesadillas. They were cheesy, pardon my pun, and the squash was really good, plus it was an unique touch. In the guacamole, I like the distant dash of onion—it perfected it. The gazpacho wasn’t my favorite, but I liked how it tasted like natural flavors. Or at least how I thought natural flavors would taste. It reminded me of everything natural. I’ll definitely make it at home—I’ll make everything at home! For those who want to make something yummy, try the quesadillas!
They are made with…
*Whole grain tortillas
*Yellow and green squash
*A tiny bit of Chihuahua cheese
Grill the tortillas
Add the cheese and make sure to get the edges especially
Shred, grill and then add squash to the tortilla and cheese
Enjoy!
For the guacamole…
*Avocados
*Limes
*Onion
*Cilantro
*A dash of salt
Take avocados and put them in a bowl
Add chopped onions and chopped cilantro
Squeeze lime into the bowl
Mash with a spoon, or your hands
Enjoy in moderation, because avocado is only good in small amounts!”
This story and recipe, as well as the others will be made into a small chap book that will get sent to the participants in the class and sold in the 826CHI store to benefit the continuation of their exceptional programming.
We helped create chefs and authors this summer. Perhaps the future Jamie Oliver’s and Dave Eggers’ were in our midst.
We armed students with culinary triumphs that they can carry back to their friends and families.
We gave more, expected less and got it all back a million times over.
Maybe more importantly than any of this, we made one little girl, Joan, smile. Upon her arrival at 826, her mother told me that she “didn’t like anything” and it was pretty clear by the look on her face that she was none too jazzed about spending her summer Saturdays with us. But had you the opportunity to watch her read her writings in front of the group, dance the tango with abandon (a little dancing is always necessary even if it has nothing to do with Super Foods,) or heard her mother tell me that she wouldn’t let her turn the car around when they were an hour late because of a flooded out freeway, the assessment that she doesn’t like anything would have sounded like the finest fiction to have ever come out of 826.
Since I’ve been given this chance to share my project with the TED community, I’m going to take this big opportunity to tell you what I learned in 2008 after teaching my first 826 workshop and what I continue to believe: We all have the capacity to make both of these TEDPrize wishes come true and we should all want to. Each of us has an interest, culinary or otherwise, that can be shared at the local level, at your city’s 826 (if your city is fortunate to have one) or in your public schools. I’m taking my passions and passing them on and I’m going to keep trying to get others to join me. I’m counting on all of you TEDsters to keep both wishes going. If you need an incentive, look at Joan’s smile.
30 August 2010
The Happy Planet Index: Nic Marks on TED.com
Statistician Nic Marks asks why we measure a nation’s success by its productivity — instead of by the happiness and well-being of its people. He introduces the Happy Planet Index, which tracks national well-being against resource use (because a happy life doesn’t have to cost the earth). Which countries rank highest in the HPI? You might be surprised. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 16:49)
Watch Nic Marks’ talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 700+ TEDTalks.
29 August 2010
New Best of the Web talk: Jeremy Rifkin
In this talk from RSA Animate, bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways it has shaped human development and society.
28 August 2010
Animal instincts: Saturday TEDTalks playlist
This Saturday’s TEDTalks playlist is about animals with a nasty sting or a deadly bite — but as our speakers reveal, these creatures have more to fear from humankind than we have to fear from them.
Romulus Whitaker is smitten with snakes, and fearful for their future. He urges us to protect the river systems that are home to these beautiful creatures.
Kartick Satyanarayan returns dignity to the infamous “dancing” bears of India — and to the families whose livelihood depended on their wild performance.
Dennis vanEngelsdorp makes a plea for bees as he investigates colony collapse disorder, the tragic disappearance of a most valued insect, the bee.
We’d love to hear more of your favorite TEDTalks about animals. Add your suggestions to the comments below, join the conversation on Facebook, or email contact@ted.com with the subject PLAYLIST: ANIMALS. (Jog your memory with the TEDTalks spreadsheet.)
Curator of this playlist: Rachel Tobias
27 August 2010
What physics taught me about marketing: Dan Cobley on TED.com
Physics and marketing don’t seem to have much in common, but Dan Cobley is passionate about both. He brings these unlikely bedfellows together using Newton’s second law, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the scientific method and the second law of thermodynamics to explain the fundamental theories of branding. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 7:39)
Watch Dan Cobley’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 700+ TEDTalks.
27 August 2010
Fellows Friday with Michelle Borkin
You have your fingers in a lot of different pots. What are you up to these days?
I’m working on science visualization at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. I learned at TEDGlobal 2009 that depending on how I wanted to talk to people, I could answer questions as an astronomer, a physicist, a visualizer of medical imaging, a computer scientist or a student. I’m all of those things. Right now, I’m working on interdisciplinary scientific visualization. I physically am running between the medical school and the astronomy department, and the computer science and physics departments here at Harvard, working to gather data and share all the visualization knowledge.
With so many different subjects, how have you managed to focus your PhD thesis topic?
It’s funny, because I started my thesis pretty narrowly focused on one of the projects I’m participating in called the Multiscale Hemodynamics Project. It’s a big interdisciplinary group of cardiologists, radiologists, computer scientists and physicists working to fundamentally solve heart disease — no small task. We have patients who come in and they get a CT scan and from that we get a 3-D geometry of the patient’s heart and arteries. Then we’re able to do a supercomputer blood flow simulation of the blood going through the heart and the arteries, and we’re essentially able to reanimate the patient’s heart. We can then look at the blood flow and color-code and do all these tricks to show the doctors that there’s a blockage here, in this area there’s a plaque, etc. We’re making it easier for doctors to diagnose a patient.
Right now, the conventional alternative procedure is to perform angiography which requires a doctor to insert a wire up to your heart, inject dye, and then look at 2-D X-ray images of the dye going through. They can only see certain types of blockages, and they can’t see all the plaque, and they can’t see the plaque deposits most likely to cause a heart attack. They then make an educated guess as to where they should put the stent or do angioplasty.
So this whole project’s goal is to make a non-invasive diagnostic tool that gives the doctor way more information than they currently have — and specifically more information about where plaque is going to erupt causing a deadly heart attack.
As I was working on visualization techniques for blood flow, I kept reflecting back to my days doing pure astronomy. As I was pulling in visualization tools from the geosciences and atmospheric science and particle physics, I thought “Oh my gosh, it’s the same thing as in astronomy — this is the same thing! I know 10 astronomers who could be using this same algorithm, this same simulation, this same visualization tool to be studying galaxies, supernovae, dark matter.”
So my PhD thesis now is encompassing fluid-flow visualization across the physical sciences. I’m still working on the blood-flow simulations which incorporate patient-specific heart data imaging, but I’m also working with star-formations astrophysicists, looking at gathering radio telescope data and combining it with fluid-flow simulations of stars forming.
Before going to TEDGlobal, I was much more focused on the biomedical visualization. I gave my three-minute mainstage TED talk on the topic. Afterwards everyone was coming up to me and I realized, “Wow, the rest of the world finds this interesting, it’s useful, why don’t I just do all of this?” So I do credit going to TEDGlobal and talking with all the people afterwards and all the follow-up for pushing me in this new direction.
26 August 2010
GOOD contest winner celebrates MDG #4
Congratulations to Francesca Cianfarini of Leftloft, designer of the poster at left (see it at larger here), which celebrates one of the Millennium Development Goals — an audacious set of goals for improving the world, set in September 2000 by the UN. Cianfarini’s winning poster focuses on MDG #4: Reduce child mortality. Some aspects of this goal have seen progress — for instance, between 2000 and 2008, measles deaths dropped by 78%. But there is still much work to be done to meet these goals by their target date of 2015.
TEDxChange, on September 20, 2010, takes a look at the MDGs. Presented by TED and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, TEDxChange can be viewed through a live webcast (visit the Facebook page to RSVP for the webcast), or you can join a TEDx event in your area.
26 August 2010
The political chemistry of oil spills: Lisa Margonelli on TED.com
In the Gulf oil spill’s aftermath, Lisa Margonelli says drilling moratoriums and executive ousters make for good theater, but distract from the issue at its heart: our unrestrained oil consumption. She shares her bold plan to wean America off of oil — by confronting consumers with its real cost. (Recorded at TEDxOilSpill, June 2010 in Washington, DC. Duration: 17:34)
Watch Lisa Margonelli’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 700+ TEDTalks.
25 August 2010
Ann Cooper’s latest tool in the Food Revolution
Food Revolution hero Ann Cooper recently re-launched her new and improved website for The Lunch Box — a collection of scalable recipes, resources and general information to turn any school lunch system into a healthy, balanced diet for kids. One of the most exciting initiatives of this revamp is the Great American Salad Project (GASP) which, in partnership with Whole Foods, will create salad bars in over 300 schools across America. The new salad bars will give young students daily access to the fresh fruits and vegetables they need, and will be funded by donations from Whole Foods shoppers and visitors to the website. To donate, click here.
Schools can begin grant applications on September 1. If you’d like to see a fresh salad bar in your cafeteria, click here to review the process and get your app ready.
To learn more about Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize wish and get on board with the Food Revolution, watch his talk from TED2010 or visit the official website here.
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