TEDBlog September, 2010 Archive
29 September 2010
Helping Afghan people find peace of mind: Inge Missmahl on TED.com
When Jungian analyst Inge Missmahl went to Afghanistan, she found the universal wounds of the human heart — despair and trauma. Yet in a country of 30 million people, there were only two dozen psychiatrists. In promoting mental health counseling, she’s helping Afghan people find individual and social healing, and building new hope for families and communities. (Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2010 in Oxford, England. Duration: 10:41)
Watch Inge Missmahl’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.
28 September 2010
Announcing TED’s Ads Worth Spreading Challenge
Winning ads in the Ads Worth Spreading Challenge will be shown at TED2011.
Today, TED announces its Ads Worth Spreading Challenge. An open invitation to the global advertising community to reinvent, inspire and engage audiences with a new definition of what video advertising can mean in the digital age, using TED.com as its platform.
TED is supported in part by advertising. Support from our partners allows TED to share great ideas on multiple platforms and in multiple languages around the world. But as TED’s curator, Chris Anderson, said in his address today during Ad Week: “If advertising is so great, why the hell is it largely failing on the web today?”
The Ads Worth Spreading Challenge invites the business community to submit their most forward-looking video campaigns by January 10, 2011. A judging panel will select up to 10 winning video campaigns, which will premiere at TED2011, February 28-March 4, 2011, for the gathered audience of 1500+ thought leaders, and will appear on TED.com for free for one week in March.
Find details, including full contest rules and entry form, right here >>
UPDATE: Read Ryan Thomas’ great reaction to Chris’s talk: “An hour with TED has paid the price of Advertising Weeks admission, given me value to bring back to my clients, and given me a passion kickstart I did not even know I needed.”
27 September 2010
New: TEDTalks BitTorrent app
Watch Nicholas Christakis' latest TEDTalk on BitTorrent.
Here at TED HQ we’re having fun playing with the new BitTorrent app for TEDTalks — part of the new BitTorrent Mainline client (and the current µTorrent beta). It’s Windows-only for now. Using the TEDTalks BitTorrent app, you can browse the TEDTalks library by date and keyword, finding talks that are most emailed, most tweeted, rated funniest or most informative … and then download them in a snap.
“We’re thrilled to collaborate with BitTorrent to bring TEDTalks to millions of new viewers,” says June Cohen, Executive Producer of TED Media. “TED’s mission is to spread ideas, and BitTorrent’s new apps platform will amplify our work really powerfully, reaching a large and engaged audience who may be new to TED.”
Check out the new BitTorrent Mainline client >>
27 September 2010
Happy 21st Birthday, Darius!
Today, TED Fellow Darius Weems, of Darius Goes West fame, turns 21! At age 15, Darius and eleven of his best friends drove across the U.S. to attempt to convince MTV to customize Darius’ wheelchair on Pimp My Ride. Darius, born with a fatal disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), was the star of the hilarious and touching documentary Darius Goes West, directed by crew member and TED Fellow Logan Smalley.
The movie has grown into a movement as Darius and his crew continue to travel the country, raising funds and promoting awareness of DMD and accessibility issues. To date, the group has visited 42 states, driven some 150,000 miles, and raised nearly $2 million to find a treatment or cure for DMD.
Watch the Darius Goes West trailer >>
To celebrate Darius’ 21st birthday, pro poker players Bryan Devonshire and Gavin Smith are hosting a No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em tournament in Las Vegas on October 2, and inviting the world. To reserve your spot at the poker table with Darius and his crew (or at their lunch table the next day) click here.
Can’t make it to Vegas? Buy Darius a 21st birthday “drink” online! Darius’ birthday wish is to get 999 donations to help scientists develop a concoction to slow the progression of DMD — the number one genetic killer of children. You can also show your support by taking the “Goslabi Challenge:” down a spoonful of wasabi just like Darius did in the film!
Watch the Goslabi Challenge video >>
If you’re an educator, you can get a copy of Darius Goes West free by clicking here. And Darius or a member of the crew will make a live Skype appearance for your classroom’s premiere!
27 September 2010
The quantified self: Gary Wolf on TED.com
At TED@Cannes, Gary Wolf gives a 5-min intro to an intriguing new pastime: using mobile apps and always-on gadgets to track and analyze your body, mood, diet, spending — just about everything in daily life you can measure — in gloriously geeky detail. (Recorded at TED@Cannes, June 2010 in Cannes France. Duration: 5:11)
Watch Gary Wolf’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 September 2010
Should Science Have a Soul? TEDTalks Playlist
Today’s playlist is about the relationship between science and morality. These speakers question whether or not they can and should live in the same space. Their differing and provocative opinions are sure to incite thought, uncertainty, and passion.
If Michael Specter could travel through time, he would travel into the future to witness the marvels of technology and progress that inevitably lay upon the horizon. What he fears is the restriction of science and progress by a morality that believes itself to be superior to proof.
Reverend Billy Graham asserts that despite its good intentions, technology cannot solve all of our problems: namely human evil, human suffering, and death.
Sam Harris believes that scientific reasoning can provide moral compass rooted in fact, and describes the need for a standard universal morality to guarantee human well being.
Here are some other talks you might be interested in that discuss the intersection of science, technology, morality and religion:
- Richard Dawkins on militant atheism
- Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives — or read his blog post about the moral reasoning behind the healthcare debate
- Lee Smolin on science and democracy
- Bob Thurman says we can be Buddhas
We’d love to hear more of your favorite TEDTalks about Science and Morality. Add your suggestions to the comments below, join the conversation on Facebook, or email contact@ted.com with the subject PLAYLIST: SCIENCE & MORALITY. (Jog your memory with the TEDTalks spreadsheet.)
Curator of this playlist: Rachel Tobias
24 September 2010
Google awards $2 million to the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)
From the TED Prize blog: Congratulations to the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) and 2008 TED Prize winner Neil Turok on winning $2 million in funding from Google’s Project 10^100. Project 10^100 (10 to the 100th power) was a call for ideas to divide a $10 million fund into five pieces that would help as many people as possible around the world. AIMS’ piece of the prize will be used to expand its network of science and math academies that promote graduate-level study in Africa.
Some 150,000 ideas were submitted to Project 10^100, then narrowed down to 16 finalist ideas. Over the past 12 months, Google reviewed concrete proposals to tackle those ideas, which resulted in the five winners.
Other winners include the wonderful Khan Academy, a network of educational video; the FIRST robotics challenge (led by TEDTalks star Dean Kamen); Public.Resource.org, which works to make governmnt transparent; and the Schweeb monorail concept.
24 September 2010
Fellows Friday with Saeed Taji Farouky
What’s the main film project you’re working on right now?
The Runner is a long-form documentary, the longest and most ambitious documentary I’ve worked on so far. It’s a film about endurance, about what it is that keeps people running. Specifically it’s the story of a long-distance runner called Salah Ameidan. He’s from the Western Sahara, which is the last colony in Africa.
Salah Ameidan was born in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara. Western Sahara has been under Moroccan occupation since 1975. Salah would run as a child, and he became extremely good at running. His family members were activists in the Western Sahara liberation movement, but Saleh was coerced into joining the Moroccan National Sports team. The Moroccans threatened to continually harass his family if they didn’t let Salah join the team.
Salah became an incredible athlete, with several titles to his name from Morocco. In 2003 he decided to finally make a stand. When he was crossing the finish line of a race in France, in first place, he pulled out the Sahrawi flag and waved it across the finish line. The flag is illegal in Morocco, and Salah knew that he would never be allowed back into Morocco, without being arrested as a dissident. So he became a refugee in France, and he’s lived there ever since.
I see in Salah this incredible use of running, as a form of escape, but also a form of keeping himself very firmly inside this liberation movement. The liberation movement is based on lines on a map. It’s based on the political definition of a state. Yet Salah’s running, particularly running long distances, is a great way of breaking those lines … of denying those lines and saying they’re meaningless. If you can run 600 kilometers across the Sahara Desert, you can really defy the definition of borders.
24 September 2010
Sound health in 8 steps: Julian Treasure on TED.com
Julian Treasure says our increasingly noisy world is gnawing away at our mental health — even costing lives. He lays out an 8-step plan to soften this sonic assault (starting with those cheap earbuds) and restore our relationship with sound. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, England. Duration: 7:15)
Watch Julian Treasure’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.
23 September 2010
TIME magazine on Sylvia Earle, Mission Blue and the quest to save the ocean
From the TIME story on ocean hotspots: Saya de Malha Banks
TIME magazine’s Bryan Walsh has posted a beautiful, in-depth story about Sylvia Earle and Mission Blue. Traveling from the Galapagos to the Sargasso Sea, and through oceans around the world, the profile tells Sylvia’s story as a pioneering ocean scientist — and details her lifelong quest to protect the ocean, one “hope spot” at a time.
From the story:
If her goal is audacious — we don’t even have the legal institutions yet to protect international waters — so is Earle. “I can’t think of many others who’ve been as persistent and vocal and forward-thinking on the oceans as Sylvia,” says Greg Stone, chief scientist for oceans at Conservation International. “The world is opening up to her message.” The often fractious marine-conservation movement — along with new corporate allies like Google — is making a concerted push for attention under the Mission Blue banner, focusing on reducing overfishing and expanding protection.
Slideshow: 10 amazing ocean “hope spots” >>
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