Some great reads from around the internet today: Journalist Joan Juliet Buck tells the story behind her infamous Vogue puff piece on Asma al-Assad (above), saying that the First Lady of Syria “duped” her. Buck now writes of al-Assad’s husband, “I didn’t know I was going to meet a murderer. There was no way of […]
. “Performance philosopher” Jason Silva creates brightly colored, fast-moving films about ideas. At TEDGlobal 2012, Silva delved into the concept of radical openness. In this new short film, Silva explores another big question: Is feeling awestruck good for us? In the movie trailer-esque video, Silva quotes recent research by three Stanford professors, which found that […]
When it comes to the internet, the Chinese government may have taken inspiration from the Great Wall of China and created the largest digital boundary in the world, blocking 500 million users from accessing the global-standard social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. But blogger Michael Anti, whose real name is Jing Zhao, explains in […]
When Giles Duley left behind life as a music and fashion photographer and began criss-crossing the globe, photographing forgotten people — those with mental illness, living on the streets, residing in refugee camps and surviving in the crossfire of war — he felt a certain level of separation from his subjects. But then something happened […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_gUgirgJIg&w=530&h=298] . What kind of talk would a 9-year-old give? At TEDxKids@Sunderland, the first TED event held for those yet to celebrate their 10th birthday, we got to find out. With the help of their teachers, students at Thorney Close Primary School created their own TED talk, centered on a question they had often asked […]
Enjoy these great finds from around the internet: Kathryn Schulz, who gave the blockbuster TEDTalks “On Being Wrong” and “Don’t Regret Regret,” fondly remembers Encyclopedia Brown as the character who taught her “the crucial unity of these terms: intellectual pleasure.” The author of the series about a 5th grade detective, Donald J. Sobol, passed away […]
Architect Michael Hansmeyer is not one for the T-square. As he explains in a fascinating talk from TEDGlobal, this “computational” designer took inspiration from nature — specifically from morphogenesis, aka the splitting of cells — and created algorithms that help him design highly unusual shapes. Instead of the same old boring Doric, Ionic and Corinthian […]
Founder of Open Source Ecology Marcin Jakubowksi is creating open blueprints for the building blocks of civilization, starting with the Global Village Construction Set. This set of 50 low-cost machines will allow anyone to build all the infrastructure a community needs – including, at Factor E Farm, one of his own. The Global Village Construction […]
. At TED2007, artist Theo Jansen shared his work creating a new form of life — which can actually survive on its own — from plastic tubes and bottles. In this 3D-animation film, David Lance imagines Jansen’s creature walking through a park, morphing into metal and becoming a spider-like form that can jump cars, fly […]
At TEDGlobal2012, Ramesh Raskar demonstrated his remarkable femtosecond camera, which can image a light-pulse as it travels through an object, or potentially see around corners. But Raskar’s projects go far beyond even that. After the talk, in a brief Q&A with host Bruno Giussani (above) he introduced NETRA, a simple attachment for a smartphone that […]
The Opening Ceremony for the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi takes place today, which means that — over the next few weeks — we’ll all be watching a steady diet of hockey, skiing and figure skating. To get you in the Olympic spirit, watch these powerful TED and TEDx Talks from Olympians and Paralympians. We […]
Enjoy these fascinating reads from across the internet: Scientists have discovered a geologic feature in Antarctica … that is the size of the Grand Canyon. [Atlantic Wire] . At TEDGlobal 2009, economist Paul Romer shared his vision of “charter cities.” As the first one is being debated and planned in Honduras, the fourth-poorest country in […]
Some teenagers spend their free time playing video games. Others dedicate their after-school hours to a job, scooping ice cream or taking movie tickets. Still others play a sport, or are star members of a debate team. And still others spend their free time in a lab, working on ways to prevent, diagnose and treat […]
Tracy Chevalier, the author of Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999), first saw the Johannes Vermeer painting that inspired her novel when she was 19-years-old. Struck by the colors, as well as the expression on said girl’s face, Chevalier stood in front of the painting for hours and bought a poster of it on her […]
Here, some great finds from across the internet, for your reading pleasure: Others may dream of the beach this summer, but we secretly wish we were at Rare Book School, a five-week long camp that brings together librarians and antiquarian enthusiasts at the University of Virginia. The school has been taught by William Noel, who […]
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York is strained for cash. And so they announced last week that they would be offering advertising space on the back of MetroCards, which New Yorkers swipe (often, multiple times) to enter a train station. It’ll cost companies $25,500 to advertise on 50K cards and $450K to advertise on […]