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 […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpQCUXNo5GI&w=530&h=298] . “An intellectual challenge presents itself ? I am in bliss. Instantly, it brings forth the notion of triumph,” high-wire artist Philippe Petit writes in his new TED ebook, Cheating the Impossible: Ideas and Recipes from a Rebellious High-Wire Artist. “Even before I address a challenge, invariably a rainbow of out-of focus solutions hovers […]
“Walls don’t work,” James Stavridis declared at TEDGlobal 2012. A highly accomplished Navy Admiral, Stavridis recalls 20th-century phenomena like trench warfare and the Berlin Wall. “Instead of building walls for security, we need to build bridges.” In his brass-tacks talk, Stavridis lays down a vision of “open-source security,” which he defines as “connecting the international, […]
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/45446852 w=530&h=298] . LittleBits are Tinkertoys, gone electronic. Some circuits, some lights, some buzzers and some buttons, these brightly colored pieces snap together with magnets, allowing for creation of projects that do things, rather than just sit there. The brainchild of TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir — who explained the littleBits in a talk at […]