Although preliminary results for Afghanistan’s presidential election will not be publicized until Saturday (and full results may not come until September 3), both President Hamid Karzai and second favorite Abdullah Abdullah are claiming victory. If neither candidate receives 50% of the vote, a run-off vote will occur. Voter participation was estimated at 40-50%, far lower […]
Last week, CERN announced that the world’s largest particle accelerator will power up again in November. However this time it will run on 3.5 trillion electron volts per beam, about half its expected energy level. Last year, the LHC shut down because of a fault between two superconducting bending magnets but recent tests have confirmed […]
The reception for this past wave of talks from TED Global 2009 centers around the theme of accountability. People seemed especially moved by Emmanuel Jal’s music on his life as a war child and Michael Pritchard’s revolutionary water filter. We even got a TEDGlobal speaker sparking a discussion on one of these highlighted talks (in […]
TED Fellow, journalist and expert on political aspects of the Internet Evgeny Morozov, who spoke at TEDGlobal 2009 on web censorship, cyber-activism and the fallacy if “iPod liberalism,” has a fascinating and thoughtful blog post about yesterday’s social networking outages. Responding to reports that the DDoS attack that downed sites such as Facebook, Twitter and […]
At TED2009, Stanford Professor and virus hunter Nathan Wolfe explained that most human diseases — AIDS, SARS, swine flu — originally came from animals. Today, Wolfe and his team announced an intriguing discovery that throws new light on an ancient disease, and provides new hope for its cure: Malaria, long believed to have evolved with […]
Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory are using the IBM Blue Gene supercomputer to model supernovas, and New Scientist has published a gallery of snapshots from the fiery visualizations. The images uncover the beautiful symmetry — and chaos — flowing through these explosive events. Visit the gallery now >> TEDTalks stars Carolyn Porco, Brian Cox and […]
It reads like everyone was inspired by the talks this week (including two more released from TEDGlobal 2009), which feature philosopher Alain de Botton on success, scientist Elaine Morgan on aquatic apes and artist/software engineer Golan Levin on his interactive art. Lets get to the comments: On Elaine Morgan’s talk: We evolved from aquatic apes: […]
Following up on economist Eleni Gabre-Madhin’s 2007 TEDTalk on Ethiopian markets comes an episode from PBS’ award-winning documentary series Wide Angle titled “The Market Maker.” Anchor Aaron Brown traveled to Ethiopia and toured the country with Gabre-Madhin, where he witnessed the trials faced by her Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, and the effects of the system on […]
What is life? Can we create it? Customize it? Edge has just published over six hours of video from their new Master Class on the future of biology, which attempts to answer those and other provocative questions. Featuring geneticists George Church and Craig Venter, the set is a a surprising, challenging look at what science […]
Some 300 people watched the TEDGlobal 2009 Associates feed — including 100 of our founding volunteer translators, past TED Fellows and TEDx hosts. We loved seeing photos of people around the world watching the feed, and share a few below: Theodor K writes: “Here is Klara, Theodor, and Isak from Denmark watching the windmill built […]
A Capuchin friar and a household name in Germany, Brother Paulus Terwitte looks at the possibility of a simple, contemplative spiritual life — in a world laden with distractions and complications. Is posting a Twitter Snapshot slightly … ironic? Twitter users meditated on this, and other questions: Google is the new forbidden apple.. Brother Terwitte.. […]
Conductor-turned-business motivator Itay Talgam showed a collection of enlightening and amusing clips of famous conductors doing what it really is that they do best: lead. The process of drawing out beauty from a brigade of musicians is a powerful metaphor with real applications for anyone who manages people. Our prolific #TEDsters captured the best moments: […]
Dan Pink, former speechwriter for Al Gore, is now hoping to spark a right-brain revolution in business and management. The spark clearly caught on with several of Twitter’s most familiar #TEDsters. Pink on psychology research: “There’s a mismatch between what science knows and business does.” — brainpicker Pink: “Rewards by their very nature narrow our […]
Magnus Larsson is an architect with a blueprint to build a wall across Africa. A wall made with bacillus pasteurii (microorganisms that create sandstone) to help provide shelter for individuals and curb the destruction of sandstorms. Support for this project was widespread from TEDsters on Twitter: Magnus Larsson wants to build a sand wall across […]
Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, principal of BIG charmed the crowd at TED Global 2009 with his talk on his optimistic and innovative projects. He also showed his “Yes Is More” manifesto, a 130 meter long cartoon strip designed to encourage big thinking. Those on Twitter were super complementary of Ingels’ talk: Ingels: Denish architect with […]
Carolyn Steel is a food urbanist, meaning she can explain what we all take for granted- our food and how it gets to us. In her talk today at TED Global 2009, she presented frightening stats about where food demand is headed in addition to gripping historical context about how the food chain has evolved. […]