TEDTalks favorite Steven Johnson has been guestblogging at boingboing.net — and this post will resonate with anyone who is cooped up indoors with a small child this season: The case against Candy Land. The essay (and the discussion afterward) touches on the nature of play, the utter futility of the game Battleship, and the idea […]
Photosynth on Multitouch, uploaded by TED Conference. On CNN’s Inauguration Day coverage today: a massive Photosynth of the precise moment that President Barack Obama took the oath of office. In the image above, an anchor sifts through individual images on a Multitouch screen. We’re proud because both these technologies — Photosynth and the Multitouch screen […]
Via Green Light: The Rocky Mountain Institute, whose chair and chief scientist is TEDTalks star Amory Lovins, this month spun off a car company, Bright Automotive, that’s focused on making street-legal all-electric cars. From the story on Green Light: Bright Automotive wants to make plug-in hybrids. The cars will go about 30 miles on a […]
Via ReadWriteWeb: CNN.com’s minisite “The Moment” will be Synthing the inauguration on January 20, combining crowd snapshots of this historic Tuesday into an immersive experience: “We’ll take your photos from every angle, combine them with CNN’s professional shots, and produce what we hope will be an amazing experience that will be shown live on CNN. […]
This week, the wonderful Rokia Traoré released her new record, Tchamantché, and it’s been rolling up glowing reviews. If you fell in love with Rokia’s smoky voice and her thoughtful, sensitive songs via her two songs on TED.com, or during her knockout set at Pangea Day last May, seek this record out. You can find […]
Here’s a mind-expanding set of photos from Boston.com’s photo feature, The Big Picture — taken by satellites or by astronauts as they fly above the Earth. The images come from NASA’s Earth Observatory. Talk about taking the 30,000-foot view …
This odd couple banters their way through a lesson on braising artichokes as part of Isaac Mizrahi’s (watch his 2008 TEDTalk) series of webisodes. The dish itself? Artichokes braised with pancetta in lemon juice and white wine — elegant yet simple, and in line with Bittman’s charge to eat more vegetables. These two don’t let […]
Peter Ward spoke at TED2008 about Earth’s mass extinctions (watch for his TEDTalk later this month). You probably know about one of these events, the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction 65 million years ago that ended the age of dinosaurs. In today’s Boston Globe, Ward talks with writer Drake Bennett about the other four extinctions — and about […]
In tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine, online today, there’s a very in-depth story about Steven Pinker — My Genome, My Self: Steven Pinker Gets to the Bottom of His Own Genetic Code. Pinker, along with nine other volunteers, had his genes sequenced last year as part of the Personal Genome Project. He learned many, many […]
Sir Ken Robinson‘s new book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, is published today in the United States and on Feb. 12 everywhere. It’s the book he mentions in his TEDTalk … He sends this message to the TED community: “At TED 2006, I talked about creativity and education and the urgent need […]
Steep yourself in the delightful tones of this homebrew theremin, built with a mug of tea: Theremug from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo. The latest in TEDBlog’s chronicle of the evolution of untouchable music, it joins this cool Wii remote hack. Thanks for the tip via Posterous, reflectionof.me
Edge.org’s annual question for 2009 is: “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” With thoughtful answers from 151 thinkers and doers, including TED’s Chris Anderson and an array of TEDTalks stars, this is a document to savor as we start the new year. Helen Fisher writes: Hidden Persuaders ’09: […]
Today’s TEDTalk, from Kary Mullis, touches on a powerful topic — how modern science is funded, and how the availability of money can drive scientific inquiry just as powerfully as curiosity or necessity can. Several other TEDTalks discuss this often-hidden driver of scientific research. Alan Russell offers a searing vision of how current research is […]
28 hours in Colombia with One Laptop per Child
Each Friday recently, we’ve been featuring a TEDTalk that was posted early on in the TED.com experiment. Today’s hidden gem is from architect Thom Mayne, who says early on in his TEDTalk: “No matter what I’ve done, what I’ve tried to do, everybody says it can’t be done.” Mayne talks about the job of an […]
There’s a fascinating conversation going on right now around Dan Gilbert’s latest TEDTalk, “Exploring the frontiers of happiness,” posted yesterday. In the talk, Gilbert goes into detail on his research into choice, satisfaction and happiness. Several commenters are suggesting the headline is inaccurate, because the talk isn’t about happiness, per se, as much as about […]