The latest edition of Edge.org is a fascinating discussion on the role scientists might play in difficult financial times. The issue features a few TED speakers, including George Dyson and Michael Shermer. Try this snippet: In all of this work economists, accountants and financial mathematicians should join forces with complexity theorists and other scientists with […]
Perforations, firstly, make stamps easy to tear off. Architects and engineers employ them to create lighter and more breathable structures. Now, graphic designers at Dutch creative agency SPRANQ re-introduce us to the cute doodads as a novel way to save ink. Ecofont, a free sans-serif typeface, is bejeweled with circular gaps along its spines, stems, […]
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 rock star and activist Peter Gabriel, talking about WITNESS.org, a project that uses powerful user-created video and online media to fight for human rights. He starts with a deeply moving personal story that […]
Via boingboing: Director Jesse Dylan made the beautiful video for Karen Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion (as well as a little something called “Yes We Can.” Now he has created an elegant 2-minute clip for Science Commons, explaining why this is a Good Thing. Watch and learn:
This week, the great CBC radio show Quirks & Quarks convened nine Canadian scientists and one science fiction writer to speculate on 10 ways the world could end. You be the judge: Is their list scarier than Stephen Petranek’s (watch his TEDTalk)?
The Washington Post has a fascinating story of a US interrogator, pseudonymed “Matthew Alexander,” who refused to use aggressive interrogation tactics sanctioned by the military — because, as he puts it: These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse. This is the same idea Philip Zimbardo shares in […]
In an ingenious geek-out that’s almost too perfectly suited for TED, designer Ken Moore presents a much-anticipated hack of the Nintendo Wii Remote: a theremin. It seems to be a nearly serendipitous merger of TEDTalks by thereminist Pamelia Kurstin and Wii hacker Johnny Lee. Has anyone seen other hybridized Ideas Worth Spreading (coincidental or not)? […]
Via the Great Beyond, an amazing undersea rescue that hits so many TED sweet spots: robots! energy! underwater astonishment! Watch what happens when a big, beautiful fish gets stuck in an undersea oil platform:
From design blog Brand New comes word of Women of Design, a new book that celebrates female designers: In publications, conferences and other public realms, women designers tend to be outnumbered by their male counterparts whose appearances, work and achievements are constantly in the spotlight. Luckily, it’s a reversing trend … [The book attempts to] […]
Fans of Jeff Han‘s touchscreen will enjoy this demo of ILoveSketch, highly intuitive new software that enables designers to create fluid 3D sketches through a gesture-driven interface: ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo. Via Kevin Kelly at The Technium.
Sometimes when you’re busy peering into space, space comes to you. This chance footage of a huge meteor rocketing through the sky is just awesome: Many lucky witnesses were also treated to a sonic boom. Did any Canadian or northern-U.S. TEDsters see this in person? (Or hear odd noises on your mobile devices around 5pm […]
To present BusinessWeek writer Steve Hamm’s new book, The Race for Perfect: Inside the Quest to Design the Ultimate Portable Computer, his own magazine asked the artist Joseph Lambert to turn one chapter into a graphic adaptation. Lambert illustrates the role of Alan Kay, “whose ideas shaped the development of today’s laptops, handhelds, and smartphones.” […]
You have 8 hours left to contribute to the Preamble of the Charter for Compassion. Tonight at midnight EST, writing begins on the next phase: the Affirmations. In the Affirmations section of the Charter, you can contribute by writing short descriptions of the eight core elements of compassion: Compassion as empathy, not pity. Compassion as […]
This past weekend, we added a captcha system to TED.com’s “Send this user an email” feature. We’re using reCaptcha, which harnesses the mighty power of captcha to help digitize old books and newspapers. Right now, reCaptcha is decoding texts from the Internet Archive (watch Brewster Kahle talk about the Internet Archive on TED.com). We take […]
By recognizing that the Golden Rule is fundamental to all world religions, the Charter for Compassion can inspire people to think differently about religion. This Charter is being created in a collaborative project by people from all over the world. It will be completed in 2009. You can help write the charter. Or inspire others […]
From Google.org (headed by 2006 TED Prize winner Larry Brilliant) comes this neat data display: Google Flu Trends. The project came about after some Google search engineers wondered if, in communities where more people searched on the term “flu,” there might actually be more flu. After talking with the Predict and Prevent group at Google.org, […]