Pangea Day bloggers are on the ground at the 6 live broadcast locations around the world, and reports are starting to come in. Reporting from Rio de Janeiro, Saralena and Claire write, We just touched down after an overnight journey from New York City — and are completely struck by the beauty of the city. […]
“We are sleepwalking into the future,” author James Howard Kunstler said in his biting 2004 TEDTalk, envisioning a bleak post-oil era for sprawling suburban America. His predictions come to life, now, in spite of the controversy surrounding them: Kunstler has written a novel, titled World Made by Hand, which details life in the “Long Emergency.” […]
2008 TED Prize winner Neil Turok sends these great photos from the new AIMS Research Centre, which is set to open May 12 in Muizenberg, Cape Town, South Africa. AIMS — the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences — promotes math and sciences education throughout Africa. Its goal is, quite simply, to find the next Einstein […]
Following Saturday’s devastating Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), Architecture for Humanity is asking for help in rebuilding the country over the long term. They write: While the media will focus its attention on the loss of life, there will be millions displaced in the coming weeks — and like most natural disasters, there’s no plan […]
A lovely moment in the latest T Magazine, in this Sunday’s New York Times: Maira Kalman writes about and illustrates her classic Alvar Aalto vase. Read the full story >>
It’s only a week now until Pangea Day — the worldwide festival of film, ideas and music, happening simultaneously around the globe on May 10. Thousands of locally hosted events worldwide will share the program, and if you’re in Milan, you’re invited to join the local viewing party hosted by Pangea Day Milano — see […]
Not to be outdone by the Time 100, the journals Foreign Policy and Prospect have together released a list of the Top 100 public intellectuals — with voting. Many TEDTalks favorites appear on the list, and you can help choose the eventual top 20 by voting for your very own top 5. From Foreign Policy‘s […]
Among the many TEDTalks stars on this year’s Time 100 list, Jill Bolte Taylor gets perhaps the coolest biographer: Dick Clark. He writes: Through her writings and lectures, she has done perhaps more than anyone else to explain, both to the healthy and the stricken, what a stroke is. Read the whole list >>
ESPN The Magazine‘s April 23 cover story takes a look at the future of sports — a world where prosthetics can enhance athletic skill beyond current human capabilities: The prosthetic-enhanced athlete will be able to run faster, jump higher and pitch harder than mere mortals. From an idea lab at MIT to a prosthetic design […]
Andrew Mwenda writes to the mailing list Africa Club: I want to thank all of you for your support and encouragement. I am now out and free, although reporting to police tomorrow, unsure of the outcome. The struggle for freedom in Uganda is not going to be easy. The challenges are enormous and so are […]
On Saturday, May 10, 2008 -– Pangea Day -– join the world for four hours of amazing short films, visionary speakers and great music. Pangea Day is a celebration of the power of film to unite us all. You’ll see films that are funny — sad — gorgeous — stark — powerful. Voices that have […]
The inaugural World Science Festival, a celebration of science and discovery, will take place May 28-June 1, 2008, in New York City. Organized by physicist Brian Greene, who explained string theory at TED2005, the event will bring together a range of speakers — including many TEDTalks favorites such as philosopher Dan Dennett, inventor and futurist […]
From the blog of TED’s musical director, Thomas Dolby: I’ve done a remix of Radiohead’s gorgeous ‘Nude’ from the Rainbows album. This was not solicited by the band. They are running a remix contest for their single, and I just went to iTunes and bought the ’stems’ to the song for $5 just like everybody […]
Photo: Shaul Schwarz/Reportage, for The New York Times. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company The New York Times Magazine recently tagged along with Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase and got an arresting look at the impact of mobile phones in the Third World. Chipchase, a “user anthropologist,” spoke at TED in 2007 to talk about […]
2006 TED Prize winner Larry Brilliant is profiled in the latest Rolling Stone. The long piece talks about Brilliant’s amazing life, from the hippie days of the 1960s, to his time in India helping eradicate smallpox, to his current job as head of Google.org, charged with spending some of Google’s money to solve global health […]
How can we use the Web to drive social change? Learn from the story of Architecture for Humanity, which leveraged a 2006 TED Prize to build the Open Architecture Network, linking communities around the globe with architects and designers who can help them solve problems. Tomorrow night, at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, a […]