The New York Times reported yesterday that the UN’s agency on AIDS dramatically overestimated its count of current and new infections: The agency, Unaids, will lower the number of people it believes are infected worldwide, to 33.2 million from the 39.5 million it estimated late last year. Much of the difference comes from new reporting […]
Since Nicholas Negroponte presented his idea for a “100-dollar-laptop” at TED2006, the project has been going through many ups and downs, enthusiasms and criticisms, and had occupied a lot of media space. The XO laptop is now here. The cost at this stage is nearly double, but the machine is awesome. Mass production started earlier […]
Consider it a bonus track to the great speech by Carolyn Porco last March at TED07, when she showed amazing images of Saturn and its moons. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) has just released video footage taken by the the onboard high-definition camera of their spacecraft Kaguya, showing extraordinary images of the Moon’s surface […]
TEDGLOBAL2005 speaker and GrameenPhone founder Iqbal Quadir is launching a new center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT, thanks to a $50 million structured gift from Legatum, a Dubai-based investment firm. The Legatum Center “will help MIT students start enterprises in developing countries, to foster organic and durable economic growth and more equitable societies”, Iqbal […]
Witness, the non-profit led by Peter Gabriel (watch his TED2006 talk) has launched “The Hub”, an online platform allowing anyone to use camcorders, cell phones and cameras to upload, share, and discuss human rights-related footage, as well as organize advocacy campaigns. A few months ago, announcing the project, Peter had described it as “a sort […]
If you happen to be in the Bay Area Wednesday night, November 14, TED2006 Speaker Phil Borges has a gallery reception in San Francisco and you’re invited: FiftyCrows Gallery 49 Geary Street, Second Floor, Suite 225 From 6 PM to 9 PM. An RSVP is required, send an email to goodevents@goodmagazine.com. Here the flyer:
A powerful question from Tanzanian blogger Ndesanjo Macha: …Africa stands for a lot more than the press –- sorry folks, the U.S. press –- gives it credit for. I pointed this out a few weeks ago: Using a simple search method at the New York Times, the terms “AIDS” + “Africa” brought back 250 stories […]
Game publisher Electronic Arts has donated the original SimCity, Will Wright‘s groundbreaking 1989 computer game, to Nicholas Negroponte‘s One Laptop per Child initiative. It’s a wonderful example of using games as tools for learning. As EA’s Steve Seabolt said in yesterday’s press announcement, “SimCity is entertainment that’s unintentionally educational.” Back in March, OLPC’s SJ Klein […]
TEDTalks favorite Sirena Huang (watch her TEDTalks performance) played in Manhattan on Sunday night; as the New York Times reports today, “A Mendelssohn concerto exquisitely performed by a 13-year-old violinist, Sirena Huang, brought down the house.” Huang played as part of a free concert to honor the 103-year-old concert pianist Alice Herz-Sommer, a survivor of […]
What’s the relationship between our happiness and the choices we make? TEDTalks from Barry Schwartz and Daniel Gilbert point out some paradoxes of this relationship, and the complex emotions involved in choice. Now, some new research from Yale sheds light on how toddlers and monkeys make choices. From the BPS Research Digest Blog: Forty 4-year-olds […]
News.com’s blog reports on how much oil we have left, in the estimate of Chevron CTO Don Paul: About 1 trillion gallons that we can extract, and another trillion that, for now, we can’t. In a hallway conversation with a News.com reporter, Chevron’s Paul estimated that we will have consumed half of all the oil […]
Some familiar TED faces and themes turn up in Popular Mechanics‘ 2007 Breakthrough Awards, published in the magazine’s November issue. Jeff Han‘s multitouch wall (watch his 2006 TEDTalk) and Hod Lipson‘s print-anything printer (related to his work on robots) are named as two of the awards’ “8 Bold Ideas” for 2007. If you were moved […]
The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its moons celebrates its diamond anniversary this week by releasing a new collection of images, movies and maps. If you could not get enough of Carolyn Porco‘s images from her talk at TED2007, head over to the CICLOPS site for new and just-posted archival images, as well as a […]
Game designer Will Wright (watch his TEDTalk) will become a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) this month — one of only 67 ever named, and the first video game designer, reports Variety. A few other BAFTA Fellows: Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Elizabeth Taylor … Since 2006, BAFTA — essentially […]
Gore gets it! – the prize, and the crisis. Deeply rooted in science, Al Gore has established climate crisis as a moral and spiritual imperative. Now we must act with speed on an unprecedented scale. Speed and scale. — John Doerr I have seen the VP’s passion since my early days photographing him in Washington […]
As congratulations for Al Gore, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, pour in from the TED community, we asked people who saw Gore’s TED2006 presentations to talk about the impact his talks had on them. This is the second in the series. When I facilitate a gathering of wild tiger experts next month in India, Al […]