Search Results for: ted

Development

CARE Turns Down Federal Money for Aid and Turns to Investing

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TEDsters have already heard this story — from speakers Iqbal Quadir, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Ashraf Ghani, Jacqueline Novogratz, and several others at last June’s TEDGLOBAL in Tanzania: developing countries need investments more than aid. One of the world’s biggest charities has now acted upon this idea. CARE, writes the New York Times, is turning down some []

Design

Low-tech, high-impact design at Amy Smith's IDDS

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Not all inventions need to be grandiose, complex things, Amy Smith said at TED2006: sometimes they can be simple and smart ideas that just help a lot of people (watch her speech – read summary). That’s the philosophy behind her first International Development Design Summit (IDDS), which just took place at MIT, where she teaches []

Lakshmi Pratury: India turns 60, time to renew its vows

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At TED2007, Lakshmi Pratury beautifully spoke about the lost art of letter-writing and its power. Founder of Tamarind Grove, which creates business and cultural links between the US and India, and a longtime TEDster, Lakshmi just posted on her blog her thoughts on the 60th anniversary of India’s independence (that was yesterday, August 15): “In []

A freak blog migrates into an institution

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After over two years at freakonomics.com, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner — co-authors of the 3-million-copies "Freakonomics" — last week moved their blog under a bigger and more institutional brand, that of the Opinion section of the New York Times’ website. Levitt spoke at TED2004 offering a preview of a chapter of "Freakonomics" titled "Why []

Environment

Wired's Anderson on Lomborg's "Cool It"

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Wired editor Chris Anderson got an advance copy of Bjorn Lomborg’s upcoming book Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, and his summary is: read it, but don’t follow his advice. Lomborg (watch his TED2005 speech) argues that although global warming is clearly happening and is human-caused, the debate over what to do []

Transcript

Premiere: William Kamkwamba on building a windmill

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When he was just 14 years old, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts, working from rough plans he found in a library book. In conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Kamkwamba, now 19, tells a moving story of ingenuity and adaptation, and shares his dreams: To build a []

Transcript

Premiere: George Ayittey on Cheetahs vs. Hippos

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This grab-you-by-the-throat talk by Ghanaian economist George Ayittey unleashes an almost breathtaking torrent of controlled anger toward corrupt leaders — the “Hippos” (lazy, slow, ornery, greedy) who have ruined postcolonial Africa, he says. Why, then, does he remain optimistic? Because of the young, agile “Cheetah Generation,” a “new breed of Africans” taking their futures into []

Premiere: Euvin Naidoo on the Africa You Don’t Know

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In the talk that opened TEDGlobal 2007 (“Africa: The Next Chapter”), South African investment banker Euvin Naidoo sets the scene, framing the conversation that would unfold over the four-day event. “What’s the worst thing you’ve heard about Africa?” he asks. After fielding call-outs of “famine,” “war,” “corruption,” he urges the audience to move past these []

"The African spirit pushes through"

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Guest blogger David McQueen was an enthusiastic reporter, photographer and networker at TEDGlobal 2007. He’s a speaker, writer, music executive and youth worker whose busy blog covers issues around Africa and general personal development — two interests that intersected at TEDGlobal, as he writes below. Being very passionate about the continent of Africa, I love []

Environment

Ed Burtynsky’s beautifully monstrous "Manufactured landscapes"

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If you are planning (you should) to go see Jennifer Baichwal’s documentary “Manufactured landscapes“, which opened last week in theaters across the US after spending a year mesmerizing film festivals audiences and will soon arrive in Europe, make sure you get there in time, for nothing describes the scale and essence of today’s globalized industry []

From "The Art of Conference Blogging"

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Ethan Zuckerman blogged TEDGlobal 2007 (and several past TEDs). Every session. Every speaker (save a few). Every day for four days. His near-real-time blogging was a crucial record of this conference. Many comments were made about his ability to turn out fully formed, thoughtful posts almost instantly. Just as important, his posts helped other TEDGlobal []

A hard week for space exploration

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This has been a hard week for lovers and dreamers of space travel — a frequent topic at TED. An explosion at Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites spaceport caused three victims. It was followed by a report on issues of personal safety at NASA, part of the unfolding story there. Space exploration is an inherent high-risk []

TED Prize

Own a Day of Architecture for Humanity

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2006 TED Prize winner Cameron Sinclair’s wish resulted in the creation of the Open Architecture Network. In the five months since its launch at TED the OAN has been shifting the landscape around how architects work to create more sustainable projects. Almost 500 projects worldwide are currently be managed through the network. A number of []

Powerful new documentary on the Darfur genocide

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TED Curator Chris Anderson writes: Last night, I attended the New York premiere of The Devil Came on Horseback, a searing documentary about Darfur, told through the eyes of US military observer Brian Steidle, whose photographs of the ongoing genocide there exploded onto the world two years ago. They raised awareness then, and the new []