Courtesy of TEDster Bill Bragin, I had the good fortune to attend the premier of Stew’s show Passing Strange at Berkeley Rep earlier this week. Bill is the Director of Joe’s Pub, the influential music venue associated with The Public Theater in New York. Not only is Bill credited with building Joe’s Pub into the […]
After disrupting music distribution with file-sharing system Kazaa, and upsetting telecommunications with Voice-over-IP service Skype, TEDGLOBAL speaker Niklas Zennström and his accomplice Janus Friis have now set their sights on television. Their project is code-named "Venice". Little is known so far, but given their history, it’s likely to be based on peer-to-peer distribution technology. Their […]
British author and TEDGLOBAL speaker Charles Leadbeater has just released a first draft of his upcoming book for anyone to read and comment on. It’s called "We Think: Why mass creativity is the next big thing". I’m generally skeptical of "next big thing-isms", but Charles is an insightful analyst of the socioeconomic evolution. He has […]
Fifteen months after disseminating hints at TEDGLOBAL in Oxford, XPrize‘s Peter Diamandis and his posse are getting ready to annouce their plans for the first Rocket Racing League (RRL) races. The RRL is a racing competition akin to Nascar, with cars replaced by rocket-powered aircrafts called X-Racers that will zip around a virtual track in […]
TED partner Google is newly operating a separate search site: SearchMash. It was unveiled a few days ago, has a very simple homepage (no ads) and produces roughly the same results as the main Google search. But it also displays the top three relevant images, and has a few Ajax features that let you for […]
When the Best American books make their annual appearance each fall, it’s normally Best American Science and Nature Writing that pulls us in. The guest editor (this year: physicist Brian Greene) has inevitably spoken at Monterey, and the writers always include a stable of TED favorites. The titles in this ever-expanding franchise offer something for […]
We took note last fall, when Masters of American Comics opened in Los Angeles. The exhibit’s traveled now to New York, and is accompanied — like so many things in this city — with a lecture series. Comic Conversations opens next week with one of our superheroes: Simpsons creator (and long-time TEDizen) Matt Groening, along […]
Last spring, I gushed about the magic that was made when Jill Sobule and Julia Sweeney shared a stage for the first time. The two met at TED2006, confessed to being long-time fans of each other’s work, and resolved to collaborate on a show. The result was an uncategorizable delight, mixing stories and song. If […]
This morning, Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson offered the first public look at the rocketship expected to make space tourism a reality. The mock-up — revealed at WIRED/NextFest in New York — is based on the design of SpaceShipOne, the Ansari X-Prize-winning craft designed by Burt Rutan (TED2006). (Watch for Rutan’s TEDTalk later this fall.) […]
Even if there weren’t two TEDsters in the running, we’d be keeping a close watch on the race to succeed Kofi Annan as U.N. Secretary General, when he steps down at year’s end. One in a series of informal votes takes place today at UN Headquarters. In today’s New York Times, an Op/ED piece titled […]
San Francisco investor Peter A. Thiel (co-founder of PayPal) is putting $3.5 million into the antiaging research pioneered by TED speaker Aubrey de Grey (see past posts on him). The money will come in annual installments of $500,000 over the next three years for a pilot project, plus matching money for every dollar donated by […]
For a long time, TEDPrize winner Cameron Sinclair has encapsulated his philosophy in a slogan that recently turned into the title of his inspiring book: "Design like you give a damn" (see Cameron’s speech on TEDtalks – or if you are in New York see him live this coming Wednesday 20 at the NYPL). Now, […]
To TEDsters, Google.org – the philanthropic arm of Google – is mostly known for the inspiring speech its director Larry Brilliant gave at TED last february, outlining a very compelling plan for an Internet-based system to rapidly detect disease outbreaks (see the original post from the conference or Brilliant’s TEDprize speech in video). A story […]
<!––>TEDPrize winner, Cameron Sinclair, and Architecture for Humanity co-founder, Kate Stohr, will be in NYC next week for the celebration of the launch of their book – Design Like You Give a Damn. They’re being interviewed by John Hockenberry at the New York Public Library on September 20th. A similar event is being planned for […]
At TED2006, Helen Fisher delivered an unforgettable talk (now available online) focusing largely on love: Its evolution, its vital importance to human society, and the science behind the stages of lust, infatuation, and long-term attachment. Inspired by Fisher — and, well, slightly disturbed by the biochemical basis of it all — singer/songwriter Jill Sobule penned […]
At the University of Chicago, Professor Michael C. LaBarbera has prepared a comprehensive analysis of the Biology of B-Movie Monsters. In it, he discusses the brittleness of King Kong’s bone structure, how Mothra breathes, and who would really win in a battle between a tiny-tiny man and a tarantula. Read the article before placing your […]