The thing I find so compelling about aquariums is that they are both scientifically fascinating and visually stunning. Which is why the Aquarium Party is always among the many highlights of the TED experience for me. Last year’s attendees of the Aquarium Party had the added pleasure of observing the worlds only Great White Shark […]
Technology-based gifts — while always welcome — can be a bit, well, boring. Here: some indulgent and unexpected choices. For someone with a big project … and a really big desk: The 30-inch Apple Cinema Display monitor. More than 4 million pixels of gorgeous flat-screen glory. Utterly indulgent, but worth every penny. $2499 at Apple.com […]
Time magazine gives the inaugural TED Prize Winner their big annual award. (Well, he has to share it with a Mr. and Mrs. Gates.) And if you missed the talk Bono gave at TED last year, there’s a transcript here, and link to Bono’s TEDTalk here. Well worth hearing.
A German TV commercial invokes the age-old question: It’s entertaining … but is it art?
Those of you who are already fanatical Jill Sobule groupies have likely signed up to be a member of her Secret Society Mystery Cult (aka, Jill’s mailing list). And if you are a Cult member then you have already seen this fantastic video of the proper way to fold a shirt (Jill learned of this […]
2005 was the break-out year for the Pre-Fab home. A BusinessWeek slideshow reveals the state-of-the-art.
Bruno Giussani and John Battelle swap Evil Search Engine Scenarios.
Ross Lovegrove has design the “iPod of toilets,” according to Swiss newspaper NZZ
Humans have a hard time picturing certain things: long-term consequences, very large numbers, global trends … For better or worse, our brains evolved to understand the immediate, “middle-sized” world that confronts us daily. We’re grateful then, to the designers and thinkers who make abstract concepts accessible. Case in point: Gapminder, a Stockholm-based non-profit. Their extraordinary […]
Steven Levitt defends his theory linking New York City’s falling crime rate in the 90s with the legalization of abortion in the 70s.
Well-produced package on Forbes.com celebrates the world’s most influential industrial designers
Gazillions of words have written this past month about one of my boyhood heroes C S Lewis, in the run-up to the release of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. (Trailer here.) Allegedly he was sexist, racist, sado-masochistic and, according to another favorite author of mine Philip Pullman, responsible for one of the most […]
A collection of inspired holiday gifts.
Bjorn Lomborg publishes a new essay, “The Relative Unimportance of Global Warming.”
Garr Reynolds offers excellent advice for improving presentations.
While studying computer music in the late 1980s, one of my classmates brought a tape into CCRMA, Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Accoustics. The tape had a snippet of music with a sound we had never heard before — a very pure flute like instrument played atop a deep and raspy drone. […]