#ted talks
When geoscientist Andres Ruzo was a young boy, his grandfather told him a story about a river that boils in the Amazon. It seemed like a myth, but his elders swore the legend was true.
In our new TED Book, The Boiling River, Ruzo tells the story of his quest to find the bubbling, boiling river hidden in the heart of the Amazon.
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The European refugee crisis isn’t so much a crisis as it is a catastrophe. In Greece the danger has proven massive, particularly off the island of Lesvos, which takes in an average of 2,000 refugees daily.
Every day around Lesvos the Coast Guard must rescue boats that have capsized, run out of fuel, or simply broken down. Which is why the Coast Guard invited a team from Texas A&M University’s Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue to launch a pilot project this week for a very special robot—Emily, the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard. Think of Emily as a life preserver melded with a jet ski.
MORE: A Robot Life Preserver Goes to Work in the Greek Refugee Crisis
These robots are like superheroes, coming to the rescue when disaster strikes. Learn how they work here >>
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These beautiful photos will make you want to save the Everglades.
“I still see the world through the eyes of a child,” says Mac Stone. “I try to incorporate that sense of wonderment and curiosity into my photography as often as I can.” His photos make the endangered swamplands look utterly enchanting – an effort to inspire people to save them.
“My job is to use photography as a communication tool, to help bridge the gap between the science and the aesthetics,” says Stone. “To get people talking, thinking, and to hopefully, get them caring.”
See more amazing photos of the Everglades >>
Facebook:www.facebook.com/macstonephotography
Instagram: @macstonephoto
Twitter: @macstonephoto
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Dark ghost shark(Hydrolagus novaezealandiae) and the pale ghost shark (Hydrolagus bemisi), both are shortnose chimaera of the family Chimaeridae, found on the continental shelf around the South Island of New Zealand in depths from 30 to 850 m.
Both ghost shark species are taken almost exclusively as a bycatch of other target trawl fisheries
- video:Te Papa Research
Swimming in shark-infested waters? Wear this cool wetsuit >>
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Old books remixed into new art
Brian Dettmer takes old books and transforms them into works of art. Don’t worry - these are outdated textbooks, dictionaries and encyclopedias that are no longer in use.
“I think one of the reasons people are disturbed by destroying books, is because we think about books as living things,” Brian says. “But they also have the potential to continue to grow and become new things.” He calls his technique “remixing” - just like how a DJ remixes music.
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The Empire State Building glows red in honor of TED Talks Live!
The shows will air on PBS in 2016, so hold tight! We can’t wait to share these amazing speakers with you>>
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Ahmed Mohamed and President Obama finally met
Ahmed Mohamed, the Muslim American teen who became a household name after being arrested for a homemade clock, has done well for himself. After sending an invite back in September, Obama finally made good on his promise to Ahmed — and it couldn’t have happened on a better night.
This is amazing! Props to Obama, for reminding us to foster kids’ curiosity and creativity.
Here are some talks by more cool kids who are killing it:
- A teen studies distant galaxies >>
-Two teen scientists use bacteria to break down plastic >>
-A teen develops a pancreatic test to detect cancer >>
-A young inventor uses solar power to make peace with lions >>
And more brilliant youngsters >>
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So this talk by Neri Oxman is amazing. The future of design honestly needs to rely on ideas that are innovative, effective, waste diverting and still look interesting. It truly isn’t enough to just create a product for the appearance . Sustainability must be considered. And maybe being carbon neutral or minimal impact isn’t enough. What can your product do to then HELP the earth in return?
Highlights:
Using chitin to create structures. Diverting potential waste (e.g. crab and shrimp shells) - and using them to create structures that also have bacteria that breaks down carbon dioxide and turn them into sugar. Only issue that she alludes to but doesn’t elaborate on is the water usage.
3D printing is clearly the future
The silk worm experiment. If thousands (probably more) of silk worms don’t need to be boiled in their cocoons & killed each year - wouldn’t that be so much more money effective but also more humane??
Biomimicry and looking back on nature and traditional practices needs to happen more regularly
This is my favorite TED talk by Mikhail Kazinik called “The school is dead, long live the school”.
The point of his TED talk is that the school system is not teaching the right way anymore. The school used to teach to create the image of the world, but it now teaches the subjects without associative thinking.
“We shove information into our poor children like bags […] and where do we put the bags after that? To the junkyard. Because the school’s task is to ignite, and not to shove information.”
The poems Mikhail quoted in this bit:
http://www.pushkins-poems.com/Yev704.htm
https://ruverses.com/fyodor-tyutchev/we-can-not-divine/8632/
The original:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gt6m7RwlYk&t=924s
Really really really unpopular opinion but here it goes
Things in our childhood (i.e. the Jonas brother, drake and josh, high school musical, full house, that’s so raven, shrek, frozen and all other shows/iconic things of our childhood) should STAY our childhood.
I’m getting so sick of seeing everything making a comeback, the Jonas brothers is decent but high school musical 4, dumb. Drake and josh remake, dumb. Fuller house, dumb. Shrek 5, frozen 2, dumb.
The list goes on and on but I think it was such a good part of our childhood that we should keep it like that… 2019 is now, it’s not 2007 anymore people should move on and just enjoy what they had when they were young.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Transcript of “What is déjà vu? What is déjà vu?”
Since Emile Boirac introduced déjà vu as a French term meaning “already seen," more than 40 theories attempt to explain this phenomenon. Still, recent advancements in neuroimaging and cognitive psychology narrow down the field of prospects. Let’s walk through three of today’s more prevalent theories…
1. First up is dual processing… this theory asserts that déjà vu occurs when there’s a slight delay in information from one of these pathways. The difference in arrival times causes the brain to interpret the late information as a separate event. When it plays over the already-recorded moment, it feels as if it’s happened before because, in a sense, it has.
2. Our next theory deals with a confusion of the past rather than a mistake in the present. This is the hologram theory… According to the theory, … memories are stored in the form of holograms, and in holograms, you only need one fragment to see the whole picture… However, … your brain has summoned up [an] old memory without identifying it. This leaves you stuck with familiarity, but no recollection…
3. Our last theory is divided attention, and it states that déjà vu occurs when our brain subliminally takes in an environment while we’re distracted by one particular object. When our attention returns, we feel as if we’ve been here before… because you have, you just weren’t paying attention.
“You know, it costs us so much to remain divided.This zero-sum thinking,that’s what’s good for one group has to come at the expense of another,it’s what’s gotten us into this mess. I believe it’s time to reject that old paradigm and realize that our fates are linked.An injury to one is an injury to all.You know, we have a choice.Our nation was founded on a belief in a hierarchy of human value.But we are about to be a country with no racial majority.
So we can keep pretending like we’re not all on the same team.We can keep sabotaging our success and hamstringing our own players. Or we can let the proximity of so much differencereveal our common humanity.And we can finally invest in our greatest asset.Our people. All of our people.
Quote from Heather C. McGhee in her TED Talk “Racism has a cost for everyone”.
Kate Phellini
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“So we can keep pretending like we’re not all on the same team. We can keep sabotaging our success and hamstringing our own players. Or we can let the proximity of so much difference reveal our common humanity. And we can finally invest in our greatest asset. Our people. All of our people.”
Quote from Heather C. McGhee in her TED Talk “Racism has a cost for everyone”.
Heather C. McGhee
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