I have decided to post a TED talk every week from here on out. There is just so much good content on the TED website that it needs to be shared. Some of the worlds most intelligent people are speaking at TED about a lot of things I think we should all be thinking about.
Mark Bittman gives a talk this week about what is wrong with what we eat and how our diet is impacting our ability to live on our planet. It’s an excellent talk and in incredibly important topic.
TED is something I check a few times a week now every week. I feel kind of ridiculous for not having written about it yet. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. TED started in 1984 as a conference to bring about the brightest minds and most innovative thinkers from those 3 categories. The speakers are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (although there have been a few to run over). The TED website makes the best talks from the conference free to view. There are already more than 200 talks archived at the site making it a true resource for inspiration to just about anyone interesting in just about anything. I have watched videos about topics ranging from Cern’s Large Hadron Collider to speculations on how our world will end. It’s some of the most thought-provoking content I have found on the internet and it always leaves me truly inspired. It’s an amazing effort and offers a unique insight into some of our world’s deepest thinkers.
TED is committed to spreading ideas. Ideas that can help shift attitudes and hopefully help change the world. The TED conference is held annually in Long Beach, California.
You can learn more about TED at their home website along with the TED Prize. Before you go there, you can view just a tiny tidbit of some of the amazing things going on their by watching Johnny Lee transform a $40 Nintendo Wii remote into a digital whiteboard. It’s on the lighter side of speculating on how the world will end but still amazing nonetheless
Well, I apologize for the bad news today but there are some stories in circulation that deserve attention beyond the normal banality of our design scene. Another such story that just left me aghast today is the story of Josef Fritzl.
Fritzl is a resident of the small town Amstetten in Austria. At the age of 18 he drugged and imprisoned his daughter, Elisabeth for the next 24 years. During that time he repeatedly raped her which led to her in turn giving birth to 7 children as a result of the abuse. One of whom died because of inadequate care. The child who died of neglect was a twin whose body Fritzl disposed of by incinerating it in a furnace. 3 of the children had never seen daylight until they were recently released. One of the children is still in critical condition. Another may have permanent vision problems because of his inexposure to natural light. The last, at only 5 years old was elated to ride in the police car as he had only seen them on television and never in person. He appears to be in good health.
73 year old Fritzl was an electrical engineer who apparently used his skills to construct an elaborate basement dungeon under his family home that measured less than six feet high in some areas. He kept the space secure with a massive 660 lb concreted door fitted with an electric lock that could only be opened via a remote control that he kept on his person at all times. The living space had only 3 total cells and measured only around 650 square feet. 650 square feet for 24 years. It belies imagination. It wasn’t until the 19 year old child fell ill and had to be taken to a nearby hospital that the atrocity was uncovered.
The strangest twist was that Fritzl managed to keep the entire incident secret from his wife the entire time by forcing his daughter to write fake letters to his wife (her mother). He even brought 3 of the children out of the basement hell to be raised by him and his wife claiming his estranged (but really imprisoned) daughter had left them on the doorstep.
In accordance with Austrian law it appears Fritzl may only be facing a 15 year sentence. At the age of 73 he will most likely die in prison, which is well deserved in this case. I do not believe in the death penalty but I do think he should be sentenced to at least the same amount of time he robbed his daughter of and that would be 24 years. How a man could do this to his own flesh and blood is an amazing human tragedy.
You can read more about the story at the following links:
Gizmodo
Yahoo News
CNN
This is just disturbing. Enough so that I had to post it here instead of on the sideblog. I was just shocked when I heard this and then saw the videos. Allegations have arisen that South Carolina Highway Patrol Police Officers have been using their vehicles to ram suspects. It’s bad enough to hear about something like this on the news but it gets even worse when you watch the actual dashcam videos of the officers engaging in the alleged behavior. How does something like this happen? We have more people in jail in this country than any other country in the entire world. What has gone awry in our culture? We pay our police officers with our tax money to protect us and uphold the law. This kind of behavior crosses the line from simply unacceptable to criminal and makes these officers no better than the suspects they are trying to capture. I know it is an easy leap to think all cops are bad when you see something like this but that just isn’t true. Most police officers are good people who live a life of difficult public service because they believe in what they are doing. The bad apples here shouldn’t spoil the bunch but videos of police brutality just keep surfacing. We need to turn the law back at these officers and make sure that if they are tried in civil court for these actions they are reprimanded and punished. They are risking peoples lives and there is just no excuse. None.
You can read more about this story here:
MSNBC
You can also watch all the videos here:
The State: South Carolina News
I was thumbing through Time Magazine tonight and stumbled across an article that really caught my attention. The topic was centered around the possibility of producing fuel from growing algae. I was intrigued immediately because algae is voracious. It grows very quickly and carries that lofty possibility of being highly sustainable. If one tenth of New Mexico, the part where no one lives, was converted into an algae farm from which we could attain fuel, it would be enough to sustain the entire United States.
Understandably algae has become the holy grail of the enthusiastic biodiesel community. It is quickly becoming a real hope at a possible resource to make a serious impact on fossil fuel consumption. So far research conducted at Utah State University has show that farmed algae can yield 10,000 gallons per acre.
A joint venture company called Vertigro Energy is growing the oil-rich algae by pumping it through plastic bags suspended in a greenhouse. The algae produced via this process is siphoned off so the lipids can be extracted and refined into a biodiesel fuel. Vertigro’s processing facility is located in El Paso, Texas. According to their Principal Scientist, Glen Kertz, the process can produce 100,000 gallons of oil per acre, per year. When you compare this to ethanol, which I think is a scam and a totally unrealistic fuel source, you see the real potential. Corn only yields about 20 gallons per acre.
I hope we begin pulling our heads, collectively out of our warmongering asses and start pushing some greatly needed funding towards researching alternatives like this. I think we have lost 8 years now fighting pointless wars and throwing money away. It’s time to pull ourselves back together and start taking it to our government to put money towards programs and research like this to start making some serious gains in sustainable energy. I think seeing what has happened to food and gasoline prices this week was a good kick start for the American public. Algae biodiesel isn’t a new idea, it’s been around a while but it is something that needs to be examined and it offers a realistic solution to looming problem that will effect all of us, worldwide.
You can read up more about algae biodiesel fuel at the following links:
Energize Now Blog
Wired
Valcent Products Inc.
Utah State University: Biofuels Initiative
Well today is the official date of Earth Day. What do you do on Earth Day? To be perfectly honest, I do not know.
WikHow has a nice little page that can help you figure out things you can do on Earth Day. I found it pretty useful and it answered some of my questions. It seems like it would be something of greater importance these days considering the heightened awareness of the possibility of an impending environmental crisis. I didn’t even realize it was Earth Day until I saw Google’s special little illustration at their home page.
Here is somewhere you can find out even a little bit more about it and what you can do.
A coworker alerted me to this disturbingly terrifying project today. I have to say it kind of sent me reeling a little bit especially when considering a group of people with the level of intelligence it would take to complete a project like this would get together to actually follow through with it. It sometimes sounds like our civilization and planet are in a lot more peril than most of us would like to consider. Whether or not any of this is right or we are totally nuts remains to be seen.
Apparently several of the seeds on our planet have been going extinct even faster than the fish and animal populations. According to Dr. Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, “Every day that passes we lose crop biodiversity. We must conserve the seeds that will allow agriculture to adapt to challenges such as climate change and crop disease.”
In order to combat this problem they have constructed the Svalbard International Seed Vault that will be carved deep into the frozen rock of an island not far from the North Pole. According to the architects the “fail-safe” seed vault will “gleam like a gem in the midnight sun,” signaling the priceless treasure within: seed samples of nearly every food crop of every country.
My question is what do they know that they aren’t telling the rest of us? If they really think it is worth the resources it would take to carve a gigantic vault into one of the most inhospitable regions of the entire planet, what is signaling the disaster that would provide just cause for such an insane project. I try to take the optimistic side when it comes to conspiracy theories but this definitely caught my attention. It’s just too bad our government could care less.
There is so much good stuff on this site. It covers so many different ideas from so many intelligent people. TED is an annual conference held in Monterey, CA. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. When it originally started in 1984 these where the only subjects talked about. Now there are no limits to who speaks and on what subjects. Each presenter has only 18 minutes to share their ideas and blow your mind . Check out the Theme : Design Like You Give a Damn. So many categories and sub categories. Go get lost with some really smart people. TED Ideas Worth Spreading.
A must for everyone to stop by and check out is Al Gore’s Current TV. It’s definitely at the top of my list for TV worth watching. Current TV is mostly user generated television that spans content from movie reviews to daily insights of Arabian camel herders. The best part is that all episodes, if you will, are just short bursts of information. If watching it on your local cable station you can then visit the website, view and comment on that topic, find more sources around that topic, and then google whatever they can’t provide. I also really really enjoy the “commercial” graphics in between programmings that generate information about the top google searches at that moment or recent comments on that particular episode. Check out the quick samplings above, it only gets better from here. More from Blakkbox here.
The Tap Project is the type of project that can really help the less fortunate, and the kind of charity that I think should be a year round fundraiser for EVERY restaurant. Not just a handful of days in March and not just at a select group of eateries.
But that said, the Tap Project is a brilliant idea, and every restaurant taking part in project deserves a shout out.
What is the Tap Project you ask? According to their site, it’s “a campaign that celebrates the clean and accessible drinking water available as an every day privilege to millions, while helping UNICEF provide safe drinking water for children around the world. Beginning Sunday, March 16 and culminating on March 22, the United Nations World Water Day, restaurants will invite their customers to pay $1 for the tap water they normally get for free.”
For every dollar raised, a child will have clean drinking water for 40 days.
$1. That’s it. That’s all it takes. If you go out to eat between March 16 - 22, ask if the restaurant you’re dining at is taking part in the Tap Project, or ask why they’re not.
If you’d like to specifically visit a restaurant taking part in this, visit the restaurant section of tapproject.org to search for a participating restaurant near you.
If you would just like to donate or want any other information, tapproject.org’s got you covered.
Well, in what I honestly have to say is one of the more extreme cases of downright egregious malpractice on American soil, the Endoscopy Center of Nevada says as many as 40,000 patients may have been exposed to Hepatitis C and even possibly HIV. The clinic is currently in the process of issuing letters to these patients acknowledging the exposure. Apparently the practice of reusing syringes by removing and replacing the needles while keeping the same plunger is the culprit behind the outbreak. The procedure was ongoing for possibly as long as 4 years, exposing thousands of people to other patients blood. The reason for this gross oversight? To save money of course. The question that obviously arises is how many other clinics have engaged in similar practices? You can read more about it in the Las Vegas Sun and listen to an NPR interview here. I usually reserve news like this for the rolling sideblog but this story was just too appalling to keep of the central feed. The story struck close to home for me since I contracted Hepatitis A (the least damaging strain) from food while traveling in Brazil about a year and a half ago. It knocked me out of commission for about a month, and I had to go to the emergency room for the first time in my adult life. If Hepatitis A can make you that sick, I could only imagine how angry someone would be if exposed to Hepatitis C in order to save a few pennies on the dollar.
I know this post might be a little off topic for a design and politics blog but I found it interesting no less so here it is. Wesley Snipes was apparently convicted of evading taxes and his trial was cut short yesterday when his defense team apparently rested its case early citing lack of evidence on the part of the prosecution. Snipes is claiming he sincerely believed he didn’t have to pay taxes and was even demanding to be paid back taxes he had already paid. He stopped filing his returns in 2000. Snipes says he was the victim of unscrupulous accountants who convinced him he didn’t have to pay any taxes.
Whew, what is that smell in here? It smells like…yuck what is that? Oh, yikes I am pretty sure that’s bullshit I smell.
I guess we will have to wait and see if the court smells it too.
French bank, Societe Generale has stated that a 31 year old rogue trader named Jerome Kerviel has cost the bank upward of 7 billion in a series of fraudulent trading scams. It is being tauted as the most expensive cases of fraud in trader history. Other sources have reported the Kerviel blamed part of his dealings on troubles at home with his father’s death. His father must have died pretty horrifically to justify stealing 7 billion dollars. It is a whole new era when a single human being can be responsible for losing such a vast some of money. It reminds me of the 12 billion that was flown, in all it’s literal physical bulk, into Iraq and massive sums of it were lost. Except that was a government responsible for that blunder, not a single rogue trader.
