Erik Johansson: Impossible photography

This guy is doing with photography and digital manipulation what René Magritte and M.C. Escher did with drawing and painting. Pretty interesting stuff. I wish they didn't cut off his talk at the end, he was just getting around to explaining how he actually created these images.

Cleaning Up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in Just Five Years Time

A nineteen year old inventor has come up with a method that he says could clean up the great pacific garbage patch in just five years time, and at a profit.

Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change

Allan Savory's solution to the problem of desertification runs completely counter to my intuition and everything I've been taught about why desertification happens in the first place, but his solution seems to be proven to work.

From TED:

“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes -- and his work so far shows -- that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

Is Our Universe The Only Universe?

This is one of the most persuasive lectures I have seen discussing the possibility of a multiverse, which is the idea our own universe may be just one among a boiling sea of universes. This lecture is more action-packed, but on a very similar subject to a lecture I posted a few years ago by Lawrence Krauss.

Miguel Nicolelis: A monkey that controls a robot with its thoughts. No, really.

One of the most amazing TED talks I've seen in a long time.

Can we use our brains to directly control machines -- without requiring a body as the middleman? Miguel Nicolelis talks through an astonishing experiment, in which a clever monkey in the US learns to control a monkey avatar, and then a robot arm in Japan, purely with its thoughts. The research has big implications for quadraplegic people -- and maybe for all of us. (Filmed at TEDMED 2012.)

Cormac McCarthy 'Blood Meridian'

I thought this was an excellent critical dissection of the book, Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy... If you haven't read it, consider it an imperative to go out and pick up a copy and read it immediately.

In my opinion, the Judge is one of the most interesting characters in the entirety of modern fiction... I love the comparisons of the Judge to Milton's version of the Devil in Paradise Lost... I don't like many books, but I don't hesitate to put this book among the top ten works of fiction I have ever read.


Thanks Rob for the link!

Ray Kurzweil "How to Create a Mind", Authors at Google

I thought this was a great lecture by the futurist, Ray Kurzweil. I have yet to read his new book, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, which might be my next purchase.

About the book:

In How to Create a Mind, The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, the bold futurist and author of The New York Times bestseller The Singularity Is Near explores the limitless potential of reverse engineering the human brain. Ray Kurzweil is arguably today's most influential—and often controversial—futurist. In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization—reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world's problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating. Certain to be one of the most widely discussed and debated science books of the year, How to Create a Mind is sure to take its place alongside Kurzweil's previous classics.

Bill Harley - Stories Out Loud

As a teacher, keeping students from falling asleep while you're talking is a craft... But getting them to remember your points intuitively is a fine art known by the best storytellers...

RSA Animate - The Power of Networks

In this new RSA Animate, Manuel Lima, senior UX design lead at Microsoft Bing, explores the power of network visualisation to help navigate our complex modern world.

Rebecca MacKinnon: Let's take back the Internet!

http://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_mackinnon_let_s_take_back_the_internet.html

Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins: Who Says Science Has Nothing to Say About Morality?

 I finished reading the book "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris a few months ago, and initially I was very skeptical of the entire premise. At first, the idea that science could determine human values seemed entirely Utopian and totalitarian in the vein of "Brave New World" or even as bad as "1984"... But I think Sam Harris really does understand those fears and goes to great lengths to confront them head-on.

This video is a great short synopsis of what is contained in the book.

'Morality: From the Heavens or From Nature?' by Dr. Andy Thomson, AAI 2009

Dr. Andy Thomson gives a talk on morality at the Atheist Alliance International 2009 Conference in Burbank, California. Dr. Thomson uses Francis Collins' claim that morality is proof of God as a jumping-off point to discuss what we know about how morality works and where it came from.

Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty

 
  From the author of: The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution

TED collaborates with animator Andrew Park to illustrate Denis Dutton's provocative theory on beauty -- that art, music and other beautiful things, far from being simply "in the eye of the beholder," are a core part of human nature with deep evolutionary origins.

Lawrence Lessig: The Future of Copyright Law and Creativity

These are two great lectures by Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down and Control Creativity (Penguin 2004).

Lawrence Lessig: Laws That Choke Creativity     filmed March 2007

Lawrence Lessig: Re-examining the Remix     filmed April 2010

TED Talk: Matt Ridley: When Ideas Have Sex

At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It's not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I'd Known When I Was 18

I thought this was a really thought provoking interview worth sharing. I found myself at least a few times thinking, "Yeah, that's some advice I should be listening to even now."
STEPHEN FRY: WHAT I WISH I'D KNOWN WHEN I WAS 18 from Peter Samuelson on Vimeo.

Douglas Adams: Parrots the Universe and Everything

I saw this on the Pharyngula blog today. This may well be one of the best lectures I have ever seen.

Johanna Blakely: Lessons from fashion's free culture

A great TED talk on the absurdity of copyright law in the digital age using the copyright-free fashion industry as a model.

TEDtalksDirector — May 25, 2010 — http://www.ted.com Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna Blakley. At TEDxUSC 2010, she talks about what all creative industries can learn from fashion's free culture.

Richard Dawkins: If Science Worked Like Religion

The Real News: The Age Of Science And Discovery

Another great TED talk. This one is very short, but really good.