TED Talk: Dennis Hong on Robots

Dennis Hong from ReMeLa gives a facinating talk on robot research.  Lot's of good clips of some of the various robots under development. I  like how Hong describes (around 12:30) keeping a notebook by his bed to capture thoughts and images that he gets as he falls asleep.  He then types these up into something intelligible in the morning.  These images have been the basis of some of his grants and proposals.

Rives: Emoticons

The poet Rives tells a short story using emoticons.

TED: Call to reinvent Liberal Arts Education

TED talk by Liz Coleman to reinvent liberal arts education by not narrowing our focus but broadening the scope of such a degree.


"The reality: No one has the answers. Everyone has the responsibility."



[Images captured from the video]

Bill Gates TED Talk

Bill Gates talks about two problems that his foundation is working on. You may not agree with him but he is asking interesting questions.

1. How do we stop a deadly disease that is spread by mosquitos?
2. How do you make a teacher great?

Follow up discussion to this talk.

John Hodgman: A brief digression on matters of lost time

Amory Lovins: Winning the Oil Endgame

I saw Amory Lovins give a lecture to a small group of teachers and interested community members in the late nineties. He spent a lot of time talking mostly about light bulbs and how much energy we could save by switching to the new low energy bulbs that were becoming more widely available. Everything he said made sense. He backed up all his points with research. He was advocating action and proposing behavioral changes that any of us could implement.

I just finished watching his new video on TED called Winning the Oil Endgame, and I am having a similar reaction. He is talking solutions. He backs up what he says with research. While his talk is aimed more at the governmental and industrial level, I still found it interesting. He has a book with the same title that is also available for free as a downloadable PDF. I'm downloading it as I write this.



[Image: Captured from TED Video; Winning the Oil Endgame;http://blog.ted.com/2007/12/amory_lovins.php]