Tuesday, November 30, 2010

George W. Bush Talks “the Facebook”


Former U.S. President George W. Bush stopped by the Facebook headquarters earlier this evening to promote his new memoir, Decision Points.
The 43rd president joined Facebook in June and uses the site to promote his various projects and speaking engagements. True to form, Bush was quick with the quips and the self-deprecating humor.
Mr. Bush revealed that he used to be a BlackBerry person but is now an iPad person. He also uses “the Facebook.” To be fair to Mr. Bush, President Obama has previously referred to Twitter as “the Twitter.” Being the leader of the free world apparently means you can apply definite articles to anything you want.
When Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg asked the former president “why Facebook,” Bush responded “because you have a lot of people on here and I’m trying to sell books.” Touche Mr. Bush, touche.

The Wonder and Beauty of Teaching Physics

Walter Lewin, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sheds light on everyday phenomena such as rainbows and what makes the sky blue. Watch Lewin create a rainbow right in the lecture hall and other exciting demonstrations in this engaging and creative discussion of physics that sheds what lies beneath the everyday wonders of our world.





Monday, November 29, 2010

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who's reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished -- and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.





Urban Science game teaches children how to think like urban planners

Epistemic games are computer games that can help players learn to think like engineers, urban planners, journalists, architects, and other innovative professionals, giving them the tools they need to survive in a changing world.

Based on more than a decade of research in technology, game science, and education, epistemic games revolutionize the ongoing debate about the pros and cons of digital learning to show the future of education in the digital age.



Seth Priebatsch: Building the game layer on top of the world

By now, we're used to letting Facebook and Twitter capture our social lives on the web -- building a "social layer" on top of the real world. At TEDxBoston, Seth Priebatsch looks at the next layer in progress: the "game layer," a pervasive net of behavior-steering game dynamics that will reshape education and commerce.




Blogging is All

In this program by the University of Maryland at College Park, Lee Thornton, professor of journalism at the University of Maryland, sits down with Robert Cox, founder and president of the Media Bloggers Association, in a discussion about the phenomenon that is blogging and its role in todays society.


Sunday, November 28, 2010

Pentagon Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg on Upcoming Iraq War Wikileaks Docs

The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks is preparing to release up to 400,000 U.S. intelligence reports on the Iraq War. The disclosure would comprise the biggest leak in U.S. history, far more than the 91,000 Afghanistan war logs WikiLeaks released this summer. We speak to the nation's most famous whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War in 1971. 




Eric Berlow: How complexity leads to simplicity

Ecologist Eric Berlow doesn't feel overwhelmed when faced with complex systems. He knows that more information can lead to a better, simpler solution. Illustrating the tips and tricks for breaking down big issues, he distills an overwhelming infographic on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan to a few elementary points.





Galapagos: Beyond Darwin

Galapagos: Beyond Darwin takes a scientific and photographic look at marine and terrestrial life of the Galapagos Islands.
The inspiration behind Charles Darwin’s boldest theories of evolution, the Galapagos Islands may be more provocative than Darwin originally expected. Explore the fascinating world of the Galapagos archipelago that Charles Darwin couldn’t explore in his 1835 visit.
Using underwater footage and state-of-the-art scientific equipment, marvel as new discoveries are made about marine and terrestrial life.
Climb into a state-of-the-art submersible and plunge 3,000 feet beneath the surface as history’s first deep-diving expedition to the Galapagos probes the depths where no camera has gone before.
Charles Darwin’s historic voyage to these islands forever changed our view of the world, yet he only scratched the surface.
Beneath the waves, an extraordinary variety of creatures continue to evolve, undisturbed by human settlement.
Share the discovery of over two dozen new species and capture creatures never before seen or even named! Be part of the expedition scientists will be writing about — and you’ll be reading about — for years.
Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 1 hour, 40 minutes)



Saturday, November 27, 2010

Zainab Salbi: Women, wartime and the dream of peace

In war we often see only the frontline stories of soldiers and combat. AT TEDGlobal 2010, Zainab Salbi tells powerful "backline" stories of women who keep everyday life going during conflicts, and calls for women to have a place at the negotiating table once fighting is over.


Friday, November 26, 2010

Jason Fried: Why work doesn't happen at work

Jason Fried has a radical theory of working: that the office isn't a good place to do it. At TEDxMidwest, he lays out the main problems (call them the M&Ms) and offers three suggestions to make work work.


Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Did You Know?

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Does Google Really Worry About Our Privacy?

A Privacy Law, Finally!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Marijuana A Chronic History

The fight against drug use in America has been going on since the turn of the last century but the term War on Drugs only became part of our national dialog in 1970 when it was first used by President Richard Nixon.
The President later formed the DEA and started a push to outlaw drugs of all kinds. Among the most discussed drugs in this war is Marijuana.
This special will look at the storied and strange history of Marijuana in America. Probably one of the better documentaries, mostly seems pro-cannabis and by far the most pro-cannabis documentary thus far released by the History Channel.
The documentary attempts to educate everyone who still has a Reefer Madness mindset, who still thinks cannabis prohibition is reasonable, and who have no idea that widespread cannabis use is relatively harmless compared to alcohol, tobacco, and especially pharmaceutical and other drugs.






Friday, November 19, 2010

The Nature of Sex

All nature’s creatures, the British novelist Graham Swift once wrote,join to express nature’s purpose. And that purpose is illustrated in delightful and sometimes dizzying detail in The Nature of Sex.
Birds, bees, and even barnacles and naked mole rats are driven to join forces to reproduce and pass along their genes to the next generation.
From the sea horse that mates in an hypnotic underwater ballet to the rodent who copulates until he literally drops dead, The Nature of Sexspans the globe to illustrate how an astonishing diversity of life forms find their mates and conceive, raise, and protect their offspring.
This Web companion to the four-part series takes a close look at the primal instinct that causes animals to come together in order to pass along their genes to the next generation.
We also examine how timing can be key in the mating process, and how varied sex contracts create not only new life, but diversity, in both animals and humans.
PART- "The Primal Instinct"

 Part 1/4


Part 2/4



Part 3/4


Part 4/4



PART-Time And A Place 

Part 1/4



Part 2/4



Part 3/4


Part 4/4



PART-The Sex Contract
Part- 1/4

Part- 2/4

Part- 3/4

Part- 4/4