You’ve already heard about TEDx from Sean here and here. The main TED conference for 2011 has been going on this week, in Long Beach, and rumors have it that it’s been great. Physicist Janna Levin gave a talk, which is not yet posted. A few of the talks are, though — check out this inspiringly optimistic view of the current situation in the Arab world from Wadah Khanfar. More TED talks here, the ones from this week are starting to appear.
In any case, one of the first very large TEDx Events was organized as a part of Universal Children’s Day in November, with a whole bunch of simultaneous organized events called TEDxYouth. I had the opportunity to give a talk at one of the events TEDxYouth Castellija, to about 400 middle and high school students, about how the Universe works.
Because of the younger audience, they cut the standard ted talk time of 18 minutes to 6 minutes, which made it even harder — at least for those of us used to having a whole hour to say something! Anyways, I managed to try to explain dark matter, galaxies, and the last 14 billion years in this short time. You can take a look here:
The rest of the speaker lineup was really great, and very diverse, including a graffiti artist, the founder of guitar hero, the google chef, and a super compelling biochemist.
My favorite talk was by Garang Akau, one of the lost boys of Sudan, who has subsequently graduated from Stanford and started his own NGO called New Scholars, focused on incubating youth-led enterprise in Africa. His fearlessness and optimism in the face of incredible hardship was seriously inspiring. Check it out:
The best part of the whole thing was meeting and talking with some of the kids, who were truly engaged and curious. Lots more awesome talks are available from TEDxYouth Castelleja and from the rest of the TEDxYouth events. Looks like the day was a smashing success all around, and will be happening again next November.
Everyone knows about the TED talks — the great, and mercifully short, presentations whose videos are among the most-shared on the web. Even clicking on a completely random talk, you’re likely to be rewarded with something interesting. Part of that is the extraordinary level of quality control — not only in choosing speakers, but in working with speakers ahead of time to fine-tune their presentations. And holding them to a time limit.
Besides the big TED conferences, there are also independently-organized events known as TEDx. Caltech is going to host such an event for the first time, TEDxCaltech, on January 14. The theme is “Feynman’s Vision: The Next 50 Years.” In practice that means three groups of talks: Conceptualization and Visualization in Science, Frontiers of Physics, and Nanoscience and Future Biology. Check out the list of speakers. If it weren’t for the fact that I am on it myself, I’d emphasize what a great program this is — any event that includes both Scott Aaronson and Lyle Mays shows quite a bit of promise. Throw in Leonard Susskind and Craig Venter, and it might be worth a special trip.
All are welcome to come! The flip side of the fact that so much work goes into making the talks successful is that a corresponding level of commitment is asked of the audience — so you don’t simply buy a ticket, you apply, and it does cost money. But who can put a price on inspiration?
It was a dark and stormy night, two years ago to the day – All Hallows’ Eve indeed. As the rain pelted the windows of my mansion, I gazed out at the common folk scurrying around with their tricking and their treating. Allowing the briefest of smiles to flicker across my lips, I picked up my phone and dialed the number.
“Hello?
“Jonathan, it’s me – Mark. Don’t speak, just listen. I’ve figured it out.”
“Oh yes – that I remember! And when that day comes, we’ll squeeze the cash from those rubes so hard that the streets will run red with their blood!”
“Well my friend, that day has come.”
“Don’t toy with me Mark!”
“Listen carefully. We begin tonight. We write, slowly but steadily. This will take two years. It will require patience, dedication and hard work, but I know we can do it if we keep our eyes on the prize. We are going to be rich beyond our wildest dreams, and we can bankrupt those losers at the same time. Jonathan, we’re going to write a Scientific American article!”
A stunned silence followed from Jonathan, as I began my trademark cackle, imagining sucker after sucker shelling out their hard-earned cash for nothing but knowledge! It was beautiful – just perfect. A crack of lightening and almost immediate rumble of thunder drowned out my joy before it reached its enviable crescendo.
Our challenge page has had a great response so far — many, many thanks to everyone who has donated. Every donation is rewarded with a direct thank-you from the classroom that you helped. Here are a few of our responses:
“I simply cannot thank you enough for your selfless donation for much-needed supplies to use in my classroom. I know that your generosity will allow students with learning disabilities to engage in hands-on activities that relate to their everyday lives in reading, writing and math.” — Ms. S, Columbus
“I AM SO EXCITED about this project being funded! I have always wanted this Lakeshore kit to assist my instruction in science. I know that the students will be excited when they are able to work in groups and pairs to understand scientific concepts using this set. Words cannot express how thankful I am to each and every one of you for your contribution to our classroom!” — Ms. L, Forsyth, Georgia
“The items that you will provide for my students will help them with counting. Can you imagine the look on their faces when they see all the resources that they will get? I can. Its a look that I constantly get when I introduce a new concept and they are interested in learning more.” — Mrs. B, Los Angeles
We’re kicking serious butt in the Discover Blogs sub-challenge, which is nice, but our collective behinds are in turn being kicked by the pretenders at Seed, especially the squid people. Do you really want to stand for that?
And while we’re stooping to cheap psychology, did you notice this recent study that women give more to charity than men? Guys, are you going to just sit there and make these scurrilous accusations become reality?
More seriously, I love the big donations, but it would be nice to see more at the $5/$10/$20 level. Doesn’t cost too much, and it can mean a lot to kids without basic school supplies. You’ll feel good!
Last but certainly not least, we wanted to give huge thanks to everyone who helped spread the word via blogs or Twitter. Here’s the roll call of honor:
Warning: following links may lead to places no thinking person was meant to go. At least that’s what I discovered when I was reading this Discoblog post about a recent branding fiasco involving the Gap. I was led to a Times article about the incident, thence to a Gawker post, and ultimately to an investigation of Pepsi’s new logo. You know the one I mean:
How much thought do you think went into creating this bit of branding genius? Even better, of what did those thoughts consist?
Wonder no more! Here is the full marketing document prepared by the marketing group that reveals the unique blend of physics, theology, symbolism, art, and a certain je ne sais quoi that made this landmark of design possible.
Excerpts presented below the fold without further comment, which could only be superfluous. (more…)
No substantive blogging from me — I’ve lost my laptop and need to get a new one, with all the crapola that entails. (Speaking euphemistically here; it wasn’t “lost,” it was stolen. Story later.)
In the meantime here’s a video from Barack Obama, supporting Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign. (Via Jezebel.) Savage is a well-known sex columnist, and Obama is President of the United States, so it’s a newsworthy pairing in its own right. But this is an important message for every teenager, or for that matter for every person. The campaign is aimed primarily at LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered) kids, who are very commonly bullied and ostracized in school. But bullying isn’t right no matter who the target is. It does get better, as you grow up and figure yourself out and find supportive communities. It shouldn’t ever be bad in the first place, so we have to do what we can to change the cultural acceptance of harassment.
At Science Not Fiction, Malcolm MacIver reports on Roombots — robots that can assemble themselves into different pieces of “furniture,” depending on the demands of the situation. Meanwhile, in the middle of a lecture on Marx, Brad DeLong mentions that Aristotle long ago pointed out that the drudgeries of everyday life would prevent most people from becoming true lovers of wisdom. Too much time cooking and cleaning made it hard to curl up with a good philosophy book. In Aristotle’s time, the solution was clear: have your slaves do the dirty work while you contemplated deep thoughts. But he was smart enough to realize that there was another possible route to carving out free time: automation. In the Politics (c. 350 BCE) he writes:
There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves.
This condition would be that each (inanimate) instrument could do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation, like the statues of Daedalus or the tripods made by Hephaestus, of which Homer relates that
“Of their own motion they entered the conclave of Gods on Olympus”
as if a shuttle should weave of itself, and a plectrum should do its own harp playing.
I suspect Aristotle would have been quite tickled at self-reassembling robots.
Imagine, if you will, 40,000 people whipped into a mad frenzy. The chants of “burn him” are deafening. They surround a 50 foot high marionette (the world’s largest), which is moaning and struggling and crying. The giant puppet, named “Old Man Gloom”, represents all of the troubles of the past year. Through fire the gathered masses seek deliverance. There are dancers with torches. The old man screams out in despair. Suddenly he is aflame, his eyes glowing from within. Soon there is a five story pillar of fire; the heat washes over the thousands of people gathered around. And then, in a blizzard of fireworks, the marionette vaporizes to nothing but a pile of embers. This is Zozobra. He burned two hours ago. A Santa Fe tradition for the past 85 years, the event marks the beginning of Fiestas de Santa Fe, which has run continuously since 1712.
There is something communal and primal about Zozobra. It feels purifying and freeing; the sorrows of the city have been dispelled. And I can bike to it from my house, which is a lot more convenient than Black Rock City. It is uniquely Santa Fe.
Back in May, I gave a talk at the annual Phenomenology Symposium at UW Madison, showing some of the first physics results from the CMS experiment. At that point we had a data sample of proton-proton collisions corresponding to 1 inverse nanobarn.
This past weekend the LHC crossed a major threshold: 1 inverse picobarn delivered to the experiments – a factor of a thousand more collisions. By late next year we are all hoping to have recorded another factor of a thousand, for a total of 1 inverse femtobarn.
In an earlier post I explained these funny units, inverse whatever-barns. The point here, though, is that as we record exponentially greater numbers of collision events, with the proton beam energy 3.5 times greater than that at the Tevatron at Fermilab we will begin to really probe an unexplored mass scale in the search for new particles. What lies there is completely unknown. (more…)
Here’s a local issue that reflects a very common set of problems: the Los Angeles subway system. Such as it is. Namely, embarrassingly inadequate. Our aspirations to be considered a world-class city on the level of New York, Paris, Tokyo or London are severely restricted by the difficulties people face in getting around without a car. Or with a car, for that matter, given the traffic.
But there’s no reason it has to be like this. At any given moment, some concerned group of citizens will be agitating to improve the situation. Right now such a group is Get L.A. Moving. They’ve put together an amazing proposal for a serious subway network that would utterly transform the city, while respecting the natural contours of the existing urban environment. Click for bigger versions.
Looking at a map like this is a bittersweet experience — comparing what could be to what is. Of course it would be very expensive; they estimate about $35 billion, which doesn’t sound so crazy when spread over a number of years. Times are tough — but that’s exactly the reason why pie-in-the-sky plans like this should be taken seriously right now. There’s no better way to stimulate the economy than to pour massive amounts of money into legitimate infrastructure projects; you create jobs, but you also create value that lasts for many decades to come. Not to mention decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels, which hopefully doesn’t need to be justified.
Also — how cool would it be to have one of these babies crawling along underneath Sunset Boulevard?
In the back of my mind, the real obstacle to building a subway system in a mature city was that you couldn’t really imagine shutting down long stretches of busy streets for months or years at a time. But you don’t have to; modern tunnel-boring technology does it all underground.
Some will object that LA just isn’t dense enough to support a subway system; our attractions are spread out rather than localized to squares. That’s an utterly backwards attitude; build the subway, the density will come. With nice weather 340+ days a year, this is the perfect city in the world to have a mass transit system connecting a bunch of pedestrian-friendly outdoor plazas.
Of course, then everyone would want to come live here. So maybe it wouldn’t be ideal. But it would still be a good idea for the economy and the environment; so I’m willing to sacrifice.
Our day (and night) jobs notwithstanding, the blog is about whatever we find interesting — science, to be sure, but also arts, politics, culture, technology, academia, and miscellaneous trivia. We have similar outlooks on many things, widely disparate opinions about others, and will do our best to keep the discourse reasonably elevated.
