Post your responses to the 8 TED talks that you watch in this section for 2nd Quarter. Your responses should be about a paragraph. These responses should be anything that you think is important, cool, uncool, interesting, uninteresting about the video you watched.
#1. “Why Earth may someday look like Mars.” by Anjali Tripathi
ReplyDeleteWith every minute that passes on this Earth, 400 pounds of hydrogen, and 7 pounds of helium are lost into outer space. This loss may not be much when comparing the abundance of hydrogen, but helium on the other hand is expected to run out in 25-30 years from now which is not good. Besides the loss of these two gases, there lies a bigger problem in the future. The hypothesis of Mar’s lack of an atmosphere lies on it’s weak gravitational pull, thus gases such as oxygen and hydrogen are assumed to of escaped into outer space. The same incident is happening to our Earth every minute, and it is a big problem in which can be a problem for humanity if any of it is still around by this time. This process may not immediately affect our planet in one day, but it will have grave consequences in billions of years from now if we still are around. This is what is believed to have turned the planet of Mars into a red planet, and it is what is believed to be planet Earth’s fate as well in the long run. If we do not nuke ourselves prior or be hit by an asteroid, then yes this is a major issue which is being overlooked in the world.
#2. “The most mysterious star in the Universe.” by Tabetha Boyajian
ReplyDeleteKIC 8462852 for most astronomers is an anomaly due to the data recorded from it. As stars are seen through the light emitted by them , planets are as well seen when this light is blocked. The odd thing about this star, and the celestial bodies surrounding it is that the orbit from this planet, or planets seem to of lasted days, when the typical time is of about a couple hours. For those who believe in the idea of aliens, then their conclusion is that it is not a natural planet, but instead a man/alien made object, ship, or whatever it may be. Other astronomers suggest that the star may just be barely developing, or that two of the systems planets crashed together at the time that it was being observed, but these hypotheses do not work or make sense in the long run. What is really puzzling to astronomers is that whatever may be orbiting the planet is not circular/ elliptical like a normal planet, and that almost every time that is does orbit and block the star's light, is never is constant. Sometimes these blocks over the star last from a couple of weeks to months, and it seems to not have a constant distance from its star.
#3. “Don’t like clickbait? Don’t click” by Sally Kohn
ReplyDeleteWell with the stupid articles “You won’t believe what her net worth is” or “Top 10 photos that will shock you”, the main way to stop clickbait is to simply not click on it if we spot it. On Youtube, the most simple way of making stupid clickbait videos for views is by either creating flashy stupid arrows or circling random objects in a video thumbnail. Another way of clickbait which may not be as obvious, but it is when the content creator creates a vague title for their video in which creates curiosity in the viewer. The worst part about this is when the commentator at times may make no mention of topic that he titles his view with. They mainly do this due to the views and the money they make off ads and sponsorships. As simple as Kohn may make it out to be it really isn't due to the deception of the content creator. If one accidently clicks on the video well what can you do to prevent that. Kohn goes on to explain that our clicks are what make the difference in the web. It is our way of speaking over the internet. Even though some people on the internet (Youtube, and 4Chan) are just outright stupid, and just make one mad and frustrated over their use of vocab. I do not know if the world is really that stupid or if they are just being stupid; probably a bit of both.
#4. “How to reinvent the apartment building” by Moshe Safdie
ReplyDeleteThe average apartment building in the world seems a bit bland, and out of style for the 21st century for Moshe Safdie. He plans to revient this complex not only in America, but in the whole world, and to do so he places the three apartment buildings in singapore as the main example of this. The three buildings are apartment, retail, and a shopping centers for the public. His view on making the most out of the smallest spaces given. This idea of his as well consists in not making the apartment complex a tall, and rectangular building, but instead for it to be unique to the space around it. Especially he wants the building to adapt to the environment, no the other way around. This new idea, and form of architecture for the housing option which is an apartment will provide the most space, and apartments for the inhabitants which decide to move in their.
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ReplyDelete#5. “The World does not need more nuclear weapons” by Erika Gregory
ReplyDeleteStarting off strong, Erika Gregory makes the statement of how a modern nuclear weapons the size of a latte has the destructive capabilities of the A-Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why is this important; well Gregory makes the argument that the world is in no need for any more nuclear missiles. We already have enough firepower to destroy the planet, so why do we need to continue to make them. The presenter made the conclusion that in order to end this nuclear threat starting now it would take about 30 years in order to reach this goal (2045). An argument against this idea is creating more nuclear missiles is for every country in the globe. By doing this no country will dare attack each other. This idea seems a bit far fetched, but it is actually a legit idea. For obvious reasons though most people still prefer the idea that no one should have nuclear weapons, and if this is to happen some time in the future than in my opinion it should be the U.S. to first take action in this considering that they started this with the use of the A-Bomb in Hiroshima in 45”.
#6. “A broken body isn’t a broken person” by Janine Shepherd
ReplyDeleteEven though one may break a bone or sprain a joint here and there, the person who they are in the inside is harder to break. This kind of reminds me of the phrase, although it is kinda cliche in my opinion, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” (Kelly Clarkson). For people who believe in a life after death or another dimension into life such as one’s soul; they can look into this talk, and instead think that one can break their physical body, but their soul is harder to break. One’s mind and soul is harder to break, and is not as easy as destroying is like breaking an ankle. One’s personality, persona, and presence in life is still present even after death. For religious people, once the body is disposed of in death, the person’s soul is eternal and ever present even after death. I personally do believe that a person’s soul is able to be tainted and harmed, but not completely destroyed, whether dead or alive.
#7. “Why aren’t we more compassionate” by Daniel Goleman
ReplyDeleteThe clearest example of compassion in the bible are those of the shepard going out of his way to save the one stray lamb, while the other 99 stay put. So as the title suggests, why aren’t we more compassionate to strangers and other around us. An experiment was conducted in which people at mass were read the story in the gospel of the shepherd, and were then observed if they put the teaching into practice. All the people did not do nothing in their part to come to the homeless man’s aid. Goleman believes that the main reason in which we do not come to the aid of others is due to our busy schedules, and lives. If we had more of time on our hands than maybe we would do something on our part to helps those in need. Technology is also a culprit in this situation due to some of us spending more time on our phone’s than conversing with those around us, which is pretty sad. Hours can accumulate with all the times that we check our phone. We all can take the first step that it takes in order to help those who can not help themselves by spending less of our time on electronics. Unfortunately homeless people are constantly criticized on the stereotype that they are nothing but lazy drunks who do not want to work, but when in reality it’s hard for them to get a good start back in life.
#8. “Are you a giver or taker” by Adam Grant
ReplyDeleteIn this world it is composed of three types of people, givers, takers, and matchers which are the people who only give to others when taking something in return. Out of these three types of lifestyles, the giver is the worst from an economic standpoint, and the best one at that case as well. The giver on the survey in which Grant conducted showed the best and worst of workers, and had the the greatest spread. The takers may at first do well, quickly fall short, and the matchers are in a limbo state. They are not losing anything, but they as well are not gaining. When life hits, being a matcher or taker may not be the smartest decision seeing that you will need help from other when moments like that do occur. The speaker did not have a definitive answer in what lifestyle we should take, and that's when the audience (us) have to choose. Do we become givers and or taker in certain moments in our life or do we decide not to do anything until we receive something in return. That really does not work because if you have a matcher and a matcher together than no progress is made.
1. My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor
ReplyDeleteWoah. That was crazy. A neurologist recalls her experience having a stroke, sharing with all how it felt and what she learned from it. She went about presenting the topic with the scientific anatomy of the left and right side of the brain, and what these two sides function as— the right side being the present moment, the left side storing the past and calculating the future. The hemorrhage she had on the left side of her brain allowed her to detach from that calculating reality and connect with the energy that is her as part of this universe. She describes the experience of becoming free from her body, floating in an endless euphoric, peaceful nirvana, her spirit too large to squeeze back into her body— yet, the doctors were able to salvage her physical body, and she awoke back in it. She faced eight years until full recovery. She shared this experience because she wants everyone to be able to attempt to experience the insight that she did when she became detached, and she thinks it is what can make this world a peaceful, compassionate, loving place.
2. What happens when you respond to spam email, James Veitch
ReplyDeleteThis was a quite light Ted Talk for entertainment purposes. No moral was revealed at the end, no greater insight on the purpose of life. But, it was pretty funny. This British guy decided to respond to spam emails and received very entertaining responses. He presented the email exchange and got a lot of laughs out of the crowd. I think this is Ted Talk's way of not swaying people away from the seriousness and gravity of any of the talks. I enjoyed it. I think you would too, VT.
The lies we tell pregnant women | Sofia Jawed-Wessel
ReplyDeleteThe speaker sounded kind of nervous and stuttered with is irritating to me but her message was nice. It was an interesting way of studying how the little things add up to create the big message and in order to dismantle systems you have to get into the most mundane things done. I am still kind of underwhelmed by her presentation though. Its just bugging me.
What you don't know about marriage | Jenna McCarthy
I was kind of confused by the end because I felt unsatisfied with the wrap up but she was a very engaging speaker. It felt like she threw a lot of facts at me and no answers but it also felt like she was having a conversation with me so I'm on the fence about this one. I'm pretty sure her end message was just not to take this all too seriously.
If I should have a daughter ... | Sarah Kay
I've actually heard her poems before and really like them! The poem she chose to begin with kind of threw me off considering the fact this poem is really just about every person's individual journey with art and the way she teaches spoken word poetry as a way to release that art and learn who you are. I thought she had a very nice message and a relaxing way of speaking.
4 larger-than-life lessons from soap operas | Kate Adams
She made me want to go watch soap operas which isn't good for my productivity levels. Good thing I'm too lazy to go find some. She was an appropriately dramatic speaker that kept my attention and made me smile. Plus, her message was so positive and sweet it was hard not to love this talk. 10/10 would recommend.
The Simple Cure for Loneliness | Baya Voce | TEDxSaltLakeCity
ReplyDeleteI'm so bitter. I hate getting emotional about ted talks. This woman made me reexamine the actions I have and I sort of knew how/what I did but her explaining emotional anchors and rituals made it super clear to me for some reason. And now I'm in this weird middle ground where I kind of know how to fix my problem but I'm scared to, what the heck Baya, I didn't ask for this during homework time. This isn't a therapy session fight me it should be illegal to make me examine all my life choices during homework.
What people say when they don't know what to say | Adrianne Haslet-Davis | TEDxBeaconStreet
She made me cry but I'll forgive her because she had a very passionate talk that she tried to add humor too but the room was too tense to get her somewhat awkward cues a lot of the time. She spoke truthfully and emotionally but openly and it was a sweet talk. Be prepared to think about difficult things, but don't be scared of it. She makes me want to be a better friend in day to day since I feel like while times of tragedy are the big times it becomes even more important, that can also be established and applied in the day to day.
The habits of highly boring people | Chris Sauve | TEDxCarletonU
I really liked this talk. As someone who loves the idea of a quiet life, this was actually really interesting and made a lot of sense to me? It makes me want to plan out my life according to these ideas and I've actually been doing the automizing with the food like he talked about. Making life easier on yourself means you'll be able to have more fun, I think that's a great way to go at life. The statistics were kind of depressing though.
How to Retire by 20 | Kristen Hadeed | TEDxUF
Kind of disappointed by the click bait title but it was a cool talk. Personally, my plan is to just go through life the exact way she said not to so.... I'm not getting much out of this talk in that vein. However, she told good stories and had a strong message about being passionate about life that I can understand and respect.
#1: Robam Chun Por (Blessing Dance) | Khmer Arts Academy
ReplyDeleteThis TEDTalk illustrates a traditional dance of the apsara that is an important part of Cambodia’s history and culture. In general, I love watching traditional Cambodian dances, especially ones with apsara so I really fell in love with the dance and dancers. It always amazes me how steady and poised the dancers can maintain their body at such long and slow paces. Also, I aspire to have my fingers be just as flexible as theirs so perhaps one day I can participate in a traditional Cambodian dance at my temple that I attend. They looked really elegant and beautiful, and it was very captivating. I also love the outfits that aspara can wear because it looks very intricate and royal-like. The only thing that distracted me was that they were not completely synchronized, but it is understandable considering they have a lot more to learn and they are still students. Nevertheless, I was really awed and I enjoyed watching them. This TEDTalk further made me want to take dance classes so I can perform an apsara dance for the upcoming Cambodian New Years at the temple.
#2: Are You a Giver or a Taker? | Adam Grant
In this TEDTalk, Grant discusses the three types of people, givers, takers, and matchers, and explores their differences and benefits. A giver is someone who is self-sacrificing, works to please others, and tends to place other people’s needs above their own. A taker is someone who is looking to see what they can benefit from another person and approaches a situation by questioning what good will they get out of it. A matcher is someone who is in between that tries to balance being a taker and giver. Grant advocates that we protect takers, encourage seeking help, and creating a well-rounded balance of takers and givers in an attempt to promote a culture of generosity and keep self-serving employees from taking more than their share. I personally identify as a matcher, but find myself sometimes leaning toward being a giver. I think givers are pretty valuable in society and I appreciate their selflessness and generosity. I think it would be interesting to hypothesize or test the percentages of givers, takers, and matchers to create the perfect society.
#3: My Story is Painted on my Body by Chantelle Brown-Young
In this TEDTalk, Young talks about her skin condition and how it has affected her throughout her life. She tells us how she used to be insecure about it, was constantly bullied for it, and always wished she was different or “normal.” Over the years, she began to love her skin, embrace herself, and take pride in it. I found inspiring for Young to finally learn to love herself after everything she has been through. I, too, agree that every scar or mark is part of us and is what makes us unique, whether we like it or not. It is up to us to decide whether we want to be affected by it negatively or positively. I think this is an important message to promote, especially to younger children who are growing up in a society that dictates what is beautiful in the media. There is not one specific type of “look” of beauty as everyone is different.
#4: Why Earth May Someday Look Like Mars | Anjali Tripathi
In this TEDTalk, astrophysicist Tripathi discusses the phenomenon of atmospheric escape that is currently occurring on Planet Earth and how this may lead to turning our planet into a red one, similar to Mars. I honestly found this TEDTalk quite boring, perhaps because the subject matter is not that interesting to me. I think I were to be intrigued by this concept, I would have to learn more information than the one presented in a limited amount of time. I would need to be fully immersed in the physics behind it and what we can do to prevent or slow this down. Also, although this was a little interesting to know, I do not think it will impact me as much as other globally environmental issues such as climate change. I think it is cool to know about this, but I am rather interested in watching a TEDTalk or learning about something more urgent.
#5: Do You Know How You Want to Die? | Ashley Evdokimo
ReplyDeleteEvdokimo discusses the importance of advance directives and emphasizes the point of having the conversation rather than earlier. She sees advance directives as a gift to the family because it does not leave them in turmoil to make life or death decisions. Although it may sound morbid, I have to agree with her. It is difficult to talk about death and tell your family how you want to die, but it will save them the stress in the long run. She also discusses how we have been taught all our lives as seeing death separate from living, when dying is actually a part of living. We should see death as a peaceful end or beautiful transition. I want to believe in this, but no matter how much we try to prepare ourselves for death, it will always hurt. Evdokimo also talks about how when she first worked for St. Mary’s hospice, she would cry everyday because each day she was surrounded by death. I recently had my own experience with hospice so this TEDTalk really affected me.
#6: Looks Aren't Everything. Believe Me, I'm a Model. | Cameron Russell
Russell discusses her journey and experience of being a model, and how it is not as great as it seems. When Russell was recruited at a young age, she was forced to take provocative shoots and was already sexualized. She tells us how she gets things free in life because of her looks, and that she is not proud of it. There is the misconception that being prettier will make you happier, but she says that models are some of the most physically insecure people in the world. I like that Russell acknowledges the privileges she has because of the way she looks and disapproves of them. I think it is important for young girls to understand that looks truly are not everything, and models are not always happy. I agree with Russell, but I also believe that being pretty does have its benefits and makes life easier.
#7: How Movies Teach Manhood | Colin Stokes
In this TEDTalk, Stokes analyzes the message that movies give off to young boys. In most Pixar classic movies, the main character is a male going through an ordeal in his life. There are far less main female characters. In other movies, the male character is portrayed as needing to be manly, be a hero, and once he defeats the enemy, his reward is a woman. Stokes believes movies are advocating the wrong message. Instead of prompting boys that they need to defeat the bad characters and will get a woman in return, they need to teach the idea that cooperation is heroic and respecting women is as manly as defeating the villain. I think that there needs to be more strong female lead characters in movies, especially in Disney and Pixar movies. I also believe that they should not put a strong emphasis as the male characters needing to be masculine or tough. I think we need to teach boys that is okay if this image is something they are not or do not want to be.
#8: I Am the Son of a Terrorist. Here's How I Chose Peace | Zak Ebrahim
Ebrahim discusses how he is the son of a terrorist, but he made the decision to not follow his father’s path and instead choose peace. As a child, Ebrahim looked up to his father and his father’s friends, who were the ones that had planned terrorists attacks in New York. Growing up under his father, he was taught bigotry. Throughout his life, he began to meet new people he was taught to hate, but found that he admired them. He soon learned that evil or hate is not inherent in race or religion. As of today, he and his mother do not keep contact with his father. I think TEDTalk is very important and informative, especially around today’s time because of the increasing Islamophobia in America and the Trump’s recent travel ban on Muslim countries. Islam does not equal terrorism, and Islam, in fact, advocates peace. Not all Muslims are terrorists, and it is moralistically wrong and dangerous to make such a great generalization that all Muslims are terrorists. I hope that more people will understand this and we can stop this stupid fear of Muslims.
Ted Talk Response #1
ReplyDeleteYouth in Sport Keeping Kids in the Game by Hugh McDonald.
McDonald looks into and discusses the difficulty of raising a young athlete and figuring out how to keep them motivated in the sport. In this generation many parents and coaches advocate that an athlete should focus on one sport year round instead of multiple sports throughout the year. McDonald explores the negative affects of this decision including the possibility that an athlete could get tired of the sport. He criticizes the influence parents have on the extent a child enjoys a sport. I think these ideas are very important in today society. I commonly see parents push their kids too much that their child gets fed up and stops playing the sport they were once passionate about. The Netflix documentary Trophy Kids analyzes the negative impact tough parents have on their children in sports. I really enjoyed this Ted Talk because I think that it is something parents need to realize they are doing. Yes parent involvement in crucial in athletes success but only to a certain extent.
Ted Talk Response #2
ReplyDeleteThe real importance of sport by Sean Adams
Sean Adams analyzes the real importance of sports that is under the surface. As a track and field star at BYU Sean Adams experienced many materialistic rewards and honors. Those however are not why sports are important. To Sean, the most significant outcomes of sport are the life skills that are created. Many professional athletes are missing a father or parental figure. An athlete learns teamwork, dedication, work ethic, family values, etc that a parental figure would typically teach a child. The all Americans, national championships, and endorsements are a positive outcome of sports but the most important are the values that will allow a person to thrive further than competition.
Ted Talk response #3
ReplyDeleteUnexpected by Ray Lewis
Ray Lewis, the Baltimore Ravens star middle ,linebacker analyzes the significance of pain and how to control it. Growing up Lewis had a difficult time watching his mother get abused. He knew that the way he could help her was through his future and football. He would go continue to work to become stronger and tougher for football and the NFL. Anytime he would feel pain he would think about his mother and his future to push through it. He advocates that if you do not control the pain it will control you. I really enjoyed this ted talk because it was obvious that Ray Lewis was passionate about the message he was trying to send. I also think that it is an important idea for athletes. Lewis shared his personal experiences and story to create a strong argument.
TED Talk #1
ReplyDelete“I Like Myself, America and You Can’t Stop Me” by Quinta Brunson
In this TED talk, Quinta Brunson discusses her childhood. She talks about how her life changed as she grew up and experienced consumerism. By the time she was 18, she realized she did not like herself. She did not like the materialistic parts of her personality. She did not like the way she looked but even more, she did not like that she cared about how she looked. As an adult, she was invited to come be part of a shoot for Buzzfeed. At Buzzfeed, she saw how much passion and creativity each person had. She then decided to start working at Buzzfeed so that she could have a platform to talk about all of the things she didn’t like about American culture. Her first video was titled “If Everyone Acted Like Reality TV Stars.” She used this video to highlight the ridiculous nature of reality TV shows and how they promote egocentrism and materialism. Brunson ends the video by saying that she now does like herself and America cannot stop her. Through her content, she wants to challenge viewers to change how they view the world. I would definitely recommend this TED talk. It was interesting and inspiring. I would recommend it especially to people who watch Buzzfeed videos as it shows the true depth and meaning behind their videos that appear on the surface to be just funny and superficial.
TED Talk #2
ReplyDelete“How Jails Extort The Poor” by Salil Dudani
In this TED talk, Salil Dudani recalls a time he was working as an investigator with civil rights lawyers at a police station. As he left the building, two police cars blocked his car, pulled him from his car and violently patted him down and rifled through his belongings while 12 police officers stood pointing assault rifles and handguns at him. They kept shouting that they were detaining a “middle eastern man lurking around the police station with a backpack.” They suspected he was a terrorist planning to blow up the police station. In reality, he was a 19 year old Indian college student interning for D.C. civil rights lawyers. Despite opening with this story, Dudani does not spend the duration of his talk discussing racial profiling. Instead, he talks about how our jail system exploits poor people. Although it is illegal under the federal government, people who cannot pay parking tickets or post bail are imprisoned. Over half a million Americans are currently in jail because they cannot afford to post bail or can’t pay their court debt as a result of something as insignificant as a parking ticket. This in turn punishes people for having a low socioeconomic status. This marginalizes large groups of people. Overall, this was a very interesting TED talk. Often times, people discuss other aspects and issues of the American jail system, so this topic was unique. Dudani is informative and presents the information in a compelling way.
TED Talk #3
ReplyDelete“Are you human?” by Ze Frank
In this TED talk, comedian, Ze Frank, prompts his audience with a series of seemingly trivial questions to determine if they are in fact “human.” He starts off simple asking the audience members to raise their hands if they have “eaten a booger long past their childhood.” The questions progress as Frank then asks the audience if they have ever sent a passive aggressive period at the end of a text or purposefully uncapitalized the beginning of a text in a non-ironic way. He goes on to ask more and more funny questions. The purpose of his talk is to show that despite what some people say, we all are, in fact, human. This TED talk was very funny. Frank’s audience was very engaged due to his hilarious questions. Frank has a monotone voice and does not crack a smile. For this video, this added to the humorous aspect of his TED talk. I would recommend this TED talk to anyone who is in the mood to laugh at some silly humor and bad jokes.
TED Talk #4
ReplyDelete“What will you tell your daughters about 2016?” by Chinaka Hodge
In this TED talk, Chinaka Hodge discusses 2016 in the form of a poem. She discusses the pain and suffering women have endured throughout time and draws a parallel to this pain and suffering in 2016. She poses her audience with the question, “what will you tell your daughters about 2016?” Will you tell them about the immense racism, sexism, and bigotry that plagued our nation? Will you tell them about discrimination and xenophobia? Through this poem, Hodge is able to recount not only the violence and fear experienced by many in 2016, but is also able to recount the courage and bravery that came with this fear. This TED talk was very interesting and unique as it was not conducted in a typical manner. By delivering her TED talk in the form of a poem, Hodge’s talk was extremely powerful and moving. I would recommend this TED talk to anyone interested in social justice or anyone who is upset about the events of 2016.
#1: Jessa Gamble: Our natural sleep cycle is nothing like what we do now.
ReplyDeleteGamble discussed how when humans are placed into an area with no light whatsoever for a couple months, their sleep cycles are entirely different. Basically, she explained that after being placed in these bunkers, the people in the bunkers eventually began sleeping in two parts. One part from 8pm-12am, and another part from 2am-7am. These people reported feeling more awake during the “day time” than they had remembered feeling in their entire lives. Gamble’s main point is that in modern society today, work and social norms absolutely destroy our natural sleep cycle. Our bodies are not allowed to sleep when they are tired and must sleep when they feel awake, vice versa. I completely agree with Gamble. I often find myself exhausted, even with a full eight hours of sleep, and that is simply because the work and time I spend awake when my body is tired truly exhausts me. This is seen too commonly today, and I think it would be very interesting to see it try and be resolved as an issue. Plus, it would be really cool to see what the ‘true awakeness’ feels like.
#2: Jeanne Gang: Buildings that blend nature and city.
This was an interesting talk. I felt that in some places it was missing pieces of explanation (for example, how exactly things affect the environment rather than just making claims). However, I did really like the idea behind this talk. Gang discussed creating architecture that unites people, creates meaningful relationships, and sparks conversation. She argued that this type of architecture could truly aid in making real and meaningful relationships. I think that this is true for the most part. This type of architecture may not make much of a difference for some, but for other people, having open accessibility and a defined space to discuss issues would be incredibly helpful in developing both communication skills and relationships.
#3: Sue Klebold: My son was a Columbine shooter. This is my story.
To start off, Klebold recapped the Columbine shooting as well as her son’s personal part in the shooting. More than just sharing the experience’s effects on Sue and her family, Klebold discusses what she regrets the most - which is missing the signs that her son was suicidal. She stresses the need for better mental health programs. In addition, she added a small bit about gun control. Gun control is undoubtedly a sensitive topic at the moment. However, Klebold remarks that it was almost stupidly easy for her 17 year old son to acquire a gun in 1999, and sadly, it is still just as easy for a mentally unstable 17 year old to acquire a gun. I completely agree with Klebold on both issues. Gun control should definitely be a priority at the moment, as well as mental health. More than anything, Klebold emphasized never to assume anything in terms of mental health.
#4: Michael Norton: How to buy happiness.
I loved this talk. Norton talked about the famous saying “money can’t buy happiness” and argued that it wasn’t true at all - just that people who aren’t happy from spending money are not spending it correctly. He discussed a series of experiments/polls in around 140 countries and found that the people who donated money to charity or regularly spent money on acts of kindness/gifts for people in their social community had a positive correlation between their happiness and the money that they spent. Not necessarily the amount of the money they spent, but rather the fact that they spent money on someone else. I completely agreed with Norton and found myself relating exactly to the situation. I, like most people, enjoy getting presents for myself but find myself much happier and satisfied when I buy something for someone who I know will really appreciate it.
#5: Anthony Goldbloom: The jobs we'll lose to machines -- and the ones we won't.
ReplyDeleteGoldbloom discussed the harsh reality that many jobs that exist in the market today will eventually be taken over by machines. He mentioned a study that concluded that 1 in 2 jobs that exist today will end up as a machine’s job. He ended up talking more about how humans can stay ahead of machines in terms of jobs - and that is to be good at handling unusual situations, rather than situations that occur over and over again. Overall, I thought that this talk’s concept was interesting, but Goldbloom could have expanded on the topic.
#6: Grady Booch: Don't fear superintelligent AI.
Booch’s talk on AI is definitely something many people need exposure to as we head on into the prospective future of AI. Artificial intelligences are becoming more and more present in our everyday lives, yet there is always an underlying fear of their true capabilities. Booch directly addresses this fear and remarks that AIs can only know what you have taught them and do not have the capabilities to “rebel” - only to malfunction. However, Booch argues that with enough money and research put into advanced AIs, this would not be an issue. In addition, he shortly discusses the possibility of an “evil” AI being made by an outer source, and argues this is largely impossible, as AIs truly capable of harm would need an extensive amount of money and research put into them. After watching this talk, I felt more informed/aware about AIs, but still feel as if there are questions left unanswered.
#7: Laura Vanderkam: How to gain control of your free time.
As a student who feels like they have close to no free time, I found this talk very inspiring. Vanderkam talked about not “making/creating” time, but rather that if tasks/things are really important to a person, this time will seem to create itself. Even in the most busy of lives, if something is truly a priority, then there will be time. Vanderkam also talked about the importance of not really stressing about making time and using shortcuts to do this, because in many cases, people have much more free time than they realistically think they do, which I know is the case for me as well. If something is truly important, then it will fall into this free time. If somebody does not “have time” for something, more often than not, the task just truthfully isn’t that important to that person.
#8 Carrie Poppy: A scientific approach to the paranormal.
The speaker of this presentation was incredibly enthusiastic and had a lot of charisma which made the talk incredibly easy to watch. She shared her own personal experience of the paranormal being debunked by scientific explanation and possibly even saving her life. In addition to explaining how basically 100% of the time science can dismiss thoughts of the “paranormal”, she also talked about the importance of respecting others ideas and challenging their ideas rather than simply dismissing them. With this, she became very tok-esque as she explained the difference between outer beliefs and inner beliefs very similarly to outer/inner knowledge. I really enjoyed this talk even though some of its ideas were more on the controversial side.
TED Talk #5
ReplyDelete“More adventures in replying to spam” by James Veitch
In this TED talk, James Veitch continues to hilariously reply to spam emails. He has several other TED talks in which he does the same thing. However in this talk, Veitch receives an email from Kamanda Koroma. In the email, he states that he got Veitch’s contact from a “South African health officer in Ghana.” He states that he needs to move polished diamonds and needs help doing so. The entire email is filled with spelling and grammatical errors. Veitch, of course, decides to respond to the email. Veitch tells the man that he would love to help. He gives the man the phone number of a bank to contact him. The man becomes very wary of Veitch and states that he does not believe he is even “reel” at all. Veitch reassures the man and continues sending him funny emails. The man states that he needs a form of ID to verify Veitch’s authenticity. Veitch then responds with a picture of his Blockbuster movie rewards card. Veitch then tells the man that he was promised a free toaster for helping and would really like to receive his toaster soon. The man tells him that there is no free toaster. Veitch photoshops an advertisement with the man’s name and a picture of a toaster in a newspaper. The man is not very amused and eventually tells Veitch to stop contacting him. This TED talk was very funny and I would highly recommend it. However, Veitch’s other TED talks are funnier in my opinion. This seemed less witty and well-thought-out than Veitch’s other videos in which he responds to spam emails. Despite this, it was still hilarious and entertaining.
TED Talk #6
ReplyDelete“This is what it's like to go undercover in North Korea” by Suki Kim
In this TED Talk, Suki Kim discusses her experience as a teacher in North Korea. Kim was born in South Korea and now lives in the United States: both of North Korea’s enemies. Kim wanted to pose undercover in North Korea so that she could write a book and expose the country for what it is: “a gulag posing as a nation.” Kim worked in an all-male university in North Korea. She states that the university was more like a heavily-guarded prison than a school. None of the students were allowed to leave the campus or contact their parents. They had little free time and that time was supposed to be dedicated to honoring the Supreme Leader. Teachers were not allowed to communicate with other teachers. They were not allowed to leave the campus without a government or military official. Furthermore, they were only allowed to leave to visit monuments celebrating the Supreme Leader. During Kim’s time in North Korea, they were celebrating the anniversary of Kim II-Sung, North Korea’s first Supreme Leader. She noticed that everything done within the nation had to do with the Supreme Leader. Every book, newspaper, and TV program is about their leader; the flowers are named after him; the mountains have his slogans carved into them; every citizen wears the badge of him; and even their calendar year begins with the birth of Kim II-Sung. This was a very interesting and informative TED talk. Considering I do not know much about North Korea, this was an interesting talk to listen to. I am intrigued by her book and hope to read it. I would recommend this TED talk to anyone interested in learning a little bit more about North Korea.
TED Talk #7
ReplyDelete“Plus-size? More Like My Size” by Ashley Graham
In this TED talk, Ashley Graham talks about her experience as a model. Graham is an entrepreneur, body activist, and “plus-size” model. Although the fashion industry considers her “plus-size,” Graham instead simply views herself as “her size.” She begins her TED talk by standing in front of a mirror and pointing out all of the things she used to hate about her body but now has learned to love. Graham was scouted in a mall in Lincoln, Nebraska at the age of 12. She then was signed to a major modeling contract at the age of 13. At the age of 17, Graham moved to New York and began working as a model full-time. While most kids are in college and discovering themselves, Graham was discovering herself on cat walks and in catalogues. She talks about how even though she was a model, she did not feel confident in her appearance at all. She dreaded when people asked her what she did for a living. She always had to qualify her being a model as her being a “plus-size” model. In the United States, plus size models begin at a size 8. I found this fact very disturbing in that a woman who is a size 8 is nowhere near overweight. This shows how jaded the fashion world is. Graham ends her talk by discussing her journey to self-acceptance in a world constantly defining her by her size. I thought this was a very interesting TED talk. It was interesting to hear Ashley Graham’s experience considering she has become very famous in the last year. I would definitely recommend this TED talk as Graham is very funny and her TED talk was both informative and entertaining.
TED Talk #8
ReplyDelete“I am the son of a terrorist. Here’s how I chose peace.” by Zak Ebrahim
In this TED talk, Zak Ebrahim discusses his father, El Sayyid Nosair. El Sayyid Nosair is an Egyptian engineer. He was tried but acquitted for the assassination of Jewish religious figure and Israeli politician, Meir Kahane. He was also convicted for his involvement in the New York City landmark bomb plot. Nosair was convicted when Ebrahim was seven years old. Several weeks before his arrest, Nosair and his friends took Ebrahim to the shooting range. Ebrahim was quick to learn and hit the targets easily. Nosair’s friends began to laugh and say “like father, like son.” Ebrahim did not understand what was so funny. It was not until several weeks later that Nosair was convicted for his terrorist activity that Ebrahim began to understand what his father’s friends meant. His father’s friends thought that he had the same capacity for violence and destruction that his father had. These men were convicted for placing a van filled with 1,500 pounds of explosives in the sublevel parking lot of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than one thousand others. These were the men Ebrahim looked up to and called “uncle.” These men were supposed to be his role models. However, Ebrahim no longer views them as role models. He wants nothing to do with them and is ultimately proving them wrong. Despite his father’s terrorism, Ebrahim has chosen peace. Despite growing up in a bigoted household where he was taught to harshly judge others, Ebrahim is accepting of everyone. This was a very interesting and informative TED talk. I would highly recommend it. Ebrahim is well-spoken and inspiring and shares a powerfully moving story.
Ted Talk #1
ReplyDeleteSara Ramirez:
"Rollercoaster"
This Ted talk was done in the form of a song which was pretty interesting. The women singing, Sara Ramirez was a character in Grey's Anatomy in which she plays Callie, I spent most of my time trying to remember where I knew her from so I had to rewatch the Ted talk to try and actually listen to her song. She really only is talking about life and the up and downs in it, so comparing life to a rollercoaster hence the name. The song was nice enough, I liked her voice but I do think the song could have been better with some electric guitar and some bass instead of acoustic. All in all it was pretty interesting and an alright tune.
Ted Talk #2
ReplyDeleteChinaka Hodge:
What will you tell your daughters about 2016?
Chinaka Hodge presents her Ted Talk in the form of a spoken word poem, something that I personally am always fond of. She has a lot of passion with the way the spoke which I think defiantly helped her get her message across more effectively. She talked about the tragedies that occurred in 2016, the protests, and how we some of the hate we say this country that many thought longer existed. Her main message was to say if you are either on the right or wrong side of history how will you explain to your daughter what you did and why you did it. What will you use to justify your actions? She pleads however that people be honest with their daughter cause they will hold their explanation as a fact. I enjoyed her ted talk and she presented it very well.
Ted Talk #3
ReplyDeleteClint Smith:
How to raise a black son in America
Clint Smith starts his ted talk elaborating how black children especially a black boy has to be raised differently than a white counter part. How every young black boy has the same teaching about how to behave or how to dress in public. They are told to keep there hood down once the son has gone down. They can not play with certain toys or hide in lurk in the dark for people's bias and racism have put fear behind the color of their skin. When facing a cop they are taught to never have their hands in their pockets cause one movement to quick leads for an end to their life cause the cop felt threatened. He explains the black children have to learn at young age that they're are guilty before they have even had the chance to learn how to walk or talk. He explains the struggles black parents have in just trying to keep their kids alive. This was defiantly a great Ted Talk the context of it and they way he presented it was very moving.
Ted Talk #1: Lux Narayan- What I learned from 2,000 obituaries
ReplyDeleteThis Ted Talk talks about a group that analyzed different obituaries in newspapers. They found that the majority are remembered for a particular achievement they accomplished during their lifetime. The most common word used was "help", and the moral of the story is that people are remembered not by how famous they were, but how they helped contribute to society. I liked this Ted talk and thought it was a very creative one at that, with an interesting lesson.
Ted Talk #2: Robb Willer: How to have better political conversations
DeleteI enjoyed this Ted talk thoroughly for multiple reasons. First I thought that the message behind it was good, in that people need to talk to each other more, instead of just fighting. I also liked how the man discussed certain improvements one can make when conversing with someone of different political beliefs. Too often do we assume the people talking to us share our exact values, which causes us to make our arguments based of them. But say the other person's values are different, the arguments don't have any impact. It's been like this for years, and we can see a growing divide between liberals and conservatives. But when you try to make arguments from their perspective, studies indicate a stronger impact on the recipient. I enjoyed this talk and thought the speaker did a good job at giving his speech.
Ted Talk #3: Sharon Brous- It's time to reclaim religion
DeleteThis ted talk was trash. Like, really bad.
Now before I vent, I thought she brought up some good points. She talked about the danger of people simply falling into a routine of practicing their faith rather than actually believe in it, which is a real problem nowadays. She also talks about how religion can be a force for good in the world, where love and kindness can help everyone. I think that's a kickass idea. However, she is borderline heretical in all of her preaching. She talks about how Muslims, Christians, and Jews have to gather to fight homophobia and trans-phobia. It's as if she has never read one of those holly books before. LGBT rights are important, but I feel like just flat out rewriting your faith is wrong. It gives off the vibe that she is doing this just so that her faith can be relevant, by pandering to hip millennials. If you're going to create a cult around social justice, don't drag the Abrahamic Religons into it. Also there was some false equivalency in her talks about religious extremism, where she had no trouble calling out christian terrorism, but would not even mention Islamic. And it's not like the average muslims are bad anything, but this disingenuous bs just aggravates me.
Ted Talk #4: Lara Setrakian: 3 ways to fix a broken news industry
DeleteI thought that this was an enlightening talk about an important issue. Nowadays there is much controversy in the media regarding the accuracy of its reporting. But there is a deeper, more pressing issue addressed in the talk. The media cares more about ratings so they decide to cover whatever story garners them enough views to make a profit. If exaggerating a story makes it more popular, than it is to some to do it! While spreading false information, it also selectively blocks out stories that are important but less attention grabbing, leading to the average person being ignorant on the topic or issue. The final issue for the speaker is the high-horse attitude of the people in big news companies, that don't work with more local reporters, which limits the flow of information people receive.
The speakers solution: create her own website that focuses on the issues that matter. She started with Syria, and today it has become one of the most important sources of info in that region. Overall, I thought it was a good argument that put for important issues with adequate solutions.
Ted Talk #5: Salil Dudani: How jails extort the poor
DeleteThis was an informative and interesting ted talk. It started with a story about how he was detained by the police for him wearing a backpack and being reported as a terrorist. He was treated with very little respect and dignity. However, he was less scared of his race factor than he had been poor. He critiques the current system of jailing with bails and fines. Wealthy people can pay no problem, but poor people who have issues are hauled in jail and kept there until they can pay or enough time has passed where they definitely cant. Such an act is illegal but many corrupt officers do it anyway. He ends the story with the message of speaking out for issues that aren't right, and need to be solved.
Overall, I enjoyed the chat. I thought it was good because the flow of information and the power he delivered it with, even if he seemed a little melodramatic at times. I was also unaware of this specific issue with law, and am thoroughly enlightened.
Ted Talk #6: Sue Klebold: My son was a Columbine shooter. This is my story
DeleteThis was certainly something I don't hear everyday. When a school shooting occurs, we tend to focus on the murderers and the victims, instead of the family. Not to say they don't matter, they just don't get much coverage in the whole scheme of things. The speaker was the mother of the columbine shooter, and talks about her experience with her son. Until that day, she thought her son was as loving and as caring as her, who was living a happy life. But after the tragedy, police investigations found suicide notes and erratic writings, hinting to the boy's real conscious. She spent the later years of her life researching and studying mental illness. The mental health care system in the US is not glamorous, and too often few people receive treatment. She considers it her duty to educate people on mental disorders and how to help people suffering from them, before someone gets hurt. She also brought up how easy it was for her son to get a gun. I thought it was an interesting talk, though I'm a little critical of some the things she says in her talk.
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DeleteTed Talk #7: Dan Gross: Why gun violence can't be our new normal
DeleteWell, I will admit he is a good speaker. He argues for more background checks in the US, and points out how the majority of Americans are on their side. That's the only real point I can agree with him on. He spends the rest of his time arguing about the NRA are brainwashing Americans into believing that guns make them safe. He drones on about how they are suppressing knowledge and information, so that they can hide the truth from society. I find it funny how he says this with a straight face after bashing gun owners as lunatic conspiracy theorist. He talks about how he only wants background checks and "common sense" laws, then talks about how guns don't make one safer. This is why I can't trust some anti-gunners when they talk about guns, because many are dishonest about their intentions. They wanna pass a law, that is actually common sense. Then another one, a little less so. Then they become as dirty and underhanded as TRAP laws, making it near impossible to own a firearm. These people always shift the goal post whenever they win. They talk about gun deaths as if they are murders, and avoid discussing other causes. But when he brings it up, he glosses over the poor mental health care in the US, and goes right to guns. The part I can't stand the most is that he talks to gun owners like their idiots. "Poor stupid people brainwashed by the evil NRA". Give me a break. He also paints himself as a brave crusader, taking on big business and saving the lives of a bajillion women, children, and black men.
Because of course, guns are the only factor in this situation.
P.S. Sorry VT for getting hella triggered
Ted Talk #8: Megan Phelps-Roper: I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church
DeleteThis is a talk that I think is fitting to end to this quarter's ted talks. It is an insightful talk with a message many people pay lip service to, but seem to have trouble following(including me). That is, having a peaceful argument without insults and jabs. She talks about how she was raised in that hateful church. She would picket signs at funerals and outside of houses, all saying horrible things about gays. She never questioned what she was taught in life, and followed the church's instructions. But when she argued with people on line, things began to change. The people who insulted her and poked fun at her and her family did nothing to change her opinion. It was when people started having civil discussions and asking questions, that she started to have doubts. Eventually she fled her community, and began to live a life of her own. People who had every right not to take care or help her, did. This is something she has never forgotten. In this hospitality and thoughtfulness has she moved on from her past of bigotry and hate.
I think this is valuable because it certainly applies today, for everyone. I certainly have this problem at time, depending on the issues. But if we as a people can move past pettiness and arguing, we can communicate our ideas to the world and make a more positive impact.
1.The game that can give you 10 extra years of life by Jane McGonigal
ReplyDeleteJane McGonigal is a game designer who suffered a serious concussion that required an extended period of bed rest. During this time, she fell into a deep depression where she contemplated suicide (which Jane mentions is a far more common result than one might think), but she decided to create a personal game to help her get through it. This game involved reframing herself as a hero, identifying her opponents and completing goals and quests. Jane felt that her game contributed to her recovery and decided to develop and release it to help others overcome similar obstacles/conditions and improve the quality of their life. I choose to partake in watching this ted talk, because the title is eye grabbing. Overall it was a good watch, I suggest it!
2. A Navy admiral's thoughts in global security by James Stavridis
James Stavridis suggests that global security in the 21st century can only be built using networks, rather than walls. His vision for doing this involves “open-source security” which he explains “… is about connecting the international, the interagency, the private-public, and lashing it together with strategic communication, largely in social networks.” He gives several U.S. military-related examples of how this might work, including literacy programs given alongside military training in Afghanistan and providing medical/humanitarian relief throughout the world. His point appears to be that military intervention is not a security panacea by itself and that before or while military intervention takes place to improve or restore security, there needs to be some thought given to other means (e.g., educational, financial, medical) to ensure that the security situation doesn’t deteriorate after the military intervention is over...This talking is extremely interesting, watch it!
3. A Darwinism theory of beauty by Denis Dutton
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But what Dutton proposes is that the beholding eye is seeing from our evolutionary past. Through a delightful talk filled with witty animations and humor, Dutton makes a convincing argument to the theory of universal beauty.
Dutton points out that there is a universal view of beauty. Shakespeare is translated into every major language, Beethoven is admired in Japan, and American movies are shown around the world.Were culture to the only benchmark used to determine what is beautiful, there wouldn’t be such these universally held views. This leads to what I found the most jaw dropping about Dutton’s talk. Our views of beauty have more to do with survival and reproduction than with a cultured aesthetic. I found it very interesting when he pointed out that when peoples from cultures around the world are shown landscape pictures and asked which is most beautiful, they all chose the same image–a wide grassland plain, with a few trees, some birds and animals with some water and a path going off to some distant mountains. It was this Pleistocene savanna, burned into our brains by our ancestors as an ideal place to live, that we perceive as beautiful. Not because it makes a pretty picture but because it increased our ability to survive.
4. A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong
ReplyDeleteThe end of this video gave me goosebumps. That is the profound effect hearing 2000 voices singing in harmony has on the soul. It was beautiful, moving and powerful. But what was more intriguing to me was the way the project came about. At it’s core, this is more of a “behind the scenes” look at a finished viral video posted to Youtube in March of 2010 of Lux Aurumque.Whitacre describes how a single fan post on Youtube, by a talented singer performing one of his song, inspired him to do so much more.Using only a director’s video and track, each singer sang their part in solo, and posted the video to Youtube. The solos were then synced into the final product. The result is 2000 people singing in harmony with voices from around the world they never heard until it was finally published.
What I love about the project is not the beauty of the song but the example it provides for the power of the internet and social media. The virtual choir, which has gone on to perform other songs by Whitacre, is composed of people who, under normal circumstances would never have performed together or even have met. Before the internet, it would have been an impossibly gigantic project to assemble 2000 singers from the world to perform a single song together. The cost alone would have prevented the production from even getting off the ground. But thanks to Youtube, and Whitacre’s inspired use of it, we now have the closest thing to a choir of angels available for free to anyone with a computer hook up and that is what really gives me goosebumps.
TED Talks #1-4
ReplyDeleteJean-Baptiste Michel: The mathematics of history
Michel demonstrates how mathematics can be used as a language to describe the humanities as an area of knowledge, or more specifically history. He uses graphs and images to further illustrate the topics and examples he presents. Both his hand gestures and facial expressions indicate interest and passion for his subject. The combination of his speech, gestures and visuals made his presentation simultaneously entertaining and informative. He furthermore presents information that would surprise the audience such as the concept of quantifying history and how numbers influence psychology in wars. Thus, overall I found his presentation to be fascinating and well-delivered.
Barry Schwartz: The way we think about work is broken
Schwartz questions why people work when work is often monotonous, menial, and with little rewards. He believes that people work for the technology of ideas. Schwartz delivered a compelling speech, addressing his audience directly and reading from note cards. He combines ideas from history, economics, and politics to support his claims. Though he lacks diagrams of other visuals, he had very animated gestures and inflections in his voice that conveyed passion to hold the attention of his audience. Despite his ardor, he often takes pauses in the middle of his sentence to look down at his notes, which often obstructs his rhythm and his audience’s attention. Even with his frequent pauses, I was still engrossed by his speech that addressed how capitalism as a system impacts workers and economics.
Philip Zimbardo: The psychology of time
Zimbardo interprets life as a series of temptations and the pull of desire and restraint, as well as time perspectives. He plays and old film about slowing time and pictures of some of the studies he has performed, which were highly informative. However, he also projected pictures of Adam and Eve, for which he created a dialogue and ended the sequence with the picture bursting into hellish fire, which was odd if somewhat humorous. He shares stories from his own experiences, studies he has performed, and statistics. The combination of these elements makes his presentation engaging and informative. However, he speaks with great speed and his gaze is often downcast, demonstrating nervousness. Despite its flaws, I found his presentation to be engaging and quite interesting.
Steven Pinker: What our language habits reveal
Pinker describes how language develops from human minds and interactions, and how it reflects human nature. He presented examples from global studies and hypotheticals to illustrate his points on grammar and vocabulary. Pinker employed precise language to deliver his presentation but frequently stuttered or stared down at his computer. The inflections in his voice conveyed emotion but he remained motionless for the majority of the presentation. Although his subject was fascinating he also lacked interesting visuals, simply putting up projected mostly black and white images of text. Despite the relevance of his topic to all humans, he only provided grammatical and hypothetical examples, thus making it difficult for his audience to connect with him and become engaged in his rhetoric. Although Pinker’s presentation has flaws, I still enjoyed the content and concepts of he presents.
TED Talks #5-8
ReplyDeleteBill Gates: The next outbreak? We’re not ready
Gates illustrates how disease will be the next human disaster and the flaws in the current system assessing the spread of disease. He combines examples from both his personal life and world examples like in the case of ebola to both personally connect with his audience and provide them with a perspective of the impact of epidemics. With his facial expressions, gestures, and tone, he engages his audience and draws interest toward his topic. He also employs powerful graphics consisting of photographs, maps, and diagrams to communicate and further develop the arguments he makes. In addition, he provides step-by-step plans to help people prevent the spread of disease, making his points grounded and plausible. His speech is highly motivating and serves as a call to action for the sake of humanity.
Stacy Smith: The data behind Hollywood’s sexism
Smith explores films as an influential form of storytelling and how they often marginalize women. Her voice and gestures portray excitement and passion for her topic that engages the audience and piques its interest. She also supplies visuals in the form of pictures, graphs, and diagrams to provide evidence for her arguments. Her topic is relevant to all people, especially women and minorities, allowing her audience to easily connect with her arguments and topics. Furthermore, she elaborates on how she conducts her studies of women and minorities in films, thus granting it more validity and giving her audience insight into her methods. She speaks to her audience directly and outlines her ideas clearly, making her appear honest and trustworthy. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed both the content of the presentation and the way she presented her arguments.
Robb Willer: How to have better political conversations
In his presentation, Willer communicates how political polarization divides the United States and socially impacts the population. He employs powerful and humorous visuals such as photos from zombie apocalypse films, as well as diagrams and graphs conveying ideas. Willer employs facial expressions, gesture, and voice intonations to engage his audience and hold their attention. He analyzes not only political views but also the underlying values of liberalism and conservatism, allowing for a deeper understanding of his topic. In addition, he combined examples from everyday life and popular culture, as well as from research and national legislation. By describing the studies he has conducted, he brings the audience to his perspective and provides validity for his arguments. Thus, I found his presentation enlightening and highly relevant to understanding modern political divisions.
Yanis Varoufakis: Capitalism will eat democracy -- unless we speak up
Varoufakis explores how the West often takes democracy for granted even though capitalism poses a great threat. Both his voice and gestures convey his confidence and belief in his subject as he presents capitalism’s flaws. He employs examples from Greek mythology, history, popular culture and modern global issues to express the importance and relevance of his topic. Although his presentation lacks visuals, he maintains the attention of his audience through his passion and deliverance of his speech. He breaks down complex concepts and paints pictures of diagrams to explain politics and the economy, allowing his audience to more easily digest and absorb his ideas. His methods made his very complicated topic approachable to his audience, and I enjoyed his presentation.
Ted Talk #4
ReplyDeleteMalcolm London:
"High School Training Ground"
Malcom Talks about how schools seem to become segregated in a way. That they help to outline who you will be in society there are the "regulars" and the "honors". He makes the point that these labels follow us throughout school and even afterwards. He also makes an interesting point saying that we are trained from a young age to capitalize on letters, and that in a way capitalism raises our youth. We step on each other all in order to get ahead, and these labels separate us into those who are taught to lead while the others follow. He compares the schooling system to a training ground setting us up for the separations that inevitably occur in everyday life. Some of the points he made seemed a little problematic but overall I thought it was a great presentation and he did have many other compelling arguments that I agreed with.
Ted talk #1- Sara Ramirez - "Rollercoaster" -
ReplyDeleteThis Ted talk, well more of a singing version of a Ted talk, was sung by Sara Ramirez who is more known for her acting role in a hit TV show called 'Grey's Anatomy". In this Ted talk she sang an original song of hers called "Rollercoaster" which was basically about the highs and lows of life and how that if how it goes with everyone. She also sang about how people in a way force you to have an idea of what you want to do with your life and when you never achieve it you are seen as a failure. She also sings about how you will gain a lot of attention you you run into a huge amount of money, but when you have none left you also have no one left either. I was just wondering though, is this based on personal experience from her or not? Not to invalidate her but I was just curious since she has run into a lot of money I assume since she's been in a hit television show. Over all I enjoyed this video, it was different.
Stoners coming out – beyond the marijuana monster myths | David Schmader | TEDxRainier
ReplyDeleteIn this Ted Talk, the speaker David discusses marijuana usage as well as the fact that he is personally a user who sees great benefit in the usage of marijuana. He makes the argument that stoners have a negative perception, which I would agree with, yet that this perception is a false one and is created by those who are willing to come out as stoners and ruin the perception for everyone else who engages in the usage of marijuana. He feels that every move of a stoner is interpreted through the lens of "pothead" creating a false reality that is biased for stoners. He argues that it is the out liars who do the representation for the stoners and therefore the perception that these out liars give to all pot heads is not accurate, yet is accepted by all of society. He makes the point that it is BS that pot is a gateway drug, it is the illegal dealership that is, not the pot itself. He also makes the argument that medical marijuana is not desired merely for recreational use, since some marijuana has been engineered so that it does not make one high, but the medicinal effects still work. I agree with some of his points in this TED Talk, but do not totally agree with it as I have personal experience of how detrimental weed use can truly be on ones life.
Ted Talk #2 - Jarrett J. Krosoczka - Why lunch ladies are heroes
ReplyDeleteIn this Ted talk by Jarrett J. Krosoczka he spoke of the importance of lunch ladies and how much impact they truly have within the community in which they feed. Krosoczka is a children's graphic novel author who has made a series about bad-ass lunch ladies who fight off bad guys with their culinary weapons. After the launch of his lunch ladies comic book he came up with the idea of School Lunch Hero Day, a day where kids can make creative projects for their lunch staff. And he partnered with the School Nutrition Association, and gave facts on, how these lunch ladies feed thousands kids a day. And that a little over 30 million kids participate in school lunch programs every day. That equals up to a little over five billion lunches made every school year. Which is a lot of food. Overall I though this video was fun and heartfelt, you can really see how much he appreciates lunch ladies.
Ted Talk #3 - Will Potter - The shocking move to criminalize nonviolent protest
ReplyDeleteIn this Ted Talk spoken by Will Potter, was about how certain part of the government has made laws that seriously criminalize nonviolent protesters. When he was fresh out of college he decided to help a local group hang door knockers against animal testing. He thought it would be a safe way to protest and do something positive, but of course he had to have the absolute worst luck, and They were all arrested. The charges were dismissed, but the whole reason why he got arrested was due to a new radical term they were associated with. It was a made up a new word called, eco-terrorist, to shift how they view peaceful protesters. They (people in power) just made it up. Now these companies have backed new laws like the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which turns activism into terrorism (if it causes a loss of profits.) Now most people never even heard about this law, including members of Congress. Less than one percent were in the room when it passed the House. Overall i really enjoyed this Ted talk, it was super interesting.
talk #1- Erin McKean: The joy of lexicography
ReplyDeleteIn this ted talk a woman, that puts the words in the dictionary, talks about the bad words that people think are bad words if they are not in the dictionary. She repeats herself a lot and basically she talks about how we are missing alot of the english language and how we don't know much and there are words that have not been invented. Lexicography is her career.
Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see
in this ted talk he really screwed with my sense perception. He shows colors and how we think we see them when it could be that they aren't. He shows that light changes the perception of a color. He does different small experiments in which he really messes with you and it took me back to that period of time where there was an online debate about the stupid blue or gold dress. What happened with hat dress was that the light was changing the way we saw its color and it also opened up my mind on how perception can change and mess with the way we think. Everyone is hardwired differently and we see though different lenses, having different senses and different perception makes us have different opinions about things and creates debates
Ted Talk 3- Keith Barry: Brain magic
i totally recommend this video. It is a fun video that shows how we think of the logic and try to not believe certain things because they just seem impossible. Keith does some magic tricks and keeps you a the edge of your seat and that experiment with the needle and the cups is really nerve wrecking. i don't want to spoil it if someone else is going to watch it so thats all I'm saying.
ted talk 4- Caroline Paul: To raise brave girls, encourage adventure
In this talk Caroline talks about bravery and how women are under looked in these attributes. i completely agree. Women are overlooked and are thought of the 'soft' human being that cannot go though a crisis without crying, that always seems to need to be right, to be the perfect person for those around her. What men do not realize is that we do not bottle up our feelings and because we express our feelings we are more understanding and because we express our feelings we can relate in more situations. What men do not know is that we have the need to know we are right because if we are not we know that most men are conformists and will mot go the extra mile to understand or accomplish the task. Men don't realize that every woman does something brave everyday, even if it is the most minimal thing. Bravery is a big part of our ego.
Ted Talk #4- Clint Smith - The danger of silence
ReplyDeleteIn this Ted talk given by Clint Smith, was in my opinion a very good Ted talk. The reason I say this is because mid talk he kind of flowed himself into a poem, which makes sense since he is a poetry teacher, so of course he would be able to do that. Also this Ted talk was about how he doesn't need his students to be validated by anyone other than themselves. And how they need to be truthful with themselves. He said that as a teacher, he has internalized this message that is "be truthful with yourself." He says that every day, all around us, we see the consequences of silence manifest themselves in the form of discrimination, violence, genocide and war. In the classroom, he challenges his students to explore the silences in their own lives through poetry. They work together to fill those spaces, to recognize them, to name them, to understand that they don't have to be sources of shame. In an effort to create a culture within his classroom where students feel safe sharing the intimacies of their own silences, He has four core principles that I really enjoyed, that he has posted on his board that sits in the front of his class, which every student signs at the beginning of the year. The core principles are: read critically, write consciously, speak clearly, tell your truth. I would honestly love to have him as an english teacher.
ted talk 5- Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar
ReplyDeletein this talk she talks about liar and how everyone is a liar and the statistics of lying. i can say i lie a lot to everyone sometimes to make me look better or to get out of something. but i just realized that because i lie that means everyone else does too on a daly basis an it makes me upset but those who lie to would be upset as well. its sad that lying is now part of our nature but if you think about it in a way it makes us progress.
Ted Talk #5 - Kid President - I think we all need a pep talk
ReplyDeleteThis video although very cute, is also actually very inspiring. What Kid President was trying to do was basically, to help you motivate yourself to be the best version you can be. He peps talk you and encourages you not to settle for what comes easy but to challenge yourself to help you gain life experience. He also encourages you to make goals and to have a dream you can be driven to make come true. But he also says that if you fail, do not get discourage and just get up, shake it off, and try again. Unless your dream is stupid. Then stop. But other than that keep dreaming.
Ted talk #6 - Steven Addis - A father-daughter bond, one picture at a time.
ReplyDeleteThis video was really cute and inspiring, but even though this video was about how he and his daughter take the same photo for 15 years, it was really about that you should feel more confident with yourself. He describes it as photos that was a way for them to freeze time for once a week in October and reflect on their times and how they change from year to year, and not just physically, but in every way. Because while they take the same photo, their perspectives change, and she reaches new milestones, and he gets to see life through her eyes, and how she interacts with everything. This time they get to spend together is something they cherished and anticipated the entire year. So he wanted to share the idea of taking an active role in consciously creating memories. So he wanted to encourage everyone to get in the shot, and to not hesitate and go up to someone and ask, "Will you take our picture?". Which I think is a great idea.
Ted Talk #5
ReplyDeleteLee Mokobe:
A powerful poem about what it feels like to be transgender
Lee does his Ted Talk in a poem which was defiantly a great way to express what he had to say. I think many times poems can get the message across much more smoothly and effectively than just talking about it. There seems to be a different flow and rhythm in the spoken poem that I personally am very fond of. He used many powerful lines in order to explain the oppression that comes along with being transgender, one I particularly enjoyed was the line "Can you see how easy it is to talk people into coffins?" So many young transgendered people commit suicide because people for some reason seem to forget that they are still humans no matter the gender they want to be. Society dehumanizes those they do not understand instead of trying to understand. And I don't think that any one who isn't transgender can ever fully understand what it must feel like to not be happy with the gender you were born with and the struggle it is to become the gender you're truly happy with. I enjoyed this Ted Talk and think more people should listen to others and their experiences with oppression instead of judging them and just contributing to their oppression.
TED Talk #1: My escape from North Korea by Hyeonseo Lee
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking, this talk was extremely moving and carried a very powerful message that few could disagree with. Hyeonseo begins her speech by describing her childhood in North Korea, which was at first sheltered but quickly became tragic when the famine of the 1990s began and her family started receiving letters about their relatives starving to death. For her safety, Hyeonseo's family sent her across the border to China, where she lived in constant fear of discovery including a very close encounter with the police before her escape to South Korea. At first, her accent was quite thick and difficult to understand, but it got much easier as the TED talk progressed. I found it quite tragic and incredibly horrifying to hear Hyeonseo's experience, especially considering her family was a middle-class one and was by no means the worse off in that nation. China's role in keeping North Korean refugees in North Korea was also quite disturbing to me, in that any escapees returned to their home country essentially receive a death sentence, a fact which the Chinese government must know. Hyeonseo's troubles were far from over, however, and many years later she had to cross the border back into North Korea in order to help her family escape. Given that she was the only one among them who spoke Mandarin, she had to pretend that she was the caretaker of a group of deaf and dumb people who could not speak in order to evade the suspicion that they were North Koreans. Later in Laos, her family was arrested twice for illegally crossing the border, and it was only due to the kindness of a stranger that they were bailed out the second time. Hyeonseo ended with a plea for international support for North Korean refugees as well as a request for communities led by North Koreans for North Koreans to learn to adjust to the outside world. Having studied this topic before, I was aware of the presence of one of these refugees, but I had no idea that there were so many of them. I completely agree with Hyeonseo, and hope that all those escaped from North Korea can find their place in the rest of the world.
Ted Talk #6
ReplyDeleteNancy Lublin:
Texting that saves lives
Nancy was talking about started a texting crisis hotline for the youth. I think its a pretty good idea because sometimes you can't say certain things out loud and texting is defiantly a much more private way to reach out to someone and talk about sensitive issues. She kind of lost me a bit when she started talking about the data thing though, cause she was kind of saying it as though texting could help get data on issues kids go through such as cutting bullying or rape. I'm conflicted on this point because we should focus on treated these kids as just another figure to a statistic but as actual humans, but then again having the statistic can make getting help for these children easier because for some reason things tend to become more "real" if there is a number behind it. I do like the idea of the texting hotline however, I think its a lot easier for teens and youths to open up through texting that a phone call with a stranger. I do not think that texting should replace the phone call hotlines cause many people an prefer it that way and to actually hear another humans voice talking back to them.
TED Talk #2: Which country does the most good for the world? by Simon Anholt
ReplyDeleteThis talk started off incredibly boringly, and I'll be honest I was trying to scroll through tumblr while watching the middle portion of it. It started with the assertion that the world is not solving its global problems as fast as it should be able to because all countries still operate to address internal, not external, issues. I very much agree with this assertion, as well as the one that the world's nations must be more willing to assist and engage in the international community if we wish to solve our shared problems. This is, in part, why our own recent election concerns me so much. Anholt went on to describe an index created by himself and a group of coworkers to describe and rank the relative goodness of each country in the world in terms of its international contribution and reputation. Surprisingly, the top nation was Ireland, despite that fact that they were in an economic recession at the time. This simultaneously makes me hopeful in the fact that nations which are not economic superpowers can still contribute and engage in the international community, but also depresses me in that America has one of the largest economies on the planet, yet it was only twenty first on the list. This, again, makes me concerned in the results of our most recent presidential election, in that I have no confidence that our international contribution and reputation will in any way improve. Overall, Ansholt was well-spoken and had very valuable points, even though it took wading through the extremely boring introduction to get there. If he had started with the comedic bits and the information that the title had promised, this TED Talk would have been much more interesting.
Ted Talk #7
ReplyDeleteTony Porter:
A call to men
Tony talks about the way boys are raised and the stigma surrounding guys crying. He states that there are rules most guys follow whether they want to or not, one of which includes no crying in front of people and do not show any emotions besides anger and especially not fear. Men are taught to not cry that those are feeling only women have, and that's another rule, men do not want to be like women. This I think is a great stigma we have in our society, the fat that we do not allow for men to cry. The have to hold their emotions in until they are alone or they are perceived as weak. I ain't ever seen my dad cry not even when his mama died, which I can not understand how you can not cry about something like that. Not only do most men not cry in front of other but if they do they'll apologize for it afterwards as though they should feel sorry for having feelings. I think it is sad that guys can not cry without being made fun of and its even more sad that they commonly mad fun of by other guys. I liked Tony's presentation and thought it was very insightful and liked the way he used personal antidotes throughout.
Ted Talk #8
ReplyDeleteRichard St. John:
8 secrets of success
This was very awkward presentation I think it could be blamed on the fact that this ted talk was filmed in 2005 and the camera quality is horrible and so is the technology used. Richard kept clicking on his computer which he had besides him every like 5 seconds which was weird and he spoke in a sort of slow broken speech again weird. It was all very cringey in my opinion, the quotes he was using and the way he was speaking. I don't know maybe I'm being to picky or judgmental it was just awkward for me to watch...
Ted Talk #1
ReplyDeleteThe incredible inventions of intuitive AI | Maurice Conti
I really liked this presentation, and it got me thinking of what the future will be like. I just can't wait for at least one of these awesome designs to be implemented into the real world. I want to see that perfect car driving around. I want these computers to have a real affect on my life with the designs that they are able to create. People often say that they fear AI and that its way too easy for it to take over. I say, who cares? Don't you want sweet looking stuff? Don't you realize how much of a role computers play in your life? Anyways, good talk, I enjoyed what he had to say and don't regret spending time watching him.
Ted Talk #2
DeleteThe dawn of the age of holograms | Alex Kipman
I thought this presentation was pretty cool and was quite happy to see the woman come up and ask questions that we were all thinking at the end. I thought we would just be forced to except that what he was saying would be true. My main problem with this device would have to be latency issues, how long can he wear that thing? If it really is wireless it cant have high frame rates? I feel like this machine would give you a killer headache in no time. I have a Vive myself and without the wires, it would be so laggy that I wouldnt be able to play it. This machine is not only smaller and denser, but also wireless, so it just leaves me wondering if it really is what it claims to be.
Ted Talk #3
DeleteMeet the dazzling flying machines of the future | Raffaello D'Andrea
This was a pretty cool little look at what the power of flying machines can be. Watching these various drones fly only makes one wonder what we will eventually use them for, in order to make them more helpful and useful for various things in the real world. Maybe one day these things can be used to help aid in the construction of buildings when they get too tall and skinny for humans to be able to help. Maybe one day these things really will deliver our mail and send our gifts to us. Just to put it simple, I think that these drones are going to end up having a huge effect later on in our lives, just you wait and see.
Ted Talk #4
DeleteA robot that runs and swims like a salamander | Auke Ijspeert
You know what, I was not very impressed by this one. Cool I guess, you managed to find out which parts on an animal do what and mimic it. Many people have already done it, to me this is nothing new. I get the reason to be impressed by it, but personally I have seen so much better. Forgetting about my past experiences though, this technology does seem to be taking nice large steps towards making robots that can simulate the activities of animals perfectly. That'll be the day now wont it. I cant wait until I can go and by the perfect dog that will live forever and never stop loving me. It wont get sick, it wont get hurt, it wont die, its the perfect machine. Thatll be the day, ill say it again. Thatll be the day.
Ted Talk #5
DeleteCan we make quantum technology work? | Leo Kouwenhoven
This video was alright, the way the guys face was formed it seemed to me that he was always angry. I didnt think I would have a problem with it, but as the video went on, it seemed to get more and more angry and I couldn't take my eyes off of it. No need to worry though, I am already caught up on the world of quantum mechanics and know full well how it works. Although, his explanation and the drawings and animations that went with it, were quite interesting and offered another view point for me to look from. I think that my overall understanding of the subject definitely grew, but it wasnt the best way to do so and he delivered the entire thing pretty poorly if you ask me. He almost seemed unsure of what he was saying, as if maybe he didnt even believe in it.
Ted Talk #6
DeleteQuantum Physics for 7 Year Olds | Dominic Walliman
This talk was more interesting, not because of the quantum talk, while that was still good no less, but because he didnt exactly focus on quantum mechanics, that was just one of many examples that he made to support a larger more over hanging point. I think it was that he wanted people to go out into the world and open their mind to new subjects, even if they seemed to be too complicated for them. He used quantum mechanics as an example, as it is quite a complicated and mind boggling subject for most. In this respect, the talk was actually pretty cool and I enjoyed his uplifting style of talking. Also, his examples that he used to help understand quantum mechanics and how they work, provided me with yet another example to help me understand. This time was probably the simplest with talk of a ball, a pond, and a stick. Good talk, would recommend.
Ted Talk #7
DeleteBlack Holes & Time Travel | David Neto
This Talk was pretty useless im not going to lie. He really only told information that was already quite easily known to a majority of the population and never put anything new into the topic. But, there is one aspect of this presentation that really captured my attention literally the entire time. His sweet sideburns. My god, they really were magnificent. You take one look at those sweet little babies and you instantly fell in love with them. I mean, he must have never cut them once in his life. Not only that, but he seemed to have groomed them on the daily too, they stood out perfectly for probably a good 6 inches. I mean, you wont understand until you see it. Also, just to top off the cake, this guy was fat in such a weird way that it looked like he stuffed blankets under his shirt. Nothing wrong with being fat, but that paired with his face made it look like he was just a guy wearing a costume, and that just made it soo much better.
Ted Talk #8
DeleteTedxVienna - Niko Alm - The End of Freedom of Religion
The way that this talk started I really did fear that he would just poop on religion the whole time and call it the most evil thing to have ever been created. I was happy to hear that he really did have a valid point that ended up getting me thinking. He pointed out that religion still had an unfair hold on our society today and that the government was the one allowing it that hold. This means that the seperation between religion and state really doesnt exist. This entire topic really interests me because I feel like it has some deeper meaning that makes me want to search even deeper. I want to know if this really does happen on the level that he describes and if it is, I want to know why and how this could happen in a society where there is a clear line and an understandning that this cannot be allowed.
Ted Talk #7- JD Schramm - Break the silence of suicide attempts
ReplyDeleteIn this Ted talk spoken by JD Schramm was about him talking of his experiences with suicide and why we need to be a more bigger support for those who wish to attempt suicide. On June 11th, 2003, he climbed up to the edge of the fence on the Manhattan Bridge and jumped down to the river below. He obviously lived but the fall shattered his right arm, broke every rib that he had, punctured his lung, and he drifted in and out of consciousness as he drifted down the river. Those who were aboard the Staten Island Ferry, passengers on the ferry heard him , contacted the boat's captain who contacted the Coast Guard who got him out of the East River and took him to the hospital. I also saw that he said, research shows that 19 out of 20 people who attempt suicide will fail. But the people who fail are 37 times more likely to succeed the second time. This truly is an at-risk population with very few resources to support them.
Ted talk #8 - Matt Cutts - Try something new for 30 days
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this talk, I found myself really wanting to relate with him on this topic. But I personally can't which made me want it to be relatable to me. He really expressed in his talk how you should try something new for 30 days. The idea is actually pretty simple. He suggest to think about something you've always wanted to add to your life and try it for the next 30 days. It turns out 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a new habit or subtract a habit. He figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you can do anything for 30 days. And I find that really inspiring, so I think I'll take his advice and try it out.
Ted Talk Response #4
ReplyDeleteThe Fast Lane to Retirement by Steve Locker
Locker analyzes the difference in cognitive behavior development and athletic development in children. He emphasizes the importance of slowing down a child's athletic career. Parents often look around them to make sure their child is not falling behind in any way and is keeping up with the competition. Children need to be able to have self motivation and be passionate about their sport and their lives instead of parents pushing. Locker states that 70% of all children who specialize in a sport drop out before puberty and single athletes get injured more than multiple athletes. I thought that these statistics and the overall presentation was very interesting. I think that this subject is something that needs to be publicized before more children begin losing the passion they once had for their sport. I also think that it is beneficial that the speaker is a 16 year collegiate head coach because he is familiar with the topic and the message that he is sharing.
TED Talk #3: Drawings that show the beauty and fragility of Earth by Zaria Forman
ReplyDeleteForman's speech was very inspiring and also very tragic, as many of the TED Talks that address climate change are. I sadly find that they are all beginning to blend together because of the sheer number of them, and yet given the environmental state of the world I doubt that this will change anytime soon. Forman works as a dry pastel artist, painting images that are meant to display the transition of delicate places such as the Arctic and equator islands in a way that is beautiful enough to inspire change. Forman was a very effective speaker, getting her point across quickly and concisely while integrating emotion and humor into her message. I additionally found her art pieces to be absolutely astonishing. At their largest, they are ten feet across, and photorealistic to the extreme. Even more impressive is the fact that one of these larger works requires upwards of two hundred hours to complete. All of this effort and talent is explained by the fact that her mother was a photographer of climate change before her death, and so passed on her career to her daughter in a sense. I believe that Forman's work is very important, even if it is one of many projects meant to bring attention to climate change. I very much appreciate her attempt to bring beauty to an otherwise ugly subject.
TED Talk #4: Glow-in-the-dark sharks and other stunning sea creatures by David Gruber
ReplyDeleteIf I were more awake right now I probably would have enjoyed this talk far more, but s it is I thought it was fine. Gruber starts by discussing the human need to impose color on the mostly blue ocean environment without taking the time to appreciate the form of color that much of sea life is already generating: bioluminescence. Gruber, along with a few others, explored numerous environments and depths of the ocean to discover bioluminescence in species previously thought to lack it. I recall watching a another TED Talk at this same venue and possibly event with similar pitfalls, namely that the short clip of sea life shown had background music that disrupted the flow of the speech. It was made even worse this time around by the speaker trying to talk over the background music. He also had the condescending excitement of a schoolteacher trying to convince his students that what they are studying is actually interesting. It was entirely unnecessary, as I already found the subject fascinating and quite beautiful, especially the bioluminescent sting ray. In the end, Gruber connected his topic back to why it was useful, in that the bioluminescent compounds present in marine life have already been used for medical purposes and further examination of new species could lead to greater medical benefit. I generally found this to be an interesting and mildly engaging talk, if somewhat average for a TED Talk.
5. Meet global corruption's hidden players by Charmian Gooch
ReplyDeleteCharmian Gooch states when we imagine corruption it tends to be a minister or despot of a small overseas nation, living in fabulous luxury. Charmian lists a few perfect examples of this behaviour. However, these people cannot operate without support from the rest of the world. Their mansions and art purchases are arranged through global banks, and despots in oil-rich nations must do deals with the largest oil companies.Many corrupt leaders make their profits through anonymous shell companies, which they secretly own. They are commonly used around the world to avoid paying taxes, but can also be used steal massive amounts of money from poor countries. A recent example involved Democratic Republic of Congo selling off state owned mining assets to a shell company, which quickly sold them for massive profits. The people of Congo lost $1.3 billion from these deals – more than twice their education and health budgets combined. Charmian investigated the deal but many of the details are locked away in the shell companies. There’s a view that corruption just happens, and it is impossible to change. But 2/3 of oil & mining companies (by value) are now covered by a transparency standard because groups demanded it. In a globalised world, corruption is a global business that needs solutions right here.
6. David Melson: The antidote to Apathy
Often it is said people are too stupid, selfish, or lazy to care about local politics. Dave proposes the opposite view: that people do care but there are barriers put in their way to prevent action. These barriers are: City Hall,Public Spaces, Media,Heroisme, Political parties, Charitable status and Elections. Melson goes into depth about each of these factors and what they contribute. I personally did not enjoy this talk hence the short review. I do not recommend this one.
7. Marco Tempest: A cyber-magic card trick….Marco introduces artificial reality glasses then shows us some card tricks from his point of view. He spins a fun tale as he deals the deck and reveals cards corresponding to the story he tells. As this happens, special effects explode from the cards and the computer voice acts as a foil – revealing probabilities and talking back to him. For a short ted talk, it was very interesting.
ReplyDelete8. Marco Norton: How to buy happiness…….If you believe “Money Can’t buy happiness”, then you’re not spending it correctly. When people think about winning the lottery – they think it will make them happy. However they spend it all, go into debt, and all their friends ask for money – their instinct is to get more antisocial and closed off. Winning the lottery ruins people’s lives – but is this because they only spend it on themselves? Michael ran a test at university of British Columbia – giving students either $5 or $20 and asking them to spend it on either themselves or someone else by the end of the day. The ones who gave their money away were happier, but those who spent on themselves felt the same. Also, the amount of money spent or given away didn’t make a difference. A similar experiment showed the same result in Uganda – a completely different culture to Canada. The magnitude of the gift wasn’t too significant – a girl who bought a gift for her mother felt as happy as a Ugandan who bought life-saving malaria treatment for a stranger. Michael extended this to the workplace – giving a team $15 each to spend on themselves or an experience for the team. The team ‘pro-social’ events were sometimes silly bonding exercises – like buying a pinata and smashing it together. However, the company got a 72c return in productivity on every 15c spent on team bonding. The productivity return for people spending on themselves is far less – only 4.2c per 15c spent. The same experiment was carried out with dodgeball teams – and the ones who spent on each other became much better teams. They dominated the league. The teams that spent on themselves stayed the same.To make yourself happier, don’t think about which product to buy. Find a way to spend it on someone else, or to charity.
#1: Dance, tiny robots! - Bruno Maissoner
ReplyDeleteThe TED Talk honestly wasn't even a Ted Talk at all. I just clicked on it because it was about tiny robots dancing. However, it was very interesting because these robots had very fluid almost human like motions. Although this Talk had zero educational value it was fun to watch
#2: Philosophy in prison - Damon Horowitz
ReplyDeleteIn this TED Talk Damon talked about a situation he had in his teen years with a friend named Tony. Long story short Tony shot and killed someone and went to San Quinten State prison. A while after that, Damon went to the prison to teach a class about the values of right and wrong and what they really mean. He asked Tony if he knew what wrong meant but he didn't just want an example he wanted to know what it really meant and if what he did really was wrong and if it was how do we know and what does it mean.
1. Understanding Happiness: The field of positive psychology has already helped us to better understand happiness. As Martin Seligman explained, traditional psychological theory, therapy and medications were aimed exclusively at reducing negative symptoms, but the new 'science of happiness' is concerned with interventions to understand, build and sustain positive emotions such as pleasure, compassion and gratitude. This change was sparked by the acknowledgement that happiness and unhappiness are not endpoints of a single continuum, and that as a result it is possible to make people happier, rather than just curtailing misery
ReplyDelete2. A Cyber Magic Card Trick Like No Other: Marco introduces artificial reality glasses then shows us some card tricks from his point of view. He spins a fun tale as he deals the deck and reveals cards corresponding to the story he tells. As this happens, special effects explode from the cards and the computer voice acts as a foil – revealing probabilities and talking back to him. Fun video, and at 6 minutes long is worth a watch. I’m unsure if the special effects improve a magic show: it seems to make it easy to trick people when anything can be modified at a whim – taking some of the skill out of magic. Even so, the novelty of special effects and interesting story he tells makes it worthwhile.
3. Battling Bad Science: Ben Goldacre is a physician, academic and science writer. As of 2014 he is a Wellcome research fellow in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a founder of the AllTrials campaign to require open science practices in clinical trials. Interesting to see how pharmaceuticals can abuse evidence by not publishing. I can understand commercial pressures not to publish negative results though, and not sure what the solution is. Should it be compulsory for companies to run trials through a central organisation and under specific rules? Even more concerning is the ethics of treating people with excessive or insufficient doses of a drug.
4. The Danger of Hiding Who You Are: Morgana Bailey is a human resources activist who wants to see the diversity of society reflected in the workplace. Morgana is a lesbian who came out during this TED talk, but doesn’t want to be defined by that. She grew up in Kansas and was not afraid to be seen as odd, but when she realised she was ‘different’ she worked harder to conform. She was paralysed by the fear of not being accepted. However, she is not the only person wanting to conform: 61% of the general population change an aspect of themselves to fit in at work, and 83% of gays do the same. They believe conformity is the path to career advancement. An emotional call to be yourself, or else see yourself being destroyed by others
5. The Optimism Bias: Tali Sharot is an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience in the department of Experimental Psychology at University College London.Optimism bias is a tendency to overestimate the likelihood of good things happening to you, and underestimating bad things. For example 40% of people divorce, but people marrying assume the probability for them is zero. Even people marrying for a second time don’t see it: “Remarrying is the triumph of hope over experience”. People tend to be optimistic about themselves and their family, while at the same time predicting a bad future for the world in general. Optimism about your own traits gives you a confidence and sets you up for success.
ReplyDelete6. The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong: Dan speaks very passionately and puts forward a new perspective, however I can’t help but disagree with him. His focus is entirely from an individual charity’s point of view – where of course it is a no-brainer to invest more in recruitment and marketing. However some of these efforts will not be ‘poaching’ resources from the for-profit sector, but from other charities. This gets worse as charities get bigger, and will generate an arms race between them. The money is coming from outside the charity: donators do not expect that their money is taken and 40% of it used to beg someone else to donate, or convince others to pick this charity over another. This is not an efficient use of money – pure growth implies an ego that ignores what the donators expected.
7. Learning How To Learn: Barbara is now a professor of engineering, but at a young age she was terrible at maths: preferring languages. A student asked her how she rewired her brain: after years as a Russian translator how did she learn engineering when she previously struggled. She looked into the issue from a neuroscience perspective. The pomodoro method is a new name to me, but is similar to other time management strategies: to break your time into modules with rests. I’ve heard 45 mins then 15mins break, as opposed to 25mins work, 5mins break. Personally I’m not sure the length of time matters
8. The Demise of Guys?: Guys are dropping out educationally, wiping out emotionally with girls and sexually with women. They are 30% more likely to drop out of school, and outperformed by girls at every level of education. Psychologically, they are 5 times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and make up 2/3 of special education students. The internet certainly has its plusses and minusses: people drawn to easily searching anything that comes to mind, and they will always find a result. This encourages novelty in both sex and education. On the educational side: people craving different sorts of knowledge should be able to be harnessed
TED Talk #5: Why am I so gay? by Thomas Lloyd
ReplyDeleteThis TED Talk consists of Lloyd's journey to accept himself as well as his efforts to assist others. The question that he seeks to answer throughout his speech is one that he was asked often growing up for numerous reasons: Why are you so gay? Being a national debate champion, Lloyd is an incredibly effective speaker, blending more melancholy emotions with a good dose of humor. The fact that this whole talk is a personal anecdote works quite well in this case and likely reflects the experiences of many young gay men. Lloyd's struggle to gain acceptance in his Catholic community was more of a struggle to accept himself. He eventually came to the realization that his creative energies were better spent forcing the community to accept him as opposed to trying to hide his identity. In conclusion, he answers the titular question by asserting that it is his responsibility to be loudly and proudly gay so that others will learn to accept him and so that other gay men would feel comfortable seeing somebody like themselves. Overall it was a very good TED Talk that touched on important social issues. I especially appreciated the burst of passion from Lloyd at the end.
TED Talk #6: How trees talk to each other by Suzanne Simard
ReplyDeleteIn this talk, Simard discusses her forestry studies, which have discovered that trees communicate with one another via chemicals and fungal networks in the soil. Much of the talk is dedicated to Simard discussing her childhood interest in the forest as well as her difficulty in conducting research on them. She also stresses the importance of conservation and proposes ways in which to preserve the forests. I did not particularly like the speaker. She was quite monotone and many of her attempts at humor fell flat. The subject would have been much more interesting if it had not been for her incredibly hokey delivery. Her science was incredible, and knowing that trees can in fact communicate with one another is revolutionary. I do not, however, believe that it was necessary for her to share the minute details of her experiments so much as the results of them. Despite this, her anecdotes on being chased away from her tree seedlings by a bear on multiple occasions was incredibly entertaining to think about and possibly the most Canadian thing I have ever heard. Overall, this was a mediocre TED Talk with a genuinely fascinating subject that was held back by an uninteresting speaker.
In “My Son was a Columbine Shooter. This is my Story” Sue Klebold details her life after the events on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School. Sue, being the mother of one of the two shooters describes her experience grappling with having a son who killed others and himself. Klebold brings a very interesting perspective on the shooting, as she reminds us that she lost a son that in her perspective, was not as bad as he turned out to be. Klebold spends the majority of the talk detailing mental health- what is it, how so many have it, how it affects us, and what we can do to stop another Columbine. The talk is around 15 minutes and definitely worth a watch. Sue Klebold is very well spoken yet one can still sense the pain in her words.
ReplyDelete“What Time is it on Mars?” Is a very- “interesting” talk. It's not as if it was bad- far from it- this talk just seemed out of place in the TED selections. Nagin Cox was very well spoke, yet her explanations of NASA and how the Curiosity program works sound a lot like she is trying to explain them to a child. I actually swore the talk WAS meant for children, however the camera panned to the crowd, revealing a lot of 30 year olds. The talk itself was a semi short anecdote about NASA employees part of the program on mars and how they had to adjust to Martian time. The talk was fairly quick, and lacked a clear message- it seemed Cox wanted to stress how close humans are to being able to live on Mars. Again, it's not like that's a bad thing, it just seemed off compared to other hard hitting TED talks.
In “The Art of Puzzles” Scott Kim talks about puzzles and how they manifest his life. Kim takes us through his puzzle-making life, showing many different puzzles and illusions that he has created. While there doesn't seem to be one massive message (other than that life is one big puzzle), the talk is short and very interesting if you are even remotely interested in puzzles. This talk even inspired me to start doing some puzzles each day, as Kim shares statistics that prove that doing puzzles to test the mind and stave off diseases like Alzheimer’s.
In “The small and surprisingly dangerous detail the police track about you” Catherine Crump sheds light on the ways police in the US and the world gather data about citizens. Many police departments take mass photos of license plates, giving full details of many innocent citizens’ lives. Crump argues that, much like weaponry, this power can be abused. Personally I believe this technology is amazing and should definitely be used. Perhaps it is just becuase I have been raised and have grown up knowing that nothing in my life is private, so having the police know where I've been does not bother me as much, I am not doing anything wrong. That said, I believe departments should dispose of innocent pictures, while those under suspicion should be used.
ReplyDelete“Before I die I want to …” by Candy Chang was a fairly short talk, yet very memorable. Chang shares her experience of conducting a sort of social experiment by painting a wall urging people to write what they want to do before they die. Chang shares some of the responses, and provides insight to the meaning of the wall. Chang suggest that in an age of distraction we should slow down and help make our neighborhoods more enjoyable.
In “The magic washing machine” the charismatic Hans Rosling spends 10 minutes raving about the washing machine. Granted, other things were mentioned, however the basis of his talk was the dependence we have today on electricity and appliances. Rosling details the consumption of energy by separate economic classes, and what can be done about it. The talk is around 10 minutes, and is definitely worth a watch for Rosling’s personality alone.
“How to get (a new) hip” by Allison Hunt is a very different talk then most that I've seen before. The talk is pretty old (2007) so the TED format appears to be pretty different. Hunt tells the story of how she needed a new hip, yet was pushed to the back of the surgery line. She devised a plan to get the top of the list, and details the plan. Hunt stresses the importance of helping others, all in a very compact time.
In “How much does a video weigh?” YouTuber and science activist Michael Stevens talks of his educational channel, Vsauce. Stevens goes over his methods for baiting viewers into clicking the video, then how he hooks them in with intriguing and seemingly impossible questions that he answers. Stevens stresses the importance of question and exploration, and suggests no question is impossible. If you enjoy this talk, I would absolutely recommend Steven’s channel, as provokes new thoughts and opens up so many topics that most have never thought of.
#3 Why Woman Should Tell the Story of Humanity—Judy Kelly
ReplyDeleteJudy began the talk with her experience visiting ancient cave paintings and being told by a docent that women simply did not paint or create as the men did. She builds on this experience by relating her own experience as a theater major and quest to become a director and the struggles she encountered. She connects this to the accepted idea in society that men are the creative genius, leaving women no platform for acceptance. The text Hamlet is taught as the epitome of human struggle, yet it truly is a depiction of this only through a male lense. Why does Ophelia never have the opportunity to express her own thoughts and feelings? Because the play was written by a male author, therefore only the male perception may be expressed—yet we teach this work as a symbol for humanity's struggle. This is a trend consistent in great works of art, with women lacking a platform for recognized creative genius. She ends the talk with expressing to the crowd the importance in changing this societal norm by supporting women artists so the little girls of the world will know they have every equal opportunity to pursue their dreams, whatever they may be.
#4 I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here's why I left —Megan Phelps-Roper
ReplyDeleteMegan takes the audience through her journey growing up in an extremist church, and her path away from it. She was raised on a picket fence with signs in her hand that she couldn't even read yet with hateful messages about gays and Jewish people. She had been devote to her religion and its beliefs among her ten sibling family, not having been taught anything else. She communicated on twitter, expressing the beliefs of her church, and received much hate from other users reading her tweets. She retorted this hateful messages to her with bible verses and smiley faces. Only then did the opposition begin to genuinely question her beliefs and their justifications. Her "opponents" became something different—they became fellow human beings. She began to see contradictions in bible verses that were the foundation for her beliefs, and began to be able to see her ideas from an outer stance. It was when she realized that we truly are all human beings that she understood that the beliefs she had been brought up with were not justified or fair. At twenty, she left her church and a family she knew would never accept her again, for the unknown. She was accepted and forgiven with open arms a community she had so readily judged and protested against all of her life. From this experience, she learned the importance of open communication, with patience and understanding for another.
#5 My son was a Columbine shooter. This is my story — Sue Klebold
ReplyDeleteThe perspective of the mother of a boy who committed mass murder is one that is extremely powerful in the sense of the compassion you feel for the person who has endured more than comprehendible. The raging red anger one may feel for the two boys who committed such an atrociously vicious act that affected hundreds of innocent people is completely understandable. Yet, that is only because we are obliged to sympathize with the masses—we are unable to view the antagonist through any other lense than a murder. A horrible human being, not a misunderstood, sick boy. The event lead his mother down a path of trying to understand mental health and the power of it in our society. Even as his mother, she was never able to see the struggles he was going through which were not uncovered until months after the shooting and his suicide. She is involved in the mental health community to help others and give back to the facet in our society that lead to the destruction of her lives and many others.
TED Talk 1
ReplyDeleteI did my first TED Talk of the third quarter on Sports Physcology. This presentation was done by Martin Hagger who is a profffeser at Curtin Universty. In his talk he described the mindset that elite and top level athletes possess. He compared Usian Bolt with Micheal Phelps in their two different and unique ways of preparing but than came back to show that the two athletes both shared the same thinking on goals, motivation and so on. I enjoyed this presentation because I play sports and was intrigued by what the presenter had to share about his knowledge of the minds of these elite athletes.
TED Talk 2
ReplyDeleteI did my second TED Talk of the third quarter on strength and muscle growth. I chose this topic because I am intrested in weight training and gaining muscle. The speaker did a great job of showing how expanding your typical everyday exercices to those with more resistance may cause one to tear muscle fibers. Depending on how much you tear these muscle fibers, the more likely they are to grow bigger and stronger. I enjoyed this presentation and thought that it provided many benficial details on muscle growth.
TED Talk 3
ReplyDeleteI did my third TED talk of the third quarter on how science labs will be revolutionized through virtual science. The speaker, Micheal Bodekaer, shows the audience how virtual science can be used as a more effective way to perform labs in science classes. This virtual technology can be used through a 3D camera that we have all seen by now. I thought that this was a very interesting topic that had multiple benefits, and could end up saving large sums of money in the long run. This was a pretty good talk, overall.
TED Talk4
ReplyDeleteI did my fourth TED Talk of the third quarter on a humans 200 year plan. The presenter, Raghova KK, describes the future of the world and what our plan is as humans living on this earth. He claims that he makes important designs all of the time, and instead of per say a five-year plan, he has a 200-plan. At first I was a little bit confused on why he would want to have a plan for himself for that long when he will most likely not survive 200 years. He wants to make a future for generations to come, which made me more intrigued by his presentation. I enjoyed this presentation, although it was not my favorite one.
TED Talk 5
ReplyDeleteI did my fifth TED Talk of the third quarter on “5 dangerous things you should let your kids do.” The speaker, Gever Tulley, describes how he runs a summer camp, where kids build what they think of. He claims that he puts power tools in the hands of second graders. He thinks that it is ridiculous how their are safety regulations on everything, and how kids are always told to stay away from sharp objects. With his camp, children learn to handle sharp objects from a young age, and learn to be aware of their surroundings. I loved this TED Talk, and thought that it was especially awesome that he puts power tools in the hands of second graders.
TED Talk 6
ReplyDeleteI did my sixth TED Talk in the third quarter on the science of living cells. The presenters name was not given. I found this one on youtube. The man talks about the nature of a living cell inside our body, and depicts exactly what the cells do, as well as the life that they live. This presentation included an enthusiastic speaker that was very interested in the cells inside our body and the functions that they perform. I enjoyed this presentation because the speaker was enthusiastic and had a great passion for human cells.
TED Talk 7
ReplyDeleteI did my seventh TED Talk of the third quarter of the real importance of sports. The speaker, Sean Adams, was an All-American at North Carolina State as a track runner. He begins by telling us the four ways men are raised in America- through the church, military, the home, and sports. He describes the beauty of sports and how closely related it is to real life. People from all walks of life join together and fight for a common goal. He then explains how he wanted to win so badly. His college track team got second and third, but never first. He then told a story about the importance of winning for each other and developing a brotherhood. I really enjoyed this talk. Sean did a great job of describing the importance of sports, and what it means to us as Americans and in life.
TED Talk8
ReplyDeleteI did my eighth TED Talk of the third quarter on how to stay calm when you know you’ll be stretched. The speaker, Daniel Levitin, stats by talking about how the brain deals with stress. He starts by describing a story where he was in a lot of stress. Designate a place where things are easily lost was the first thing he talked about. He then talked about how the brain releases cortisol when you are stressed, which leads to cloudy thinking. He then brought up a very realistic situation where someone had to make a big medical decesion for their future. He claims that one should talk about certain situations when they are not in the heat of the moment. The cloudy thinking leads to decesions one would not normally make. I enjoyed this talk as it gave me something new to think about, and something new to learn.
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ReplyDelete1.David Brooks: Should you live for your resume ... or your eulogy?
ReplyDeleteThere are two brands of people in life, the ones who crave success or the ones who are more concerned with social connection, familial values, and love. Each of these personalities place emphasis on building their favored choice, however how can we balance the two in order to live a more fulfilling life. Strengthening a resume and your relationship with your parents are both advantageous however success in the workplace is certainly more valued in American society. The economic ideologies we hold in life such as input leads to output and risk leads to reward is beneficial in a career, but not in building a humbling character. The risk is that we have become increasingly competitive and that makes us materialistic as well as animalistic. We need to find a way to be successful in both aspects without ignoring the other.
2. Lux Narayan: What I learned from 2,000 obituaries
Obituaries are a family's way of boiling down a loved one's life into a short sentence or paragraph. With use of natural language processing Narayan was able to highlight keywords used in obituaries and thus analyze what a life is supposedly worth. Common words in these 2,000 obituaries were pioneer, founder, lawyer, help, and time. Ironically, on average most working people find memorable success at age 37 and are only remembered for it 44 years later at the average dying age of 81. Narayan also separated obituaries from famous and non famous people and found a strong similarity in the word help, revealing humanity's true value in helping one another.
3. Bassam Tariq: The beauty and diversity of Muslim life
Living in New York, Tariq began to notice that Islamic culture was being appropriated and oversimplified, particularly in its foods. Halal meat was one such food that Tariq saw across New York but not one represented true Islam. Halal is the preparation of meat that follows Muslims law yet many of the companies selling this Islamic specialty were not truly representative of what it was. Frustrated with America's oversimplification of Islam Tariq opened Halal Chops in the heart of New York fashion district. Now Halal is being properly represented and other cultures are being exposed to a true Islamic staple.
4. Alexa Meade: Your body is my canvas
As an artist Meade became fascinated with shadows and the absence of light. Through trial and error her interest morphed into body canvas painting in which she was able to make a 3 dimensional scenes look like a 2 dimensional paintings. Meade transferred her ideas elsewhere and begin painting stationary objects such as food and plates, however her most wild idea was painting a body submerged in milk. The paint when in contact with liquid would float off and change, making beautiful colors and designs in the liquid. Meade gave art and the fun in discovering your passions a new lens and showed some of her great works.
1.) Mandy Len Catron: “A better way to talk about love”
ReplyDeleteIn her TED Talk, Mandy Len Catron talks about how we talk about love and the different ways we interpret what our love is and means. Many people talk about love in the sense of falling, falling in love. She points out that we do not call into jumping into love, but accidental uncontrollable falling. She then proceeds to talk about how we interpret this uncontrollable feeling and how we tend to think that the exciting, dramatic love with the lowest lows and the highest highs is what love is all about, especially when we are younger. In a few studies, it is almost impossible to determine the difference in our brains from romantic love and mental illness. In fact the levels of serotonin that rush through your brain due to romantic love parallels the levels of serotonin caused by OCD. This explains why in the first stages of a relationship, you seem to be obsessing over them and uncontrollably thinking about them. Mandy points out an interesting idea that the main problem when talking about love is that we use the wrong metaphors, and in order to truly talk about what love is we need to use the ones that represent the honesty of love. Her talk is very interesting and how she uses a mixture of comedy, factual evidence, and personal stories really captivates the audience.
2.) Eve Ensler: “Suddenly, my body”
Ensler discusses the separation between her mind and her body in this TED Talk and how she always thought of it as “me” and “my body” where they were two separate parts of her life. She goes through the story of her life and how she gained control of her body and saw it as a part of herself. After starting “The Vagina Monologues,” Ensler was able to hear stories of women losing control of their body and losing the connection due to rape or molestation or anything along those lines then rebuilding that connection. She talks about her battle with cancer and how she sees cancer all throughout our society. Not literal cancer, but this emotional cancer and holes throughout who we are due to carelessness and the inability to connect our mind and our body into one. Because of her cancer she was able to reconnect her mind and her body and see herself as one full person. Ensler’s talk was interesting and inspiring, but at times it was hard to connect her points back to her overall message and understand how what she was saying fits into her talk.
3.) Sarah Kay: “How many lives can you live?”
Sarah Kay is best known for her spoken word poetry and in this talk she recites two of her poems. This is more of a personal TED Talk where she discusses growing up and how when she was little she believed she could do everything she wanted to do and she could be everything she wanted to be. She thought that she could be a princess and a ballerina and an astronaut, not all at once, but rather at separate times. She points out the fact that we need to live our lives as if we can be anyone we want because we do not have all the time in the world, so if we want to be more than one person in our life then we’d better get started. We need to start our lives in order to get through everything we want to, but we should not rush because we need to live out each moment. She ends her talk with one of her poems about her life growing up and how she felt as a kid. I really liked how Kay included her poems into her TED Talk because it made it more personal and entertaining. This is a very inspiring talk and it really makes you think about how you want your life to be.
4.) Phil Kaye: “Why we tell stories”
ReplyDeletePhil Kaye uses poetry in his TED Talk to add to this idea that he's trying to prove. He brings up the topic of stories, why we listen to them, why we care about them, and mainly why we tell them. He brings up his personal background and how he got started with spoken word poetry and why he fell in love with it. Just like with stories, people love hearing poetry. He talks about how he doesn't know the real answer as to why we do this, but he believes that it's because it makes us feel alive. We tend to believe that our lives are very predictable and when we realize they are not it makes us feel vulnerable, so we tell them in order to talk about and celebrate what happens that was not predicted. We tell stories to make other people feel good, to warn them, make them laugh, make them sad. But we mainly tell them so that they can feel and also so we can feel. He concludes his TED Talk with another one of his poems, but before that he talks about how we tend to live our lives to be perfect, but in reality humans are infinitely flawed and we should not worry so much about perfection and rather about living. Phil Kaye’s TED Talk was great and it was very inspiring. I would recommend this to anyone because of how amazing it is. I would definitely recommend it to everyone going off to college or starting to change their lives because it makes you realize what's truly important in life.
5.) Glennon Doyle Melton: “Lessons from the mental hospital”
In her TED Talk, Melton discusses her past with mental illnesses and mental hospitals. Starting at 8 she became bulimic and would binge and purge day in and day out for 18 years. On top of that she became addicted to drugs and alcohol, where she found herself unable to come out for the day, but only live in the night. Growing up she always wore capes, just like a normal person would to personify a superhero. Everyone puts on different capes, whether it is pretending, addiction, or perfectionism, everyone wears capes in order to cover their true raw and vulnerable self. We do this as a sort of defense mechanism to the emotions we feel, so those who may be seen as sensitive are merely feeling what others have become numb too. Melton brings up the time she was in a mental hospital and how it's not at all like it is in the movies, but rather it's a place where she felt normal, where everyone felt as much as they could and did not hide behind this numbness. She talked about her college life and how days to most people were a sense of hope and light, but to her it was this darkness that she was not able to deal with. Her message behind this is to show that it is okay to feel and that you are not sensitive, but you are just feeling what needs to be felt. Her talk was very personable and intriguing. At times it was a little bland just because of how she was talking and how she held herself, but overall it was a good and eye-opening TED Talk.
5. Caroline Paul: To raise brave girls, encourage adventure
ReplyDeleteAs a young adult Paul became a firefighter and was faced with many adversities both on call and at the station regarding her gender. She noticed both men and women were surprised when she said she was a firefighter and questioned her bravery. Paul began to wonder why society questioned someone displaying a positive quality for the fact that they were a women. As it turns out at a young age parents raise their daughters differently than their sons in the leniency they give to climb tall play places. Encouraging parents and young girls to be brave by being adventurous, Paul hopes to break the stereotype of weak women and further equality among genders.
6. Richard St. John: 8 secrets of success
We often wonder how to become successful both mentally and economically all which maintaining happiness and free will. When on a plane ride a young girl asked Richard St. John this very question yet to his surprise John did not have a concrete answer. With extensive time and research interviewing extremely successful people John accumulated 8 factors: passion, work, focus, pushing yourself, motivation, service, ideas, and persistence. With use of these ideas maintaining happiness all while becoming economically sufficient is less of a feat. If you work hard for something you love and help others work is much more of a hobbie.
7. Terry Moore: Why the ‘X’ is unknown?
Today the symbol of X is used throughout pop culture. Some examples of X are the the x prize, the x files, and project x however where this symbol came from is less ambiguous. The Arabic language is extremely logical and can be compared to an equation. When western science, mathematics, and engineering was created by Persians, Arabs, and Turks X was used as a way to symbolize what they did not know. As global expansion took place and languages were exposed across continents the Arabic X was changed to a more understandable form for Spaniards and English speaking countries to create the X we use today.
8. Shereen El Feki: Pop culture in the Arab world
As result of different ideologies and governmental laws Arabic communities have less access or acceptance to American culture. The Arabic MTV was created a way to combat this divide. The Egyptian creator promotes this alternative to young Arab teens to be inspired by Islam to lead better lives. The music videos are kinder than other broadcast and are not over serialized or filled with violence. To cater to younger audiences an Arabic company also created an Arabic barbie that is adorned in Arab clothing as an alternative to American barbie, teaching girls and boys to accept their religion and culture as just as relent as American culture.
6.) Jude Kelly: “Why women should tell the stories of humanity”
ReplyDeleteIn her TED Talk, Kelly talks about the problems that come along with just hearing a man’s side to a story, or a man’s interpretation of humanity. She brings up significant works of literature and art that tell humanity from a man’s point of view. In E.T., a story about accepting all types and not focusing so much on differences, fails to include 50% of the population. Instead it only focuses on how the boys save E.T., not how the girl is connected to him. In Hamlet, Shakespeare tells the dilemma of life and the overarching question of suicide. One of the only two women characters, Ophelia, actually does commit suicide, but instead of the audience hearing about her point of view and feelings we only hear about Hamlet’s never-ending struggle. In art, women tend to be told that they cannot be creative in the way that men are. In society, women’s stories are only told to see how women feel, not how humanity is. Kelly fights that women need to also tell the stories of humanity in order to get a better understanding of our world. At times Kelly overanalyzed a little too much about certain literature and works and tended to become the “femininazi” instead of feminist. Overall this was a good talk with interesting points.
7.) Jia Jiang: “What I learned from 100 days of rejection”
Rejection is a part of everyone’s life and Jia Jiang explains how rejection is a good thing and why we should embrace rejection in his TED Talk. Jiang spent a lot of his young life too focused on the idea of rejection and the fear that what he was doing or wanting to do would not be good enough. To counteract and hopefully end this fear he decided to embrace rejection. So, he started doing a program on rejection therapy where everyday for the next 100 days he would be rejected in one way or another. In the beginning he would run after we got the answer “no,” but a little bit farther into this study he began to ask them why they said no or explain to them what he wanted. As the days went on he began to embrace this rejection and he learned that by simply asking he could get what he wanted. He was able to complete what he wanted to just by following up with their rejection. He learned that in life we tend to be too caught up in the fear of being rejected that we do not see the kindness that is there if you just simply ask. Instead of think of rejection as this horrible thing, we should embrace it for all of its positive and negatives sides. Jia Jiang’s talk was really good. He added in some comedy that really captured the audience and made it more enjoyable and entertaining.
8.) Kelli Jean Drinkwater: “Enough with the fear of fat”
In her TED Talk, Drinkwater addresses the problem with what she calls fat-phobia. All around the world people are defined by their bodies, whether they are skinny or fat or curvy they are judged by how they look. In society people tend to praise those who are skinny while looking down at those who are fat. Drinkwater has struggled with being fat all of her life, but she never truly saw it as a burden rather as a piece of who she is. From being a little girl in a ballet class to walking down the runway, she has embraced how she looks and encourages others to do so. There has always been this stigmatism towards people who are overweight, but there should not be. Drinkwater points out that if you want to change your body you have the power to do so, and if you do not want to change your body then you also have the power to embrace who you are. Instead of seeing our limitations as purely limiting, she dares us to see how they can make us better and how we can use them to our advantage. Her TED Talk was very inspiring and I love the message that she is sending out. Her talk included some levels of comedy which made it enjoyable and made it easier to talk about such a serious problem in our society.
#6 Our story of rape and reconciliation —Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger
ReplyDeleteThordis and Tom recount the story of their childhood relationship which resulted in Thordis's rape the night of their winter dance. Tom was an exchange student from Australia living in Ice Land for a year. During this time, he met Thordis and they began dating. After their winter dance, Tom took advantage of Thordis's intoxicated state and raped her. This consequently resulted in emotional for both of them. The community Thordis grew up in taught girls to blame themselves for rape. Tom spent years burying what he had done, attempting to rationalize the goodness of his character and his action in the past. Thordis reached out to Tom after 8 years, and they began to write each other about their emotional struggles. Both finding it impossible to reach acceptance for this event, they met up in South Africa for a week to attempt to reconcile what had happened and begin to heal from the hurt they had both experienced for years.
1)Chinaka Hodge: What will you tell your daughters about 2016?
ReplyDeleteWomen were trained to dodge and wait and cover. Women were told to be silent. Women wept this year, we lost our year of inhibition. Women were called fat. Women are women, not brides or objects. Women bore women and not, questioned whether that made them true women. Daughters will ask their fathers if men fought for their women rights. Daughters want to know what sacrifices were made for her future. Women now are born just in time to lead and make their footprint known in the history of humankind.
2)Bassam Tariq: The beauty and diversity of Muslim life
Muslims got together and wanted to break their fasts of ramadan in different states every day. 30 mosques in 30 days. People all around the world were inspired by this movement and did their own 30 mosques in their part of the world. Muslim stories always violent and reduced them to political objects. Muslims used the term “Halal meat” to abuse the religious views of muslims and exploit this belief for personal gain because they’re deceiving muslims for economic gain. Muslims must unapologetically reclaim their religion and tell their stories, their communities are unique.
3)Aziz Abu Sarah: For more tolerance, we need more ... tourism?
People threw rocks at israel cars. People disliked israelites. Wall of anger, hatred, ignorance that separate people of different cultures. Tourism is the best sustainable way to connect people and create friendships. People often hold predispositions about people due to their beliefs or nation. By traveling to different places and experiencing the cultures first handedly, one is able to have a different view and great rid of stigmas. The more we interact and create bonds, healthier relationships can arise and is revolutionizing the direction of world travel.
4)Joe Landolina: This gel can make you stop bleeding instantly
A soldier fitting in the battlefield receives a fatal wound that can kill in a matter of minutes before medical care can come and save them. Smart biomaterials actually work with the body and help the body help naturally. The body is made of cells, cells sit in extracellular matrix (ECM) that give the cells a home. The ECM is different in every part of the body. Scars are poorly formed ECM. Current products can only reconstruct ECM in 2 dimensions. The ECM gel reassembles into the surrounding tissue. The gel can stop a gushing wound because the blood realizes that the ECM helps work with the body and creates a response that starts creating fibers and makes a clot in 10 seconds.
5)Melissa Marshall: Talk nerdy to me
Communication is needed from scientists and engineers to change the world. They are tackling our greatest challenges. If we don’t know about it and understand it then we don’t know what is going on. Scientists and engineers can invite us into their world and engage us. Tell us why science is relevant to the world. When describing science, be cautious of jargon. Making things simple as possible without compromises the message is possible. When presenting work, use a single readable sentence with visuals to create a deeper understanding. This will help average people be interested in the same passions as this scientists and engineers and let us understand the relevant problems.
6)Damian Palin: Mining minerals from seawater
ReplyDeleteBacteria accumulate minerals from their environment. Metals are attracted electrical charges produced by these bacteria in the form of minerals. People all over the world today suffer from not being able to drink well sanitized water. Desalination process allows us to take out salts and use the water for drinking and agriculture. Seawater reverse osmosis forces water through a membrane which uses energy and converts it to clean water. This is cost prohibited for countries over the world that are poorer. We are also left with a concentrated salt solution called “Brine” which is just pumped back into the sea and is detrimental. Bacteria can be used to extract metals from brine and virtually a mining business that can bring in revenue. A mining industry in the way mining has never existed before.
7)Terry Moore: Why is 'x' the unknown?
Arabic is an extremely precise and logical language. Western science, engineering was originally worked out by persians, turks, and other middle eastern countries. Algebra is a word derived from an arabic word. The arabic text containing this mathematical wisdom was brought over to europe and was highly sought after to have it translated into a european language. There are some sounds in arabic that do not make it through a european voice box. And these sounds tend to not be represented by the characters available in the european languages. Because the spanish could not produce the “Sh” sound, they borrowed the “Ch” sound from the Greeks known as kai then into the latin “X”. X is the unknown because you cannot say “Sh” in spanish.
8)Amy Lockwood: Selling condoms in the Congo
The largest country in Africa is the Congo. HIV prevalence is 1.3% among adults in the congo. Poor infrastructure results in only 25% of the HIV affected receive treatment they need. There is no demand for condoms in the congo, thus places do not sell them. Only 3% of the congo adults use condoms. The customers do not buy the branded versions of the condoms, they only buy the generic.Fear, Financing, and Fidelity are used in the marketing of condoms in the Congo. People do not think about these things before they get a condom, this is why people usually do not buy the condoms. People who are selling the condoms usually are not even in the countries they sell the condoms but hold ideals of their country of home and thus do not understand the mindset of the targeted audience in the Congo. When wanting to stop the spread of HIV, the marketing agencies must think about the customers and what messages will change their behavior in terms of marketing.
#7 Half a Million Secrets
ReplyDeleteFrank Warren pursued a seemingly silly idea of handing out blank post cards with his address that had the simple instructions to write an artful secret they had never shared before and send to him. With this, he started a movement that gained greater and greater momentum. His blog, "PostSecret," is now the second most visited unadvertised blog. He created an platform for human connection in which people may feel as if they may be heard, and others who may feel as if they are not alone. It had brought people together based off of the human nature of empathy and connection. I checked out the blog and it's really interesting. I'm going to start following it!
Ted Talk Response #5
ReplyDeleteStudent Athlete: The Untold Story By Richard Carthon
Richard Carthon describes the different aspects of being a student athlete at the collegiate level. He is a baseball and football player at Tulane University. As a result of going to class, practice, workouts, meetings, organizations, and sleeping, Carthon emphasizes being where your feet are. It is important to give 100% and focus at what you are doing at hand. Many of the groups that Carthon was a apart of refused to except excuses. He had to push through the struggles because of those around him that were depending on him. His classmates, teammates, family, and those around him were expecting him to give everything he had even if he was running on three hours of sleep. I think that this ted talk was very well presented. It was obvious that Carthon was passionate about the subject and the life of a student athlete. I was interested in this Ted Talk because I believe there is a certain side of a student athlete that many people do not get to see.
#8 The shared experience of absurdity —Charlie Todd
ReplyDeleteCharlie Todd shares his experiences as an improv comedian in New York and the joy silliness can bring to people's lives. He began the tradition of "No Pants" day in the New York subway, from which his ambition in projects such as this sprung. One day, over sixty random people dressed in a blue shirt and cackies walked sporadically into Best Buy. A man was set up in Central Station with signs pointed at him about giving him a high five. 70 people were set up in the windows of a department store synchronically dancing. The videos of these events show random people coming together with smiles and laughter—the silly experiences allow them to find joy and amusement in part of their day, as well as the opportunity to connect with others through shared experience. He relays the value in play and that there is no wrong way to do it, as long as it is fun and brings joy or amusement to others as well.
#1 The jobs we'll lose to machines - and the ones we won't
ReplyDeleteAnthony Goldbloom owns a company that works with experts working on machine learning, he states that eventually 1 in 2 jobs will replaced by machines. However machines will never be able to make unique decisions. Computers need to base their knowledge off of things they have perviously learned, they make decisions based off the past. In theory computers capabilities are limited to high output regular tasks, and they will never be able to solve questions beyond the natural. Computers can never create their own intuition.
#2 The future of money
ReplyDeleteNeha Narula begins the Talk based off of an interesting story about an African culture that used stones to measure currency, a large high value stone fell into the sea but they still used it as apart of the economy. Almost a word of mouth based money system, she compares this credit cards and paypal. Currency doesn't need to be physically transferred anymore, now she speaks about how money will no longer be physical, all digital. No banking will be handled by humans, all will be operated by technology. Cryptography based banking, each server has knowledge of ones money and when someone spends money one server will tell the next server and so forth, general bit coin tec. I personally think she's wrong, the current system of finances is not broken enough to get rebuilt.
Sam Ramirez- “Rollercoaster”
ReplyDeleteThis TED talk was a performance by Sam Ramirez. It was a song, titled “Rollercoaster”, about her past relationships and impactful life events. It had the life message of caution is better for the highs and lows of life, but she ends questioning that message. To me it almost felt like a song that could belong in a musical as part of a character arc. In that way, it felt more like part of a story rather than the whole thing. Another thing I would fault it for, as a TED talk, is that is not very specific. While it is a nice example of many vocal techniques and has a wide life lesson about opportunities and highs and lows, it does not really teach the listener very much.
Ani Lui- Smelfies, and other experiments…
This TED talk was performed by a designer at MIT’s design labs. She links together science and design to try and conceptualize what questions affect different plants and how the questions of science impact what we believe. Her current project is what she likes to call a smelfie, or a smell selfie. This would be, in concept, a way to reproduce a human’s natural smell. She is conceptualizing this in connection with plants and trying to find new ways for people to comprehend loss and to mourn by placing a person’s scent in a plant. She also discussed ways to interact with plants by using their own chemical formats. She discussed creating a lipstick that would allow the plant to respond in different ways if she kissed it, a plant that would love her back. These concepts were really interesting to me, as a person who loves science but also loves design and fun concepts. The way that she thought of things was, to me, very interesting.
Lucianne Walkowicz- “Let’s not use Mars as a backup planet for Earth”
In this TED talk, Walkowicz talks about the dangers of attempting to excuse the destruction of Earth with the possibility of living on another planet. This is an idea that I strongly agree with. I think that people say things like ‘it's okay, we will just move to Mars’ when they don't know all the facts. They aren't aware that living on Mars would be worse than living in the driest, most inhospitable desert on Earth. The possibility of finding another planet like Earth in a far off galaxy that we could potentially reach is also a ridiculous premise. Even if we do find it, what will happen to Earth in that time as we are searching?
Auke Ijspeert- A robot that runs and swims like a salamander
This TED talk was about the study of robotics to try and simulate spinal cords. Honestly, I just picked this talk because I wanted to see a robot salamander, and it did not disappoint. I know that the point of the TED talk was not the salamander, but he was just so darn cute. There was also a robot cat that came on stage. The goal of this project was to simulate less complex mammal spinal cords before attempting the human one. They did eventually get the human one, and along the way the guy explained how the spinal system works. I didn't really understand all of what he said, but seeing the robot salamander made this TED talk worth it.
#3 A few ways to fix a government
ReplyDeleteCharity Wayna is a cancer research who got a scholarship which brought her to the US to study, however she realized that the the government was unhealthy. Everyone suffers from a bad government or economy. Economies only thrive when new shops can set up and can thrive however most countries make this difficult. She decided to dive deeper into the individual to understand why failure was happening. They watched people creating their own business, she realized it would take at least twice as long to open a business in Kenya. She saw that this was because people no longer saw their role in government which makes failure inevitable. They encouraged people to work harder and this made the economy pick up. I fully agree with her, you have to start at the bottom to fix every layer above it and this is how restoration happens. This was a great Ted Talk
Ted talk response #6
ReplyDeleteSports psychology by Martin Hagger
There are many different components that contribute to an athlete’s success. In the sports psychology ted talk the speaker touched on the importance of confidence. Confidence is a very large factor during competition. It allows an athlete to focus on the positive outcomes instead of negative thoughts. Those with more confidence are more likely to be success during a game or match than those who are filled with doubt. I think that this Ted talk is interesting and very relatable to many athletes. Sports psychology is becoming a bigger factor in collegiate and professional sports. Researchers are beginning to realize the significance that the mind has in sports. As an athlete it can be difficult to maintain confidence after struggling or making an error during competition. This Ted talk advocated the importance of sport psychology and how it can affect the result of competition.
Ted Talk #1
ReplyDeleteWhat makes a good life? by Robert Waldinger
This Ted Talk starts out with Robert Waldinger stating some statistics on what millennials wanted to be when they were older. fifty percent of them replied they would like to be rich the other half of them stated they wanted to be famous. He then moves on to talk about the Harvard study of growth and development. Harvard studied 700 men and asked them survey questions about their life. followed two different types of people one being freshman at Harvard during the time of WWII. The second group was boys who grew up in the slums picked out specifically for their poor situation. Each of theses groups are sent survey questions interviewed in living rooms they, got medical history, talked to wives and children, blood samples, and the people being studied are video taped. what they have learned from this study that is still going on is healthy relationships make us happy, human interaction makes us happy. People who are more socially connected are happier, healthier, and live longer. This Ted Talk about a study of human interactions that is still going on today was very interesting to learn about.
Ted Talk #2
The person you really need to marry by Tracy McMillan
Tracey McMillan starts off her Ted talk by A children rhyme that kids in elementary sing to tease each other. She then talked about how she has had three failed marriages. She later goes on to talk about how her mother was a prostitute and a drug addict and her father was in prison basically her entire life and she went through 24 foster homes. She is talking about how people need to marry themselves. The rest of the Ted Talk she talks about how she needed to solve things about herself and love yourself before you love anybody else. This Ted Talk was not very interesting to listen to. I do not recommend.
Ted Talk #3
How your Brain falls in love by Dawn Maslar
Dawn Maslar begins her Ted Talk by The brain and how different parts of the brain cause different types of reactions. She then goes into a story about her summer vacation and her grandma gave her directions on how to fall in love, her grandma said that the women should not sleep with the male until they knew they were in love. She goes on to talk about how prairie Voles and a scientific study on their euro transmitters that increases dopamine but this goes up with many other items. they later found that oxitosen for a women is how women fall in love. for males it is vasopresen. She found out that all these chemicals in the brain are increased during sexual activity only for girls boys their brain hormones drop during sexual activity. This Ted talk was ok it wasn't the best one.
Ted Talk #4
How to gain control of your free time by Laura Vanderkam
Laura Vanderkam starts of her Ted Talk about how she writes books on time management and stereotypes. Time is very alastic, therefore the key to the time is that what ever you do not have time for it is not a priority. Treat priorities as most important and place things on high priority and factor it into a calendar. 168 hours in a week. Full time job Leaves 72 hours to do other Things throughout the entire week. Use time where your sitting idly where you can focuses on what matters in your life and scale it on a level of importance.
Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are
ReplyDeleteCuddy discusses the importance of "non verbals" or in other words the way in which you treat and control your body language. One can judge another based off their body language for up to wakes after the occurrence. It is part of human nature to react certain ways in terms of your body, whether it is happy or sad we all tend to instinctively react the same way. It is important in life to take control of your non verbals, make your body language tell the people around you that you are confident and controlled and you might be surprised to find that you actually start feeling that way. Don't let your body language negatively affect the way others and yourself see you. Even by faking it, you may actually start to feel what you were originally trying to fake in terms of body language.
1) The mathematics of love | Hannah Fry
ReplyDeleteI watched this video because I recognized Hannah Fry from the Numberphile channel and I think she’s awesome. This talk was fantastic. Fry adds humor to unpacking common love advice with complex mathematical study. She begins by acknowledging that love isn’t always logical, but claims that math still has something to offer in terms of interpreting the patterns of love. She describes various theories about managing relationships (romantic and platonic) and then introduces studies which have covered the topic. I thought this talk was fascinating, and managed to combine the fields of psychology and mathematics into a funny and thought-provoking speech. The speech itself is more about the beauty of math rather than actually finding love. I would highly recommend this talk to anyone who wants to see more about the abilities of math to effectively predict daily life.
2) I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here's why I left | Megan Phelps-Roper
I watched this talk because I strongly dislike the Westboro Baptist Church and was curious what a former member would have to say. I found that Ms. Phelps-Roger’s advice to never assume negative intent when something is misunderstood, to stay calm, and to ask questions across ideological divides, to be inspiring. She is an example of a rarer phenomena: someone with an extremely polarized view of the world who was able to, with difficulty, change. She applies her experience to currently deepening political divides, and encourages mutual understanding and civility. I found her idea of social media as a buffer rather than a conduit to be refreshing. I highly recommend this TED talk to anyone who feels hopeless when surrounded by people who disagree with them.
3) What happens when you have a disease doctors can't diagnose | Jennifer Brea
I watched this TED talk out of curiosity, and found it to be captivating. Jennifer Brea details her struggle with a disease that she initially could not identify. I was particularly shocked that it began to manifest in her early twenties, and quickly consumed her life without any identification as to what it actually was. I live under the assumption that doctors are at least able to identify diseases, and Brea introduced the perspective that for thousands of people who seek the help of even the best doctors, this is not the case. Brea is incredibly inspiring. It is visibly difficult for her at times to give the talk, and yet she talks about her hope that patients will one day not have to face what she has fought with. I would recommend this talk to anyone who wants to learn about the importance of saying when you don’t know, and of just how strong humans can be.
4) What I learned from 100 days of rejection | Jia Jiang
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this talk, but I enjoyed it. Jia Jiang tells the audience about an experiment he did in which he actively tried to be rejected by strangers for 100 days in order to conquer his fear of rejection. This talk is hilarious at many points, and it is remarkably optimistic. My favorite insight from the talk was that even as Jia Jiang attempted to be rejected, asking exorbitant favors and making ridiculous requests, the strangers attempted to understand him. I am an optimist, and it may be just telling me what I want to hear: that, no matter how ridiculous the request, people assume there is a reason behind it and want to be convinced to help. Jia Jiang was able to do things like work as a college professor, just by asking. Jiang is a distinctly inspiring speaker and I would recommend this to anyone who is afraid of rejection in any form.
5) Are you a giver or a taker? | Adam Grant
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to find that I enjoyed this talk. I normally don’t like people who try to box humans into one mindset or another, and then use their flawed taxonomy to build a worldview. I clicked on this talk with the hope that I would be proved wrong, and I was. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is a humorous but honest speaker. He advocates for a more generous workplace, but acknowledges that there must be a mix for a company to function. Although this talk was isolated primarily to impact on a workplace environment, I would be intrigued to see if the same logic can be proven in other areas. I didn’t previously know organizational psychology was a fully fledged field, and Adam Grant’s talk made me want to read more on the topic. I would recommend this talk to people who want to learn about human behaviour, with a little snark mixed into the lessons.
6) The secret US prisons you've never heard of before | Will Potter
The title of this talk sounds like a conspiracy theory but, oddly, it’s not. Journalist Will Potter talks, broadly, about what people in power do when nobody's watching. I honestly don’t know how to feel about this talk. What Potter describes is reality, but my mind instantly wants to categorize the horrors he describes as a kind of dystopia that is not the United States. I clicked on this video in order to include a more substantive, serious talk in my selection for the quarter, and was not disappointed in that regard. Potter is the only reported ever allowed in a CMU (a kind of prison that heavily limits communication with the outside world), and delivers a detailed account of what these facilities actually are. What struck me most was the apparent random use of CMUs. I found myself questioning why they existed at all. Will Potter is a limited and biased source, but his coverage of a little-known topic about the United States government and organized criticism is thought provoking. Potter claims lack public awareness is one of the main reasons why this program persists, and so, whether you are skeptical or not, I urge you to watch this TED talk.
7) My son was a Columbine shooter. This is my story | Sue Klebold
ReplyDeleteI had reservations about watching this TED talk because I was concerned that it might take the violence that occurred at Columbine and place in a context where it was only used as something to promote a book or a person. I was incorrect in this assumption. Sue Klebold offers a new perspective on the shooting, and adds a call to action for communities to deal with mental health seriously. She is frank with her emotions, but does not excuse her son. This talk made me think about what happens after all the media attention has left a tragedy, and what happens to the people who must directly deal with the consequences. This is an unquestionably difficult to watch talk, but I feel it does contain a vital message. The views of Sue Klebold are valuable, and her response to the unimaginable is admirable. This talk is important to watch in order to gain a more complex view of the aftermath of and prevention of tragedies like Columbine.
8) The art of asking | Amanda Palmer
I vaguely knew who Amanda Palmer was before watching this TED talk, but my background knowledge did not prepare me for her unapologetic and empathetic rocker aesthetic. She begins the talk by describing her first job as a human statue. The odd events don’t end there. This disarming talk optimistically claims that people want to help, and all that you need to do is ask. Palmer speaks specifically in the context of the music business and how her philosophy of asking people to pay for music rather than making them is ultimately the best choice. I don’t know if I agree with Palmer’s optimism, but her complete and utter trust in the people of the world as a whole is breathtaking. Her life seems to be a series of increasingly risky moments of trust in others that have led to good things. I think this talk is important to watch, even if just to appreciate the level of trust it is possible to have in strangers.
Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do
ReplyDeleteRobbins discusses the complicated topic of why we do what we do. He starts off with explaining that he is not there to motivate, but rather to explain why. Why having a better understanding of why we do the things we do or why others do things will carry us a long way in life. He claims that decision is the ultimate power. The defining factor is resourcefulness, not resources. We often find the reason we don't do or achieve what we want is because of the same old excuses: claiming we didn't have the thing we needed, we didn't have the resources. However it wasn't the resources one needed, its the resourcefulness to get past the basic need and search for something else to solve the problem. It is also about the emotion, if one finds the right emotion it can carry them a long way. The emotion creates the action, the thing we do, it is why we do it. It goes from decision, to meaning of that decision to emotion. And that is the three major steps into why we do what we do.
Ted Talk #5
ReplyDeleteFive ways to listen better by Julian Treasure
Julian treasure starts out his Ted Talk by saying we are loosing our listening and our communication time. Humans only retain about twenty five percent of what they hear. Listening is making meaning from sound, We Recognize pattern recognition. After five minutes of listening to the same sound you will begin to not hear it. sound also places people into time. another problem is the world is so noisy that people stop listening because it is so noisy, So people begin to wear headphones. But then they are walking around in their own little bubbles not listening to anything around them they are in their own little bubble. He then goes on to speak about listening skills that you should do to reset and regain your listening skills. This ted Talk was interesting but he talked very fast in the video.
Ted Talk #6
The hidden power of smiling by Ron Gutman
Ron Gutman starts of his Ted Talk by telling a story about his childhood dream and how he wanted to be superman, But he knew as a child he needed super powers to actually fulfill his dream. When he studied at UC Davis he studied old yearbooks and the span of a smile could predict the length of their life. He went on to say when baby's are in the womb they are smiling. People smile to express joy and satisfaction. Children smile as many as 400 times per day. There has also been a study to frown at somebody who is smiling. People tend to mimic the action of others Humans can tell the difference of a real and fake smile. One smile can generate the same brain activity as 2000 bars of chocolate. This Ted Talk was very humerus and interesting to watch.
Ted Talk #7
How to speak so people want to listen by Julian Treasure
Julian Treasure starts out his Ted Talk by discussing the human voice and how much significance it has in everyday life. Ne even compares the human voice to an instrument. 7 deadly sins of speaking first is gossip, judging, negativity, complaining, excuses, exaggeration, lying and, dogmatism witch is the confusion of facts with opinions. how you should talk is Honesty, Authenticity, Integrity, and love, this is how you should talk to everyone. He later then talks about how to speak and how it should be on a neutral register. people need to fluctuate their tones when talking to other people, they also need to control their speaking pace. this Ted Talk was very interesting he even had the audience doing voice exercises.
Ted Talk #8
Why i escaped from my brainwashed country by Hyeonseo Lee
Hyeonseo Lee starts her Ted Talk by saying what it was like to live in north Korea. Whenever she saw the dictators picture she must bow at it. form the tome that she was born she was taut how great the dictator is and how he went to the other side of the rainbow. They found safety in their ignorance. They were told many scary stories about capitalist countries and how many people died outside of the hospital. she realized when watching tv late at night and watching commercials about how bright the world is. she escaped form North Korea from a connection she had to get into China. She had to keep changing her name she then became the girl with several names. she almost got caught in in South Korea because her passport was fake. After a while she went back to North Korea to get her family and after almost getting caught multiple times her family made it out but they will never be free. This Ted Talk was extremely inspiring about what people at a young age must deal with and how they go though all these lengths for freedom.
Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation
ReplyDeletePink talks about what motivates us to do the things we do. For many it is believed that by providing a reward it will cause a person to be more motivated. However that is not always the case. Someone may be uninterested in the award or it may obstruct that persons thought and cause them to be unable to achieve the task. A reward that is supposed to stimulate motivation only causes that person to be narrow minded and the concept of thinking outside of the box is nearly diminished. All the subconscious may focus on is that reward. Therefore rewards don't work to motivate if they motivate to not do the correct thing. In modern day business many people are required to perform tasks that may require the out of the box kind of thinking but it the reward that is hanging over their head that may prevent them from being able to do that and being completely successful at their task.
Cameron Russell: Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model.
ReplyDeleteImage is impactful, and that is the message Russell shares throughout her talk. We are in a world where one can make an opinion of you based on who you look or what you wear. In some ways it can define you as a person. However it is important to overlook the appearance because that is just what is on the outside. Russell showed pictures of her taken for magazines like vogue and allure, and alongside them posted a picture taken of her that same day but in the morning or when she isn't all done up. Those pictures have quite a bit difference, but they are both her. What we see is not necessarily the truth. The image may be distorted to make you believe something that isn't necessarily true. Russell talks about little girls saying they want to be models and she questions that, because being something that is all about image isn't really anything at all. There is a limit of opportunities to go after, so never let the image of something make you misinterpret it or make you shy away from it.
Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar
ReplyDeleteLying is an act that everyone does, whether it be a serious one a simple white lie, everyone has done it. Meyer discusses the information behind lying. Lying is actually a two way street. There is the person that lies, and there is the person that believes the lie. I lie will only work thanks to that second person who believes the lie. Whether or not that role is willing or not is the sad part. We lie to fulfill our fantasies and make us either sound better or to protect others. The morality behind lying is the tricky thing. Simple white lies may not affect your moral compass but it is the big ones that cause one to be uncertain. Most lie for a reason and it is that reason that is the basis of judgment. There are little keys things to look for to know whether or not someone is lying, something like verbal dodging or physical bodily twitches, these are the things every person unknowingly does when they lie.
Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness
ReplyDeleteGilbert discusses the science behind happiness and how what we think about it isn't actually the reality. Many people believe that a bad event like an accident, the failing of a quiz, an argument with a loved one will affect your happiness, but the truth is it doesn't. Gilbert claims that if one has been a traumatic incident, three months later it will have no real affect on them. The reason behind it is that he claims happiness can be synthesized. Humans have something like a psychological immune system that allows them to feel better about the world in which they find themselves. We synthesize happiness yet we think happiness is something to be found. It is our own perceptions that make us feel the way we feel. If one is sad over an event it is because it gets to a point where they are making themselves sad over an event. We create happiness and we can make ourselves happy if we just have the right mindset and ability to look at things differently and find the good. Everyone has the ability to do it, that is why the human brain is so complex, it is just a matter of willing oneself to create that happiness and get past any sort of despair that may be blocking it.
Keith Barry: Brain magic
ReplyDeleteBarry exemplifies the art of deception as he shows many different tricks that seem to have no explanation and are simply tricks of the mind. To begin he shows the audience a video clip of himself and a random women he has never met before in a car. He is driving completely blindfolded and he claims to be using her eyes to see the road and he manages to safely get them to their destination. Then he calls up two people from the audience and he has one of them close their eyes while he touches the other one. Then he asks the one with their eyes closed whether or not they felt something. They say yes even though he never touched them. It is very interesting to watch him deceive the mind in what he calls brain magic to make people believe what he wants. The mind can be easily fooled as long as one has the ability to keep another's focus on what they want them to be focusing on.
Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius
ReplyDeleteGilbert touches with the hardships of being an artist. having written Eat. Pray. Love. a world wide bestseller she talks about how basically anything she writes next will be compared to her great accomplishment, and even though she still has half her life ahead of her there is this notion that her greatest achievement is already behind her and nothing will surpass it. Thus leads to the stereotypical artist who drinks in the morning and goes through dark times, all because they believe that their greatest works can never be recreated or surpassed. Gilbert refuses to go down this path and instead researches ancient societies and how they dealt with creative geniuses and she fell upon the ancient Greeks and Romans. Their civilizations believed in an entity that came down from the heavens and gave people wisdom or creativity, and these being were called geniuses. What Gilbert found to be great about this concept was that it can happen to anybody, everyone has their own creative genius in different forms that may not always apply to art. She now follows this philosophy that the best is not always behind us and that we all have our own creative genius inside of us.
1. Are you a giver or a taker? By Adam Grant
ReplyDeleteThis TED talk by Adam Grant goes over the differences between a so called “giver” and “taker”. The “givers” are people who always want to know how they can help others while the “takers” are people who always want to know how they can use people for their own advantage. While there are certain characteristics that both portray, there is a third category that people often forget: the matchers. The matchers are people who have an even balance of give and take. Grant conducted a study on the different types of people in school and work to see the productivity and success of each. He measured that the “givers” often had the lowest scores on tests and slowest on productivity because they are always busy helping others. However, the givers were also on the very top of the productivity graph; it turns out the givers represented both the bottom and the top. Grant believes that we must protect the givers from burning out and encourage givers from seeking for help as well. This TED talk was very enlightening and helped me realize that help seeking is a very important step towards success.
2. Islamophobia killed my brother. Let’s end the hate. By Suzanne Barakat
Suzanne Barakat’s TED talk was powerful and tragic as she recounts the death of her brother and two sister in laws. Her family was murdered by their neighbor, who openly hated on the Muslim religion. I thought it was extremely thought provoking when Barakat asked the audience what the response would have been if the situation was the opposite, where a Muslim American shot three American college students out of hatred. Barakat also called for action from anyone to help voice and end Islamophobia. She believes that everyone can use their talents in order to spread the message and end the hate. Throughout the TED talk, I was watching in shock and horror as she continued to describe her younger brother and his life before the shooting. I could never imagine going through the traumatic events as Barakat did. She is truly an inspiring figure and a strong woman, handling the death of her family and the ongoing hate and Islamophobia.
3. How one tweet can change your life by Jon Ronson
Jon Ronson’s TED talk was humorous and serious at the same time, discussing the dangers of social media in our digital era today. The invention of social media allowed people around the world to speak their mind and provide instant opinion towards every situation. His talk focuses on one particular case, stemming from a woman named Justine Sacco. Sacco was traveling to Africa and tweeted a seemingly harmless joke before boarding the flight. While Sacco was in the air, the tweet attracted everyone’s attention and became one of the top tweets in the world. People started calling her out and sending her death threats for a “racist” comment. Ronson’s TED talk revealed that when things are taken out of context on social media, it is easy to misinterpret and attack people wrongly; in Sacco’s case, she had no way of defending her statement while on the plane and experienced an extreme amount of cyber bullying. Ronson also mentions that these harmful tweets towards Sacco were sent by normal, nice people. Wanting justice for the people Sacco “offended” by directing a racist tweet, these people on Twitter called the woman out for a comment she did not intend. This TED talk was very interesting and made me think about the way we interact on social media.
4. 4 reasons to learn a new language by John McWhorter
ReplyDeleteThis TED talk provided some good reasons as to why people should learn new languages. Firstly, by learning the language, people will be able to participate in the culture that speaks it. Two languages has also been proved to help dementia and create a better multitasker. Lastly, it has never been easier to learn a new language. With learning tools like the Rosetta Stone, or even a random app on our phones, we are able to learn languages easily. McWhorter believes that although many languages will disappear in the future, the fun of learning these new languages are exciting. McWhorter’s TED talk was engaging with many examples of different languages that was very interesting. This relatively shorter and lighter TED talk was pleasant to listen to.
5. Paper towns and why learning is awesome by John Green
I read most of John Green’s books growing up. Although Paper Towns was not my favorite by Green, he changed the meaning of this term in his TED talk. Paper towns were false cities made by map companies as copyright. However, these paper towns became a metaphor for the roads and cities that we create in our minds. Green described himself as a horrible student, always tired of school; he thought that school was just another necessary step that we needed to get through. His unwillingness was reflected in his grades. However, as John Green grew up, he read many books on different topics that interested him. Attending an engaging high school and college, Green experienced the joy of learning. He believes that the online platform and learning sites like Youtube are helpful in educating people of all ages and changing their perspective of learning. I thought the TED talk was a little long and provided one too many examples of Youtube learning videos, but otherwise I enjoyed it.
6. I’m 17 by Kate Simonds
Kate Simond’s TED talk was inspiring. At 17, she is standing in front of a large crowd of adults and demanding their attention and respect. She focuses her TED talk around the lack of respect adults seem to have towards young adults around her age. She believes that although 17 seems like a young age, adults should not degrade or look down on their perspectives and opinions by claiming they do not have enough experience. I was quite captivated by Simond’s TED talk especially since I am the same age. I applaud her courage for presenting for TEDx at only 17 years old. I thought that she had fair point, expressing that young adults should also voice their opinions more often.
7. I am not your Asian stereotype by Canwen Xu
ReplyDeleteCanwen Xu starts off her TED talk by listing a bunch of stereotypes and pointing out that if she did not claim that those facts were false, everyone would have accepted that she loved calculus, plays the piano and violin, and wants to be a doctor in the future. I thought it was very interesting when Xu began to discuss her issues with her racial identity. Growing up in a predominantly white district, Xu wanted to conform and become more white in order to fit in with the others; she rejected her cultural heritage. Xu also goes over the common questions White people often asked her, whether they were intentionally racist or not. The most common question was “Where are you from?”. I know the frustration Xu feels with this question. Although it is reasonable that people ask, it seems that some will continue to push and ask where I really am from, expecting a country other than the United States. Canwen Xu’s TED talk was very relatable and helped me see how she originally rejected her culture because she did not want to seem different. Although we are different in many ways, I felt a connection towards her as a speaker.
8. Why thinking you’re ugly is bad for you by Meaghan Ramsey
I really liked Meaghan Ramsey’s TED talk on self esteem and the problem with social media presence on teenagers nowadays. Ramsey believes that the idea that teenagers should be on these social media sites daily, posting, liking, commenting, has an effect on their self-esteem. In fact, many young girls are posting on Youtube and other platforms alike, asking others on their opinion whether or not they were pretty. This form of validation backfires as the internet starts bullying these vulnerable teenagers during an extremely sensitive and self conscious period of their lives. By always showing size zero models and encouraging “thinspo”, the media is also changing the way young teenagers view themselves. Ramsey believes that adults should encourage teenagers to be body positive, finding out that the low self confidence affects test scores and work productivity for all people. Although I was already aware of the issues Ramsey discussed, it was a nice refresher and reminder to love our own image and self.
Inside the mind of a master procrastinator- Tim urban
ReplyDeleteIn his ted talk, Urban started out with a story about his procrastination habits in college. This immediately captured the crowd's attention and established his personal connection to his topic. He also had some very informal looking graphs that, while not exactly detailed or scientific, made his point that he saved all his work till the last night very understandable. By continuing to used dumbed down graphics he kept the attention and favor of the crowd and also made his argument and examples of procrastination and the reason behind it applicable to the masses and easily comprehended. I found that his presentation techniques worked very well on us (Gavin was quite enthralled and amused) and made us think about our own experiences with procrastination. He also had a very strong ending in which he concluded that everyone procrastinated, some just did it in subtler ways without deadlines. Then, by showing a graphic of all the weeks in a 90 year life, he called us to action to make as much of the time we had left as we could.
A Saudi, and Indian, and a Iranian walk into a Qatari- Maz Jobrani
Jobrani was very charismatic and very funny. By making fun of a wide arena of different middle eastern cultures he was able to include social commentary on stereotypes. First, he talked about a “serious issue” i.e. the number of kisses to give in greeting based on where you're from. In doing this he highlighted the divide between cultures and how the rigid social laws are dividing everyone. He also talked about a Muslim family that got kicked off a plane for talking about the safest places to sit and how he is prohibited from saying certain things on American planes because of the assumption that he would be a terrorist. While he kept the crowd laughing, and his talk maintained a humorous air, he addressed serious issues and gave valuable commentary on the ridiculousness of treating people differently because they look like past terrorists.
The case for arranged marriages- Ira Trivedi
In her ted talk, Trivedi talks about the pros and cons of arranged marriages. She started by labeling the shift away from them as a “love revolution” and then proceeded to give the examples of her grandparents and parents, who had successful arranged marriages, and of her sisters, one of which had a modern arranged marriage and the other a love marriage. She then talked about how the pressure was on her and how that had motivated her to write her book about marriages. While she did include evidence on marriages such as the increase in divorce courts and an increase in abortions and teen pregnancies in connection to the “love revolution” and premarital sex. Sadly, she did not really relate how these things are caused by a lack of arranged marriages. She also mentioned welfare and the increase in single parent homes but again failed to connect it to her argument as a whole. She was also very nervous and corrected herself throughout which made it hard to focus. Overall, she had some really interesting points but her presentation’s lack of organization combined with her presentation skills severely limited their overall impact.
Losing weight the ‘cool way’- Patrick Rensen
ReplyDeleteLike many speakers, Rensen started his TED talk by citing his own personal experience of growing up with two overweight and diabetic parents. He then generalized this connection by talking about how 50% of Norweigens are obese and 75% of americans are, and that more people die from obesity than starvation. While this was all interesting, it was just the prelude to his actual topic about “brown fat”, a type of fat that is activated by the cold and is much smaller and healthier than “white fat”. While the advantages of brown fat were cool to hear about and it was encouraging to hear that our bodies had ways of managing weight, his talk seemed more like an advertisement than an educational tedtalk on fitness. Also, his promises on the possible effects of brown fat seemed unrealistic. He promised that if we stayed at a cool temperature for a year than we could lose 3-5kg of fat, but it seems unrealistic to stay at one temperature all the time. He also failed to mention any side effects of this and so overall I found him as a source rather unreliable.
See invisible motion, hear silent sounds. Cool? Creepy?- Michael Rubinstein
This ted talk was about the benefits of newer technology that allows you to magnify videos. Rubinstein started with a picture of someone’s face and explained that the color of our skin is constantly changing, he then demonstrated how, by magnifying the video times 50, we could very clearly see the changes. To give us an application, he told us about how the change in color correlated to the heart beat and how the images could determine heart rate. He then gave an example of this being used on prematurely born baby in a hospital to measure her heart rate without attaching her to a bunch of machines. He had a variety of examples of the use for this throughout his talk and even applied it to his own life in using it to monitor his baby daughter. While I found him as a speaker to be rather dry, I thought his presentation was well thought out. By applying the technology to a batman clip and using his personal experience, he managed to keep the majority of the audience’s attention while keeping his talk factual. I do, however, think that he included too many examples which made his originally interesting content a bit boring and hard to stay interested in.
The art of asking- Amanda Palmer
I loved both this ted talk and Palmer as a speaker. While someone watching it with me thought her points were hippie like and overly optimistic, I found her perspective on human interaction to be both encouraging and insightful. She talked about her experience asking for help with her art as first a human statue and later a crowd funded musician as well as the criticism she faced. What I found inspiring, was her choice to focus on the generosity and love of her fans and supporters over the hate of her critics. While she did discuss the negative feedback and the emotional effect it had on her, she made it clear that those who judged her actions simply did not understand the intimacy of her interactions and the beauty it produces. Throughout her entire talk she remained calm and even when she talked about the opposition she was more saddened by their solitude than anything else. I really respect her attitude towards her work and the reactions to it and as she spoke her passion and commitment to the integrity of what she’s doing was obvious. I guess it makes me an optimist, but I love how her experience has led her to fully believe and advocate in trusting the fundamental goodness in human nature.
The very real magic of quantum mechanics- Adam Murphy
ReplyDeleteThis ted talk was very interesting in that it took something that is nearly impossible to understand, quantum mechanics, and contextualized it into something that we all have at least a basic understanding of, magic tricks. He talked about different theories and proofs and as he did so he demonstrated them using common magic tricks such as the rabbit in the hat. He also used magic to demonstrate an instance in which the essence of something and the physical object could be separated. He then applied quantum mechanics to our everyday lives by explaining its use in computer hard drives. While I found the physics in his talk to be interesting, I was most intrigued by his passion for science. He ended his talk with the line “magic tricks lose their luster the moment you understand how they work, but science, science only gets more interesting.” I thought this quote was beautiful and fully captured the complexity of science that so many are willing to overlook because of the difficulty and rigor of the subject and to see someone so in love with it and so dedicated to knowing about it was amazing.
The physics of the “hardest move” in ballet- Arleen Sugano
This was an animated ted talk with a voice narration that explained the physics behind fuite turns in ballet. It started off by talking about the turns and their use in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake by the black swan and how they are used to portray her as a sorceress and out of this world by creating a series of seemingly endless and impossible turns. It was fun to see how the science could disprove the magic without taking away from how incredible the turn is. By explaining the move in terms of momentum the video explained how the dancers used her leg to rotate around and techniques that were more effective. What this revealed was the attention to detail the ballerina must have to do it, making it all the more impressive. It was not a very intricate video or overly exciting but the content was solid and it was cool to see the overlap between dance and physics, two things I spend a lot of time doing.
Rodrigo y Gabriela- An electrifying acoustic guitar performance
ReplyDeleteThis is another performance TED talk. This time, it was two acoustic guitarists. What I found really interesting was that despite being acoustic guitars, they had a lot of vibrancy and energy. The style was heavily influenced by flamenco and had a lot of the same beats. At the same time, it had some of a new age flair to it. I also found it interesting that this was a combo of two guitars. That made the sound much more complex and allowed for some really interesting tempo changes. The only thing that I would improve about this TED talk is the camera angles that were imposed upon the performers. There were many cuts and angle changes that I thought were just unnecessary. The best thing to do would have been to simply show the performers and their music.
Luke Syson- How I learned to stop worrying and love “useless” art
In this TED talk, Synson goes through his shift in thinking. Originally he was stuck in his viewpoints based on Renaissance paintings. He got a job at the MOMA in New York and came across a pink elephant case. His initial reaction was one of disgust, but he soon learned an appreciation for the object’s imaginative quality. His new outlook on life and art is to embrace these more imaginative design qualities. I think this is a good outlook to take and I thought that many of his points were intriguing. The structure of the TED talk was good, but he was not the best speaker. He took a lot of pauses while speaking and that was a little distracting.
Ted talk response #7
ReplyDeleteThis app makes picking up trash fun by Jeff Kirschner
Kirschner created an app to try and get people around the world motivated to pick up trash and litter. He decided to to post pictures of trash that he picks up. The pictures are very artistic and illustrate trash as approachable and easy thing to limit. After he created the app litterati people began posting pictures from around the world. Kirschner then decided to map out all of the pictures to see the impact the app was having. The app created a way for people to enjoy picking up trash and a fast way to decrease the trash. I think that this is a very creative way to get people to want to pick up trash. I was interested in this Ted talk because I think there is a huge litter problem in our society and people are not determined to pick up trash when they see it. I think that if this app had more publicity and attention then it could really have an influence on the number of people who pick up trash. Through the app a group of 5th graders picked up 1300 pieces of trash and in another town a litterati group picked up 1500. This is a very smart way to spread awareness about trash.
1) Jeff Kirschner: This app makes it fun to pick up litter
ReplyDeleteI was interested in choosing this video because for me, I do not find picking up trash particularly fun, however I also know the importance of having a clean ecosystem. I thought that the app he made where he started on social media just posting each piece of trash he saw, which had originally just started as him using it as photography, but eventually the hashtag he was using #literatti. His app I think is not only fun and new, but it is also very beneficial for the world. However, one problem that I thought of was how he will draw in new users to use the app. Because people like me know that trash is not good, but many of us do not think much about picking it up. The data viewpoint is also very cool, where the app shows every trash picked up on a map setting. I think that he had a well put together talk, but it lacked the excitement to get people rallied about about making a change.
2) Lux Narayan: What I learned from 2,000 obituaries
I really like how Lux Narayan pointed out that the newspapers use man's failures as a front page to attract people, but he found a way around that using the obituaries. He looked at the obituaries, at the few words and sentences that described one's life. He looked at those words to define what people feed success as. He noticed that most of the words were something about art, yet we preach to our youth that engineering and other fields with not much personal remembrance. He also noticed that the comparisons between the famous people's obituaries and just the average joe's was that they both seemed to help others. Overall, I really liked how he delivered the talk, even though his talk was rather not that intriguing, I still liked the way he deliver the talk with inspiration to the youth and everyone else.
3) Alan Smith: Why you should love statistics
Alan Smith describes how people are not good at guessing statistics, which makes us need statistics more in order to get our stats correct and be more successful. He relates to us that statistics is a very important subject because it is about us as a group rather than individuals that gives us important information about the average. I particularly agree with Alan because I believe that statistics is one of the most important things we can learn and understand because if we can use the results correctly, we can succeed in the fields that we struggle in and have problems in. We can learn from these results, which is what Alan tries to really portray. I liked the way that Alan presented his talk using a lot of statistical graphs and data to prove his point and to prove to the audience how important the filed of Statistics really is.
4) Deepika Kurup: A young scientist's quest for clean water
Right off from the bat, I did not like how Deepika talked. She seemed overly ecstatic about her talk, she was very loud and used what seemed to be uneducated in the way that she talked. But she is only 14, and her dedication to cleanse water is pretty cool. She provides good statistics and examples that help further her point to create a world with clean water, and is good about connecting with the crowd, in which she gets the audience to laugh a couple times and really feel for her ideas. I do think it is cool that she began in her kitchen of her parents house, and the amount of information that she knows about the topic of clean water is impressive. Most of the terms she uses, is not used or in many times not even known by 14 year olds. As the talk went on, I realized that she is actually more than just educated, but rather a genius when it comes to her ideas or clean water and the problems that occur with today's sources or water. I think it is cool that she has worked on a project that she once started in 2012, which shows the dedication she has to make a change.
Ted Talk Response #8
ReplyDeleteBefore I Die I Want to by Candy Chang
Candy Chang was very interested in getting to know her neighbors and the people around her in an indirect way. She lives in New Orleans Louisiana and is very fond of the area. When she lost someone very close to her she was looking for a way to grieve and connect with those in her community. She found an empty space and decided to turn it into a creative art project. She wrote Before I die I want to.. and anyone can grab a piece of chalk and write any of their hopes or aspirations. The comments that were written on the board were a form of support for Chang and assured her that she was not alone. It gives anyone a voice to reflect and share their goals with the community and the world. Boards similar to Chang's have been created in different countries all over the world to bring peers together. I really enjoyed this ted talk because I have seen boards like this but the presentation made me see them in a new perspective. It made me realize how much they can mean to people and strangers.
5) Adam Grant: Are you a giver or a taker?
ReplyDeleteIn a world where I feel that the takers are overpowering the givers, Adam Grant tended to disagree with me. Even though takers are successful in some cases, it the group between the givers and takers, the neutral "matchers". These matchers feel obligated to take from the takers because they deserved what they get. So these takers are quickly dethroned by the matchers. Adam researched many survey's and researched on the idea of takers and givers where he found that the most productive people in the workplace are actually the givers, some may not be shown on the data sheet as the top performers, but it is because they help those who are struggling and tend to lend a hand to those of need. This in return brings the whole workplace as a combined group higher at the average. After many of times of karma, the takers realize that what comes around goes around, which creates a large group of matchers. He also touched on the idea that givers can be burned out. I thought that all around, this was a very good talk in which I was interested the whole talk.
6) Travis Kalanick: Uber's plan to get more people into fewer cars
The co-founder of Travis Kalanick explains his plans to create a world that uses fewer cars, fewer places to park, and less congestion. He explains that 100 years ago, a man once placed a modern day uber that took people where they needed to go in LA. However, the trolley monopolies created regulations that basically destroyed the business. Travis gives ideas and facts that really make us think about how we drive around today. He pitches the idea or UBERpooling, which is a uber where people carpool together to similar places. Not only is the ride cheaper, but it is way more economically beneficial. With this new invention in place, many people are carpooling now that never have before. I think that his ideas are genius, the ideas that he is presenting can really make a change in the way we transport from place to place, making transportation not only cost-effective but also beneficial for our ecosystem. The facts and visuals that Travis uses really helps prove his points and ideas.
7) Danit Peleg: Forget shopping. Soon you'll download your new clothes
The reason I picked this talk was because this idea of downloading clothes seems virtually impossible to me. However, the use of 3-d printing to create clothing is cool, but I'm not sure of how successful it will be in today's date. The amount of work that goes into actually designing, printing, and putting together a single item of clothing seems like too much work when we can go out and buy a comfortable piece of clothing for very cheap. In my opinion, I thought the items she presented to the audience was more of a fashion piece that was not made to do everyday things such as running and moving a lot. I think it is a cool idea, but realistically I do not think that it will prosper in the future world. There are just too many problems with the product when we can fix these problems and just purchase a piece of clothing from our store. We do not have to download, design, or piece together any of the clothing at stores which we have to with a 3-D printed piece of clothing.
8) Tom Wujec: Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast
ReplyDeleteI thought that Wujec presented an interesting point when he asked people to draw out the way they make toast. For many, the presented these drawings in steps, like instructions, using nodes to show how. Most showed a piece of bread going into the toaster, coming out and being spread with jelly or butter. However, Wujec stated that it is much, much more complex. Then he stated that the bread first comes from a farmer's grains, which are then processed into bread, which are then packaged up from a factory and then flown across the world into grocery stores. This idea, that just making a simple piece of toast is way deeper than one can imagine was actually pretty cool. He then went into how many nodes are needed in order to better tell your audience how to create the toast. He said that anywhere between 5-13 nodes were good enough to still understand the idea. Too many and the reader was bombarded with information, and too little left the reader confused. The way he presented this to the audience kept them intrigued with jokes about the drawings and about the ones that were actually quite bad, but he still delivered his point, which I thought was pretty impressive.
Ted talk #6-Stacy Smith: The data behind Hollywood's sexism
ReplyDeleteIn this video she talks about how women are not as involved in Hollywood movies. And i agree with her because tbh there aren't any movies where there is a woman that is the star actress. There is still a. gip with women and men even after so many years and marches and protests and people speaking up there is no difference. Now there is the wage gap and movie rolls, like really? I don't thin there is big difference between a man and a woman having the leading role, both genders do as much work, they both reverse, they both audition I don't know why there has to be such a difference. Jobs as well as movie characters should be the same and not be differentiated because there in not much of a difference both are equally as strong.
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ReplyDeleteTed Talk #7- Salil Dudani: How jails extort the poor
ReplyDeleteIn this ted talk he talks about how police had thought he was a terrorist just because he was wearing a backpack. This really shows how police has been around for a bit and how the racism is pretty strong as well as the stereotypes. Its sad to hear that young man of 19 years of age was detained patted down and arrested and the police had to call the government to check in if he was on the watch list. Its all pretty typical that police thin that any first Mexican or middle eastern, or black male or female are seen, as the worst.
ted Talk#8- Jeff Kirschner: This app makes it fun to pick up litter
ReplyDeleteIn this ted talk a man talks about creating an app so that people could take a picture of the piece of trash they are picking up. At first its stared just local but then it went all over the world on Instagram. I think that it is a great idea that using an app to help the environment because everyone has some type electronic device and since everyone seems to always have their nose in their phone having apps that actually help the environment is not a bad idea at all. I've seem highways and freeways in santa rosa and they are filthy there is trash to the side of the freeways, there are pieces of gum all over the sidewalks and i see no point in threatening people that it is a $1k for littering and yet there is still a lot of trash and "paying" is not helping.
Ted Talk 1
ReplyDeleteStrange answers to the psychopath test by Jon Ronson
This video was actually very interesting, especially when combined with the classwork we've done regarding human sciences. It questions how one can tell someone is crazy, and Ronson points out the unique situation of Tedy, who had no way to appear sane to his psychiatrist, because of the situation he had been trying to avoid and then found himself in. The video also discusses how capitalism effects psychopath statistics, and why it is that there's a high percentage of CEOs and business people who are psychopaths. Over all, it was somewhat chilling but extremely interesting to watch, and made me think more on what it is we consider sane and why.
Ted Talk 2
Never ever give up by Diana Nyad
This video was pretty interesting in the way she described her journey. In some cases I was confused because of the way she told her story, but it was fascinating to listen to, and she told some jokes and kept attention easily enough, and was personable. The message behind her talk though, about never giving up, and having courage and commitment was incredibly inspiring. It fell flat a little times when she seemed to come across a bit too humble, but it was incredible to be reminded that she accomplished something so extraordinary later in life.
Ted Talk 3
How movies teach manhood by Collin Stokes
I greatly enjoyed this Ted talk because it talked about how manhood is taught to boys through movies but not in a way focusing on male dominated movies as a good thing. The speaker talked about the differences between the Wizard of Oz and Star Wars, and that he would actually prefer his son to learn lessons from Wizard of Oz than Star Wars, because while movies like Star Wars are focused on beating the bad guy and collecting the reward, a female, Wizard of Oz wasn't necessarily like that. He defended princess movies, but in the sense that the way men are portrayed in them teaches women to defeat the patriarchy but not boys, that the portrayal to boys of the men in these movies isn't beneficial. Then he proceeded to bring in the issue of sexual assault, which originally I was wondering how he would tie it in, but he made a connection I hadn't considered before.
Ted Talk 4
My love letter to cosplay by Adam Savage
This was by far my favorite video to watch, because you could easily see and hear the love he has for costuming and cosplay, and he was clear on the difference between the two. Besides delightful pictures and stories of previous costumes and cosplays he's done, it was interesting to hear how he defined what cosplay meant to cosplayers, because it's something I've felt but haven't been able to really articulate before. This video made me smile, simply because you can see the joy he has for what he's talking about, and he admits to how it can be embarrassing but on the other hand it can be so much fun, and the spirit he shows in how he talked about how he didn't care he passed out one time is something that is common to see in cosplayers. Mostly though, Adam Savage makes me think of that weird uncle who shows up to family reunions every once in a while and helps you make a bizarre mechanical contraption that sets half the dining room table on fire and says it turned out wonderful and disappears before he can be asked to help clean up. So the video was great.
#1 Kamal Meattle: How to grow fresh air
ReplyDeleteReally neat topic, but a pretty boring talk. The speaker talks
about how the New Delhi air was essentially killing him, and how he was
able to combat that simply with common house plants. It's certainly good
to hear this, I know India is famous for horrible air quality. As I said
earlier though, the talk itself wasn't very interesting, the speaker just
gave his speech and didn't really engage the audience at all.
#2 Juan Enriquez: What will humans look like in 100 years?
Really liked this talk. Juan opens with a very TOK like question
"Is it ethical to evolve the human body?" He then goes on to talk about
the history of prosthetic and their evolution, as well as how humans
might evolve themselves in the future. He then comes to the conclusion
that it is unethical not to evolve the human body, as it is the only way
to survive in a harsh universe. I agree with him completely, and it is really cool to think about the new forms we may take hundreds of years from now.
#3 Sebastian Thrun: Google's driverless car
Oh man, self driving cars are so cool, I cannot wait. This was a
shorter talk, just outlining how cool self driving cars are. Its really
increasingly how much better things will be with them, how many fewer
traffic deaths there will be, how much more efficient driving will be. It is really amazing to see technology advance like this.
#4 Joe Lassiter: We need nuclear power to solve climate change
Another good talk. I'll admit that I watched it because I agreed wholeheartedly with the title alone, but Joe really opened my eyes. Ever since chemistry, I've thought that nuclear is the only real way to provide enough power without environmental concerns, but this talk goes into much greater detail. The big problem is how many new nations are industrializing, and becoming more reliant on coal, or natural gas. Without an alternate source of power, nuclear being the best we have, these countries will have no choice but to continue to pollute so they can better the lives of their citizens.
TED Talk #7: Learning from dirty jobs by Mike Rowe
ReplyDeleteIn this TED Talk, Rowe discussed the merits of not only doing dirty manual labor, but also doing things that are not your passion. He starts the talk by recounting an episode from his TV show, Dirty Jobs. I watched this episode specifically because I enjoyed this show as a child and was interested to hear Rowe's opinion on his experiences. His initial anecdote is from an episode that I specifically remember, one in which Rowe apprentices for a shepherd and has to castrate lambs. He initially disagreed with the shepherd's method, but realized that it was the right one after watching a lamb suffer from the "sanctioned" method. Rowe was an incredibly effective speaker, and that is not just the nostalgia glasses talking. He was extremely well-spoken and had an extremely poignant sense of humor. Rowe went on to make the point that the people he encountered during his show were incredibly knowledgable and balanced compared to others. Rowe concludes that people should perhaps choose their jobs based on societal needs, not on passion, as few of his collaborators are living their dream job. I found this TED Talk to be incredibly well done, and the conclusion to be quite thought-provoking.
ted talk #1: "what i learned from 2000 obituaries"-Lux Narayan
ReplyDeletein a study done with 2000 obituaries over the course of 20 months, narayan discovered that they often consist of achievements. common words found in famous and non famous people were "john" and "help" which goes to show that if youre named john then you're doing something right. i thought this ted talk was really neat and it made me think about 2000 people that have died and barely been remembered.
These are Gavin's--- he forgot to post them
ReplyDeleteInside the mind of a master procrastinator- Tim Urban
Tim Urban, like many high school students (and people) is a master procrastinator. His point is to try and explain the mind of a procrastinator to more “type a” people. Utilizing humor and the idea that a monkey and panic monster controls one's mind, he successfully captures what many people (such as myself) go through on a daily basis. This type of procrastination works when there are deadlines, however he touches on the downside of procrastinating; procrastinating with no deadlines. When there are no deadlines things just do not happen leading to F.E.M.A. (failure to effectively manage anything), resulting in a lower quality of life. He makes a point to fight procrastination, which any procrastinator can agree with. Overall, his humor was appropriately placed to make his point while being a stupendous storyteller. This video earned my recommendation.
A Saudi, an Indian, and an Iranian walk into a Qatari- Maz Jobrani
This was one of the more international ted talks which was a nice change after seeing so many American ted talks. However, this ted was in english and very easy to understand. Maz Jobrani did a stand up comedy talk on the middle east. While I found it to be funny it seemed like you had to be from the middle east to get it. Do not really know if the examples he said were accurate but the people who looked native were laughing a lot so he must have been hitting some points home. It as a whole, was quite hilarious and earned my recommendation.
you guys are goals
DeleteThe case for arranged marriages- Ira Trivedi
ReplyDeleteOkay this was a six minute ted talk, in the interest of trying to get eight ted talks done before a deadline that one forgot/was not aware about, it is perfect, but only because it is short. Ira Trivedi discusses a new generation of Indians not so down for arranged marriages, but romanticism and love. When one can get past the speakers mistakes and obvious nervousness, it's a cool idea. I, however could not get passed the mistakes and found the talk very boring. I would not recommend it as there are probably much more intriguing six minute ted talks than this one.
Losing weight the ‘cool way’-Patrick Rensen
This again is another si minute ted talk, however it is significantly better than the arranged marriage one for one reason, it has a pun. When babies are born they do not have the necessary muscles to shiver themselves to a normal body temperature, so to have a homeostasis, the infants have a surplus of brown fat. Brown fat is a fat that is specifically meant to have a temperature equilibrium by adding heat the body is loosing via the skin. What research has shown is that adults too have brown fat, and it is activated when one is cold; making a lower temperature a cool way to lose fat. Patrick Rensen stated that this method could have one loose three to five kilograms of fat a year. While an interesting subject, the ted talk was a little dry and hard to get into.
See invisible motion hear silent sounds. Cool? Creepy?- Michael Rubinstein
ReplyDeleteThis was a very interesting ted talk. Some of my peer(s) (Riley) may have found this particular talk boring, however I believe that is because she can not see the big picture behind the idea Michael presented. Using new camera technology, Michael Rubinstein is able to amplify the motion and color of everything. This can lead to anything from being able to see veins contract to skin changing color based on the amount of blood being pumped in a person at a certain time, to seeing how a building moves with the wind. By amplifying this motion and color humans are bought into this new world not visible to the naked eye. The amount of applications in it of itself is amazing. By looking at the motion of a bag of chips when someone was talking, they could almost recall what was said to perfection. Very interesting topic, would recommend.
The art of asking- Amanda Palmer
Amanda Palmer tells the crowd about her life as a musician. She started not as wealthy, being a human statue to pay her expenses, but what she lacked in money she gained in experience. To Amanda, being a statue person is the same as being a musician, it is not necessarily about the money but more so the connections one makes with their fellow humans. Base off the video it seems Amada has a positive outlook on our humans, and while there are people who do not understand Amanda, there are also people who are generous and kind that allow for the most raw and real human interaction. I for one think it's all bs. While I think Amanda's view is great, I am just too darn cynical about our human race to completely agree with her. It was a interesting video and I would recommend it
The very real magic of quantum mechanics- Adam Murphy
ReplyDeleteMagic is a mystery, a puzzle with questions and answers, however when one understands a magic trick they often feel cheated. Quantum mechanics is almost the complete opposite. The more one knows, the more one can think about more things giving an ever expanding ocean of questions. In Quantum mechanics, there is no knowing, only probabilities. That inability to completely understand quantum mechanics is what makes it so whimsical. How can light be both a particle and wave while neither at the same time? How can one know if schrodingers cat is alive or dead without actually looking at it? These are the questions Adam is fascinated about, for he sees quantum mechanics in the same way as a child sees “fake magic’. Was a good ted talk, kind of an intro to quantum mechanics would recommend.
The physics of the “hardest move” in ballet- Arleen Sugano
In an environment where the teacher really cares about a student's learning and progress, physics can be really fun. When there is just a person talking to you for four mutes about ballet and physics, the time spent is significantly less fun. While the same information is taught, one (in my opinion) would take away more in a classroom learning rather than watching a video you saw in eighth grade physical science that is painfully dry. This ted talk was not one of those videos, but it was quite close. In the video, the physics behind the 32 spin move in the black swan was revealed It was very boring and I would not recommend the video, however the idea of angular momentum is pretty neat-o.
ted talk #2: "how to grow fresh air"-Kamal Meattle
ReplyDeletethis talk was actually really neat. meattle lives in Delhi, where the air quality has caused him to be allergic to the air in the city. a company found three plants that can actually produce fresh air in minutes and circulate carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. there needs to be about 3 plants per person in a building, but other than that, rates of allergy symptoms and asthma decreased dramatically in a group of people who have been in one of these buildings for 10 hours. overall, people's health increased by a crazy amount after just a short amount of time. this talk actually helped me out at work today because a customer said she had asthma and was having trouble with the current air quality so she was buying artificial plants. i told her about the talk and she laughed and said that plants don't produce oxygen.
#3: "don't eat the marshmallow!"-joachim de posada
ReplyDeleteaccording to posada, if you put a 4 year old in a room alone with a marshmallow for 15 minutes and say "if you don't eat it in 15 minutes, i'll give you a second one", its the equilalent to telling a 37 year old that you'll bring them a cup of coffee in 2 hours. this talk was hilarious as well as eye opening because i realized just how malleable our brains can be at such an early age of development. these kids learned to delay gratification so early in life and that is key to leading a good life later on, as was shown in the study 15 years later with the same kids. i enjoyed watching this ted talk and i really wish there were more of it.
#4:"the agony of trying to unsubscribe"-james vieteh
ReplyDeletenormally, listening to a guy who would get out of the car and play dead on the sidewalk as a kid would be unnerving, but it got my attention. the lesson i took from this talk is that any situation can be turned into a game if you just know how to play the game the right way. i have 59 minutes to watch 4 more ted talks. it was pretty neat hearing about his computer program that he designed to auto-reply to emails. i hate that i can never find more videos from these really funny people.
ReplyDeleteTED Talk #1
“Fear”- Connor Shaw
This TED talk featured Connor Shaw, a senior at Cardinal Newman and brother of Caitlin Shaw. Connor’s talk discusses fear and the effects it has on daily life. He talked about the impact fear had on his own life, especially when pertaining to death. He had two people very close to him die which made him fear his own life itself. He discussed suicide as well and how people perceive it to be from fear. He used anecdotes from his mother who witnessed 9/11 and the aftermath. He also referenced Gandhi and The Giver. The presentation aspect was a little shaky after saying um multiple times but I give him credit since he is only in high school. It was inspiring to see such a young person present so professionally.
TED Talk #2
“What will you tell your daughters about 2016?”- Chinaka Hodge
I really enjoyed this TED talk because it touched me emotionally. It was a summary of 2016 in the point of view of a woman. She had an emotional response to the year’s events as did many women in the US. She interpreted the year’s events in a way that she could turn them into life lessons for children. It opened my eyes to just how much injustice actually occurred in 2016. It also motivated me to be more active in my community and make my voice heard so others can learn. I would highly recommend this TED talk to anyone who is open-minded about different political points of view and seeing how this past year affected women everywhere. Her presentation style was appealing to me since it had a nice flow and was emotion driven.
TED Talk #3
“Looks aren’t everything. Believe me, I’m a model.”- Cameron Russell
I really enjoyed this talk because Cameron was comedic in her presentation and speaking. She discussed some controversial topics and questions that normally come with being a model. Cameron was honest with her approach and made the audience comfortable with her honesty. She addressed the fact that she was privileged with her appearance whether her body or skin color. She also talks about how the pictures of her from modeling aren’t actually her, it’s a construction of her. She emphasized how looks aren’t everything and how many girls and women are actually unhappy with themselves. I found this talk to be extremely inspirational and would recommend it to anyone interested in modelling or body confidence in general.
TED Talk #4
“Plus-size? More like my size”- Ashley Graham
Ashley started off her talk by talking in the mirror to herself and her body. She was reaffirming herself by recognizing her imperfections by society’s standards and turning it into a compliment. She discusses how her body doesn’t fit the typical ideal of what society says is beautiful or healthy. She emphasizes the fact that her body is not a definition of who she is and that she is more than just her appearance. She also discussed how she wasn’t confident in her body when she was younger because she compared herself to the media which didn’t represent the general population. She calls to redefine the definition of beauty in media and claiming yourself as your own role model. This talk was inspirational and let me see into the life of a plus-size model who struggles with confidence despite appearing body confident on the outside.
Ted Talk 5
ReplyDeleteHow to spot a liar by Pamela Meyer
This video was interesting in a few ways, but ultimately was very boring. She gave some statistics that did work to back her speech and give credence but were very easy to tune out. She wasn't a very engaging speaker, and if almost feels like a waste of time to listen. The very first big thing she said regarding her topic, her first rule of lying, came across as utter bs, simply because of how she phrased it, and the ridiculousness of what she was saying.
Ted Talk 6
The art of asking by Amanda Palmer
This was a very intriguing and fascinating Ted Talk. From the beginning she kind of pulls you in, and it was very weird, especially when she pulls up the 8 foot bride, but it was also really fun to listen to. She made a direct connection between what she started off talking about and her actual subject for the day. I really enjoyed this Ted Talk because she was very personable, and made jokes that actually were funny, and she made herself believable. Her talking about the connection she would feel with people, and how she and her bandmate would turn asking into an art form felt genuine.
Ted Talk 7
The voices in my head by Eleanor Longden
This video was interesting in the different way it gave insight into mental illness. While I still am not quite sure I agree with the speaker, her points are to some extent valid and believable, though I do not know to what exact extent. She speaks of how life initially was normal for her, or that's how it appeared to others, and how she convinced herself she was fine as she was, before things began to change. It's then that after the system that should have helped her started to give up to her, that she began listening to the voices she heard in her head, and actually reports some success in being able to live her life again through this.
Ted Talk 8
Why I must come out by Greena Rocero
This video was incredibly inspiring and not necessarily thought provoking along the lines of the typical stuff we do in class, but more along the political scale. Her talk about how she first got into modeling, how she came to finally view herself were rather sweet, especially when she talked of the support her family gave her. She spoke on why she felt compelled to do this Ted Talk, to 'come out' in this way, and her reasoning was rather touching, considering the risk she brings up that she will have to deal with. Overall, this was a great video, and was interesting to watch.
ReplyDeleteTED Talk #5
“Your smartphone is a civil rights issue”- Christopher Soghoian
This TED talk was very informative and I learned a lot about smartphones and how they are surveillanced. I also learned how involved our government is with our phones in general. Christopher discusses the difference between iPhones and Android phones with comparison to their companies as well. He talks about Google versus Apple and who in particular own the two different types of phone. I learned that the middle class typically own Android phones because they are cheaper. SInce the phones are cheaper, the security is not as well developed so poorer people have less security. This is how our smartphones are a civil rights issue. Christopher believes that this small issue for smartphones are actually essential to civil rights issues and how much they are spread on social media. I would recommend this talk to anyone who is interested in smartphones or how influential they in our society.
TED Talk #6
“A highly scientific taxonomy of haters”- Negin Farsad
Negin was very funny and claims to be a social justice comedian. Her talk was hilarious and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to her interpretation of different people who are mean towards others. She goes through different groups of haters which I was able to relate to a lot. It was funny to see these groups of people represented in a comedic way instead of actually being taken seriously. I loved Negin’s approach to the situation since it was so entertaining while also getting her point across. I would highly recommend this talk to anyone who needs a good laugh or feel like they aren’t alone in their interpretation of haters.
TED Talk #7
“Art can heal PTSD’s invisible wounds”- Melissa Walker
Melissa started off by going through an experience of war while also discussing the effects it has after the actual event. She describes this experience as an invisible wound of PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. Melissa talks about her own experiences with family members with PTSD and how it changed her whole family dynamic. This talk also discussed the importance of art with victims of PTSD. She learned that art can actual be an essential part of recovery for people who suffer from PTSD. She works as an art therapist and allows the veterans to work through their trauma at their own pace and using their own medium. This talk really opened my eyes with how powerful art actually is in many people’s lives. I strengthened my own passion in learning how different medias like art, music and literature can help people express their true emotions and feelings that they wouldn’t be able to express otherwise.
TED Talk #8
“The beauty of what we’ll never know”- Pico Iyer
I really enjoyed this talk because it inspired me and opened my eyes. It also really followed most of my own personal beliefs which was great to see. He discusses the importance of not knowing what will happen next. He started the talk with an anecdote about an experience he had in a foreign country that opened his eyes on the unknown. He learned that he loved not knowing what would happen next or everything about his surroundings. It opens your mind while allowing you to appreciate the moment and really live in the moment. The experience is what is most important to him because he is able to realize that knowledge is obtained. He also believes that that the more we know, the more we see how little we know. I find this saying to be extremely eye-opening and motivating in a sense. I would recommend this talk to anyone willing to see a different perspective on life.
#5:"this gel can make you stop bleeding instantly"-joe landolina
ReplyDeletethis automatically made me think of some video game or even pokemon i guess. what joe is actually doing is creating bio-products. he's trying to develop a gel that can replicate any damaged extra-cellular-matrix(the stuff that gets damaged in a cut) and repair it as well. as an example he pumped blood through a piece of meat and cut it and applied the gel in about 15 seconds and the bleeding stopped(wtf). the gel is from plants!
#6:"why i teach people how to hack"-Ýmir VigfÚsson
ReplyDeletealthough hacking is usually a pretty dangerous thing to do, ymir doesn't make it seem that dangerous. it makes me feel like even though people do something that is dangerous, it doesn't mean that they are also a dangerous person just because they did something that happened to be dangerous. ymir believes that he has pushed younger hackers into a more useful career rather than a destructive and dangerous one. he actually sets up hacking competitions where his students will hack each other competitively and try to win the hacking championship. a new spin on a dangerous activity.
#7:"how to speak so that people want to listen"-julian treasure
ReplyDeleteapparently now there are 14 deadly sins, and the second 7 are in speaking.
-Gossip (speaking about people who aren’t present, and probably saying nasty things about the listener later)
-Judging (judging the person you are speaking to, and finding them wanting)
-Negativity (negative outlook)
-Complaining (achieves nothing)
-Excuses (passing problems of the world on to everyone else)
-Lying
-Dogmatism (mixing up facts and opinion)
these are the 4 things you need to have in order to not sin:
Honesty – be true and clear with what you mean
Authenticity – be yourself, stand in your own truth
Integrity – do what you say, be trustworthy
Love – wish people well
this ted talk was pretty sweet and it reminded me of everything that my JC speech teacher didn't teach me about talking to people.
Britta Riley- A Garden in My Apartment
ReplyDeleteThis TED talk was about a woman who is part of a developing campaign for hydroponic planters called window farms. These farms were designed to try and allow for people living in apartments to grow their own plants and food. What I found most interesting about this project was what they called R and DIY. This is a form of research and development that was more open sourced. It allows for people around the work to adjust the window farms for their own climates. For instance, people in Finland added LED grow lights to their farms to adjust to their long, dark winters. I thought that this was a very innovative idea and that the project itself is very important with the environmental problems of today.
Jakob Trollback- A new kind of music video
This TED talk was very interesting to watch because instead of over explaining every bit of his idea, Trollback decided to use an example of his work to demonstrate the premise. The video began with a short introduction from Trollback describing his past career as a DJ and animator and how he and his team decided to try and make a music video that followed the music and not necessarily the idea. This was very interesting to see in practice because I at first didn't understand what he was trying to say, but once the video came on it made perfect sense. The video was somewhat similar to a lyric video, with the words to the song coming on screen, but it also had small animated movements that followed the beat of the song. It is an easier idea to view than to try and explain, but that is the biggest reason why I enjoyed this TED talk
#8:"why we have too few women leaders"-sheryl sandberg
ReplyDeletethis one hit home especially because of our election that we just had. female heads of state, parliament members, and board positions are only 13-15% of he workforce, and these have not improved over the past decade. its so dissatisfying to actually see these numbers. i thought women were working harder and progressing more towards equality, especially in the workforce, but nothing really changed. this video was published before the 2016 election, so the number aren't all that accurate, but its still staggering. i want to get out and do something to help, but i don't have all that much to complain about since i get paid the same amount as the males do at my level of the company where i work. its disappointing to me that no one is actually seeing the work and effort that women put into society every day and it's not appreciated very much. a really awesome talk on the subject as a whole.
1. "Don't fear super intelligent AI" -Grady Booch
ReplyDeleteBooch addresses the fear of artificial intelligence taking over the human race, a fear portrayed in many sci-fi books and films. Being a highly educated scientist, Brooch discusses the reasons to not be afraid of such a result due to the impracticability of placing the power of an entire system such as a factory or living space under a single AI, and the illogical notion that such AI cannot be turned off. Instead he points out that the problems humans do need to consider are how to balance the decline in job opportunities due to AI and other social issues with incorporating them into daily human life. By bringing up the initial fears during the production of cars and cellphones, Booch argues that all problems will be solved or out shined by the positivity that the new invention will bring to the human experience.
2. "Art made of the air we breathe" -Emily Parsons-Lord
Parsons-Lord recreates air from specific time periods and explains how they differ and what it means for us. She stressed the effect every human has on the air and how the air connects each and every one of us due to our input with gas exchange in our bodies. She then addresses climate change and asks to focus not on large scale problems, but on air.
3. "The beauty of what we'll never know" -Pico Lyer
Lyer recounts a trip in which he let himself be led around by a poor man living off money from cheap tour guides. This experience made him realize that the more a person sees in the world, the more that person realizes that there are things he or she does not know. He doesn't believe ignorance is bliss, but that understanding and acknowledging the fact that you do not know things will lead to a more peaceful, open life. With his own personal experience, he argues that one truly discovers oneself when faced with the lack of knowledge.
4. "What you need to know about CRISPR" -Ellen Jorgensen
I have been very interested in CRISPR and how scientists will approach the ethical boundaries and overall problems concerning it. In this video, Jorgensen discusses the falsity in the claims about this genome altering invention, putting to rest the rumors of it being cheap and easy. Mainstream media may be downplaying the concept of CRISPR, but The processes are not to be taken as lightly as a simple plastic surgery or hair dying. CRISPR's effects are permanent alterations on an individuals DNA, effecting the individuals future generations. It obviously poses extreme ethical issues such as the idea that scientists are playing God, but the only the future knows how the world will change based on this technology.
5. "3 ways to fix a broken news industry" -Lara Setrakian
Being a former abc news reporter in the Middle East, Setrakian discusses the major flaws in the portrayal of certain events by media and how they can be fixed. I chose to watch this TED talk because the choices modern media makes to focus on unimportant topics or to lie about them in order to achieve ratings is practiced heavily today. She acknowledges the immense impact media has on the public view and in this dire call to action, points to the very industry she used to work for as the source of the problem.
6. "7 rules for making more happiness" - Stefan Sagmeister
I thought this talk was going to address 7 universal ways to lead a happier life, but it was more of Sagmeister's own personal rules to make his own life happier. He promotes a lot of his work as he is a designer and after each rule, displays a new project he is working on. I did not find benefit much from this ted talk besides realize I should focus on what makes me happy in order to be generally more positive. I guess, the primary impacting piece of the talk was just the title because it made me ponder what I could do, but the talk itself seems to just boast about Sagmeister's progress with designing a video about happiness.
ReplyDelete#5 Anthony Goldbloom: The jobs we'll lose to machines -- and the ones we
won't
Continuing the technological theme of my talks, this talk deals
with the increasing automation of jobs. Machines excel at processing high
volume tasks, and can already grade essays, or diagnose illness as well as
a human can, much more efficiently. Something they can't do, however, is
deal with new situations, things that require creativity. This is why a
good deal of jobs will be safe from automation. At least, with our
current level of AI.
#6 Patience Mthunzi: Could we cure HIV with lasers?
Really cool talk, about the use of lasers to cure HIV, as the
title implies. As of right now, pill form is the most effective ways to
deliver medication. The problem with pills, however, is that the medicine
becomes diluted when passing through the human digestive system. This is a
huge problem for HIV patients, as the diluted medicine cannot kill the
virus in key places. Lasers could, potentially, make microscopic incisions
into key areas, where the anti HIV drug could be deposited, completely
eradicating the virus. This technology could have many other uses, for many
other diseases.
#7 Alison Killing: There’s a better way to die, and architecture can help
I was first struck by both the title of this talk, as well as the last name of the speaker. I doubt that its pure coincidence that with a last name like "Killing", you would be drawn to death. Either way, the talk itself was a little lackluster. The points made about the uncomfortableness of hospitals and how we can change them were interesting, but a whole lot was said with not that much really getting across. I'd say the best part of this talk is the title, and "a better way to die" would be a cool name for a band.
#8 Sally Kohn: Don't like clickbait? Don't click
Pretty interesting topic. Sally talks about how with the change in media, consumers now have much more power than we used to. She brings up how there has been quite a lot of nastiness online, but by not paying attention, or "clicking", we can take power away from these people. Sally also did a very nice job as a speaker, the talk was entertaining and she engaged with the audience well.
Ted Talk #1: I watched a Ted Talk called “An electrifying acoustic guitar performance” by Rodrigo and Gabriela. I thought this Ted Talk was honestly really amazing. It was simply two musicians playing acoustic guitars but it was truly inspiring. The woman, Gabriela, kept tempo and used her guitar to not only strum, but as a drum and Rodrigo played mostly the melody. Although there was nothing technically educational about this video, it was very inspiring and energizing to see two people so in tune with each other. At one point, they stopped looking at their guitars and simply gazed at each other as if they were completely absorbed within the music, The pure and passionate love for music and the amazing melody being created was very inspiring and reminded me of why I enjoy playing music so much and why I enjoy truly connecting with people.
ReplyDeleteTed Talk #2: I watched the Ted Talk “Where do superstitions come from?’ by Stuart Vyse. This Ted Talk was actually pretty interesting. It not only explained where many common superstitions originated from, it also examined superstitions that I did not even know existed, however I am a very superstitious person so I’m not sure learning about more things to worry about was the best for me. It explained where the origination of knocking on wood and why certain numbers are seen to bring bad luck, such as the number thirteen. This video also explained how some superstitions are culturally programmed into our brain because we learn them as young children and how others are truly just figments of our imagination. Also, this video had some pretty funny animation that I did really enjoy.
7. "A Garden in My Apartment" - Britta Riley
ReplyDeleteRiley explains her invention of a product called window farms that allow primarily apartments or any living space with a window to be able to grow and produce their own food. The project itself was very interesting because each window farm could be tailored specifically to the climate that it will be in, sunny vs. dark, hot vs. cold.
8. "A highly scientific taxonomy of haters” - Negin Farsad
Farsad adopts a comical approach in order to explain the mindset and techniques of specific kinds of haters. From the title, the sarcastic tone is already apparent, casting a light, more approachable atmosphere to the ted talk. Farsad's tone towards the topic of hatred allows the audience to not be as easily offended, and also enjoy a funny, yet impactful interpretation of those who are deliberately mean to others.
Ted Talk #3: I watched a Ted talk called “Does "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" have a hidden message? by David B. Parker. This Ted Talk was pretty interesting, however it was not one of my favorites. It explored the alternate meanings to the Wizard of Oz and how there were many historical connections to the 1900’s. It explained how a history teacher, while reading this story, made connections to the curriculum and the book. He then used the book to help teach the subject to his students and keep them engaged. However, as engaging as it might have been while being taught, this Ted Talk was not as engaging as I had hoped. I was rather hoping for a deeper meaning connecting to philosophy or society. However, for history phanatics, I could see how many would like this particular theory.
ReplyDeleteTed Talk #4: In the Ted Talk “Why do we dream?” by Amy Adkins, the meanings behind dreams were explored. There are a vast variety of reasons as to why humans dream and the effects that dreams can have. Some theories proposed were that we dream due thoughts in our subconscious and that particular items in dreams actually have alternate meanings. Another theory is that in order to strengthen our fight or flight response so we are actually practicing how we will react in certain situations within our dreams. Another theory proposed was that we dream to relieve stress, so that the mind is able to rid itself of hormones produced from stress. One last theory is that our mind needs to continuously think and work, thus our dreams are produced from our brain continuing to work while we are unconscious. Overall I thought that this Ted Talk was pretty interesting and I enjoyed hearing the different theories about why we dream. Maybe I’ll have a dream tonight?
Ted Talk#5: I watched a Ted Talk called “Why do we love?” by Skye C Cleary. I thought that this Ted Talk was pretty interesting. It examined both the biological reasons as to why we love and the philosophies proposed as to why we love. Some philosophies dated back to ancient Greek times, when they believed that people used to be two people combined. However one day, humans angered the Gods and Zeus split each human in half and so we feel empty and as if we are missing something and wander the earth until we find our other half, or soul mate. One of my favorite philosophies stated that love is similar to a friendship in that we love to support and further each other in our personal lives and that we are not codependent upon each other, but rather individuals. I thought that this was very smart, in that you are able to keep our own identity and support the person you love. I thought that this Ted Talk was actually very interesting in the aspect of the philosophies themselves and to see which philosophy we tend to gravitate towards.
ReplyDeleteTed Talk #6: In the midst of spring quarter, college acceptances and rejections are being thrown at all the seniors. Being rejected can be hard, and takes a toll on someone’s mental strength to remain proud, calm, and confident about themselves and their abilities. I watched a Ted Talk called “3 tips to boost your confidence” in the Ted Ed sections. This Ted Talk really helped me personally. It is easy to feel like a failure when being rejected from schools: it makes you feel like you are not and never will be good enough. But this Ted Talk addressed not only what confidence truly is, but what how to achieve it. It said that confidence is the ability to turn words into actions. It explained how after failure, it is easy to give up, but takes strength to persevere and grow. By having a mindset of growth rather than thinking that what you have, is what you get, one continues to strive and push themselves further in whatever path they choose. This Ted Talk gave me hope for the future and truly made me feel better. To anyone in need of a little pep talk, this Ted Talk is a go to.
Ted Talk#7: I watched a Ted Talk called “The Benefits of having good posture” by Murat Dalkilinç. Ever since I was a young kid, my mom always told me to stand up straight and have good posture, however I never truly realized the benefits of doing so until I got older. This Ted Talk examined the health benefits of having good posture and moving regularly, and the negative repercussions of being stagnant with bad posture. When I watched this video, I became hyper aware of how I sat and how i stood. I have very good posture when standing and walking, in fact many of my friends have referred to my walk as a strut because I hold myself high. I realized that although I have very good posture when I stand and walk, my posture when I sit is actually pretty horrible. In fact I slouch a lot when I sit and rather than being able to look at things eye level, many things positioned on my desk force me to look downwards. Overall I really enjoyed this Ted Talk and would recommend it to anyone, because good posture is very important.
ReplyDeleteTed Talk #8: As the teenagers that we are, very few of us obtain a healthy amount of sleep on a regular basis. Studies show that teenagers need about nine hours of sleep each night, however I personally tend to get about 6 hours on weekdays and then over sleep on the weekend. The detrimental effects of this unhealthy cycle were magnified in the Ted Talk “The benefits of a good night’s sleep” by Shai Marcu. This Ted Talk explored not only the vital health aspects of sleep, in that it gives the body time to repair damage and restore a balanced system, it also magnified the necessity of sleep within a school environment. It stated that rather than cramming for a test the night before, it is actually much wiser to study a little and then get a good night’s sleep in order to retain more information into the long term memory. I would recommend this Ted Talk to all sleep deprived humans, specifically teenagers. In fact, in order to really show how much I’ve learned from this Ted Talk, I am going to sleep right now.
Ted Talks
ReplyDeleteA Choreographers Creative Process in Real Time. || Wayne McGregor
In this Ted Talk Wayne McGregor a choreographer, discusses and demonstrates how any simple idea, thought, or object can be translated into a movement or dance. He utilizes two dancers who have no idea what they are doing dance based on his verbal commands. Although he may already have a preconceived idea of what he desired from the pair. I figured this Ted Talk would be more interesting, as a result I watched it hoping to glean some inspiration from it being a dancer/choreographer myself. Unfortunately what I saw was nothing special or unique but is in fact very common in the world of dance as improvisational dancing. Further the copious and seemingly relentless production of saliva from Mr. McGregor was overwhelming my sense of hearing to the point of almost closing the video and crying. Other than that it was acceptable.
Inside The Mind of a Master Procrastinator || Tim Urban
In Tim Urbans Ted Talk regarding procrastination, Urban discusses the thought processes involved with major assignments, events, projects, and tasks that cannot be completed easily. For explaining this he splits the portion of the brain responsible for handling such tasks into three characters. The first being the rational decision maker, second being the instant gratification monkey, and third being the panic monster. The methods used to explain the situations and their circumstances are easy to comprehend and easily relatable making this Ted Talk very efficient in explaining procrastination. This is a Ted Talk that was very humorous and added an interesting spin onto the art of procrastination.
Strange Answers to the Psychopath Test || Jon Ronson
In Jon Ronsons Ted Talk, Ronson expunges the secrets behind diagnosing psychological disorders via checklist. This Ted Talk was extremely interesting as it addressed aspects of the human brain that can be classified as disorders that seem to create a set of conditions that are easily met and observable in everyday life. The presentation itself was even more interesting as a result of the sound effects and animation making the presentation that much more intriguing. Over all this Ted Talk was enlightening due to explaining how psychiatry seemingly perpetuates and classifies humans with disorders to avoid the existence of gray areas.
The Language of Lying | Noah Zandan
This Ted Talk was very short and enlightening. As a frequent liar I found some of the patterns described to be extremely accurate. This Ted Talk interested me as it assists me in formulating better lying patterns so that I can escape the consequences of my irrefutably terrible behavior/actions. In short this Ted Talk was very brief and informational, although there was not much to absorb the information provided was nonetheless useful.
TED Talk #8: My son was a Columbine shooter by Sue Klebold
ReplyDeleteAs the title suggests, this talk centers on the mother of one of the Columbine High School shooters, Dylan Klebold. She discusses her feelings of failure when she found out that her son was the perpetrator of a murder-suicide, and her fear of judgement by others. She was a relatively effective speaker, although she was far less emotional than I might have thought. I do not fault Klebold for this at all, though, as it must be far easier to not express her emotions. This is especially true given that she also details the health problems and panic attacks that she began to have several years later as a results of her son's actions. This lead into Klebold's final points, both about mental health and gun violence. She calls for people to try to recognize signs of mental illness sooner, and to get helming when they are present. She also acknowledges that it was disturbingly easy for her underage sun to legally get access to the guns that he used to kill himself and dozens of others. Overall, it was a decent talk, though it lacked the emotional weight that I thought it might have.
TED Talk #2: Beatbox Brilliance Tom Thum
ReplyDeleteIn this TED talk, an Australian man named Tom Thum beatboxes for the crowd. He explains his lifestyle of traveling around the world beatboxing in all different downtown places. HIs lifestyle sounds very unique and exciting and his talent is incredible. He is extremely charismatic and good looking and clearly wins over the crowd with his incredible talent. He begins by doing some more simple beatboxing which is still very incredible and then continues to take a journey across the world beatboxing different styles of music. I have always thought of beatboxing as making beats with you voice, but he is able to turn his voice into a musical instrument and the finale is that he plays jazz with his voice as if it is an instrument. He also shows off some of his unique equipment. This TED talk is one of my favorite that I have ever seen and was amazed at how exceptional some people are at certain things.
TED Talk #3 - Top Hacker Shows How It's Done - Pablos Holman
ReplyDeleteIn this TED Talk, Pablos Holman shares his incredible hacking skills with the audience. He begins by showing off some of the more basic things and making jokes about how he can see what you are doing on your hotel tv and can control the tv from his own room. He goes on to demonstrate how easy it is to scan credit cards, steal passwords, pick locks, and create machines that can hack private information. This TED talk is prevalent to me because lately I have been thinking a lot about computer science and have contemplated teaching myself how to hack. I think it would be really interesting to be able to manipulate media since media is so widely used and this TED Talk proved to me that although hacking is complicated and challenging, it is exciting and rewarding. It also invoked some fear in me because it demonstrates just how easy it is to electronically manipulate systems and get access to information that was thought to be secure.
TED Talk # - More Adventures in Replying to Spam - James Veitch
ReplyDeleteThis TED Talk had me laughing almost the whole time and was a great example of how humor can be used to captivate an audience and make a story very memorable. Mr. Veitch one day decided to reply to some spam mail that was meant to scam him and he took a humorous approach by mocking the spammer and making him do weird things. The conversation between James and the scammer went on for weeks and James said some very hilarious things and used his power in the situation since the scammer wants something for him to make the scammer say what he wanted him. James creates a code that involves goofy words and convinces the spam emailer to use the code, which ends up being the "best email ever". This TED Talk was incredibly entertaining and goes to show that one can find humor and fun in almost any activity, even in responding to spam email. The lesson of this TED Talk is to have a good laugh at things when you can and take a risk and do something random because sometimes something you never expected could happen will come out of it.
TED Talk #5 - My philosophy for a happy life - Sam Berns
ReplyDeleteSam Berns is a young man who suffers from a fatal disease called Progeria, which is incredibly rare and accelerates aging in young people. At this point in time, Sam Berns has unfortunately passed away, but his talk was incredibly inspiring and makes you realize that it is so important to appreciate what you do have and not what you don't because just being normal is a very fortunate things. However, after this TED Talk, I would argue that Sam was just as normal as I am and much more emotionally mature. By the age of 17, he really had life figured out and was so mentally strong that he was able to implement incredibly important principles into every part of his life. He mentally manipulated his life into a positive and happy experience and I have the utmost respect for him. Sam shares the story of his life with his disease, but attempts to explain that even though his disease is very challenging, he does everything he can to focus on the things that he can do and not the things that he can't. Secondly, Sam surrounds himself with people who he wants to be around who resonate with him internally. Lastly, Sam always keeps moving and looking forward to the next positive event of goal. This TED Talk inspired me and made me appreciate the courageous and wise nature of this incredible man.
TED Talk #6 - How to Become More Confident - Till H Grob
ReplyDeleteIn this TED Talk Grob discusses confidence and provides a method for conquering fear. Till discusses the idea of comfort zone challenges which are acts where you challenge yourself to get out of your comfort zone to get over a fear. Till shares his story with us of how he was a popular but insecure person who wanted to get over his fear. One day, he decided to lay down in the middle of the busy street for two minutes and he did it. Ever since that day, he has taken part in these kinds of comfort zone challenges where he works to put himself in uncomfortable positions so that he can get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I really enjoyed this TED talk. It made me smile a few times and I think I want to engage in comfort zone challenges myself. Technically, comfort zone challenges is called exposure therapy in psychology and it is a researched and documented strategy, however since there is such a social stigma surrounding therapy, many people have not heard of it. I am going to urge myself as well as others to go out and try these as I think engaging in this kind of activity can really enrich one's life.
TED Talk #7 - Why I Stopped Watching Porn - Ran Gavrieli
ReplyDeleteIn this TED Talk, Ran discusses porn and how awful it is for society. There are two main reasons why watching porn is bad. One, it changes one's sexual fantasies into one's of male dominance and female sub ordinance. It turns sex into an animalistic and dominant practice instead of an emotional and loving activity. The second reason why watching porn is bad is because when watching porn, you are supporting the industry by providing it with demand, which causes more people to have changed fantasies and in general is supporting prostitution. I really liked listening to this TED Talk because it really resonated with me. I think that watching porn really does change one's fantasies and does negatively affect society as a whole. Love would be much healthier if porn doesn't exist and both males and females would feel better about themselves. Porn perpetuates the idea that sex is all about huge penises and penetration and really it is about the combination of a physical and emotional connection of a man and woman. I never plan on watching any porn because of this TED talk.
TED Talk #8 - What if you could trade a paperclip for a house? - Kyle MacDonald
ReplyDeleteIn this TED Talk, Kyle MacDonald shares his journey of trading a paperclip for a house. There were many steps along this journey and it was really interesting to hear exactly what was traded, but I am not going to list it all here. Instead, I want to share that I thought this TED Talk was cool not because the speaker was the best, but because the story was so incredible and Kyle is such an opportunist and optimist. The journey was not necessarily about the items that were being traded, but it was the collaboration with others that was so unique to this experience for Kyle. This TED Talk is less so about trading things and more about the importance of taking action, putting yourself out there, and trying something new when you have an idea. Often times, we have ideas, but we usually fail to take action and try. Life is short and so it is crucial that we put ourselves out there and dare to take the risks. Kyle is a damn cool dude and taught me a lesson to live by.
Transforming noise into music Jackson Jhin
ReplyDeleteI watched this Ted talk not really expecting much, and that's kinda what I got. I already knew many of the things he tried to explain to the audience, so it wasn't a very enlightening experience. Altogether it wasn't too bad of a talk, but the guy tried too hard to be funny and sounded to uninterested to make me interested.
The danger of a single story Chimamanda Ngozi
I watched this talk in my English class. The lady explained many different stories of the ignorance of Americans to other cultures around them. She explained that she was from Africa and that when she moved to the US, her new American friends always asked her about her tribal music and her language. She showed that she also listened to Beyoncé and only spoke English. I found this ted talk to be an eye opening, as even I was not really sure about other cultures.
How to sound smart in your test talk Will Stephen
I laughed my ass off while watching this. He so easily describes almost every public speaker who speaks well in such a funny and understanding way. He actually managed to sound smart while talking about random topics. I inspire to be like this man one day.
Lies damned lies and statistics
After watching this informative ted talk, I am now a master of the talk. I could easily speak at a red event and do it well! I now know the colors I need to dress in and the vocabulary that is required for speaking in a comical manner that inspires people. In actuality, i just laughed at the video because he explains the wackiness of the requirements to give a Tedx Talk.
Rives: A mockingbird remix of TED2006
This talk was pretty interesting. As much as I wish this was Freestyled, I know it was not. The guy really does well with his poem and keeps it real and funny. This was purely entertaining and almost had nothing to do with real life.
Yossi Vardi: We're worried about local warming ... in your lap
This guy really showed the dangers of blogging. I think we could all learn something from this guy and stop the blogging epidemic. I really enjoyed watching this Talk. The way his accent stayed monotone throughout the talk just made it all the more funny.
Julia Sweeney: It's time for "The Talk"
I feel very informed about how human reproduction happens. The description given to the eight year old was definitely the correct one.This one was not as funny as the other ones that i have watched, nor as in forming, but I still got a kick out of it knowing that this lady messed up so much as to explain this to her eight year old daughter.
Hillel Cooperman: Legos for grownups
This guy is the definition of a nerd. He is obsessed with legos. Everything he showed was really really cool, and I can appreciate the skill needed to build all these sorts of things, but I never expected there to be a sort of black market… for legos. I enjoyed watching this as it brought back memories from when I used to play with legos myself. I can really appreciate the skill needed to craft such giants works of art, but seriously, they have nothing better to do?
TED Talk #1: How I’m fighting bias in algorithms – Joy Biolamwini
ReplyDeleteJoy presents an authority on the subject of algorithms due to her position as a student in the MIT computer research labs, and she is definitely one of the most unique speakers I have heard. I can not tell what nationality she is but her accent combines with her high strung speaking voice to create a strange, honestly slightly annoying experience. I have been aware of the problem of the inclusion of coding and her talk of computational creation provides further evidence for the presence of the problem. Her charisma makes her a likable person including her awkwardness in her stance and speaking. The content of what she shared was not very substantial, but it was more of a message to become aware of bias in algorithms, and how others can help to. However, that still adds value to her TED talk.
TED Talk #2: Smelfies, and other experiments in synthetic biology – Ani Liu
ReplyDeleteAni’s speaking voice sounds bored, probably as a result as practicing specific notecards. Her topic was interesting because of how unique it was! She embraced the weirdness in her interest in olfactory synthetic biology and the natural scent of people. Through our diet, our health, our mental state, etc, our scent is concocted. I had not been aware of how the smell of the body might be perceived differently without the presence of a body, but a petri dish. Due to myself being in Biology 2 I can relate to her explanation of phototropism and how she is moving it further to force plants to react to stimulants in smells and grow towards those smells. However, I am not sure how useful her discoveries are, but history has showed us that does not really matter. Its cool to see people discovering concepts just to discover.
TED Talk #3: 3 ways to fix a broken news industry
ReplyDeleteLara, an entrepreneur, has a contrastingly clear speaking style with a higher level of enunciation than the past two TED talks. I agree that trust in news has hit an all-time low, but I was not aware of there being a solution to this, but it being more of a paradigm shift in media. One way we can fix the news industry is finding local reporters because of their connection and specialization. She argues that local journalists are our mentors and news behemoths cover too many areas. Also, she argues that the news industry should have a Hippocratic oath for the news industry. However, this is a sensitive issue because any limitation to the news can be seen as the limitation of the first amendment. Also, she argues that news as an adult educator must embrace the complexity in issues. News outlets recently embrace the other side of the spectrum, the oversimplification of issues which can be dangerous.
TED Talk #4 Buildings that blend nature and city – Jeanne Gang
ReplyDeleteThis speakers quirkiness is immediately likable, but her knowledge on the subject retains her authority on the matter of architecture. It is interesting to see how an architect designs rooms, buildings, and materials to encourage relationships and social activity. At the same time, using materials that benefit the planet such as using old trees that would have produced more carbon emissions. The digital simulations of the air flow on buildings was also interesting to see how wind morphs around a building. One of the buildings that she has built features strange balconies that encourage romantic relationships, community bondings, and friendship. Also, public buildings are needed to be made more friendly such as police buildings. Even if you have done nothing wrong, and you are only reporting a crime, the architecture similar to a fortress causes unease and a diminished trust between the people and the officers. Now, some of the kids play basketball on the police grounds, and now the courts allow a safe place for children to play, and even sometimes with police officers. However, the practicality of such solutions may be not seen as worthwhile to policy makers and people paying for the buildings.
TED Talk #5 Don’t fear super intelligent AI – Grady Booch
ReplyDeleteDue to my internal assessment being on the fear of artificial intelligence, I decided to watch this TED talk. He believes the fear of the coldness of artificial intelligence is unrealistic. His background is very interesting in graduating from the air force academy, working with NASA, and then becoming a software engineer warrants his authority on the subject. By highlighting the differences in the processes of creating a direct program and a learning AI, including the difference of datamining and programming. Also, he addresses the media’s warning of an existential threat and unpacks some of the arguments of people such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates. Practically speaking, artificial intelligence will not control all aspects of our life, and he argues that we can always just unplug them. However, I wish he more thoroughly addressed these problems and his answer left me wanting.
TED Talk #6 Beautiful new words to describe obscure emotions – John Koenig
ReplyDeleteJohn presents himself as very nervous, exhaling while talking and awkwardly walking around. I clicked on this video because I feel many feelings that I cannot simply describe and to encapsulate them into a word would be worthwhile. There is a power in doing so, because they make people feel less alone in feelings and emotions that are experienced all throughout life. There is no stranger feeling than making up a word and having it taking up a mind of its own. Are these words made up? John’s answer to that question was that the meaning of words is not given by the word, but the meaning of words is given by our contribution to that meaning, and that all words are made up. Words are not real, they have no meaning but we do.
TED Talk #7 A scientific approach to the paranormal – Carrie Poppy
ReplyDeleteCarrie’s introduction to the paranormal was met with laughs from the audience and she was not met with very friendly responses, which reveals the bias in the crowd of people who watch TED talks. She tried a little too hard to be funny. Her TED talk relied on the scientific explanations of the paranormal, and her personal story was a result of carbon monoxide gas. Also, she is a reporter for these explanations where she was investigating these occurrences. What she has found so far has been that science has explained one hundred percent of all the cases she has found. Carrie argues that there is inner truth and outer truth. In TOK, we call this personal knowledge and shared knowledge. We argue that outer knowledge is accepted as road blocks when there is a lack of personal knowledge. Once there are scientific explanations, in this case a ghost, then the outside truth is debunked. When we challenge these beliefs, we help people draw themselves in reality and possibly change our lives to be better off. However, she encourages the respect of beliefs but also ask questions about these claims.
TED Talk #8 What I learned from 2,000 obituaries – Lux Narayan
ReplyDeleteLux reads the obituaries every day in the morning. He works in an analytics company, and he wondered if there are ways to get a certain obituary featured. Being an analyst, he looked at 2,000 obituaries to answer this question. He found that if your life work can be run through a program and the most important descriptors can be found and then a simple sentence can be constructed to summarize the importance of an entire life. By ingesting paragraphs of people who are famous and people who are not famous and found conclusions. Both the famous and non-famous people could be featured in an obituary by helping people. By making the world a better place, the descriptors of your life become more significant to other people.
TED Talk #1
ReplyDeleteJoy Buolamwini: How I'm fighting bias in algorithms
MIT grad student Joy Buolamwini works with facial recognition software, and one day she noticed something, that the software didn't recognize her. The problem was that the people who made the algorithm made it so that it can only recognize minimal amount of facial expressions and skin tones. Now she made it her duty to fight what she calls code gaze. To get the encoding movement started, she launched the Algorithmic Justice League, where anyone who cares about fairness can help fight the coded gaze. This was a very insightful ted talk. I didn't know this problem was this prevalent today. I really enjoyed this talk and I learned new things about the world of technology.
TED Talk #2
Caroline Paul:To raise brave girls, encourage adventure
Carolina strats this talk with a story about her childhood how she always wanted to set a world record. She tells a story where she did brave thing to stop an explosion, and she got suprise complement form firefighter. She realized not only did he think women could not be strong, he think that they could not be brave either. She also goes over the misconception that girls are fragile and more in need of help, and that boys can and should master difficult tasks by themselves. But the truth is that at this young age, girls and boys are actually very alike physically. In fact, girls are often stronger until puberty, and more mature. This was a very excellent TED Talk. Caroline was very engaging during her TED Talk.
Ted Talk#3
Kio Stark : Why you should talk to strangers
Approaching another stranger and starting a conversation implies to an important social impact that everyone is being recognized by another. Stark talks about how she is obsessed talking with strangers and making eye contact, which is something people avoid to do. Starks believes that these random act of kinds can bring “profound experiences” and “liberating moments” to another person. People have grown to become a fearful around strangers, due to the way social media indicated that talking to strangers in a negative way. Researchers have also found out that some people feel more confident about revealing their true selves to those who don’t personally know them. Stark explains the the way for an individuals dealing with strangers, their perceptions must overcome fears. Starting random conversations with strangers, can lead to memorable experiences.
TED Talk #4
Jude Kelly: Why women should tell the stories of humanity
Kelly is a theater director, who started the festival called WOW, Women of the World, seven years ago, and it's now in 20 countries across five continents. Wherever she traveled she noticed the attitude that women can't do this compared to men. She stated how, we are taught divine knowledge comes down through the masculine. She wants to make a change and encouraged everyone to change to all their institutions. She suggests to support women artists, buy their work, insist that their voices are heard, find platforms on which their voices will be made. She stated how women are entitled to their destiny and are entitled to speak on behalf of the whole world. This was a really powerful TED Talk. This Ted Talk covered the reality of equality and that it's not really their. especially in second world countries.
TED Talk #5
ReplyDeleteBrittney Cooper: The racial politics of time
Cooper discuss the history of racism through time. The claim that the US was never “pre-race” is disingenuous. In the past, it was claimed that Africans were people outside of history who had had no impact on time or the march of progress. Copper states, this idea, that black people have had no impact on history, is one of the foundational ideas of white supremacy. At present, Copper argue that the racial struggles we are experiencing are clashes over time and space. In the future she questions if black people really have a future. She discuss how black people lives are lives of perpetual urgency and Time is used to displace them. Copper stated the future is how we make it to be. This was a really powerful Ted Talk and all the questions I had and in the beginning were answered at the end.
Ted Talk#6
Rebecca Brachman:Could A Drug Prevent Depression And PTSD
Brachman begins her talk by discussing how the administrations of antidepressant treatments are a sign of helping others remain happy while staying clinically stable. But how there is still no official treatment for PTSD, nor depression. Then she emphasizes how common depression is in our society, and how a person at least know a person who suffers from it. Brachman then went on to explain how she and a colleague had started to run experiments on mice, who suffered from depression or PTSD. She explained how the most recent antidepressant drug, Calypsol, aided the mouse in becoming less depressed, leaving it to explore, instead of hiding in a corner. She concludes her talk, on how this new drug could be the end of mental epidemic. This was a really interesting and inspiring talk. Her talk reflected the reality of how society thinks of mental illness.
TED Talk #7
Deepika Kurup: A young scientist's quest for clean water
It has been Deepika Kurup mission to solve water crisis around the world. When she traveled to india, she realized not everyone is fortunate enough to enjoy the clean water. To solve this global water crisis, she decided to start with converting her garage into a laboratory. Her goal is to create a safe, sustainable, cost-effective and eco-friendly method of purifying water. She encourages we all must come together when tackling this global problem. This talk wasn't that amazing, it was very dull at some moments but Kurp had a great message.
TED Talk #8
Robb Willer:How to have better political conversations
Robb is concerned with the fact that Liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, more and more they just don't like one another. He became fascinated with the questions, What can we do to chip away at polarization in everyday life? What could we do to connect with and communicate with our political counterparts? He discovered that the political divide in our country is undergirded by a deeper moral divide. He did a survey and found out that People's moral values, they're their most deeply held beliefs. People are willing to fight and die for their values. He stated how when we go to persuade somebody on a political issue, we rehearse our own reasons for why we believe some sort of political position. He suggests empathy and respect. This was a very informative ted talk. I agree with him that finding a common ground is important when discussing politics.
Ted Talk #1
ReplyDelete-Daniel Levitin:- How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed
-In this Ted Talk, Levitin explained how you can use your stress to your advantage by planning for the future in an intelligent way. We must remember how to prevent situations of stress by preparing for them accordingly. Daniel discusses how if you always lose your keys, for example, making a designated spot for them in your house can be a helpful way to eliminate that stress from your life. Overall I found this Ted Talk to be very intriguing, as I personally often stress but rarely think to use it for my advantage. Daniel's perspective on stress was very helpful because the technicality behind it makes so much sense.
Ted Talk #2
ReplyDelete-Robert Hoge:-Own Your Face
-In this Ted Talk, Hoge discusses how all his life was defined by the way he looked. He talked about going through numerous facial reconstructive surgeries to appear slightly more normal, but denied to stop when he realized one of the risks was death. At this point Hoge realized that having life at all was far more important than his attractiveness or physical appearance. We do not get to choose the way we look, yet it seems that humans base someone's capability off of appearance. This inspirational talk left me feeling almost guilty for ever being insecure about the way I looked, because that should never hold me back from being who I am and being able to thrive. Overall, this talk connected human sciences to natural sciences, and showed how important it is to love yourself and never change for society.
Ted Talk #3
ReplyDelete-Tim Urban:-Inside the mind of a master procrastinator
-In this Ted Talk, Tim perfectly interpreted how the human brain functions during procrastination. I found it quite fascinating that the common fear and process of procrastination is shared by so many people. Our reasoning is so confusing, especially considering a procrastinator does not tend to learn from his/her mistakes. Overall, Tim did an excellent job in putting words to the common feeling shared among students who have poor time management skills.
Ted Talk #4
ReplyDelete-Sophie Scott:-Why We Laugh
-In this talk, Sophie analyzes the natural science behind human behavior, and how we are able to laugh. Scott explains that laughing is a rapid contraction of the ribs, and although other mammals may be able to laugh, humans use it in different ways. According to Scott, you are 30x more likely to laugh when in the presence of another human being, because humor and language separate other animals from us. Mammals can express laughter while playing or being tickled, but humans require much less standards to begin laughing. Between emotions, humor, and simple anatomy, laughter is unavoidable, but is also what makes us human.
Ted Talk #5
ReplyDelete-Nick Bostrom:-What happens when our computers get smarter then we are?
-Nick begins his talk by first explaining that the human race has only been on Earth for a short period of time in comparison to the entire history of the planet. He then discussed that in the years 2040-2050, artificial intelligence will become its own "race". He explores the topic that if we create machines, they will eventually control us humans, because they will obtain a level of intelligence that will surpass ours. The general fear would be that humans would become as helpless as animals. Ultimately, us humans are in control of wildlife, since we are the ones changing and manipulating it. One can only imagine if we had a higher intelligence living in the same society as us.
Ted Talk #6
ReplyDelete-Stephen Petranek:-Your kids might live on Mars. Here's how they'll survive.
-Stephen predicts that by 2035, people will want to start taking trips to Mars, because people are becoming more and more curious about life on Mars. He explains that ten years ago, no one thought that we would have an electric car that would successfully work, and now we have the Tesla. Petranek feels as if this is easily compatible to people's views about Mars. I found this Ted Talk to be rather frightening, as to me the risks seem to outweigh the benefits. I do not feel it is necessary for humans to inhabit another planet in which they will likely destroy. The process of re-engineering a planet and completely changing everyone's lifestyle seems extremely difficult, and I do not think many people will be willing to jump to this idea. Overall this talk was very informative and only time will tell what will happen.
Ted Talk #7
ReplyDelete-Steve Ramirez:-A mouse. A laser beam. A manipulated memory.
-In this Ted Talk, Ramirez discusses how we find/create a memory within the brain. They talk about how finding and selecting a memory is not easy at all, but also how the brain itself helps in the discovery. They can pinpoint cells which ultimately lead them back to certain memories or occasions. They call them "biological windows" explains that they only "light up" when that memory is triggered. They explain that drugs affect the whole body, and not simply the specific cells targeted. I found this to be pretty interesting as I never even fathomed that a device could manipulate our memory, and bring back feelings or events in the present moment.
Ted Talk #8
ReplyDelete-Tony Robbins:-Why we do what we do
-In this talk, Robbins explains that decisions are ultimately what guide us to where we are in the current moment. Once you focus and concentrate on a goal, you automatically put meaning into it, ultimately creating emotion. The invisible force of desire and self interest push you to do what you do. He explains however, that it needs to be genuine because that is what pushes us to positively contribute to society. The main point I got from this Ted Talk was that when you make a decision, be aware of the long term affects it will have on your life and the world.
Ted Talk #8
ReplyDelete-Tony Robbins:-Why we do what we do
-In this talk, Robbins explains that decisions are ultimately what guide us to where we are in the current moment. Once you focus and concentrate on a goal, you automatically put meaning into it, ultimately creating emotion. The invisible force of desire and self interest push you to do what you do. He explains however, that it needs to be genuine because that is what pushes us to positively contribute to society. The main point I got from this Ted Talk was that when you make a decision, be aware of the long term affects it will have on your life and the world.
The Myth Behind the Chinese Zodiac || Megan Campisi
ReplyDeleteThis short five minute Ted Talk utilized animation instead of video to illustrate the variety behind the Chinese zodiac. This video explained the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac and how they each were put on the zodiac. The 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac were decided by a race the first 12 animals to cross the finish line would earn their place on the Chinese zodiac. I also learned from this video that the Chinese zodiac resets every sixty years rather than twelve. This is due to each sign also being associated with the yin or yang aspect of the yin-hang symbol. Also the zodiac symbols are split into the 5 elements earth, water, fire, wood, and metal. This Ted Talk was very informative and provided to be an extraordinarily intriguing Ted Talk.
The Upside of Isolated Civilizations || Jason Shipniski
This Ted Talk was semi-interesting as it discusses the perks of being an isolated civilization, along with what that entails. Unfortunately all these civilizations discussed no longer possess their isolation as Japan chose to interact with other countries, Egypt was invaded, meanwhile the maya disappeared. However the self sufficiency of each civilization is what made them prevalent in history. To me this information was all extremely fascinating, however what Jason Shipniski failed to explain was how exactly being an isolated civilization was so special. Other than that obvious hole in reasoning, the Ted Talk turned out to be pretty interesting in explaining ancient civilizations that shrouded themselves in mystery.
History vs. Cleopatra || Alex Gendler
ReplyDeleteIn Alex Gendlers Ted Talk "History vs. Cleopatra" Gendlers discusses the queen of Egypt and her reign of prosperity. In this Ted Talk Gendlers enlightens the audience to the success of Cleopatras reign in association to the rumors perpetuated by the roman empire. I learned a lot of things about the queen of Egypt that I previously did not know. Things such as Cleopatra getting exiled by her brother and manipulating her way back to the throne. I also never knew about her amazing accomplishments such as being multi-lingual, leading armies, scholar-hood, along with her management of the economy. This was a very interesting Ted Talk that I would recommend to anyone interested in ancient Egyptian history, or anyone interested in powerful women.
If Superpowers were real: Immortality || Joy Lin
ReplyDeleteI must say Ive never seen a more dream crushing Ted Talk than this one. In this Ted Talk Joy Lin explains how the superpower immortality is flawed. Ive always thought since I was young "how cool would it be to live forever and see the world change?" in this video Joy Lim explains the part of immortality that isnt so appealing. For example how living forever means you watch your family, and friends all die before your eyes. Also Immortality does not mean invincibility, meaning that an injury sustained does not go away unless treated, and that you can still die if the methods are extreme enough. Although short this Ted Talk was really exciting and enlightening.
A Thousand Times No
ReplyDeleteShebab presents one of the most comical slights in the guise of art that I can other find praise for. Her cheek and guile not only spend time enriching her viewers into the breadth of Islamic art that is present throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean, but additionally in exploring the beauty of linguistics. The word no in Arabic is far more, it is “no, and a thousand times no”. Very direct, very harsh, and in all of the collected works she displays, exquisite.
The Small and Surprisingly Dangerous Detail the Police Track About You
The automatic license plate reader, what a boring series of words. Wrong, they are terrifying. Imagine what you could do with the knowledge of where a single individual went on a daily basis. If they went repeatedly to a sexual health clinic or a therapist office, what might it tell you about them? A lot. Now consider an entire nation where the state knows where you are and when. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the United States of America. Innocuous, but insidious.
Social Maps that Reveal a City’s Intersections - and Separations
Developing a map of a city seems to relate to the layout of its streets and districts. What about its culture? Troy designs maps based upon social media within a city to describe the culture of that city. His work in Baltimore reveals the structure of communities within the overall framework of geography. Additionally it highlights the connections between those communities. These identifications are an interesting way of taking a pulse within a city, and perhaps discovering how well it mixes with itself. This way of thinking might help discover ways to bridge the gaps between subcultures.
Don’t Like Clickbait? Don’t Click
What a novel idea. Sometimes the most simplistic of answers is simply the right course of action. In this case ridicule works to affect a higher quality of internet discourse. Ostracizing those whose soapbox rants or crappy articles seek to exploit and intrigue is precisely what they are seeking to avoid. Kohn is more than right, don't give in to the crack of the internet. Spurn its dealers by rendering them devoid of your buisness. Speak by ignoring their speech, what a fantastic inversion of their goals.