the phones just are not ringing about the extermination of people. there seems to be more worried about the extinction of species, but not of the murder of people. yet today in the 21st century there seems to e a new movement that is indeed focused on the endangered peoples movements.
very compelling speaker.
spoke about the challenge that we face with the dilemma of technology being sold into repressive regimes that can be used for repression. much of it is being used to track down bloggers who were enabled by the very technology which nabbed them.
are we at risk of a nuclear attack? perhaps more important, can we permanently eliminate the threat of nuclear attack? by 1985 the world had 65,000 nuclear warheads. 95% of these were in the US and Russia. after 1985 numbers of warheads were reduced. so essentially, there are two chapters of the nuclear threat. chapter one was 1949 – 1991 when there was an arms race between the US and Russia. the second chapter has been manifested ever since the break up of soviet union. the challenge is that we no longer have one enemy, but is really about terrorism. today, there is a real threat of nuclear explosion. response planing is essential. in order to survive after such a blast, you have to get away. distance and time.
this was scary.
http://www.childrenshealthfund.org/whoweare/bio_iredlener.php
why don’t we ask for the things we need? in praise of praise. peace starts household by household.
an incredible talk about the lucifer effect. wow. another one to see again. standing ovation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Garrett_Lisi
he spoke about quantum mechanics. it was a bit too out there for me. and the presentation was too mechanical to really get into. he did show some amazing graphics. but….
he spoke about the beginnings of the TED conferences with Chris Anderson….worth to see again if it comes up as a podcast. great story!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Kearns_Goodwin
wow. a historian who gave a really great talk. defiantly look at again!
he talked about the importance of lifestyle changes in preventative medicine. it was really interesting. worth looking up to learn more about it.
http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/
memes – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme – essentially a unit of cultural evolution.
Darwin – if you have creatures that vary, and if you have struggle for life so that nearly all of them die, and if the very few that survive passed on whatever it is that allowed them to survive, then they must be better off. evolution is essentially variation, selection and heredity. if you have these, then you MUST get evolution. This is the simple version of the principle of Universal Darwinism.
she started off well.
she showed a bunch of photos of toilet paper that has been folded. useless but a cultural artifact that has been spread around the world.
life performs computation.
i have not heard someone talk so fast in a loooong time. good example of how not to do a presentation. he took a good hours worth of content and simply talked as fast as possible to get his standard talk into 20 minutes.
it was interesting. he made the DNA smily faces by folding the DNA. his thing is DNA origami.
designing and synthesizing life.
after mapping the genome, now he is looking at digitizing life. one of his areas of focus is to create ‘creatures’ which can create ethanol or hydrogen. it was an interesting talk. it is not genesis, but manipulation of the building blocks in a conscious way. he looks at synthetic genomics as the way to do what is known as combinatorial genomics. there are 20 million ‘blocks’ which can be combined now.
he is now working on an on-line tool to create synthetic life. he believes that he will be making a new 4th generation bio-fuel within the next 18 months.
