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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Power

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.

http://www.drlauramd.com/

an incredible talk about the lucifer effect. wow. another one to see again. standing ovation.

http://www.zimbardo.com/
http://www.lucifereffect.org/

http://sifter.org/~aglisi/
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://www.wurman.com/rsw/

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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Ornish

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.

http://www.dna.caltech.edu/~pwkr/

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter

the first day of the conference worked up to its grand finale which was to be a BBC debate on the role of media in shaping public opinion. technical glitches precluded the seamless transition to the debate. Robin Williams took to the stage to do about 25 minutes of stand-up comedy. fantastic.

covering britney is cheaper.

she spoke about the type of news which americans are consuming. she used great images from worldmapper.org

http://www.current.org/radio/radio0601miller.shtml

he talked about breathing. it was a bit hard to follow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Sri_Ravi_Shankar
http://www.srisri.org/

author and paleontologist.

he rambled about life on earth and how the fossil record indicated the crater impact. he presented the evidence for this. it ended up being interesting. he talked about the longevity of bacteria. especially green sulfur bacteria. H2S can be given to a mammal and turn it into a reptile. then cool the mammal.

he suggests that humans have a reaction that allows us to produce H2S and survive huge heights of CO2. this very hard to understand and believe.

the earth has never had any ice on it when CO2 has been above 1000ppm. we are now at 380 and rising.

Rare Earth. Whey complex life is uncommon in the universe
the life and earth of planet earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ward_(paleontologist)

a bit of a comedian.....off the wall, but ok

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hodgman

a wonderful talk about the origin of our species. defiantly work seeing when podcast.

http://leakeyfoundation.org/foundation/f1_7.jsp

He has to be one of my most favorite current artists. his work is simply incredible.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

this man has seen amazing things. he shared some insights from his journeys to some of the most remote peoples of the world.

a MIUST see podcast when on-line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Davis

WOW!!! oh my what a way to start. she told a story that was beyond riveting. she had a stroke and is a neuroscientist. she lived thru her death. simply incredible.

a MUST see when the podcast is up.

http://stores.lulu.com/jibtaylo

stanford physicist. now looking at the largest scale. the talk will be about the 21st century universe.
ordinary matter makes up on 4% of the universe. 26% is dark matter. we only know it is there due to the gravitational fields. the other 70% is Dark Energy. she rambled on about both dark energy matter and dark energy.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/people/faculty/burchat_patricia.html

presented the new www.worldwidetelescope.org. this will be launched by Microsoft in April of this year. it should be really cool.

http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?msr_tr_id=MSR-TR-2002-75