I posted about
TED in the past. A
CNN article mentioned TED recently and I checked out a few more of the new talks. From the CNN article;
Here are 10 big ideas from TED2010...
$60K a year can make you happyPsychologist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman says millions of dollars won't buy you happiness, but a job that pays $60,000 a year might help.
Save the world through gamesJane McGonigal, a game designer, says playing online video games gives people "superpowers" that help them improve the real world...
Anonymity promotes honesty
Christopher "Moot" Poole runs one of the seedier corners of the Internet. His site, called 4chan, is known as a den of porn, hacking and anonymous rants...
We can end slavery
Kevin Bales, founder of a group called Free the Slaves, said he was surprised to learn slavery still existed when he read a pamphlet saying just that...
Moral ideas are right or wrong, not both
Writer Sam Harris -- who is perhaps best known as a stern critic of organized religion -- says we use science to prove or disprove hypotheses, and we should similarly use evidence to say some activities are moral and others are not...
'What we eat is really our chemotherapy three times a day'William Li, president and medical director of The Angiogenesis Foundation, which focuses on the connection between blood vessel growth and aggressive cancers. There are 11 FDA-approved drugs that inhibit growth of blood vessels that sustain cancers, but Li pointed out that there are a number of foods and beverages that could offer substances that accomplish the same thing -- and could help prevent cancer...
The ukulele can stop warUkulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro says his traditional, Hawaiian instrument, which he learned to play at age 4, can make the world a less violent place...
$28 billion mostly wasted on placebosHolding up bottles of herbal supplements, writer Michael Specter spoke out against what he sees as a growing rejection of science. He says it's resulted in parents refusing to vaccinate their children due to an unfounded connection to autism and people shunning genetically modified foods that have the potential of helping the world fight increasing hunger.
The herbs, he said accomplish one thing: "They darken your urine. You want to pay $28 billion for dark urine? That's OK."
'Stop politicians doing stupid things that spread HIV'Elizabeth Pisani, epidemiologist who has studied drug abusers and sex workers who are involved in the spread of HIV-AIDS, said nations that have followed former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's example by creating programs to provide sterile needles to drug abusers are much more successful in curbing the spread of the disease...
Every eight days, the toll of a Haiti quakeEsther Duflo, a professor in MIT's economics department, said, that every day, 25,000 children die of preventable causes, adding up every eight days to the approximate death toll of the Haiti earthquake...