Babbles of a Lover and a Fighter

For those of you who don’t know about TED, it’s a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.  The speakers are awesome, ridiculously passionate about their research, beliefs, careers, and hobbies.  They’re basically a bunch of nerds, artists, comedians, scholars who come together to share ideas.

I like to browse every once in awhile, and since there is such a broad spectrum of topics (from religion to orgasms, string theory to slight of hand, culinary arts to Legos, world hunger to aliens), one in every 5 or so I watch really grabs my attention.  Some speakers just reek (in the best way possible) of compassion and do-goody-ness, some make my brain hurt, some make my heart hurt, and some just make me giggle with titillating humor, like this snippet from Emily Levine’s Theory of Everything:

The reason I don’t do math is I was taught to do math and read at the same time. So you’re 6 yrs old you’re reading Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  It becomes rapidly obvious that there are only 2 kinds of men in the world: dwarves and prince charmings, and the odds are 7 to 1 against your finding the prince.  That’s why little girls don’t do math; it’s too depressing.

Some of the talks are about 20-30 minutes, but if you have about 4 minutes and 27 seconds, check out this talk about social media, memes, and humpback whales:

And Alexis Ohanian (picture snagged from this interview) is kinda cute and has a nice voice.  Just sayin’.

So yeah, TED talks are brilliant and always oh-so-interesting.  It’s my go-to when I feel like my brain’s deteriorating from too many pointless YouTube videos.

Tags: TED

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 12:07 am and is filed under Things I Like. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.