gregladen | April 4, 2008Speaking at TED in 1990, the not-yet-legendary architect Frank Gehry takes a whistlestop tour of his work to date, from his own Venice Beach house to the under-construction American Center in Paris. In this 50-minute slideshow (before TED's 18-minute limit), Gehry explains the site-specific nature of his buildings -- context he felt was lost in the discussions of his then-controversial work. In this candid and funny talk, he exposes his own messy creative process ("I take pieces and bits, and look at it, and struggle with it, and cut it away...") and the way he struggles with problems ("This…
gregladen | April 3, 2008"In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not DNA."
-Gregory Bateson
gregladen | April 3, 2008
... well, OK, maybe that is a slight exaggeration.
You know about giardia. Giardia intestinalis. It causes a nasty gut infection, and you get it by drinking water pretty much anywhere in the US (potentially). It is very hard to get rid of.
Giardia adapt to immune system attacks (of their host) in a way that passes that adaptation down to their offspring without genes. It is a Lamarkian process. Giardia have no mitochondria, yet many of the genes known to be in mitochondria in eukaryotes are found in the giardian nucleus. So, ancestral giardia probably had mitochondria, but all those…
gregladen | April 3, 2008Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools. With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open their own volunteer-driven, wildly creative writing labs. But you don't need to go that far, he reminds us -- it's as simple as asking a teacher "How can I help?" He asks that we share our own volunteering stories at his new website, Once Upon a School.
gregladen | April 2, 2008"All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men. "
-Isaac Azimov
gregladen | April 2, 2008I don't have time to really do this paper justice, but I wanted you to know about it. It's at PLoS, and therefore you don't have to be special to read it free.
Understanding the dynamics of human body weight change has important consequences for conditions such as obesity, starvation, and wasting syndromes. Changes of body weight are known to result from imbalances between the energy derived from food and the energy expended to maintain life and perform physical work. However, quantifying this relationship has proved difficult, in part because the body is composed of multiple components…
gregladen | April 2, 2008I came across this chilling misanthropic missive in support of home schooling.
The greatest pitfalls of public education are the humanistic philosophies taught at the expense of biblical truth, ungodly teachers and classmates seeking to influence our children, and the absence of spiritual or moral considerations within the educational process. However, those problems aren't isolated to the public-school setting (as evidenced by just a few minutes of television-watching).
Within most of our neighborhoods--and even in some Christian schools--there are influences that tear at our desired…
gregladen | April 2, 2008As she accepts her 2008 TED Prize, author and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- have been diverted from the moral purpose they share to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion -- to help restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine.
gregladen | April 1, 2008"We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet."
-Margaret Mead
Quote
gregladen | April 1, 2008Syphilis is first clearly seen in Europe in 1495, when it appeared as a plague (though it was not "the blague" ... Yersinia pestis) among Charles VIII's troops. When these troops went home shortly after the fall of Naples, they brought this disease with them, staring an epidemic. The level of mortality in Europe was truly devastating. Is it the case that syphilis was brought to Europe by Columbus and his men just prior to the plague-like outbreak of 1495?
The origin of syphilis has been debated for years, really since the actual 1495 event itself. Some researchers have asserted that…
gregladen | April 1, 2008
This image shows a large outcrop of layered rock in Aureum Chaos, an area that has apparently collapsed, leaving a region of irregular knobs and hills. Unlike many of the knobs, the light outcrop shows distinct, nearly horizontal layers. This may indicate that it was deposited after the collapse of the Chaos.
... this is what my back hard looks like right about now.... Click the photo for more info.
gregladen | April 1, 2008
This is kinda like what my front yard looks like right now. Click the picture to see and learn more.
gregladen | March 31, 2008Canada, land of the holier than thou. Hey, some of my best friends are Canadians, but really, most Canadians look down on Americans for being all the bad things that we truly are. So fine, we deserve it. But if you are a non-Canadian of any nationality, the next time a Canadian condescends to you, mention the one-million-seal a year quote that the Canadian government allows in their annual seal hunt.
Top Three Seal Hunt Myths
Here are the top three myths told by Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) about the commercial seal hunt:
Myth #1: The seal hunt is humane.
All…
gregladen | March 31, 2008
Jennifer Gooch's mission was to create a simple Web site where people could go to find their lost gloves. Even if no happy reunions ever took place, she was just content to spread a little goodwill.
But just a month since http://www.onecoldhand.com went live, the Carnegie Mellon University art student is busier than ever. She's reunited four gloves with their owners, is working on similar sites for cities around the globe, and is planning a book to showcase her found gloves.
Four. Wow, that is impressive, I would have thought zero.
Why do I think that? No, not because I think the dog…