A "smartpill" is a type of
endoscopic capsule camera that creates a video of the digestive process from entrance to exit.
For Stefani Bardin's "M2A Project" film for TEDxManhattan, two subjects swallowed a smartpill capsule. One subject ate a meal of Top Ramen and Haribo Goldbears, together with a drink of blue Gatorade. The other subject ate a meal of homemade chicken noodle soup, together with naturally flavored and colored gummy bears and a hibiscus drink.
The camera followed.
[NSFLunch.
Wired article for a quick overview.]
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posted by Countess Elena
on Feb 11, 2012 -
3 comments
Over the past few centuries, Western cultures have been very good at creating general prosperity for themselves. Historian Niall Ferguson asks: Why the West, and less so the rest? He suggests half a dozen big ideas from Western culture -- call them
the 6 killer apps -- that promote wealth, stability and innovation. And in this new century, he says, these apps are all shareable.
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posted by Foci for Analysis
on Oct 4, 2011 -
97 comments
Simply pairings of amazingly interesting individuals prompted by a question, generating a conversation. For 10 minutes to 50 minutes. And so it will go – conversations interlaced with threads of improvised music. An astrophysicist & a microbiologist. An actor & a playwright. A jazz musician & a classical one. An energetic exploration of the lost art of conversing.
Thirty years after launching the original TED conference, Richard Saul Wurman seeks to
reinvent the typical conference format with
The WWW Conference.
posted by Foci for Analysis
on Aug 9, 2011 -
15 comments
Filter Bubbles: As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy
posted by MechEng
on May 7, 2011 -
77 comments
Am I supposed to be laughing or taking notes? Comic Charles Fleischer, who played Carvelli on
Welcome Back, Kotter and voiced Roger Rabbit, gives
a Ted talk which degenerates into what appears to be a dissertation about the number 37 and its relationship to string theory, delivered in a rapidly shifting sequence of accents; watch the audience get more and more uncomfortable as they try to figure out whether they're watching a stand-up routine, a Kaufmannesque prank, or a guy going crazy right before their eyes. TED should have known what they were getting; Fleischer has been performing some form of this routine
for decades. (Warning: numbered suit.)
Transcript of the routine. Fleischer's strange myspace page. (Warning: strange music/talking on click which I can't figure out how to turn off.)
posted by escabeche
on Aug 12, 2010 -
17 comments
Let me introduce you to the
Lifesaver bottle. This very compact design (in both a
bottle and a
jerrycan form) allows someone to get clean drinking water in seconds. Their filters can last up to 20000 liters in the jerrycan form and 6000 in the bottle form. The price for this technology? $150 for the bottle and $400 for the top shelf jerrycan.
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posted by DoublePlus
on Apr 2, 2010 -
72 comments
Sam Harris's talk on morality at TED has sparked a debate on whether science can have anything to say about moral problems. Harris, a prominent author and outspoken atheist, makes the politically incorrect assertion that there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality (as opposed to the concept of moral relativism), and that the methods of science can be used to determine them.
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posted by knave
on Mar 29, 2010 -
162 comments
Neil Blomkamp’s
TED Talk starts with the question of does he feel his aliens in his film
District 9 are a realistic depiction of what extraterrestrial life might actually be like... (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Feb 3, 2010 -
27 comments
Ted Taylor, physicist, nuclear scientist, and designer of the deceptively tiny
Davy Crockett nuclear recoilless rifle, is not quite as famous as one of his other projects: nuclear spacecraft propulsion.
Project Orion was intended as an interplanetary (and eventually interstellar) vehicle which could achieve Earth orbit with a series of 800 nuclear explosions, each detonated about a second after the other below the spacecraft. It would propel itself through space in a similar fashion, carrying many orders of magnitude more mass than chemical rockets such as the Saturn which would ultimately take men to the moon.
Taylor and others intended a mission to Mars by 1965, but the
Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 destroyed all hope to see Orion take flight.
For the interested,
"The Curve of Binding Energy" goes into much more detail, including the U.S. Air Force's plan to turn Orion into a nuclear space battleship (!).
A youtube video of an Orion concept test using conventional explosives is
here (flight footage begins around 0:23).
posted by edguardo
on Feb 1, 2010 -
56 comments
Can robots feel human emotions?
"Hal, switch to manual hibernation control."
"I can tell from your voice harmonics, Dave, that you're badly upset. Why don't you take a stress pill and get some rest?"
"I'm sorry, Dave, but in accordance with special subroutine C1435-dash-4, quote, When the crew are dead or incapacitated, the onboard computer must assume control, unquote. I must, therefore, overrule your authority, since you are not in any condition to exercise it intelligently."
"Hal," said Bowman, now speaking with an icy calm. "I am not incapacitated. Unless you obey my instructions, I shall be forced to disconnect you.
previously
posted by Xurando
on Dec 13, 2009 -
152 comments
Sptnk.org : The Observatory for the Study of Contemporary Culture. Sputnik is an NY organization that seeks to document, promote, and foster discussion around current trends in culture (I think Sptnk is more a "loose confederation" than an organization, but I can't seem to find much more about them. Here's one of the founder's tongue-in-cheek Linked In page). They just launched a new website which ties together sets of interviews from thinkers and doers in lots of fields. They are organized nicely into
"paths",
"conversations", and transmissions (presentations).
Jonathan Harris (he blogs at
number27.org) did the design of the site, which is top notch. The production values are not up to
ted.com levels, but the weaving of stories and conversations that is emerging may prove useful. Happy culture hunting!
posted by zpousman
on Jul 2, 2009 -
18 comments
