ted
carlyo | March 21, 2013The USA Science & Engineering Festival is thrilled to introduce our elite group of X-STEM and Nifty Fifty Speakers for the 3rd Festival! In today's blog we feature Physicist and former NASA Astronaut Dr. Kathryn Thornton!
We are excited to announce that Dr. Kathryn Thornton will serve as both an X-STEM and Nifty Fifty Speaker for the Festival! Selected in 1984 by NASA as an astronaut candidate, Kathryn Thornton would go on to serve 12 notable years with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston -- a career which would see her become the second American woman to walk in space, in addition to…
illconsidered | September 6, 2010Here is a very good TED talk by Johan Rockstrom about human pressures, environmental constraints and possible futures.
drorzel | August 10, 2010A reader emails to ask about a new-to-me theory of physics, called "Quantum Space Theory" being promoted by a fellow named Thad Roberts. I wouldn't usually bother with this, but Roberts was one of the speakers at TEDx Boulder. this is disappointing, to put it mildly-- TED is a respected organization, and I don't like seeing them lend their support to something that is just dripping with kook signifiers. The key paragraph of the overview of the theory is:
To start grasping this higher-dimensional intuÂitive picÂture check out the book excerpts in the book excerpts secÂtion. If you are more…
illconsidered | April 27, 2010I found this from a comment on a Skeptical Science article (worth a read in its own right) and thought readers here might be impressed.
It is from a TED talk by James Balog who has been creating fascinating and awe inspiring time-lapse videos of calving glaciers. The whole talk is about 20 minutes and worth listening to, if you must you can jump ahead to around the 9th minute when the set-up ends and the visuals begin:
Of course, the whole thing could have been cooked up by Phil Jones and CRU, with help from the NASA moon-landing fakers...
sciencepunk | April 17, 2010Journalist Michael Specter makes a erudite and impassioned plea for reason and critical thinking in this video from TED. It's a fantastic speech, and huge tracts could have sprung from my own lips (and probably have done on one occassion or another). He even paraphrases a favourite bon mot of mine: "science is a process not a pronoun". Check it out:
Hat tip: Brian
bioephemera | April 18, 2009
In her recent TED talk, JoAnne Kuchera-Morin described UCSB's AlloSphere, a new project that enables scientists to literally stand inside a three-story projection of their data:
The AlloSphere space consists of a 3-story cube that is treated with extensive sound absorption material making it one of the largest anechoic chambers in the world. Standing inside this chamber are two 5-meter-radius hemispheres constructed of perforated aluminum that are designed to be optically opaque and acoustically transparent. (source)
Scientists and artists can stand on a bridge through the center of this…