new ted talks posted!!!! here are two of my new favs. i'm so obsessed.
Morgan Spurlock: the greatest ted talk ever sold reasons this talk is awesome:
Morgan Spurlock is awesome. Supersize me was obvi bangin and loved his tv series 30 days.
the talk ends up being a satellite conversation to the main discussion he has in his upcoming doc, the greatest movie ever sold, both which uncover the hidden and influential world of brand marketing (what i do 9 to 5, so of particular interest to me). love to look at the thing i do 80% of my waking life in a different light. it's probably going to make me depressed about what i do.
Eric Whitacre: a virtual choir looooove this ted talk. eric talks about his experience being part of a choir of the first time and literally how it takes your breath away, how it makes you feel a part of something bigger - something that you wouldnt ever be able to create on your own, how hearing classical music/opera live is just unreal, etc. totally feel him on this one, this is why i liked being in an orchestra. not because i played the violin well or really liked it all that much, but because it allowed me to be part of a bigger sound, dissonance and harmony, yada yada.
anyway, eric ended up with this awesome idea to conduct a chior based off of youtube videos. he sent out a video of him conducting, and 100 people sent back videos of themselves singing their part.
This is the first video he did, watch out it's flippin amazing:
and here's the ted talk eric did this year where he ends up doing a second virtual chorus of 2000+ people from all over the world:
it's decided. going to ted is officially on my bucket list.
i've been on a bit of a TED kick, and by kick i of course mean i watched 23 videos in the past 3 days.
if you dont know what TED is, it's basically youtube with an intellectual/insightful/artistic filter. weeds out the double rainbows/people setting their eyebrows on fire iphone videos. they're video's of talks from various TED events throughout the year. you can watch them at TED.com or on hulu. i'd like to go to one of these talks, but tickets are apparently $5k.
TED stands for technology, entertainment, design: ideas worth spreading. My favorite videos are:
1. underwater astonishments
as of 2008, we've only explored 3% of the earth's oceans. and 70% of the earth is covered in ocean. that's a lot of unknown.
highlights: 4:21. octopus with an invisibility cloak. seriously i had to watch that part a couple times. amazeballz
2. Let's Talk Parenting Taboos not that i'm necessarily interested in parenting tips, but they point some interesting things about "the baseline of happiness" that are oh so relevant.
13:05 they bring up this chart of average happiness vs age. they then apply a secondary line to plot the extremes of emotions that range around average happiness - when you're young the highs are super high, but the lows are super low. as rufus says, "age is a form of lithium, as you get older you become more stable." as you enter into adulthood, your average happiness goes up but the highs and lows become less extreme. "your average happiness goes up, but you lose those transcendent moments".
so basically they're saying you're overall more happy, but your highs arent as high and your lows arent as low because you self limit your experiences. re: the example he included of you being given the opportunity to go to a concert that is 99% guaranteed to rock your world, but you decide against it because you fear it will be crowded and you wont be able to get a beer so you rather just stay at home. hello, this happens to me ALL THE TIME. and it's kind of sad - i want those highs, but i guess by this point you dont risk it because you know the lows can be debilitating. so here we are moseying through our 20s, right along the happiness baseline.
3. a choir as big as the internet
insanely beautiful.
also holler at the boy with the yellow lighting at 1:45. hey boy hey!
4. Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain
"Listening to Bobby McFerrin sing may be hazardous to your preconceptions. Side effects may include unparalleled joy, a new perspective on creativity, rejection of the predictable, and a sudden, irreversible urge to lead a more spontaneous existence."
"what's interesting to me about that is regardless of where i am, every audience gets that."
5.mike rowe celebrates dirty jobs
is he not the manliest man or what. goodness. even when he's talking about cutting off goat balls.
"Listen for his insights and observations about the nature of hard work, and how it’s been unjustifiably degraded in society today."
6. what adults can learn from kids
ok little kids who seem too old to be their age like this girl, dakota fanning circa i am sam era, and that man child who lipsyncs to katy perry on youtube, really freak me out, but seriously she was giving this talk like BAM.
jealous of her speech delivery skills. although she's pretty nerdy. but seriously, girlfriend be name dropping aristotle and bill gates, referencing "totalitarian regimes" and "pioneer germ fighters", and using the word "reciprocal," "credentials," "imperative," "senile" and "alienating" appropriately. she's 11!! shouldnt she be playing with da bratz dolls or something?
also in somewhat unrelated but related news, i saw ted mosbey at the movie theater last weekend.
i love the iphone, i have one, i live by it, etc etc
but we had the editor of pop sci stop by and give us a preview of all the cool tech stuff that's coming out and let me tell you, the next gen droid is freaking awesome. and this picture is funny.
my productivity this morning has been pretty low, good thing it's slow today. I of course fail at the dummy-proof process of activating iPhones. But nick did some troubleshooting and fixed all of it. and now it's fully functioning! i'm so connected. too cool for you now. just kidding.
Can't wait to have more than an 8 minute talk time battery life. ugh my phone now sucks so bad. Although it did come back from the dead after going through the wash cycle...
which will basically convert any video file into an mp3 file (fo FREE. waffle fries).
so say you're watching a live video of the ting tings on youtube and you really want that version of the song to play on your ipod. you go to the above link, enter in the youtube link, and voila! it pops out an mp3 of the audio from the video.
it's also good if you're too cheap to buy 99 cent mp4 on iTunes. Enjoy!
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