BurntPhotons

I saw this video on Amber Mac's weblog today and couldn't help adding it here. I love the song (it was the reason I wanted to buy the game Gears of War for the Xbox 360), and the video is interesting too. You can find the original video here. I won't get into the politics of the whole thing but it states some very interesting information about the world if it were only made up of 100 people.

I just realized how odd that the song was used for both Gears of War advertising and this video. Strange world.

So do you know TED?

As their about page states:

"TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader."

"The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)."

It is a really cool event. (Or at least appears that way from back here in Ohio.)

They get some big-named presenters like Jane Goodall, Bono, President Bill Clinton, Jeff Bezos, and James Nachtwey to talk on all subjects they care about or champion such as technology, AIDS, and global warming. In addition TED answers the wishes of some of the presenters ever year.

TED offers some of their presentations online to view from their site. I happened to stumble across them a long time ago and am slowly making my way through some of their video content. I just stumbled across this presentation from the My Extra Life blog which linked to a YouTube presentation by one of the presenters talking about a a photosynth demo.

Check it out... and all the other video's at TED.com.

EDITED 8-9-2007: Fixed the links to TED.com. Evidentially I suck at html.

I have to admit I'm a bit space crazy. Perhaps it goes back to my childhood where I had dreams of being Captain Kirk or my desire to fly airplanes. (Or maybe it is more of a psychological problem I should investigate further now that I've read that sentence a second time.)

But anyway... The program FeedDemon helps me keep track of a multitude of subjects. Many of the sites it checks out for me are photography related, but in trying to catchup on the myriad of websites it tracks for me I've noticed that I appear to have a geeky love of space and science. Here's a list of just a few that I keep track of.

Astonomy Picture of the Day -- It does what it says. Images from The Hubble Space Telescope or from some other satellites are the sites main bread and butter, but it is not limited to pure space images. I've seen photographs of comets in the desert sky or a closeup of planet passing in front of the sun. Each time I look at the site I find something stunning.

Science @ NASA -- The site touches on some of the science behind the space program. A recent article was about a satellite using Pluto to gain some speed for it's path through the universe.

NASA Breaking News-- Probably the geekiest of them all for me, the site keeps me up to date on all of the goings on at NASA, such as when the space shuttle is rolling to the launch pad, or what is going on with the international space station or what sort of budget has just been passed. Some of that I'll admit I don't read.

I wonder which came first. My love of science fiction or my love of science.