Gerard Senehi:
Listed as an "experimental mentalist", I wasn't sure if this guy was sent to entertain us or to convince us to re-examine what we believe our minds can do. I was sitting fairly close to the stage for this talk, and people - I could not believe my eyes. I think I gasped aloud a few times - he made objects float, bend, break... I turned to look at the audience at one point, and I was sitting amidst a crowd of 12 year olds at the circus... wide-eyed, open-mouthed - startled, disarmed, and gleeful. Don't we all want to believe in magic? And isn't it true that what we <i>believe</i> to be possible is a self-imposed limitation which consensus only solidifies... what if we were to expand these beliefs, would our powers expand too? Our potential?

http://experimentalist.com/

Leslie Chang:
Leslie spent almost three years with the "Factory Girls" of China - the working women who manufacture goods that all Westerners take for granted: iPhones, luxury handbags, sneakers... She wanted to sense and then communicate what it was actually like to live on that side of the supply chain. She befriended the women she studied, never pitying or objectifying them - her reporting never took on a condescending tone, that ever-present risk of any anthropological pursuit. I was affected by the humanity and respect with which she approached her journalistic task. She did not repeat the story of Western guilt ("Look how awful we are! If you own an iPhone you have blood on your hands!") she accomplished something far more significant - she brought light to the blind spots in our worldview: there are <i>people</i> at the end of that seemingly inexhaustible stream of products/gadgets - those products don't just materialize! At every stage, they involve <i>people</i> with dreams and disappointments, love and anguish, hope and desire... humanity... things infinitely more valuable than factory output.

http://www.leslietchang.com/book1.html

Elyn Saks:
In a session called "Misbehaving Beautifully", the incredibly courageous and articulate Professor Elyn Saks gave a powerful speech on her own mental illness. If you can handle a first-hand account of a psychotic episode, watch this talk. The audience was rapt - we were all imagining, with fear and profound sympathy, what it would be like to unravel in the way she was describing, to hear your mouth uttering nonsensical phrases, to feel accosted by invisible, malevolent forces, to doubt the very fabric of reality. After living a sound, well-ordered life as a working professional, how utterly terrifying to experience your own mind fracturing and malfunctioning... If this remarkable talk doesn't inspire compassion for mental illness, I don't know what will.

http://www.ted.com/talks/elyn_saks_se...

Jonathan Trent:
Jumping up and down, jumping up and down! Imagine waste water turning into biofuel for cars, buildings, airplanes. WASTE WATER! Yes, sewage. Now that's closing the loop! And get this, it releases clean water as outflow. And it's solar-powered. The trick - using green algae! Nature has ALL the answers! (more jumping up and down...)

I confess I teared up a little watching this talk. Though this technology, and others like it (WOW the new wind turbines, see the next entry!) will take a while to scale and spread, they EXIST! They are being worked on by the most brilliant minds in the world! Children of tomorrow rejoice!

At the risk of sounding a touch melodramatic (hey, it's kind of my <i>job</i>) the best thing I will take from the TED experience is this: I feel better about having children. Yep. On the subject of bringing new life to Earth, my heart is a little lighter knowing that solutions are being born, hope is alive and well, and millions of smart people out there care about the future... what a gift, mmm? (*crying again*...)

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/rese...