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Correction- the dude is from Berkeley.

Could this be enhanced by applying a small electro-static charge?

Not according to this guy from Stanford who starts talking about geckos at 12:40 and claims electrostatic forces have no effect at 17:30.

has already turned the largest oil spill in U.S. history into a thing of the past

You migh want to check out the consequences of the oil spill and the use of dispersants before making such comments!

From a scientist a the scene: The oil spill's toxic trade-off

> I recognize that I am not assailing their arguments because they are not worth my time
Translation: I'm too lazy to read the book or look up any of the papers she references from credited scientists ...

> I don't deny there are levels of consciousness, they're just all physical.
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor has first experience that disagrees with that.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

The best example of the lack of copyright is the fashion industry. There is no copyright. Everything you can see on the street or in the store you can copy free and sell it. But are we lacking of fashion? Hell no, the fashion industry is the most creative industry and there are no shortcomings of profits either. Don't believe me: http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

Only 5% of all book authors and musicians are actually making money off of copyright. At least 95% of book authors are not selling over 5000 copies of their works, the music bands are just getting 1% of each CD sales. Just watch The Surprising History of Copyright and What It Means For... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI

Another example is Metallica. They made $22.8 million from shows and only $1.6 million from album sales. The price for the album is $22.99 (or something I made a quick search) that should be $6.8 million. Even a big band like Metallica makes only 24% profit of a CD sale. Image how much a no name band is making (from http://timothyblee.com/2010/03/02/album-sales-a-trivial-fraction-of-metallicas-revenue/). And of course I like this image http://wussuphater.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/picture-1.png

Sorry, but only the 5% of the most red and most famous artists and book authors are making money from copyright. Anybody else makes no money from it. Copyright was never intended to help or protect the creator. It was historically a law to help publishers and still remains the law to help publisher. Why do you think it's called "copy right", because it protects the right of the publisher to make a copy of your work and to profit from it. The creator have the right to make a copy of his work already, you don't need a law for it.

Another argument, Creative Commons started in 2001. After only 2 years there were already approximately 1 million licenses under a CC license. After 7 years there are estimated 130 million CC licensed works. Here is my graph of their history Here is my prediction of CC works to the year 2015, by then we will have 7.6 billions works under CC.

Rarely has the geek factor at Slashdot been so painfully evident. No matter how relevant the topic, a superficial stupidity in the summary text reduces this place to a tribe of impulse-challenged baboons trading shallow bon mots like a feces fight.

Quoted at Stress : The Frontal Cortex:

"One of the first things I discovered was that I didn't like baboons very much," he says. "They're quite awful to one another, constantly scheming and backstabbing. They're like chimps but without the self-control."

Troglodytes in the high art of back-stabbing, as Sapolsky humorously demonstrates with his own poison pen:

[Old Testament nicknames] was a way of rebelling against his childhood Hebrew school teachers, who rejected the blasphemy of Darwinian evolution. "I couldn't wait for the day that I could record in my notebook that Nebuchanezzar and Naomi were off screwing in the bushes," Sapolsky wrote in A Primate's Memoir. "It felt like a pleasing revenge."

Bezos' grandfather had something useful to say about cleverness at the expense of what matters:
Bezos at Princeton

Almost every society mentioned in Buettner's study of longevity move around a lot:
Dan Buettner: How to live to be 100+

Here we are hunched over our keyboards having a feces fight about the semantics of immortality rather than thinking about major life choices. If a computer programmer's office chair was a protein complex, there would be a conjugate protein that binds the chair and expired occupant into a handy burial pod that can be rolled (rather than wheeled) out of the room.

With rare exceptions, you don't see death sitting down on the job all that often. Here's another obligatory Ted link:
Challenging Death

I had completely forgotten the cape wipe. Nice touch in the editing room.

This sad display leaves me contemplating an update to the video tombstone memorial from Atom Egoyan's "Speaking Parts" with the text of "last post" and "last tweet" added automatically to the rolling feed by the web-scrapers of omniscience. Even St Peter has an iPad these days to assist in the great summing up.

I feel the Gesture Wars are coming... This is a quite a bit simpler system, targeting broader market, then the one suggested by John Underkoffler, that was developed during the making of the "Minority Report" the movie. I have also noticed the demo for both systems did not tackle close-up gestures which is how the "Pad" will most likely be used. Plenty of space for more ideas, and competition.

Special edition or regular edition it will still never get anywhere near "Aliens." Sorry, Cameron, but the thirty years of experience you have gained and the extra production budget have actually made you worse. Go back to your roots.

Check out his TED talk...

1) Avatar was ALWAYS meant to be an eye candy spectacle. A proof of the capabilities of his company that he founded for the purpose of making 3D art.

2) Titanic was just an excuse to dive the real wreck...

3) He sought to make more films, but there wasn't any money in it, so he returned to make another Hollywood film.

4) Avatar's subsequent release merely funds his true passion of science and exploration.

I bring this up because you seem to be taking Cameron as some sort of artist who'd be interested in your critique. In reality, he's met all of his goals, and now has further funding for his true passion - exploration.

Rather interesting, don't you think?

What you mention exists: Margaret Gould Stewart: How YouTube thinks about copyright (a TED talk).

The result would be that examiners would reject everything

You sound like it's a bad think. In fact, less "intellectual property" would do the US economy right now wonders. Look at the fashion industry, there you have none "intellectual property", no copyright, no patents, and they doing quite well. Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion's free culture

But of course Cooperate America is now on it's best way to ruin that industry as well. The Costs of Ownership: Why Copyright Protection Will Hurt the Fashion Industry

""we don't know what the problem is and in fact there may not even be any problem, but let's put a stamp on it anyway" (I'm not a psychiatrist, but my father is and I talked about it with him)"

Yeah right, like this qualifies you for saying anything about it. Real severe autism certainly does exist and that there is quite strong evidence that their is in fact a spectrum. See temple grandin:

Now just watching her now she seems "more normal" but you can tell their is something off about her right away and if you had no idea of her developmental history you could easily write her off as just another psychiatrists "fake disorder".

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html

Similar to what you get with intelligence, from very stupid to very smart. The idea that things are monolithic (well understood, easily dismissed as nonsense) instead of highly complex and difficult to understand is a huge problem with human understanding of not just autism but human traits and disease in general.

So autism can range in it's severity, since "Autism" is a rubric for a host complicated factors not well understood that leads to all sorts of real life issues.

One of the real issues is

1) Humans are profoundly ignorant, oblivious and stupid at all levels of society
2) If you do not believe this, check out how medicine was practiced in the 1800's and long before that.

Like many things autistic spectrum disorders are over-diagnosed but why why people are diagnosed on the autistic spectrum is in the first place is to get help. People are insanely insanely prejudiced against one another that do not fit the behaviour of the masses and so they become discriminated against in employment and in other avenues of life. So it's little wonder why many people think psychiatry is bunkum, they want the other to be easy to understand and to justify their their ignorance and innate prejudices against others. People want answers to complicated questions within their narrow window of existence, I'm sorry but reality does not work like this for anyone who has actually looked at the history of medicine and psychiatry in particular. Entire generations of people existed in darkness simply because it was beyond their ages understanding and understanding of autism today still suffers from this same phenomenon.

It's easy to to try to discredit something you've never known anyone living with or experience their daily behavior on a regular basis.

With Autism being so prevalent in humans

Autism is not prevalent at all. The fairly recently introduced class of "autism spectrum disorders" however are, but that's because it's generally a weasel term for "we don't know what the problem is and in fact there may not even be any problem, but let's put a stamp on it anyway" (I'm not a psychiatrist, but my father is and I talked about it with him). My *personal* opinion is that many people who are somehow not very socially minded or otherwise feel like an outlier want to be diagnosed with something that "explains" that fact. However, nobody is great at everything and the fact that you are less good at certain things does not mean that you suffer from a disorder (just like people who aren't good at maths don't suffer from a "calculation spectrum disorder").

It's similar to the ADHD diagnoses in many cases (note: I'm not saying in all cases). There's a wonderful talk by Ken Robinson at TED that touches on this. It's been a while since I watched it, but at one point the presenter talks about a kid (a few decades ago) that did bad at school, never could sit still, was hard to deal with etc and no one could figure out what was wrong with it. Eventually however, it was diagnosed by a smart guy as suffering from the affliction of being a "dancer". They enrolled it in dancing classes and that person grew up to become a very famous dancer and choreographer. He notes that today the kid would probably have been diagnosed with ADHD, but fortunately that "condition" wasn't invented yet back then.

Yes, you may not have become an engineer... you may have become something else.

Using medication to shoehorn children into oppressive child-hostile environment (school) is not the best solution IMHO.

The key to reverse-engineering the human brain lies in decoding and simulating the cerebral cortex - the seat of cognition. The human cortex has about 22 billion neurons and 220 trillion synapses. A supercomputer capable of running a software simulation of the human brain doesn't exist yet. Researchers would require a machine with a computational capacity of at least 36.8 petaflops and a memory capacity of 3.2 petabytes - a scale that supercomputer technology isn't expected to hit for at least three years, according to IBM researcher Dharmendra Modha. Modha leads the cognitive computing project at IBM's Almaden Research Center. By next year, IBM's ‘Sequoia' supercomputer should be able to offer 20 petaflops per second peak performance, and an even more powerful machine will be likely in two to three years. "Reverse-engineering the brain is being pursued in different ways," says Kurzweil. "The objective is not necessarily to build a grand simulation - the real objective is to understand the principle of operation of the brain." Reverse engineering the human brain is within reach, agrees Terry Sejnowski, head of the computational neurobiology lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Sejnowski says he agrees with Kurzweil's assessment that about a million lines of code may be enough to simulate the human brain.

That last line is probably wildly incorrect, but it doesn't really change the basis of the argument. It's not infeasible that we could reach this in a decade. Look at this TED talk from 2009: http://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.html where Henry Markram claims he's able to simulate a single neocortical column on a neuronal level in a supercomputer.

Now go back to TFA:

I'll make a prediction, too. We will not be able to plug a single unknown protein sequence into a computer and have it derive a complete description of all of its functions by 2020. Conceivably, we could replace this step with a complete, experimentally derived quantitative summary of all of the functions and interactions of every protein involved in brain development and function, but I guarantee you that won't happen either. And that's just the first step in building a simulation of the human brain derived from genomic data. It gets harder from there.

PZ Myers is probably correct about that: we won't be able to plug in an amino acid sequence into a computer and then figure out what it looks like in 3D, and how it interacts on a molecular scale. But that argument doesn

TED had an interesting talk about patents and innovation from the perspective of the fashion industry, in comparison to the software industry. The point being that the fashion industry has no patent protection, is full of innovation and makes a bucket load of money.

The reasons why the fashion industry wasn't allowed patents is also interesting, I would say the same arguments could apply to software.

Don't forget air quality. There's a cool TED talk on this

http://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_on_how_to_grow_your_own_fresh_air.html

They measured a 20% (or something - watch the video) increase in productivity after using plants to clean the air.

There's a cool TED talk on this

http://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_on_how_to_grow_your_own_fresh_air.html

They measured a 20% (or something - watch the video) increase in productivity after using plants to clean the air.

Oh, and by the way, sorry for double-posting, but there is a pretty interesting talk on TED recently on the subject of copyright in the clothing industry. The point being that there is none, and how the clothing industry have managed without it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

Rory Sutherland touched this subject earlier of Ted. The 12-minute talk is here; http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_sweat_the_small_stuff.html

Many nice observations there, but instead of ruining it for everybody by trying to rephrase them, just spend 2 minutes and watch the beginning. You'll likely watch the rest too. ;)

Monkeys? Crows use tools. They can bend wire into the shape of a hook to get things out of a narrow space. Without being taught. Tool use is no big deal. http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows.html

NO, NO, NO. That's a debunked myth.

The solution to overpopulation is the development of the third world, increasing availability to food and medicine. Easier said than done, of course, but that's the now-obvious goal. Promotion of suffering is neither strategically- and certainly not morally the right approach.

Sorry to reply to myself, but if anyone is interested, here is Shai Agassi's TED talk discussing this idea. He emphasizes the separation of "battery ownership" from "car ownership". His point is that when you buy a gas-powered car, the car is pretty cheap. You then pay for gas, and that recurring gas-cost is what pays for the expensive oil wells and refinery operations. But when you buy an electric car, you are expected to pay for the whole battery pack. If instead you just buy the car, and rent/lease/subscribe-to the battery pack, then you're back to the situation where the up-front cost is lower, and you pay incrementally for the expensive infrastructural components.

This makes the gas vs. electric cost comparison "more fair" in some sense, and makes electric cars affordable to the masses. (Potentially.)

I guess MMA is Mixed Martial Arts, I've never heard of that term or acronym before.

Humans have been into aggression for since before the dawn of the earliest civilizations, do you really think it's going to go away any time soon? Maybe you need to brush up on your history a little bit, "civilized" societies can and do go from their pinnacle to their worst in short time spans, shockingly short if there is a lot of pent-up tension. In some ways, I think it might be argued that civilized societies pretend they are free of humanity's worst aspects, when it's just denial or turning a blind eye.

On the contrary, there has never been so little violence in this world: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html

Everybody must have seen this video on TED:

http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves.html

If you can read the electrical impulses non-intrusively and with a lightweight headgear, and then use an adaptive algorithm to learn an individual's 'fingerprint' brainwave patterns, you can easily use the technology to control everything from powered wheelchairs to those cool animatronic prosthetics developed by the Japanese. Of course, you will also need some corrective algorithms so that empathically generated signals do not start to control the hardware ;)

For someone doing this manually yes however photosynth has made this an easy endeavor now a days. You will see what I mean from the 3:00 mark and on.

http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html

WikiLeaks are being responsible in their disclosure. They do redact things which offer no more insight than is required. The names of the people involved in specific stories will most commonly be redacted (nearly always), in order to ensure that there is no unnecessary repercussion.

WikiLeaks is a whistleblower. They are not trolls.

If you want insight into what WikiLeaks is all about, and what their principles, and policies are, I would suggest this pretty good interview of Julian Assange by Chris Anderson at TED.

When it comes to data, this guy is the presentation master:

The best stats you've ever seen

Asia's Rise

When it comes to data, this guy is the presentation master:

The best stats you've ever seen

Asia's Rise

I personally am pretty confident that cryonics works. Yes, I have a degree in a related field and I am working on an MD. When I say "works", I mean that if a patient is frozen with a well oxygenated brain within a short time period following legal death (the heart stops), and cryoprotectants are used, then I am confident that nearly all personality and memories are preserved.

I recall actually hearing the opposite regarding oxygenation. Based on people that have fallen through ice that have ceased brain and body function, which have then later been reanimated without any noticeable body or brain damage, severe oxygen deprivation and quick chilling seem to be the key. For those that fell through ice and survived, they essentially drowned and their bodies rapidly cooled before any deterioration was able to happen.

Here's a great Ted talk on the subject.

Yes, I'll completely agree on that issue of access to fresh food as it relates to social class or segregation, good point.

Isles, inc. is one example group in Trenton that has made a difference fostering community gardens is the inner city for fresh veggies (as well as other benefits): http://isles.org/

Here is a co-op just started in a town as part of regenerating it:
http://www.mohawkharvest.org/

But our society could do a lot more. These issues are all intertwined.

And then these issues are interwoven with product design, advertising, profit-driven commerce, and externalities:
"The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health & Happiness"
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

People with less free time to understand all this then are also at risk (another issue of either income or lifestyle).

So, a complex mix of issues. But, they are systematically addressable, even without massive government involvement (as nice as it would be to throw a lot of resources at the problems). Get you vitamin D, pennies a day, have a garden or at least grow sprouts in your kitchen, buy more vegetables, soak and cook beans, buy frozen fruit instead of ice cream, make green smoothies in a US$100 blender.
http://www.greensmoothierevolution.com/
The most important foods to buy organic (generally, stuff you don't peel):
http://www.greenwala.com/community/blogs/all/6290-The-Dirty-Dozen
In general, it is cheaper and healthier to eat vegetarian. Permanently turn off the TV that mesmerises people into eating more junk.

It can be a positive upward spiral, of one improvement leading to another. First vitamin D, cheap and easy, then smoothies, then other changes... Any small group of people in any US community can make these basic things happen for themselves and their neighbors, as Isles, Inc. shows, as the Mohawk Harvest Cooperative shows, as lots of other examples show.

Still, it can be hard to throw off the mental parasites (like coming through mainstream TV, or even sometimes through school programs influenced by the meat and dairy industry) that keep us down.
* "Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food"
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jamie_oliver.html
* "Dean Ornish on the world's killer diet"
http://www.ted.com/talks/dean_ornish_on_the_world_s_killer_diet.html
* "Ann Cooper talks school lunches"
http://www.ted.com/talks/ann_cooper_talks_school_lunches.html
* "Mark Bittman on what's wrong with what we eat"
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html

From:
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
"A lot of the constraints on us, a lot of the ah, ah - strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own mind. I'm not saying that there aren't armies and police and various ways to punish deviants. But there isn't any way to punish a LARGE NUMBER of deviants. There isn't any way to do that. It's too expensive

Yes, I'll completely agree on that issue of access to fresh food as it relates to social class or segregation, good point.

Isles, inc. is one example group in Trenton that has made a difference fostering community gardens is the inner city for fresh veggies (as well as other benefits): http://isles.org/

Here is a co-op just started in a town as part of regenerating it:
http://www.mohawkharvest.org/

But our society could do a lot more. These issues are all intertwined.

And then these issues are interwoven with product design, advertising, profit-driven commerce, and externalities:
"The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health & Happiness"
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

People with less free time to understand all this then are also at risk (another issue of either income or lifestyle).

So, a complex mix of issues. But, they are systematically addressable, even without massive government involvement (as nice as it would be to throw a lot of resources at the problems). Get you vitamin D, pennies a day, have a garden or at least grow sprouts in your kitchen, buy more vegetables, soak and cook beans, buy frozen fruit instead of ice cream, make green smoothies in a US$100 blender.
http://www.greensmoothierevolution.com/
The most important foods to buy organic (generally, stuff you don't peel):
http://www.greenwala.com/community/blogs/all/6290-The-Dirty-Dozen
In general, it is cheaper and healthier to eat vegetarian. Permanently turn off the TV that mesmerises people into eating more junk.

It can be a positive upward spiral, of one improvement leading to another. First vitamin D, cheap and easy, then smoothies, then other changes... Any small group of people in any US community can make these basic things happen for themselves and their neighbors, as Isles, Inc. shows, as the Mohawk Harvest Cooperative shows, as lots of other examples show.

Still, it can be hard to throw off the mental parasites (like coming through mainstream TV, or even sometimes through school programs influenced by the meat and dairy industry) that keep us down.
* "Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food"
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jamie_oliver.html
* "Dean Ornish on the world's killer diet"
http://www.ted.com/talks/dean_ornish_on_the_world_s_killer_diet.html
* "Ann Cooper talks school lunches"
http://www.ted.com/talks/ann_cooper_talks_school_lunches.html
* "Mark Bittman on what's wrong with what we eat"
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html

From:
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
"A lot of the constraints on us, a lot of the ah, ah - strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own mind. I'm not saying that there aren't armies and police and various ways to punish deviants. But there isn't any way to punish a LARGE NUMBER of deviants. There isn't any way to do that. It's too expensive

Yes, I'll completely agree on that issue of access to fresh food as it relates to social class or segregation, good point.

Isles, inc. is one example group in Trenton that has made a difference fostering community gardens is the inner city for fresh veggies (as well as other benefits): http://isles.org/

Here is a co-op just started in a town as part of regenerating it:
http://www.mohawkharvest.org/

But our society could do a lot more. These issues are all intertwined.

And then these issues are interwoven with product design, advertising, profit-driven commerce, and externalities:
"The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health & Happiness"
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

People with less free time to understand all this then are also at risk (another issue of either income or lifestyle).

So, a complex mix of issues. But, they are systematically addressable, even without massive government involvement (as nice as it would be to throw a lot of resources at the problems). Get you vitamin D, pennies a day, have a garden or at least grow sprouts in your kitchen, buy more vegetables, soak and cook beans, buy frozen fruit instead of ice cream, make green smoothies in a US$100 blender.
http://www.greensmoothierevolution.com/
The most important foods to buy organic (generally, stuff you don't peel):
http://www.greenwala.com/community/blogs/all/6290-The-Dirty-Dozen
In general, it is cheaper and healthier to eat vegetarian. Permanently turn off the TV that mesmerises people into eating more junk.

It can be a positive upward spiral, of one improvement leading to another. First vitamin D, cheap and easy, then smoothies, then other changes... Any small group of people in any US community can make these basic things happen for themselves and their neighbors, as Isles, Inc. shows, as the Mohawk Harvest Cooperative shows, as lots of other examples show.

Still, it can be hard to throw off the mental parasites (like coming through mainstream TV, or even sometimes through school programs influenced by the meat and dairy industry) that keep us down.
* "Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food"
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jamie_oliver.html
* "Dean Ornish on the world's killer diet"
http://www.ted.com/talks/dean_ornish_on_the_world_s_killer_diet.html
* "Ann Cooper talks school lunches"
http://www.ted.com/talks/ann_cooper_talks_school_lunches.html
* "Mark Bittman on what's wrong with what we eat"
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html

From:
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
"A lot of the constraints on us, a lot of the ah, ah - strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own mind. I'm not saying that there aren't armies and police and various ways to punish deviants. But there isn't any way to punish a LARGE NUMBER of deviants. There isn't any way to do that. It's too expensive

Yes, I'll completely agree on that issue of access to fresh food as it relates to social class or segregation, good point.

Isles, inc. is one example group in Trenton that has made a difference fostering community gardens is the inner city for fresh veggies (as well as other benefits): http://isles.org/

Here is a co-op just started in a town as part of regenerating it:
http://www.mohawkharvest.org/

But our society could do a lot more. These issues are all intertwined.

And then these issues are interwoven with product design, advertising, profit-driven commerce, and externalities:
"The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health & Happiness"
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

People with less free time to understand all this then are also at risk (another issue of either income or lifestyle).

So, a complex mix of issues. But, they are systematically addressable, even without massive government involvement (as nice as it would be to throw a lot of resources at the problems). Get you vitamin D, pennies a day, have a garden or at least grow sprouts in your kitchen, buy more vegetables, soak and cook beans, buy frozen fruit instead of ice cream, make green smoothies in a US$100 blender.
http://www.greensmoothierevolution.com/
The most important foods to buy organic (generally, stuff you don't peel):
http://www.greenwala.com/community/blogs/all/6290-The-Dirty-Dozen
In general, it is cheaper and healthier to eat vegetarian. Permanently turn off the TV that mesmerises people into eating more junk.

It can be a positive upward spiral, of one improvement leading to another. First vitamin D, cheap and easy, then smoothies, then other changes... Any small group of people in any US community can make these basic things happen for themselves and their neighbors, as Isles, Inc. shows, as the Mohawk Harvest Cooperative shows, as lots of other examples show.

Still, it can be hard to throw off the mental parasites (like coming through mainstream TV, or even sometimes through school programs influenced by the meat and dairy industry) that keep us down.
* "Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food"
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jamie_oliver.html
* "Dean Ornish on the world's killer diet"
http://www.ted.com/talks/dean_ornish_on_the_world_s_killer_diet.html
* "Ann Cooper talks school lunches"
http://www.ted.com/talks/ann_cooper_talks_school_lunches.html
* "Mark Bittman on what's wrong with what we eat"
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html

From:
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
"A lot of the constraints on us, a lot of the ah, ah - strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own mind. I'm not saying that there aren't armies and police and various ways to punish deviants. But there isn't any way to punish a LARGE NUMBER of deviants. There isn't any way to do that. It's too expensive

is working on his next fortune. All existing batteries can only store less than 10 minutes of current energy consumption. He suggests burning existing nuclear waste in a traveling wave reactor. Interesting. http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

Who says that's a benefit?

20-minute interview at TED Glodal a few weeks back: http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks.html

Work is a trade of my time and energy (mental and physical) for money. Not suffering.

Exactly. Suffering is related only in the case of those idiot MBAs who think that paying a salary makes them own their employees as if they'd rented slaves.
Reminds me of how Mike Rowe's TED talk where he discusses the guys doing dirty jobs (seek to ~11:00 if you're pressed for time). He claims they're much happier than us desk workers, and they're the ones we'd assume are "suffering" the most.

The molecular weight of cellulose in deep space might not surpass C70, but it *might* exceed C70... see one of the questions in this TED talk:
http://blog.ted.com/2009/10/qa_with_garik_i.php

Brewster Kahle is building a truly huge digital library -- every book ever published, every movie ever released, all the strata of web history ... It's all free to the public. A video describing his project can be found at : http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/brewster_kahle_builds_a_free_digital_library.html Good luck with your project.

Your wish was my command, master! Here is for June 17th 2010. Click on the pic for the flickr.com link or just go to the accompanying blog

It is easy to understand why Psychology Today puts it in those terms, because it sounds sensational and they are out to sell more, but it really isn't as bad as you make it sound.

Especially if you are the kind who hangs out with all liberals, then you really have a narrow moral view (you probably favor openness to new ideas, new experiences, etc). Jonathan Haidt makes a good point that you probably have a very one-sided view, and that there are good things on both sides of the moral/political spectrum. The person who showed that video to me said it utterly changed him forever. It wasn't that impressive to me, but it is quite good.

I'm guessing this is just a rehash of the stuff demoed here...

http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

18 minutes TED talk video Clifford Stoll where he touches on computers in the classrooms (and many many many other things): http://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everything.html

He's a fun watch.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson.html

highly recommended talks...and funny too.

--jeffk

The first time I heard it was with Sir Ken Robinson at a Ted conference. I recommend everyone to watch it. His thesis is that creativity is as important as literacy and we should treat it with the same importance. I highly recommend everyone to watch the presentation. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

There's many well thought out ideas floating around at TED, why not just pick one of those?
Like this one http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html for example, real lasting results with practical amount of money.

You might want to listen to this for inspiration: http://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_sinclair_on_open_source_architecture.html

no. I assume that everyone who is successful got there for an important part because of luck. I'm not sure what you mean with equality of condition, but what I'm a fan of is the idea that meritocracy, as good as it sounds, is unachievable and one's status is not a reflection of one's value to society. On this, I definitely agree with Alain de Botton.

This means that assuming everybody has the same opportunity and only "needs to work harder to succeed" is a fallacy. It also means that people looking down on those who weren't as lucky as they were are, in my eyes, very egocentric and slightly despicable. Being mean spirited, I actually often wish they would get a bit of bad luck and find themselves at the bottom again for a while. It helps with the perspective.

First, check out: http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ "Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives"
"""
Who are you going to be? That is the question.
    In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
    Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job.
"""

Some very interesting psychologists; maybe look up some of their students?
    http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Seligman#Positive_psychology

By a practicing psychiatrists on how vitamin D is related to much mental illness:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

By others on the psychological aspect of our society, personal troubles in it, and its infrastructure:
    "Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy" by Bruce E. Levine
        http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
    "Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals" by Thomas Moore
        http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
    "About the AARP/Bluezones Vitality Project"
    http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about

On how improved nutrition will make people healthier and happier:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
And holistic aspects of health and diet too:
    http://www.drweil.com/

http://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liquid_filled_eyeglasses.html