things that can and never should

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Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.

Editor’s note: Astronomer Jill Tarter is director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute. She was awarded the TED Prize in 2009. TED, a nonprofit organization devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading,” hosts talks on many subjects and makes them available through its Web site.

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Blind river dolphins, reclusive lemurs, a parrot as fearless as it is lovelorn … Douglas Adams' close encounters with these rare and unusual animals reveal that evolution, ever ingenious, can be fickle too — in a University of California talk that sparkles with his trademark satiric wit.

via Douglas Adams: Parrots, the universe and everything | Video on TED.com.

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Mark Roth studies suspended animation: the art of shutting down life processes and then starting them up again. It's wild stuff, but it's not science fiction. Induced by careful use of an otherwise toxic gas, suspended animation can potentially help trauma and heart attack victims survive long enough to be treated.

via Mark Roth: Suspended animation is within our grasp | Video on TED.com.

Speaking at the University of Sydney, acclaimed physicist and cosmologist Sean Carroll gives an entertaining and thought-provoking talk about the nature of time, the origin of entropy and how what happened before the Big Bang might be responsible for the arrow of time we observe today. Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in 1993 from Harvard University and has previously worked at MIT. He is the author several acclaimed books.

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With endearing honesty and vulnerability, Raghava KK tells the colorful tale of how art has taken his life to new places, and how life experiences in turn have driven his multiple reincarnations as an artist — from cartoonist to painter, media darling to social outcast, and son to father.

from the article:

Stem cells have been a focal point for hype and hope for years now. Besides healing horses and dogs, they have promising effects on diabetes, corneal blindness, even HIV. It’s pretty clear that they’re also the future of organ transplants. Just the news of a stem cell related development or patent will cause a biotech company’s stocks to soar. The FDA, which regulates all interstate drug sales and related clinical trials is not trying to keep Americans from these “miraculous” cures, it’s simply trying to make sure they are safe first. Apparently, that’s taking too long. Medical tourism agencies are starting to cater to those seeking stem cell treatments. Whether or not they are ready for widespread medical use, stem cell therapies are in high demand, not just in the US but around the world. It’s no longer a question of when we will have access to these treatments, it’s a question of how.

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Summary
Neil DeGrasse Tyson discusses Death by Black Hole .

Whether discussing the universe’s origins as host of NOVA’s “scienceNOW” or asserting that Pluto is a not a planet on “The Colbert Report,” astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson translates the universe’s complexities for a broad audience.

Known as the great explainer of all things cosmic, Tyson first became known in the astronomy community by lecturing on the subject at the age of fifteen. He is currently the director of New York’s Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, where he also teaches. Tyson has written seven popular books including the bestselling Death by Black Hole and the memoir The Sky Is Not The Limit.

His professional research explores star formation, dwarf galaxies, exploding stars, and the structure of the Milky Way, topics which he writes about in his long running “Universe” column in Natural History magazine. Tyson’s varied honors include the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal and People Magazine’s 2000 “Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive” – City Arts & Lectures

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Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our “experiencing selves” and our “remembering selves” perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy — and our own self-awareness.

Carnegie Mellon professor and ex-imagineer Jesse Schell lays out a vision of the future in which our lives become, essentially, one big RPG. Schell’s discussion kicks off with some of the most unexpected gaming developments over the last few years.

Re-posted from g4tv.com