Snooze .....

Jessa Gamble

If you snooze, you lose. This intriguing talk last just four minutes, making you wonder why (if you know, tell me). Further, it is given by a fellow Canuck who lives somewhere near the Arctic. On the other hand Jessa Gamble is a journalist, rather than a scientist (disclosure next time, please!!),  and you can’t find anything about her on Google Scholar (at least I couldn’t).  

So what is going on? Couldn’t TED find a scientist who has been doing cool research on sleep to keep us awake with a fuller (and perhaps more documented ) eighteen minute version?

The above notwithstanding, I do think that electric lighting during evening hours has been mucking around with our biological clocks for over a century. 

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

mel-ted response to Dr. Ian Pearson

Dr Ian Pearson, Futurizon Futurologist, talks about the next 

 wave of convergence between the digital and human.

 

This is from TEDxWarwick and it looks exactly like a university lecture, which it is. I have been at a university for 37 years and trust me, they aren’t TED quality.  University lectures have poorly prepared PowerPoint, and this one does too. They are often distant and the lecturer talks down to his audience, from a position of higher authority. They are often bereft of personal resonance on the part of the lecturer.  Ian Pearson is a smart cookie, even if he doesn’t know that bacteria do not contain mitochondria (perhaps mitochondria were once bacteria, as a matter of fact).  I am not sure that androids/robohumans will exceed his intelligence any time soon, even if they can beat him easily in chess.  The point of his lecture is that computers will become smarter and smarter over the short term and we don’t. They are also sensorial, sensing what is going on all over the world (Facebook, Twitter and Google have been doing this for months). Evenutally, there will be moral issues involved in their mortality and ours. Will it be okay to kill (terminate?) an android with ‘feelings’.  Will our computer clones make us (actually only the younger people, us over-thirties will not live long enough) immortal on the web?  Will computers be able to mish our DNA and create virtual kids when we are ninety? These are all worthy thoughts, but I am watching his talk and thinking about William Shakespeare, who lived four hundred years ago and is immortal, and I wonder what Ian Pearson (or any of us) will be other than dust four hundred years from now.  But if there are still people around, some of them will still be quoting Hamlet. 

 

mel-ted response to TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor - Both sides of the cortex

The timber of her voice may be off putting at first, but stay with it. This is one of the most riveting of the TED talks. Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist who lost brain function because of a massive stroke, and after eight years of recovery, began to share her personal revelations of this experience with the world, with particular reference to the yin and yang of selflessness and universalness. Her explanation of the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain may be over simplistic or otherwise controversial, so don’t take a college exam based on what she has to say. On the other hand, if you go with her flow, you realize just how wondrous yet tenuous our consciousness is. Food for thought for both sides of the cortex.

 Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight | Video on TED.com