Jeff Jarvis @ TEDxNYed: This is bullshit

One of my favorite ways to spend spare time in the past 3 years has been to watch talks given at the annual TED conference. More recently TED has established a new format called TEDx which has enabled independent groups to organize TED-styled conferences all around the world. At one of these gatherings Jeff Jarvis gave a a great talk called “This is bullshit” and I’d thoroughly recommend watching it since it contains a lot of interesting thoughts and spot-on observations on both education and the news-media:

TED: Dan Ariely asks “Are we in control of our own decisions?”

I just watched another TED video since it came up during a discussion at university today. Here’s the summary:

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we're not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

Dan Ariely’s other talk on our buggy moral code is also well worth watching!

Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on creativity

I’m spending this Saturday evening catching up on reading and watching lots of online videos. Among other things I decided to re-watch (for what must be the 5th or 6th time) Ken Robinson’s talk about creativity and education at TED 2006. It’s definitely among my all-time favorite TED talks and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in education:

Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes

I just realized that I've never mentioned TED here on the blog which kind of surprised me. Anyway, in case you've never heard of it, TED (Technology Entertainment Design) is an annual conference with presentations from some of the smartest minds on earth and its tagline is "ideas worth spreading". Over the past year I've watched about two dozen of the presentations and most of the were great while some were simply outstanding.

The one I've embedded below is somewhat unique in that it's very short but definitely well worth seeing.

My favorite part comes up at 3:09 min...

Weekend almost over

Had a very quiet and relaxing first weekend here at home. Got home in the early afternoon and most of the day was spent recounting some of my experiences and stories from the past few months, unpacking all my stuff, re-organizing it in preparation for next weekend when I'll go to Vienna, going through all the mail that arrived for me (I should really switch all my bills to electronic versions if possible!) and catching up on my e-mails. In the evening I got pretty tired but managed to stay up until 11 p.m. which I felt was a reasonable time to go to bed.

Woke up at 6 a.m. when I was still pretty tired and finally got up close to 10 even though I still felt like staying in bed. So I guess I'm doing pretty good in terms of my jet lag but the real test will take place tomorrow morning because I'll have to get out of bed at 6:30 a.m. as I'm starting my next internship!

The evening will be spent visiting a friend of mine and then watching some of the TED videos before I grab some sleep.

Given that the weather should be pretty good over the next few days and I'm really looking forward to the new job it will certainly be a good week. Also hope to get some reading done, I have two or three books and a ton of magazines waiting for me!