John Taylor Gatto - I Quit. I Think.

Many people are familiar with Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk on schools killing creativity.

Regretibly he doesn't get that it is deliberate, manufactured if you wish.

John Taylor Gatto was the most awarded teacher in NY State. 

He figured out the systematic dumbing down process.

Sadly, he died last week but you can learn more about his extraordinary research over here.

Ed Snowden at TED Talks

 

There are still a lot of unanswered questions about Ed Snowden but it would be wrong to suggest he is not defending important human truths about the internet. 

In this latest TED talk he says:

"Dick Cheney is something else" [He's a fucking lizard]

"The NSA is deputizing corporations to do their dirty work" [Please see TPP trade negotiations that will put corporations above Governments]

"We need a Magna Carta for the internet" [and a declaration of independence]

Graham Hancock's TED Talk Banned

A standing ovation for the former Economist journalist and author of Fingerprint of the God's.  This talk has been banned by TEDx WhiteChapel because it comes too close to the reality that is being hidden from the unconscious British people.

The war on conciousness is best exemplified by people who don't know that the entheogenic experience is as important a human experience as having sex or having a wedding. 

If you haven't considered one you can't claim to understand the basics of life. Ask around, talk to people, use a search engine. Reality is not meant to be an adequate experience. It's quite demanding.

Ron Finley - Gangster Gardening In LA

This is the best TED Talk I've seen in ages and I'm going to follow Ron Finley's advice.

Carne Ross: Pimp Diplomat

Carne Ross gets it. A little bit confused by 9/11.

After 15 years in the British diplomatic corps, Carne Ross became a "freelance diplomat," running a bold nonprofit that gives small, developing and yet-unrecognized nations a voice in international relations. At the BIF-5 conference, he calls for a new kind of diplomacy that gives voice to small countries, that works with changing boundaries and that welcomes innovation.

Update: Carne Ross is a warmonger pimp egging on death in Syria.

Carne Ross’ International Diplomat (ID) reports to Najib Ghadbian, who co-ordinates the SSG. According to Ross’ firm, with SSG he will: “meet with key officials and desk officers in the State Department and other U.S. agencies to gather their views [on the Syrian civil war] … and advise the Syrian Coalition how best to tailor their own approach to the U.S. Government.” The acknowledged (thanks to Wikileaks) State Dept. funding of a Syrian opposition dates back to at least 2006. Ross started to advise the ‘National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces’ at the point were concerns were publicly raised that the rebellion was “being hijacked by Islamists linked to Al Qaeda” according to the New York Times.  But the rebellion has never really been in the ascendency, nor has its rebels been homogenous: in 2012, when the US blacklisted the Al-Qaeda-linked group Al-Nusra Front in Syria, the measure was initially criticized by the opposition. Of his firm’s role Ross was quoted as saying: “We’re not lobbyists, we’re an advisory group.”  But he openly advocates intervention, arguing that similar fears of a perceived Islamist threat were used to justify non-intervention in Bosnia two decades ago.  This was parroted by Johnathan Freedland in the Guardian (seemingly before Ross was hired).  Ross’ other pronouncements in favour of escalating the conflict, include the inflamatory ‘Let’s call Russia’s bluff on Syria,’ also in the Guardian.  Independent Diplomat, as a private firm, clearly perceived an opportunity to shakedown the émigré groups that would emerge and be supported by the West.

Set Theory Delineations Of Infinity

I don't necessarily agree with all of the above explanations but it does in 7 minutes what other videos fail to do in an hour and a half. Ideas of infinity and nothing are the most important questions a person can spend time on.

That Censored/Banned TED Talk - Nick Hanauer "Rich People Don't Create Jobs"

Super-rich Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has been raising the hackles of his fellow 1-percenters, espousing the contrarian argument that rich people don't actually create jobs. The position is controversial — so much so that TED is refusing to post a talk that Hanauer gave on the subject.

Too Much Information - Puking On Big Data

Excellent new TED talk by an obviously likeable but neurotic speaker confusing obsession with art and inadvertently highlighting why we're choking on information and starved of wisdom.

Hasan Elahi

When the Feds come after you, you have several options: panic, resist or, if you’re interdisciplinary American artist Hasan Elahi, flood them with information. It all started in 2002, when Elahi was detained in Detroit after a flight from the Netherlands, suspected of hoarding explosives in a Florida locker. Though lie detector tests subsequently cleared him, Elahi – who is an associate professor at the University of Maryland and has exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Centre Pompidou, and the Hermitage – was subjected to six months of questioning about his extensive international travels. Figuring once in the system, never out, he decided to turn the tables and cooperate – with a vengeance.

Starting with constant phone calls and emails to the FBI to notify them of his whereabouts, what started as a practicality grew into an open-ended art project. He began posting photos of his minute-by-minute life, up to around a hundred a day, on TrackingTransience.net – hotel rooms, train stations, airports, meals, beds, receipts, even toilets – generating tens of thousands of images in the last several years. Just for good measure, he also wears a GPS device that tracks his movements on his site’s live Google map. And as if to prove his point that “the best way to protect privacy is to give it away,” Elahi – while still being watched by the authorities, according to server records – hasn’t been bothered since.

He says: "By putting everything about me out there, I am simultaneously telling everything and nothing about my life."

"He figures the day is coming when so many people shove so much personal data online that it will put Big Brother out of business."

Rise Of China

Martin Jacques the prominent (former) Marxist intellectual of the UK did a talk about China at TED. I like Martin Jacques so perhaps I'm splitting hairs over his mispronunciation of LENOVO in the talk but there is one point he makes about ignorance which is worth the the full 25 minutes. 

If you're reading this from the West and are more engaged with the goggle box for sports and know more about team members sex lives than any facts you care to choose about China then you may well be in for a surprise when the winds of cultural change unravel and blossom as quickly as they can.

Reality Check

Schumpeter's Creative Destruction

Good new talk on TED by Tim Jackson with a thought provoking slide on creative destruction just in case the tree is obstructing the woods.

Rory Sutherland

Advertising is in good shape with Rory at the helm of the IPA. Possibly the best-fun lunch companion a bloke could hope for (or at least he covered my disreputable ass, with deliciously wobbly London Underground noises, while I was bunking off one memorable afternoon from JWT in Docklands). Thanks for doing the, I'm-on-the-tube background-noises-blag, when my boss called to ask where the hell I was Rory.


 Anyway, you can find out for yourselves with this TED video quite why he's a true anarchical thinker. Exactly what we need..... and just in the nick of time.


NB: I also saw Rory speak at the launch of Stephen King's book where he turned up with ostensibly no notes and cleaned up with the crowd in JWT's bar at Knightsbridge. Here's more of one of Adland's best. We're lucky.

Rule Breaking Sloppy Blogging

Tim has warned us all of the perils from lazy blogging but I watched this lastest TED video last night and thought it chimed nicely with the the sentiment around the thinking man's blogosphere where the top down hierarchical nature of 20th century business and it's marketing machine are responsible for the dehumanization of our species. I think once again this is about not just learning to talk human, but learning to act human. I urge you to watch this fine talk by Barry Schwartz because it's important and valuable to those who try to over plan, in the belief that it will produce better and more effective outputs. It's a new rules social contract we need and paradoxically its about less rules and more...well I'll leave that to you.