3 posts tagged “ted”

I never took physics... I left high school that year. SO... I found this quick explanation of superstring theory pretty cool (and quick!)

Also, am I the only one who finds humor in the name "Large Hadron Collider"?  Isn't that a bit of an understatement?  I mean, how about "Supersize Hadron Collider," at least?

Karen Armstrong is probably the single most influential author in my life. She writes about religion - comparative religion, you might say.

Armstrong was a nun, and left the convent after years of frustration. After years of getting completely away from religion, she studied the world's major religions from a different point of view. In her words, that study brought her back to a vision of what religion could be.

Armstrong does an amazing job of explaining the basic beliefs and history of the world's most popular religions -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Her books have really given me a better understanding of the sacred, of philosophy, and of looking within and without to find deep mythic truths.

I was raised in a completely non-religious household, the daughter of two "recoverig Catholics" (one with a Buddhist slant). As a result, I think I lack a lot of the antipathy towards religion that many of my friends, who were made to follow a particular religion, hold. I was allowed to question, read whatever I wanted, and for me the pendulum probably swung even a bit too far in that I had a bit of hunger and wonder about religion that was never satisfied. So, around the end of college I started reading up on comparative religion. I find it fascinating.

To sum up, two of the things I've learned are important to me:

• A sense of sacredness in life - not only in my life, but I think our culture needs more reverence in general
• I aim to put aside time each day to meditate on something deeper than the surface of everyday life. This could be my family, or it could be the nature of reality. Just something more than the daily grind.

I also learned that fundamentalism is (in historical terms) a fairly recent development in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. This puts our current situation and understanding of religion in perspective.

Anyway, here's Armstrong's speech:

This morning I got an email from TED, this conference of the "world's greatest thinkers and doers". They support some pretty amazing stuff. Anyway, the radical thing they told me about is the Encyclopedia of Life. Here's the description:

Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.

The idea is to have an encylopedia of all life, basically - something important since species are going extinct every day, many before we've even discovered them at all.  Check it out--the 2-minute video is worth watching.