September TED talks

Ah, autumn is upon us.  The pitter patter of students rushing between classes, rain, meetings meetings meetings…  It’s a familiar pattern, but somehow it comes on as a bit of a surprise every September.   Along with our committees picking up again this month, our Fun stuff picks up again too… and TED Talk lunches are underway again.  We had a pretty good turnout this month, and thanks to Jane and Mario for their contributions.  Here’s what we watched…

Stephen Wolfram: Computing a theory of all knowledge

“Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, talks about his quest to make all knowledge computational — able to be searched, processed and manipulated. His new search engine, Wolfram Alpha, has no lesser goal than to model and explain the physics underlying the universe.”  Link to talk on TED

Talk about jumping into TED with both feet! I’m no maths genius (ask Dave W) but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who had a hard time keeping up with all Mr. Wolfram had to share. (The computational universe has nothing to fear from me!) Very cool though, and he was certainly passionate about his topic.

Richard Turere: My invention that made peace with lions

“In the Masai community where 13-year-old Richard Turere lives, cattle are all-important. But lion attacks were growing more frequent. In this short, inspiring talk, the young inventor shares the solar-powered solution he designed to safely scare the lions away.” Link to talk on TED

I had better luck understanding this one (no math ;).  Here’s a young man who’s making a big difference in his community.   No complicated computations required to place my bet that we’ll see more from this inventor.

Next TTL: October 30, 2014 12pm-1pm CLE030