TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

I watched several TED talks today and wanted to  summarize my notes for Rof1.   I was first introduced to TED talks, by the way, by Biomimicry Institute's funding director, Diana Lee.  She was the one that told me about Janine Benyus's talk about biomimicry.  

The three talks all fell within my favorite TED theme: "Animals that Amaze." One speaker was a filmographer with a love for cephlapods, another was a chef with a love for sustainable seafood, and another was a biologist with a curiosity about dragonflies.  All talks were informative and inspiring and caught my attention because of possible career paths that I have considered at one point.

Talk1

Event: TED Talks, April 2010  

Series: Mission Blue Voyage

Speaker: Mike deGruy, Filmographer

Topic: "Hooked by an octopus"

Abstract: Mike DeGruy tells his journey becoming a world renowned underwater filmographer. His love for cephlapods began at age six as he was observing an octopus.  An assignment during his PhD studies to film a collection expedition got him hooked into filmography.  Being a filmmaker is rewarding for him as a scientist, he says, as he is really able to study these animals in their natural environments.

Significance:  Filming cephlapods increased deGruy's appreciation and love for nature and he hopes to raise awareness through his videos for people to act locally to bring about global environmental changes.

Overall Reaction of talk: deGruy is a wonderful storyteller.  He is truely awed by nature and he wants to share that wonder with others.  His love of cephlapods led him to become a filmmaker and has become very successful filming for the BBC, National Geographic, Nature, as well as owning his own film production company.  I had never considered filmography before I heard his talk, but being able to really watch animals in their natural environments is intruiging.  Being able to showcase this beauty to viewers would be fantastic.

Photo taken from TED Talk website.

Talk2

Event: TED Talks, Mar 2010 

Series: TED2010, Long Beach, CA

Speaker: Dan Barber, Sustainable Chef

Topic: "How I Fell in Love with a Fish"

Abstract: Dan explored a sustainable fish farm in Spain which does not use feed, measures success based on the health of its predators, and purifies the water which it is supplied.  The consequence is a sustainable system and delicious fish.

Significance:  He stressed that we need a revolution in the way we raise farmed food.  We need to switch our mentality from trying to feed more people for cheaper, to that of making healthy, delicious tasting food that is sustainable for our environment.

Overall Reaction of talk:  I was inspired by Dan's exploration of this topic and spread the word about his talk.

Talk3

Event: TED Talks, Dec 2009

Series: TEDIndia2009

Speaker: Charles Anderson

Topic: Charles Anderson discovers the insect world's greatest migrant.  

Abstract:  Anderson described how he discovered the globe skimmer dragonfly migrations from India to South East Africa using the intermonsoon winds.  He explained that they breed in temperate pools during the monsoon rains.  The monsoon rains are heavy from Jun through Oct in India and heavy from Oct to Apr in SE Africa.  Thus, the dragonflies migrate in search of rain in which to breed (breed in areas where there is greatest convergence).  

Significance:  Globe skimmers have the longest insect migration - 16km w/in four generations (dble that of monarch butterflies).  This migration impacts the birds which prey upon these dragonflies - these birds must migrate the same distance using the same winds in search for food.

Overall Reaction of talk:  Dr. Anderson made me curious about other long distance migrators.  Here is an excerpt from The Independent: 

The longest aerial migrations are still those of birds. The Arctic tern travels every winter from Britain to the Southern Ocean and sometimes even reaches Australia – a round trip of more than 22,000 miles. The longest single non-stop journey is believed to be that of the bar-tailed godwit, a wading bird, which has been shown to fly 8,000 miles across the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand in a continuous uninterrupted flight lasting eight days. When the godwits arrive and land on the coast near Christchurch, the Christchurch cathedral bells are rung.

ALAMY

References:

Buncombe, A. "From India to Mozambique, the insect world's greatest migrant."  The Independent (July 21, 2009).

Absentminded

Def: Deep in thought and heedless of present circumstances or activities; preoccupied.

Recently I was referred to as being absentminded.  While this was not news to me, as I have been called numerous synonymous names from time to time (ie 'aloof', 'going to the beat of my own drummer', and 'on another planet'), the label, for some reason, did stir me to question what the causes, symptoms, benefits, and consequences are of being absentminded.

According to Wikipedia:

Absent-mindedness can refer to three very different things:

1. a low level of attention ("blanking" or “zoning out”);
2. intense attention to a single object of focus (hyperfocus) that makes them oblivious to events around them; or
3. unwarranted distraction of attention from the object of focus by irrelevant thoughts or environmental events.

 

And here is what Wikipedia has to say about consequences of absentmindedness:

Lapses of attention are clearly a part of everyone’s life. Some are merely inconvenient, such as missing a familiar turn-off on the highway, and some are extremely serious, such as failures of attention that cause accidents, injury, or loss of life.^[1] Beyond the obvious costs of accidents arising from lapses in attention there is lost time, efficiency, personal productivity, and quality of life in the lapse and recapture of awareness and attention to everyday tasks. Individuals for whom intervals between lapses are very short are typically viewed as impaired.^[2]Given the prevalence of attentional failures in everyday life and the ubiquitous and sometimes disastrous consequences of such failures, it is rather surprising that relatively little work has been done to directly measure individual differences in everyday errors arising from propensities for failures of attention.

While absentmindedness can lower productivity, it can be good by allowing the analytical mind to hyperfocus.  Several highly-praised thinkers have been given the absentminded label.  Among them include Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, Albert Einstein, and Archimedes (among, I'm sure, many others).  I would like to know famous women who are absentminded.  

Are absentminded women as highly praised as men?  Women traditionally need to be more alert and organized in order to run a home and keep track of needs of family members.  How do absentminded women cope?  What kind of mates are best for absentminded women?  How well are they able to raise children?

For my own self, being absentminded is a blessing and a curse.  While getting ready this morning I was watching Frans Lanting's amazing TED slideshow of Life on my laptop.  I love how wrapped up I get with things that I love - the slideshow brought me to tears and riveted my attention.  So much so, however, that I completely forgot my need to get ready within a timely manner...needless to say, I leave the house most every morning running out my door.

Irregardless, I love musing.  I love expanding my mind, exploring, and thinking.  I am on this quest to understand the patterns of life (the natural world).  Once I understand the patterns of life, I feel that it is my mission to inspire awareness of these brilliant designs in hopes toelicit action towards protecting our threatened ecosystems. 

RE: Transforming Education

Dear Rof1,

I follow a blog written by palontologist Dr. Scott Sampson.  Earlier this month he wrote an article about transforming education, emphasizing the need to teach ecoliteracy and evoliteracy for the sake of protecting civilization (big claim...but I agree).  Here is my comment on transforming education based on personal experience:

"I agree and want to extend your point to other disciplines outside of biology in order to make the argument that educators must enable pupils to 1) experience their subject and to 2) understand the function or purpose of what's behind the thing they are learning. I recall many of my history lessons being compilations of dates and random people - I was memorizing out of context and without an ability to relate to my subject matter. I think the reason why I gravitated towards biology was because I innately connect with that subject through my experiences hiking and exploring. Also, oftentimes in math, I never understood the function or relevancy of what I was learning given my practice sets. As soon as I realized the function of statistics, however, learning became 'second nature' (whereas before it was a topic I avoided entirely). 

Once we can experience our subject, we can engage with it and are compelled to learn.
Visual representations of our subjects can help us experience our subject matter, and we are fortunate to enter an age where graphic design is advanced enough to reenact many topics that were originally only able to be described schematically. Take animations of the living cell, for example, or reenactments of famous battle scenes or dinosaur interactions (like the ones seen on the Discovery channel) - by bringing to life what otherwise could not be visualized, students become engaged and learning occurs automatically.

Also, if only educators could teach topics from a functional perspective, I feel that students would be able to look at challenges and problem-solve more efficiently. Teaching organismal biology, for example, from a functional perspective helps people understand why biodiversity exists (as opposed to organizing life via complexity). Likewise, if math could be taught to include relevant examples, students could understand the function of why one would need math in everyday challenges. For example, the purpose of quadratic equations could be explained showing an example where non-linear regression was needed to determine statistical significance of a particular data set (so important in real life).

Ecoliteracy and evoliteracy are HUGE topics that need more attention. By getting students to experience nature and the process of evolution as well as to put ecology and evolution into a functional perspective (ie ecosystem services and natural selection), educators will enable young people to connect their textbook knowledge with conservation and sustainability (merge knowledge/memorized facts with relevancy)."

Is sentience superior?

Dear Reader of One (Rof1),

Recently a friend of a friend directed me to a post he had written about sentience.  He was giving merit to sentience, recognizing its benefits - namely, the ability to self-organize and fight entropy.  I added to his post by inquiring into the evolutionary arisal of sentience in humans.  Here it is:

Being biased as I am (I enjoy being human and being cognitive), you've got to admit, humans are pretty cool - our ability to create tools is unrivaled. Our tools range from aids for catching/eating food, defense, education, to creating music and enhancing recreation. Our ability to be self-aware and invent is astounding.

I believe sentience arose via evolutionary biology and natural selection. Humans are not great predators and can be easy prey. Without tools, it would have been difficult for us to survive. While we can survive as herbivores, we are easy targets for anything with great speed, mechanical power, or toxic chemical warfare. It was therefore advantageous for humans to gain the ability to be self-aware, to organize, to collect...etc. Our defense lies within our ability to use tools. And, in general, greater cognition allows predators to capture prey which utilize a more advanced mechanical-motor system. Our sentience is for survival.

Why then, have our tools expanded beyond those required for survival? What is the 'purpose' of a violin, for example? What evolutionary advantage does a water ski or a golf club provide? Are we superior in that sense to other animals? Since we no longer compete with other animals for resources, are we permitted to live lives of luxury? Also, our social structures are vast: we've formed communities, governments, class systems, etc. Are we superior because of our ability to organize? Again, I ask evolution for answers: quality of life allows for greater survival. And, here within lies the key: intra-species competition is driving our evolution (though we will constantly be battling microorganisms because their ability to adapt is much more rapid than ours). 

It is interesting to observe what qualifies as quality of life. One would argue that tools increase our quality of life. The industrial revolution mechanized many previously hard-labor jobs, freeing workers to specialize and advance business to where it is today - a global marketplace with remarkably advanced communication systems and a greater access to technology and information than ever before (with which to create more tools). One would think that this has allowed humans to be superior in their life strategy than other life forms. More complex, yes. More superior? Tough call. 

Despite access to tools, others would argue that our survival depends on our 'pursuit of happiness,' for, unhappy and stressed people tend to be weaker breeders. Evolution depends in large part on reproductive fitness. Interestingly, nations with the greatest access to tools have some of the lowest parent to offspring ratios - thus, reproductive fitness has lowered. With a labor market that has expanded, competition has increased. And, with that increased competition, has come greater stress and isolation (I might be stretching this argument just a tad!). In some cases, I would argue, that elephants have practiced greater social connections than some humans. Soon, if not already, there may be a 'tipping point' where humans cry out to return to their 'roots' - to the thing that makes them 'human' - their ability to connect with others and to the Earth. They may seek to simplify their lives, reduce their tools, and live in an arguably more 'sustainable' pace of life (wow, this argument is getting biased). 

So, in the end, is sentience more complex than other life forms? Yes - if you look at the range of human capabilities, we are able to perform more functions than any other animal species. While other animals have AMAZING adaptations to their environments, their cognitive limitations restrict the niches they can exploit. Is sentience more superior? For survival, no - with greater protection against predators via the invention of tools, humans have subsequently increased intra-species competition which has arguably put strains on our reproductive fitness. 

Female Hormones (Op Ed)

Ladies and Gentleman-

Have you ever noticed how predictive women's cycles are?  The cycles are like clockwork!  Recently had a hilarious conversation about the topic over G-chat with my friend Brandon:

me:  The hormones of the female body are amazing.

Boys should learn about them and understand just how precise they are.

 Brandon:  Oh really?

I believe that we, men, have observed the following:

 "Flighty emotions ranging from absolute love to shear terror that can change with the winds. Approach with caution"

 me:  lol

 Brandon:  The observation hasn't been updated in a while.

 me:  Okay, well, let me update you then.

Love comes between day 5-15 of a woman's cycle;

Indifference comes between day 1-3;

Ugliness (she will physically appear ugly to you) from days 23-27;

Bitchiness from 23-27;

Raging horniness and sex appeal 4-10;

Neediness from day 16-21;

Tiredness from 18-25.

These are approximate of course.  The predictability seems incredibly precise and repititious.  So predictable, that I don't even need to right down when my cycle starts every month...I can feel the changes so dramatically.

If you understand the cycle...you will become a much happier man. You can make your woman remain happier also.

me:  Go hit the books, then Go to the mattresses!

 Brandon:  Having reviewed your documented submittal, I have determined that there is no need to change the current record.

me: haha 

 Brandon:  Male cycle:

Day 1-30:

Hungry and horny;

Day 15: Need to scratch something.

I went with simple.

I could go into detail on how your crazy horomones torture us...but that will take a bit of work. 

 me:  The moods of guys reflect the observed emotions of the females they are with?

 Brandon:  Yes.  Here's how the male cycle gets modified:

Day 1-3: Intrigued and attentive;

Day 4: Happy and content;

Days 5-10: Indifference sets in. We are getting what we need and all is good.

Days 16-22: Annoyed and need space; 

Days 22-27: Shocked. Who is this person, what happened? Fight or flight mode engaged. It is interesting.

 me:  This is a pretty accurate and ubiquitous account of the male cycle, huh? You guys go through these cycles?

 Brandon:  Only if we are seeing someone.

 me:  Right.

And, if you're single? Then what's the story?

Brandon:  Horny and Hungry.

You ladies insert complex emotions into our lives.

 me:  LOL.