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Ok, I realize most of my posts lately are just links to videos, particularly on TED Talks, but I just caught this one a couple days ago and had to share it.

Benjamin Zander is a conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, teacher, and public speaker.  Earlier this year he gave a wonderfully inspiring talk at the TED conference speaking about classical music and attempting to open it up to the masses.  His energy and stage presence are invaluable in achieving this goal.  Check it out for yourself:

As revolutionary as the Wii experience has been to the gaming community, we have only begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible. Johnny Lee is a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University and over the past 6 months he has developed a number of innovative uses for the Wii remote, particularly taking advantage of its high resolution infrared camera.

Mr. Lee recently gave a talk at the TED conference where he demonstrated a few of these Wii-mote hacks. Probably the most impressive is the use of IR goggles to allow the software to provide 3D feedback based on the user’s motion. This could have huge implications for the future of 3D gaming.

For more information on these projects, check out the following links:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

http://www.wiimoteproject.com/

I’ve recently become hooked on the TED Talks lecture series, and seeing as how their moniker is “Ideas worth spreading,” I figure it would be prudent for me to do just that by providing a link and personal recommendation to the loyal reader(s) of my blog.

If you’re not already familiar with TED, here is a description lifted from the About page:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

I invite you to go to TED.com and find a talk that interests you. If you’re looking for a starting point, here are a few of my favorites:

• Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
  A journey to the center of your mind (2007)
• Raul Midon
  “All the Answers” and “Tembererana” (2007)
• Michael Shermer
  Why people believe strange things (2006)
• Jeff Han
  Unveiling the genius of multi-touch interface design (2006)
• Steven Pinker
  The stuff of thought (2005)
• Richard Dawkins
  The universe is queerer than we can suppose (2005)
• Dan Dennett
  Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes (2002)

I caught this clip on The Daily Show last week and it just cracked me up.

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.

- Albert Einstein, What I Believe, 1930

I came across this quote in a TIME magazine article entitled “Einstein & Faith” in which the author explores Einstein’s personal views toward science and religion. This article is a great read for anyone who has heard mixed opinions on whether Einstein was a religious person.

Julian Beever is an English chalk artist who has been creating chalk drawings on pavement surfaces since the mid-1990s. His works are created using a projection called anamorphosis, and create the illusion of three dimensions when viewed from the correct angle.

http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm

This guy has an amazing ability to capture a three-dimensional perspective and project it onto pavement. You can see that he is very creative with his applications as well. It seems a shame to think that many of these have washed away by now!

Here are some of my favorites:

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I was at Barnes & Noble today. Check out what I happened to stumble upon:

This is the semi-official fan book of the movie The Big Lebowski written by the founding dudes of Lebowski Fest, Will Russell and Scott Shuffit (whom I have met personally), as well as Bill Green and Ben Peskoe who are also Lebowski Fest veterans and contributors.

While I was not privy to this new shit until it came to light in the bookstore today, I did at least manage to snatch up the last copy they had. So far it appears to be quite a comprehensive collection of Achiever fodder written by good men, and thorough.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cd-AJeJvBE