Better than a Big Mac.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html

Big Mac anyone?

http://www.meatvideo.com/

Wind, water and sun beat other energy alternatives.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/january7/power-010709.html

Here is the TED debate over nuclear power:
http://www.ted.com/talks/debate_does_the_world_need_nuclear_energy.html

I don't see that there is any debate. The answer is clear.

Happiness Index

What is the most advanced country on the planet - in terms of well-being? You will be surprised to find out.
http://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index.html

Even more TED

Any math teachers? Check this out.
http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_computers.html

More TED

I love TED. What a guy. Here's another video (from 2005 but very relevant) about the power of collaboration on the internet. Check it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_source_economics.html

Stuff

Another great TED video about collaboration and conservation. Please watch, and use.


http://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_case_for_collaborative_consumption.html

The future of education

Must see. This is the most profound change in education I have seen yet. Technology at its finest. The implications are great.
video.ted.com/talks/podcast/SalmanKhan_2011.mp4

Transportation

For the latest on fuel-efficient cars for sale now and in the foreseeable future, here's where to get the latest info: http://www.plugincars.com/

Plug-In Hybrid & Electric Vehicles - PHEVs - News & Reviews | PluginCars.com

Citing skyrocketing oil prices and new government policies, investment banking powerhouse Morgan Stanley

Nuclear power - friend or foe?

For a relatively balanced viewpoint on the nuclear energy debate, you need to read Monbiot's blog. Here is the most recent post http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/

Peak Everything Revisited

Here are astonishing new writings about Peak Everything from a great writer, Richard Heinberg. These are excerpts from a new book on the limits of natural resources, to be published in September 2011: http://www.postcarbon.org/article/254838-earth-s-limits-why-growth-won-t-return

Twitter in education

Who knew Twitter could make you smarter?

Metacognition - the practice of thinking about and reflecting on your learning - has been shown to benefit comprehension and retention. As a tool for students or professional colleagues to compare thoughts about a topic, Twitter can be a viable platform for metacognition, forcing users to be brief and to the point - an important skill in thinking clearly and communicating effectively. (Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7027.pdf )

The power of the wiki

Will Richardson (2010) says "if you want to find the most important site on the Web these days, look no further than Wikipedia.org." That's a pretty bold statement. Of all the gazillion websites available out there, he picks an encyclopedia. But I think he is right. He quotes Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." As of today, Wikipedia has over 3.5 million articles, and growing every day. Try putting that encyclopedia on your bookshelf! It is an amazing collaboration of individuals from around the world, creating this enormous, constantly updating and growing collection of information about everything. And it's all free (well, they do ask for donations occasionally).
Here is a great story by Richardson: Just after Christmas 2004, an earthquake struck in the Indian Ocean and created the tsunami that killed more than 175,000 people. "It may have happened over five years ago now, but it was without question the event that made clear to me that we were living in a much different information world as I turned to Wikipedia to watch the event unfold. The earthquake occurred just after midnight (GMT) on December 26, and the first 76-word post was created at Wikipedia about nine hours later. 24 hours after the first mention, the entry had been edited more than 400 times and had grown to about 3,000 words, complete with some of the first photographs of the devastation, a chart documenting the dead and injured, and other graphics describing how the tsunami was spawned. 48 hours after the first post, the entry had grown to more than 6,500 words, had been edited 1,200 times, and contained more than a dozen graphics including video of the wave itself. Six months after the event, more than 7,000 changes had been recorded, and the post settled at around 7,200 words. All of it had been created and re-created by people just like you and me who were interested in contributing what they were finding to the entry. It was without question the most comprehensive resource on the Web about that horrific event. And that process is being repeated over and over as news happens around us. Wikipedia is the poster child for the collaborative construction of knowledge and truth that the new, interactive Web facilitates. It is one of the main reasons I believe in the transformative potential of all of these technologies. No one person, or even small group of people, could produce Wikipedia, as currently edits appear at a rate of around 400,000 a day. Every day, thousands of people who have no connection to one another engage in the purposeful work of negotiating and creating truth. They do this with no expectation that their contributions will be in some way acknowledged or compensated, and they do it with the understanding that what they contribute can be freely edited or modified or reused by anyone else for any purpose. The extent to which this happens and to which it is successful is truly inspiring."
But wait, there's more.
The success of Wikipedia has spawned a wiki revolution. There are now wikis for about any subject you can think of. These are sponsored by the foundation behind Wikipedia: Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, and MediaWiki.
Check it.

Using Wikis for online collaboration

I've made an inspiring discovery. I've seen references often to Web 2.0, but I never knew what it was referring to. So I finally did a Google search and came up with the Wikipedia (of course) article right at the top (how ironic). It turns out Wikipedia is the poster child for Web 2.0. Web 1.0 (read-only web) was just geeks in the background creating all these web pages and content and the rest of us were passive viewers, not much better than watching TV. Now with Web 2.0 (read-write web), we are all participants in the content (thanks to those same geeks who wrote the software). And wikis are really the tool that makes it happen. Blogging is part of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, but blogging is essentially just writing. Nothing new. A wiki is a "collaborative web space where anyone can add content and anyone can edit content that has already been published" (Richardson, 2006). And the most well-known wiki is the aforementioned Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia, created by a collaboration of tens of thousands of individuals. It is a revolutionary concept, and it has become so popular, that it has spawned a whole wikipedia of offshoots, to where the entire Internet is moving toward becoming a shared universe, a One World Order.
This story really slapped my face about the power of Wikipedia: During the uprising in Iran following the contested elections, one of the best places to get the latest information was at, you guessed it, Wikipedia. In the first week of protests, the article on the "2009 Iranian Election Protests" was updated almost 2,000 times (as of today 2,314 edits) by hundreds of contributors who left over 145 citations at the bottom of the page (as of today there are 230 citations). Wikipedia became a clearinghouse of information based on the work of concerned citizens. It has created millions of amateur editors who are, in blogging parlance, ready to "fact-check your a**". Today Wikipedia has 3,587,529 articles, in English. It is published in 279 languages.
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." - Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder
The implications of this are tremendous.