Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Good v Evil



Have you seen TED? TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. The basic premise of the non-profit is "Ideas worth spreading." Their website is a collection of essays, articles and videos. The topics are so widely varied and interesting, it's really worth a look.


I want to draw your attention to one video in particular. It's going to sound silly, but after I read the book Wicked, by Gregory Maguire, I've been drawn to the idea of good and evil in modern context. Anthropologists and their students face struggles in maintaining objectivity. When you're conducting research and one of your subjects is doing something you think is "wrong" do you stop them from doing it or do you allow it to happen for the sake of research. Because, the argument goes, if you have the evidence from ONE case, you have ammunition to help the ENTIRE population. Tough choices.

But I digress. The video I'm talking about is this one. It's 20 minutes long, but worth the watch. Samantha Power is talking about a renegade hero, a guy who negotiated with terrorists and dictators in order to save people. The story is compelling and Ms. Power's telling is captivating. But that's TED, compelling and captivating. As a sidebar brag, a LOT of Penn Staters have appeared in TED Talks. That's right! We can drink and be brilliant!
Thanks for reading,
Sara

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

TED is awesome! I could watch it all day (and some days I do listen to it for hours). And you're right - Penn State is well represented there. But that's no surprise. It's also very well represented in printed popular science magazines.

I normally don't pick the political talks like this one. Kind of a jerk that way I guess.

Lori said...

I love TED videos. Many of them are so unbelievably inspiring.

Nadine said...

I love the TED videos!!

Re: the title of your post - without revealing spoilers, did you watch last season of Lost yet? Particularly the last episode?

Kathy said...

Interesting post. I watched the video.

Melanie Hooyenga said...

I'm glad you explained TED. I've seen links from it but wasn't sure exactly what it is.