TED Community » Steve Gottschalk

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• +2

  A reply on Talk: Hans Rosling: Religions and babies

  19 hours ago: As I see it, the real heart of the talk is the idea that it is good for birthrates to fall to around 2 children per woman and that four factors to help do that are increased child survival, decreased need for child labor, increased women's education and work opportunity, and increased access to family planning. Leading with the question of whether religion affects birth rates only to conclude in the end that it does not - well it's good to know but is almost better suited for inclusion in a talk called "Oft-Discussed Factors That Don't Affect Birth-Rates".
• +3

  A comment on Talk: Hans Rosling: Religions and babies

  20 hours ago: A dispassionate conclusion about religion - imagine that! Not that it's perfect or that it's evil, just that it makes no difference to birth rates. Once again Hans Rosling sets the standard for Ted Talks.

• A reply on Talk: Hans Rosling: Religions and babies

  20 hours ago: I'm not aware of a religion where women's education and women's participation are religious dictates. I can think of many states where religion is filtered thru patriarchal culture to justify political dictates preventing women's education and women's participation.
  
  The nearest religious dictates I can think of are in Christianity where Paul the Apostle instructs the Corinthians that women should not speak in church and in Judaism when Moses says men and women should worship in separate sections of the temple. But even so, these dictates are only relevant to religious congregations, not secular society. Do you know of any that are more explicit about prohibiting women's education and work?
• +3

  A reply on Talk: Hans Rosling: Religions and babies

  20 hours ago: Are there any countries where more than 50% self-identify as atheists at present?

• A comment on Talk: Melinda Gates: Let's put birth control back on the agenda

  1 day ago: It sounds to me like when families in South Saharan Africa are given the opportunity to control their family size thru birth control, the men reject it. What good is giving African women condoms if their husbands won't use them?
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Michael Norton: How to buy happiness

  Apr 25 2012: In a nutshell: charity makes the giver happy regardless of the amount.

• A reply on Talk: Brian Greene: Is our universe the only universe?

  Apr 25 2012: The answer is that if we rephrase the question as "How would the universe have to work in order for our universe to be fine-tuned for life if the default state is for there to be no life?" we can come up with wildly imaginative theories that can only be verified if another universe crashes into ours.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Brian Greene: Is our universe the only universe?

  Apr 25 2012: If Einstein's theory of relativity is correct...
  If there is repulsive gravity...
  If there is dark energy...
  If there are strings...
  If we allow for extra dimensions...
  If those universes each have different shapes...
  If we'll accept more than one answer for a question of physics...
  If our universe collides with another one...
  
  Want to throw in a virgin birth with all those empirically unverifiable ideas while you're at it?

• A reply on Talk: Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy

  Mar 31 2012: The big idea I'm getting out of this is no matter what materials you use, invent to the price point of the market. If sodium/sulfur is more efficient or cheaper and you can make a product that costs marginally less per unit than consumers are willing to spend, have at it and put Sadoway out of business!

• A comment on Talk: Daniel Schnitzer: Inventing is the easy part

  Mar 31 2012: Technology dissemination as Dean Kamen calls it or market penetration strategy as business people call it is important. But if Hatians say they are not buying these bulbs because they are too expensive, the the problem is that the product was not designed to the price point of the market, to borrow from Donald Sadoway's TED Talk.
  
  The bulbs may pay for themselves in three months, but will that leave the Haitian consumer with money to eat during those three months? We can try to cut down the upfront costs with imaginative schemes like remittance vouchers, but is it possible to create solar bulbs with a cheaper price, shorter life, and the same energy saving ratio? If so, that second option is much more likely to work.