TED Community » Genevieve Tran

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Education for children, adults and myself, having a good time, cooking and picnics!

An idea worth spreading

8 hugs a day! SPF 15. Disarm them with a smile. Cook / prepare as many of your meals yourself as you can. Build muscle and bone through exercise while you're young. You are amazing. Stop shopping for shit you don't need. Make time for nothingness every day. Courage, my Love. Travel light. Take photos. Love your lover for real or not at all. Write cheesy ass songs or poems until they are good. Define your own goals and success. Think sexy thoughts. Have dinner parties. Toast your parents. Cry. Be funny in another language. Kiss like you mean it. Work like you mean it. Strive to sleep well every day. Speak clearly. And only lie about your biological age.

Talk to me about

TED talks, living in the matrix, health, good ideas

People don't know that I'm good at

Knitting, composing songs and painting.

My TED Story

TED is like the education I never had. I've learned so much. I've been a little excessive on the viewing, but this is the closest to being cyborgs with these fabulous (most of them) speakers and thinkers.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +98.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: Manal al-Sharif: A Saudi woman who dared to drive

  3 days ago: It's great that this was a matter for Ms. al-Sharif's brother too and all the other men who stood up. This peaceful, but determined defiance by all of them against bogey men is how all liberties big and small are won.

• A comment on Talk: Andrew McAfee: What will future jobs look like?

  Jun 12 2013: I can't agree with the Greek mythology of "abundance" for our here and now. The facts are: there are finite resources, compound interest, credit limits and even that money printing press has got to break down sometime!
  
  I don't know if Hayek and Friedman really championed minimum income or not--but I guess that's what's happening with China creating all the product with its ever increasing factory power and then having to lend America subsistence wages in order to buy it! It's absurd:
  
  The machines of the future will be financed at compound interest rates by banks; their products are going to have to be sold to increasingly unemployed people, failing which, the machine manufacturers will have to be alternate employers (i.e. Store Greeter?) or lenders (Store Credit Card?) in order to push some product and make good on the bank loan for the machines. End result: we are trapped in our useless consumption model; everyone is trapped in mounting debt, as usual.
• +4

  A comment on Conversation: So, what is the purpose of men in modern families?

  Jun 8 2013: It's sort of rare, but when I meet a man who shines in his manhood, it's a beautiful thing--and it has so many of the same characteristics of what we might call true womanhood: nurturing, kind, protective, thoughtful, strong, sure, generous, and positive.
  
  Come to think of it, when people are truly connected to what it means to care for themselves and each other, we could say that these are the characteristics of:
  
  Motherhood, fatherhood, brotherhood, sisterhood, childhood, neighbourhood... We are not so essentially different, when we are truly beautiful!
• +4

  A comment on Talk: Anas Aremeyaw Anas: How I named, shamed and jailed

  Jun 7 2013: Like all psychopaths, abusers of power know how to manipulate our weakness of complacency. This is how Mr. Anas' throwing it back in their faces is extremely important. But he shouldn't be a hero--his facelessness should be because he is one of millions acting.
  
  I hope we don't limit the relevance of this talk to "Africa"--which we expect is rotten with corruption. Many of those who climb to powerful positions in the West also do so expressly to exploit the quiet nature of the masses to further their own agenda. Corruption thrives in a fertile backdrop of complacency (assumptions of checks and balances in the West are as powerful as fear is in dictatorships and lawlessness to keep people quiet).
  
  We are all complicit and corrupt when we fail to speak up when it matters. Maybe we don't fear death or physical harm anymore, but we fear trouble in our lives, the loss of a job and income to support our children, the loss of status--our first world fear is administrative hassle (!) The effect is the same: we care for our immediate lot in life and are unable to think of long-term effects our failure to act will have on society. (Which is why Mr. Anas' continually risking life and limb is so admirable).
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Ji-Hae Park: The violin, and my dark night of the soul

  Jun 2 2013: It's Ms. Park who is the instrument for the music to come to us :)
  
  (As a musical troglodyte, I so very much appreciate being taken to heights like this, to appreciate just how far music reaches.)
• +4

  A comment on Talk: Jackson Katz: Violence against women—it's a men's issue

  May 30 2013: This is an unhesitatingly and thoroughly important 18 minutes that all students need to spend watching before graduating high school.

• A comment on Talk: Alastair Parvin: Architecture for the people by the people

  May 26 2013: Architects as space flow problem solvers, not just builders --> with this, Mr. Parvin just opened up his field super-wide. Architects and designers could decongest tourist areas, de-ghettoize apartment blocks, install a workable school and sewage system in the world's shanty towns, help storefronts think beyond a window display to bring in more customers, help public protests organize more effectively, recommend blueprints for a city's upcoming demographic waves of residents (like more aging people or young families). So many things!
  
  I'm not sure I would download the open-source printable house (except maybe for a treehouse). I don't trust myself to assemble an earthquake-proof house. And I'd hate to think that the whole housing industry might become disposable because its DIY nature causes it to be non-resalable or too easy to replace. In Japan, because of a personal ick factor, residential real estate purchases are often for the land only--previous houses are torn down. It can be very wasteful. And people engage architects for personal projects often. It can make the look of neighbourhoods un-cohesive / poorly zoned and poorly planned if the personal design strategies clash.
• +3

  A comment on Talk: Judy MacDonald Johnston: Prepare for a good end of life

  May 24 2013: This puts in stark perspective just how much our life is ultimately ruled by administrative paperwork from beginning to end. Hospital release, report cards, standardized tests, university applications, loan applications, job applications, tax returns, contracts, investments, mortgage, car lease, insurance, licenses. We shouldn't expect to get off the hook so easily with the business of death. It's only fitting to have a well-organized file handy! But of course!...Though now that unprepared, f#$%-it-all, sudden death doesn't sound so bad...haha
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Maria Bezaitis: The surprising need for strangeness

  May 24 2013: I actually think "strangers" and "strangeness" have become irrelevant because of the Internet. We chat with customer service reps in India, argue with trolls, puppy pile on fan pages, flash boobs on Reddit etc. Oh and wax on wax off en masse on TED :) As for strangeness--is there really anything we haven't seen on the web?
  
  It's interacting in the real world that has become stranger and more difficult :/
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Sergey Brin: Why Google Glass?

  May 19 2013: Not sure if the look of Google Glass is any less socially awkward than hunching over a phone. lol Bluetooth phone talkers already look kinda ker-azy...