TED Community » Abdi Christia

More About Me

I'm passionate about

simplicity, sustainability, natural world, appropriate technology

Comments

• TEDCred score: +64.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0

  Jan 18 2012: While some people think this talk is not good enough, I find it well said and useful, at least for myself.
  
  Alain's stereotypical description of an atheist may be more suitable to:
  a. a novice atheist who's still learning how to cope with the new paradigm
  b. an atheist living in a very religious community, or even a very religious country
  c. a purist and or no-compromise atheist who finds religion as 'take it or leave it' choice
  
  There are people who can't pretend to believe something they don't believe. Well, in secular countries they may just face little discomforts. But it'll be different in place where everything starts and ends with a prayer. A place where your religion must be written on your ID cards, where your parents or supervisors names very rarely come first in an acknowledgement of your (academic) achievements. Yes, there are places where religion plays a major part of people's life. In that circumstance, atheists probably have to unroot themselves from the culture.
  
  For me, Alain's talk brings the same principle as aikido. Rather than receiving (or giving) 'right-angled' impacts from our differences, we'd better flex our mind to make them 'obtuse-angled.' Both sides would have lower crash impact that way. However, this might be interesting, the impact-receiver side always win because it's the one directing the impact. Will the same thing happens in atheism case?
• +9

  A reply on Talk: Martin Hanczyc: The line between life and not-life

  Nov 8 2011: "Given mere chance, how many possible years would it take for purely random mutations to produce something so infinitely complex as a human being..."
  
  Dear Clint, would you please take a little moment to learn a bit about evolution, then come back to reconsider your argument? Personally I'd recommend Richard Dawkins' books since I found he has simple explanation for the topic. Or you could readily read about it in wikipedia (http://bit.ly/tManyI) . Why would I do this? Because for me that very argument of yours spoils everything you said before.

• A comment on Conversation: Do you have a suggestion for TED? Something we could do better?

  Jun 5 2011: TED has been providing a link for TED Speaker recommendation. I've done it once quite a long time ago, but until now I haven't get any responses on it. I am trying to understand that it may take additional staff to deal with this, but it will be very nice for the person to get a response on why yes or why not.
  By the way, I recommended Bill Mollison as the co-founder of Permaculture as a TED Speaker. I think Permaculture qualifies at least in Technology and Design theme of TED.

• A comment on Conversation: Do you have a suggestion for TED? Something we could do better?

  Jun 5 2011: Up to today, we still need manual tweaking in order to synchronize subtitles with its downloaded videos. However, this is not happening when we watch it online. I feel it will be great if the downloadable subtitles have been synchronized with the downloadable videos.
• +4

  A reply on Talk: Angela Belcher: Using nature to grow batteries

  Apr 29 2011: I really think that your (Markus') view on plants' energy efficiency needs to be expanded. Although plants convert only tiny percentage of solar into chemical energy, the remaining solar energy is not wasted.
  
  A part of it heats topsoil, thus allowing soil life to operate at warmer (better) condition, especially at temperate climate. Another part heats the plants' leaves, transpires water vapour, thus engaging the plants to suck more water from the soil. This plant-based water vapour eventually compose the major portion of the inland rain. This effect alone is sure to be very important for many organisms, including us.
  
  Let us take an example by comparing plants and solar panel at solar energy utilization. Plants are dwarves (say 1% efficiency) compared to the best solar panel available (say 25% efficiency) in utilizing solar energy. To make it worse, the energy form in plants is not readily usable if compared to electricity. Nevertheless, plants are self-reproducing, self-maintaining, creating microclimate, sequestering carbon, etc (please check William McDonough's talk), while our solar panels are not even comparable on those issues.
  
  I hope we can view this subject in a more comprehensive approach in the future.
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Michael Pollan: A plant's-eye view

  Aug 10 2010: Is there any way we can recommend someone to be a speaker in a TED Conference?