Feb 18 2011: The best hidden gem is Matthieu Ricard. The link to his talk is http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/matthieu_ricard_on_the_habits_of_happiness.html
Feb 18 2011: I absolutely agree that if you want something to be common knowledge you have to get it to a large audience. It would be interesting to consider what kind of ideas about the world most of us walk around with. Most of us get our facts from tv and newspapers in the format of news, which hardly ever engage in cause and effect analysis. Presumably the reason why you want people to have truthful ideas about the world is that they can intereact with it in a positive way. For people to want to think about the world they have to be given facts and have to have them related to each other in terms of cause and effect. Just knowing that the average Bangladeshi for Mexican couple have 2 children is not terribly interesting. Now, If you dig at what is behind that phenomenon, maybe we will get interested and will be able to direct some of our resourses to help the needy, or put preassure on our governments to give more aid.... The thing is, from my experience of the media, I am not that sure that the objective is to interest people in the world but just to get them to consume some more...
Feb 18 2011: It is interesting that in spite of my being a reasonably well informed citizen (BBC, Channel 4, and the broadsheed papers) I haven't come accross any of those two items: The EU putting import tariffs on Chinese solar panels nor the Bangladeshi Minister of Environment speech on the iniquities of the world system. Things will not change until a critical mass of people are aware of what goes on and until the elites feel watched by the people. The media elites are the gatekeepers preventing information from flowing freely. It is very discouraging!
Dec 27 2010: I absolutely love watching his guy talking! However, I am not sure that integration in the world economy is the answer.... Surely, if I can produce some of value and I am going to pay enough to get value into my life sure, but if I am going to get exploited and the only thing I get out my work in tiredness and starving wages... well, I'd be better off out of it.
Dec 26 2010: I've watched another of his presentations where he claims that the average income across the world is something like $7.500, and from memory that particular video was from 2007, well before the financial crisis wiped I don't know how many trillion dollars from the global economy.
I love Hans Roslings presentations and he seems to have the heart in the right place but he seems carried away by numbers without paying much attention at what there is behind... Is integration in the global economy always better than something else, i.e. growing your food or hunting for it?
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A comment on Conversation: What's the best hidden gem in the TED archive?
A reply on Conversation: Why do so many think that population growth is an important issue for the environment? Don't they know the facts of demographics?
A reply on Conversation: Why do so many think that population growth is an important issue for the environment? Don't they know the facts of demographics?
A comment on Talk: Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty
A reply on Talk: Hans Rosling: Stats that reshape your worldview
I love Hans Roslings presentations and he seems to have the heart in the right place but he seems carried away by numbers without paying much attention at what there is behind... Is integration in the global economy always better than something else, i.e. growing your food or hunting for it?