TED Community » Claudio Dinapoli

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• TEDCred score: +32.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +2

  A comment on Talk: Paolo Cardini: Forget multitasking, try monotasking

  Dec 5 2012: Human multitasking (a person's ability to do more than one thing at a time) isn't just a bad thing in human life. On the contrary, it might be also useful. And it really has been in human history, in my opinion. For instance, let's imagine a worker working on an assembly chain; he is given one simple repetitive task to perform for hours and hours. If he didn't have any capacity to fantasize or to talk to someone else he'd be stuck in his boring task. His experience at workplace would be depressing. So, when a given task becomes automatic and we are left with some spare conscious ability to do at least one more task, we can use it to enhance our experience of life.

• A comment on Talk: Ruby Wax: What's so funny about mental illness?

  Nov 6 2012: I've always thought my pet male dog is happier than me since the first time I saw him sniffing female dogs genitals.

• A comment on Talk: Ryan Merkley: Online video -- annotated, remixed and popped

  Oct 22 2012: So let's give MTV channel an undoubted merit: years before this software 'Popcorn' it invented and aired Pop Up videos. Anyway, a very interesting and useful tech tool, but after seeing a TED's talk 'popcorned' I think all these interactive and informative pieces of information that pop up during a video may actually distract a viewer rather than delivering a better understanding of what she's seeing. Maybe that video shouldn't be popcorned at all, or perhaps a viewer should be given the option to disable 'Popcorn' and watch it naked, making a comprehension of what it wants to deliver. And, during a second view, as I always replay many interesting videos, one can enable 'Popcorn' and have a deeper and more informative experience of it. That's my two cents.

• A comment on Talk: Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different?

  Oct 13 2012: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy"
  - William Shakespeare
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy?

  Jan 20 2012: Let me tell you something. I'm from Italy and last year a referendum took place in my country on whether or not revamp a plan for building nuclear power plants on the Italian soil. There had been previously another referendum back in 1988, after Chernobyl nuclear disaster, that had already banned nuclear from Italy. But Belusconi's government started to say since 2009 that nuclear could be the answer to increasing raw materials prices, including other traditional sources of energy, such as oil, coal, gas. The debate here in Italy was very poor and Fukushima helped a lot the pro-YES advocates (here in Italy referendums are abrogative of laws). I'm glad TED spread this debate that at least is intellectual and scientific. It is not true though, as you wrote, that now, in the aftermath of Fukushima nuclear crisis, this debate is useless and nuclear is obviously dangerous. In this debate, both parties gained a point. Mark could say now that nuclear is likely to be dangerous, and Steward could reaffirm that the alternatives to nuclear are still the same. It is true that Germany is going to shut down all nuclear production by 2022, but the replacements aren't photovoltaic panels and wind turbines, that still don't produce steady energy for baseload demand. The replacements are going to be coal and gas fueled power plants amounting from 10 to 20 GW.
  
  One last thing. Any statement on nuclear being dangerous is too absolute. What nuclear is unsafe? If a Chrysler has a car crash and all passengers die, can we say that all cars are unsafe, including Volvos, Toyotas, BMWs, and Mercedes? I don't think so. Fukushima didn't reaffirm that nuclear isn't safe at all. 10 km away along the coast in Fukushima prefecture, another nuclear power plant was double-hit by the same earthquake and tsunami. All activities were properly shut down. Fukushima told us two stories: one is famous -- it's Fukushima Dai-ichi (first); another is less known and it is called Fukushima Dai-ni (second).

• A reply on Talk: Bono: Action for Africa

  Jan 3 2012: Latins used to say "Nemo propheta in patria" which roughly can be translated in English like this: "Nobody is a leader in her homeland". I've heard so often comments like yours on Bono's attitude, but too many times those comments lack of an explanation. Why, in your opinion, as an Irish, Bono is a 'twat'?
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy?

  Jan 1 2012: Yes, you're right. Germans decided last year, after Fukushima nuclear crisis, to cut off all their nuclear power plants by 2022. It was widely publicized by all newspapers as well as by bloggers and environmentalists. It is less known and acknowledged by the wide public, though, what it is going to be used instead of nuclear in Germany. As Steward Brand wisely said in this debate, there are a few alternatives to nuclear to produce what it is called steady energy (baseload energy), otherwise known as the minimum demand of energy in an electric grid. They are: coal, gas, hydro, and in some cases (where it is available) geothermal. Guess what Germans are going to use after cutting off nuclear power plants? Coal and gas. That's what Angela Merkel, German chancellor, said last May (2011) Here's the news:
  
  http://snipurl.com/21hkd8d
  
  A guy in this video, obviously against nuclear, suggested people to beware the pro-nuclear propaganda. There's another ongoing propaganda that is pro-renewables. Its major lexical weapon is this: there's always a German company (but it might be Chinese, Japanese, even in the US) developing a wonderful technology that is going to be a breakthrough in producing clean renewable energy. In this case it is a storage battery that might solve photovoltaic grid problem and in addition to that its life cycle lasts longer than already existing lithium-ion batteries in our smartphones or other devices (which on average last 2 years or so). In the meanwhile, Germany is going to build 20 GW of fossil fuel power plants by 2022. Batteries not included. Sorry for being so sarcastic.
• +5

  A comment on Talk: William Kamkwamba: How I harnessed the wind

  Oct 11 2011: I've just linked this video on Facebook as a reply to a friend of mine who had posted on her "wall" an Italian article whose title sounds like this "What if Steve (Jobs) were born near Naples?". That article states that being "hungry and foolish" - as Jobs famously said back in 2005 before an audience of graduated students from Stanford - could actually work in a good, promising environment, that is California. Instead, if one stays "hungry and foolish" in a tough, bureaucratic, criminal environment (like Naples) she will surely end up remaining "hungry and foolish" for the rest of her life without realizing anything important like Jobs success. As I pondered whether the latter statement was true, this video I had watched months earlier just popped up in my mind. William had dropped school early in his life, he was hungry in a literal way, and last but not least he was foolish, or at least other people close to him believed him to be crazy after he decided he would build a wind mill. What he actually did was a little cultural, economical revolution in his very tough environment. I think this video could compare to Jobs speech at Stanford in terms of how inspiring it is. Steve addressed his speech to students and young American people. William did it to African people. An Apple inc. can spring everywhere, even where you can't imagine. Even in Africa where there are low rates of education, high rates of mortality, droughts, and misery. Now we have a proof.

• A reply on Talk: Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability

  Jan 5 2011: I've always thought shame is interrelated to our personality, it follows us like our shadows and never leaves us alone. If we feel shame it's because we feel not BEING enough and that's not going to change at all. We say "I'm not worthy". On the other hand there is guilt that has a lesser impact in our lives, because we feel we DID something that wasn't enough in our past, but we don't feel that we're not going to change. We don't recognise ourselves in that moment in the past. We did it wrong, we might admit, but we're not wrong at all. So those who feel guilt are less likely to experience a sense of uselessness than those who feel shame. So i think you're right.
  I quote you: "Embracing vulnerability, accepting their own imperfections - these are things you can do to mitigate Guilt, more than Shame. Mitigating Shame involves either changing/amending the behavior, ." But rather than behavior, it's a changing in our personalities that needs to take place.