Things got bet­ter for me in this ses­sion. The kick­off speaker, Nina Jablon­ski had what I think was the best stage pres­ence so far. Oth­ers will dis­agree, but I really liked her — I’d totally study Anthro­pol­ogy if she was one of my professors.

Nina Jablon­ski

  • this month is the 200th anniver­sary of Charles Dar­win’s birth
  • Ori­gin of Species was pub­lished 150 years ago — just one line in it about evolution
  • Dar­win likely under­stood the nature of the spread of pig­men­ta­tion in human pop­u­la­tion, but never wrote about it
  • Dar­win rejected the idea that pig­men­ta­tion was related to climate
  • TOMS satel­lite data col­lected that shows lev­els of UV expo­sure of surface
  • there is a fun­da­men­tal direct cor­re­la­tion between UV expo­sure and skin pig­men­ta­tion in cul­tural groups — pig­men­ta­tion is an evo­lu­tion­ary factor
  • melanin acts as a nat­ural sun­screen — darker=more protected
  • also pro­tects against DNA destruc­tion and folate breakdown
  • UVA has no abil­ity to make Vit­a­min D in skin, only UVB — sig­nif­i­cant con­se­quences for high lat­i­tude populations
  • health and social consequences
  • Vit­a­min D defi­ciency from under­ex­po­sure to UVB a sig­nif­i­cant issue — mea­sur­able effects on skele­tal and men­tal health
  • evi­dence for evo­lu­tion is “right on your body”
  • best speaker so far

Arthur Ben­jamin

  • cal­cu­lus is the wrong sum­mit for high school math
  • rather, we should teach com­plex prob­a­bil­ity and statistics
  • every­one should know what “two stan­dard devi­a­tions from the mean” means
  • few peo­ple use cal­cu­lus daily in a mean­ing­ful way as opposed to probability
  • cal­cu­lus still crit­i­cal — intro­duce in in 1st year of college

Hans Rosling

  • ret­ro­spec­tive on world HIV infec­tion rates
  • recog­nised in 1983 and virus dis­cov­ered in 1991
  • global HIV epi­demic now reach­ing steady state — around 1% of adult population
  • 30-​​40M cases in the world
  • all not reached by treat­ment — 6% untreated in poor coun­tries 2 years after diagnosis
  • only by stop­ping trans­mis­sion can we fur­ther reduce infec­tion rates
  • HIV is very dif­fer­ent in Africa yet the West views Africa as a sin­gle whole
  • over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion
  • research is now break­ing the per­cep­tion of Africen infec­tion rates and the source and nature of those infection
  • 4% of the globe has 50% of the infection
  • we need Heart. Money. Brain.

Louise Fresco

  • bread is a sta­ple of human diet
  • “real” bread is about authen­tic­ity — why do we have this image?
  • most of our ances­tors were close to the land — we have mythol­o­gised the past
  • processed white bread is a sig­nif­i­cant cul­tural marker — plenty
  • global agri­cul­tural pop­u­la­tion is now ~4% in indus­tri­alised nations
  • never before have so few been involved in pro­duc­ing our food
  • the “plenty state” change in the con­sti­tu­tion of bread (adding sugar, milk, fruit, eggs) shifts it from sta­ple to par­tial cause of obesity
  • mass pro­duc­tion ->large scale -> habi­tat destruction
  • we need to go back to know­ing what food is about — we are removed from what our bread is
  • the anti-​​mass pro­duc­tion move­ment bases itself on false argu­ments and will rel­e­gate farm­ing com­munties to poverty
  • rather than hyper­local, we need to move away from long haul food to regional food
  • we need to give agri­cul­tural com­mu­ni­ties the nec­es­sary tools
  • we need to dou­ble global food pro­duc­tion by 2020. — the demand for pro­tein in devel­op­ing nations is a dri­ving force
  • clever, low-​​key mechanisation
  • more good science
  • ask your gov­ern­ments for inte­grated food policy
  • food is about cul­tural respect

Eliz­a­beth Gilbert

  • life­long love and fas­ci­na­tion with writing
  • will it now change with the weight of expec­ta­tion after Eat, Pray, Love?
  • she is afraid of not achiev­ing more
  • some writ­ers undone by their gifts
  • “Encour­age our cre­ative minds to live”
  • look­ing for mod­els for sane man­age­ment of cre­ativ­ity — ancient Greece and Rome
    • cre­ativ­ity asso­ci­ated with a divine spirit
    • unknow­able reasons
    • dae­mon or a genius — divine enti­ties of creativity
    • Dobby the House Elf
  • Renais­sance changed — Man at the cen­ter of the universe
  • you could be a genius rather than have a genius — fun­da­men­tal difference
  • Tom Waits — embod­i­ment of tor­tured poet
    • cre­ative process hit him while dri­ving — “Do you not see that I’m driving”
    • no longer tor­mented by cre­ative process
  • cre­ativ­ity as tran­scen­dent event — painful rec­on­cil­i­a­tion for per­form­ers and creators
  • Ole!

Jacek Utko

  • news­pa­pers are dying for many reasons
  • can any­thing save newspapers?
  • Small. Free. Local. Focussed. Views over news
  • Cirque du Soleil as model for news­pa­per design
  • design posters not newspapers
  • have fun through experimentation
  • treat the entire paper like a sin­gle com­po­si­tion akin to music
  • have the  designer respon­si­ble for the reader experience
  • cir­cu­la­tion grows sig­nif­i­cantly — 13 – 35% imme­di­ately after the redesign
  • design as a part of the whole process — not just a point
  • improve the prod­uct as well — bet­ter content
  • strategy+content+design
  • design can change prod­uct, com­pany, you — give power tto designers
  • do all your work at the high­est poss­si­ble level
  • “To be good is not enough.”

Nigel Holmes

  • new update
  • mil­lion — bil­lion — tril­lion sounds inncouous
  • at the scale of a small­brochure, 1B is 1/​42″ high to 1T at 20′
  • If 10T is the deficit, we need 1B ideas

Mar­garet Wertheim

  • the cro­chet hook is a pow­er­ful tool
  • cro­chet­ing a coral reef involves — peo­ple on sev­eral con­ti­nents, math, craft, activism
  • 100s of mod­els in instal­la­tion — 99% of work by women
  • a response to news of dam­age to Great Bar­rier Reef
  • aes­thetic and poetic dimen­sions of math
  • Andy Warhol Museum asked her to exhibit
  • also Chicago Cul­tural Cen­ter — at 3000 square feet
  • insane, cro­chet overdrive
  • many con­trib­u­tors — local peo­ple con­tribute their own pieces
  • organ­isms in corals reefs exhibit hyper­bolic geom­e­try — only way to phys­i­cally model is with crochet
  • hyper­bolic geom­e­try dis­cov­ered in 19th Cen­tury — only in 1997 was use of crocheta
  • also Eucldidea anspher­i­cal geometry
  • hyper­bolic space
  • “fem­i­nine hand­i­craft” defies Euclid­ean geomery and gen­eral rel­a­tiv­ity — sea slugs don’t care
  • let­tuce also embod­ies hyper­bolic geometry
  • The Cro­chet Code
  • play — kindy for grown-​​ups
  • we have think tanks, we need play tanks
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