I was listening to my daily BBC news podcast when the news of Craig Venter creates synthetic cell from artificial genome. In his interview with the BBC, he believes that this breakthrough could spark the new industrial revolution. Honestly, this is beyond my understanding and although it creates wonderful opportunities and have great potential, there is also a fear of such technology. The technology can be used for tremendous good to develop alternative fuels, nano technology, new vacines, new plastics all from Carbon Dioxide, but of the flip side this technology could find its way into the ultimate biological weaponry. It was hard to avoid the ethical questions that have been raised and it seems like it is an argument that is in a vast grey area, in serval interviews he was asked if he was playing god, and he made a great responses on BBC.com
Beyond the argument of whether this is right or wrong, I believe most importantly as Craig Venter puts it “this is a giant philosophical change in the way we view life.”
One thing that baffles me is that in the US, this news is played down so much, that I find it hard to believe that on CNN, that the 30th birthday of Pacman is more important than a breakthrough on such a magnitude.
Comments Off | Share posted on May 21, 2010 at 10:26 am ad, nike, Video
I love commercials, especially ones that doesn’t seem to be selling anything (just reinforcing their brand). Nike never ease to satisfy me in that department. Here is a new ad from them, adding elements of social media and Homer Simpson in the mix. Just something fun to watch, enjoy
I was invited to the Pawsox game this afternoon at the McCoy stadium in Pawtucket. (For those who doesn’t know who or what the Pawsox are, they are the sister team of the Redsox.) At these events, the baseball happens very much in the background where people come to mingle and meet friends, however, today all of us had our eyes fixed on the field. Rajesh Bellani,the Associate Provost of RISD was at the center of the field throwing out the first pitch. It was exciting!
Comments Off | Share posted on May 16, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Other than y own conference, Better World by Design, this is one of the best designed conference that I have been to, and by far the best TEDx I’ve been to (I have been to TEDx all round the world). It has been a great afternoon, the speakers are great, there was a great variety of topics discussed. Back to paying attention to the amazing speakers. Join us live at the TEDxCambridge website or follow the tweets #TEDxC
Or just see the photos that I am taking from the conference live(ish)
I went in to the theaters not expecting too much. I wanted to see the film because of Banksy and see what he had to say. It turned out to be this amazing story about the underground street art movement from the perspective of a ‘film maker’, who is really a french guy with an obsession to film everything and later found the street artists as a subject. The story seemed amateurish, but everything came together and tells a great story by telling how the movement exploded and losing meaning.
Comments Off | Share posted on May 14, 2010 at 12:58 pm
I had a blast at TEDxEast the past friday in New York City. It was a real treat to see both the founder, Richard Saul Wurman, and the current owner, Chris Anderson, of TED to be on the same stage, speaking about what they are passionate about. Then we had Baba, a rapper, rapping about evolutionary biology, and Suzanne Vega perform. In a nutshell, a great conference. Here are photos from TEDxEast.
