Postcard from Earth: Some Like it Hot

If you actually watched commercials on television (for me it’s an occupational hazard), you’d get the impression that the world has embraced environmentalism.  Every company seems to have gone “green” in one way or another and wants to make sure we know it.

Nowhere is it more evident than in the energy sector.  Americaspower.org tells us that ”clean coal”  is “the fuel that powers our way of life.”  The idea of “clean coal” sounds a bit like that old joke about “military intelligence,” but we’ll let that ride for now.

America’s Natural Gas Alliance reminds us that natural gas is “domestic, abundant, clean energy to power our lives.”  Even the oil companies tell us how they’re developing all sorts of new ways to meet our energy demands: Exxon Mobil is exploring extracting oil from…  algae!

Seeing all this, you’d be reassured that we’re making real progress in our efforts to deal with the negative effects of our energy consumption and the resultant issues of climate change.

Unfortunately, you’d be totally wrong.

In 2010, the last year for which I’ve found data, we reached a new high in global carbon dioxide emissions.

Source: thinkprogress.org, Climate Progress, Joe Romm, Editor

Some sources claim we topped 10 million metric tons for the first time in 2010.  But who’s counting 862,000 metric tons here or there.  That little downward dip in 2008, BTW, is the global recession.  I guess a couple of people delayed first-time auto purchases back then or previously rampant construction in Dubai slowed down a bit.  The good news, as the chart points out, is that the economy started to recover in 2010.  The bad news: we recovered with the highest year-on-year increase ever in CO2 emissions — 6%.  That’s why the line is steeper from 2008 to 2010 than at any other point on the graph.

“Wait a minute!” you cry.  “What happened to the Kyoto Protocols and all that?  Didn’t we all pledge to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases?”

Yes, some of us did.  The 169 countries who ratified the Protocols agreed to collectively reduce carbon emissions by 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012.  While a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, the United States has never ratified it, presumably because to deliver on it would be detrimental to the U.S. economy.  And China and India, who did ratify it, are technically exempt from reducing their emissions because they’re developing economies.

Hmmmm.  Little bit of a problem there.

Source: thinkprogress.org, Climate Progress, Joe Romm, Editor

China has overtaken the U.S. as the biggest emitter of carbon.  India comes in at #3 just ahead of Russia and behind the U.S at #2.  What this chart doesn’t point out is the differences in population among the three countries.  At over 1.3 billion people, China has 4 times the population of the U.S.  India, almost at 1.2 billion is not far behind.  The U.S. has just over 311 million people.  So on a per capita basis, the average U.S. citizen is accountable for 4 times the carbon emissions of the average Chinese and about 15 times that of the average subcontinent Indian.

Oops!

It  actually gets worse.  You see, the United States is what we call a “mass affluent” society.  That means we are a largely middle-class country where families have lots of disposable income relative to people in the rest of the world (what, in the marketing departments of U.S. companies and their ad agencies, we refer to as “ROW.”)  So we put McMansions with central air and heat on tightly-packed suburban lots, stock them up with flat-panel TVs and computers, and drive around in our SUVs.

Now there’s this thing in the ROW that’s good news for marketers called “The Rise of the Global Middle Class.”  Believe it or not, a lot of people on Planet Earth are economically a lot better off than they used to be.  And where is that rise most notable and where will it most notably continue to rise?  You guessed it: in China and India.

Source: Christian Science Monitor, May 2011 Graphic: Rich Clabaugh, Monitor Staff

The only reason India eclipses China is because of projected birth rates:  China has had a one-child-per-couple policy since 1979.  India has no such policy, though they do get in trouble from time to time for a program incenting sterilization.   In 2002-3, women were sterilized over men 40:1, despite the fact that tubal ligation is a more complex procedure than a vasectomy.  (For Sterilization Target is Women, New York Times, November 7 2003.)  That’s just a side note.

And what does this growing Asian middle class do with their newly found disposable income?  Surprise, surprise — those cheeky little buggers buy cars and air-conditioners and  flat-panel TVs!  They even buy computers.  How dare they!  Just because you get MTV on your satellite dish doesn’t mean you can expect to live like the people you see on MTV.  Does it?

So much for reducing carbon emissions.

NASA climatologist James Hansen recently explained at TED2012 that you can think of carbon emissions much like a blanket over the earth.  You know how at night you crawl under your duvet and fall asleep all warm and comfy?  And how sometimes in the middle of the night you wake up, overheated, and you throw off the covers?  That’s because your duvet not only keeps cold air away from your body, it prevents the heat your own body produces from escaping into the atmosphere.  It traps that heat, so you stay warm.

Unfortunately, Planet Earth has not yet discovered a mechanism for throwing off its carbon emissions covers in the middle of the night nor in the middle of a century when it gets too warm.

Source: Bart Verheggen at wordpress.com

This chart shows the results of three different ways of calculating an average global yearly temperature.  I have no idea how that’s done, but I can tell that all three ways tell the exact same story.  0.0 on the vertical axis represents the average global yearly temperature from 1900 to the present.  In the years below the dashed horizontal line at the 0.0 point, it was cooler than that average.  (Maybe the post-WWII baby boom had something to do with those cooler temps!)  For the years above such a line, it was warmer.

Now where have I seen that curve before?

There are variations year-to-year in average temperature and always have been.  You have to look at the overall trend and the slope of an imaginary line that describes the trend.  Things really do seem to start heating up in the ’80s as the slope of the imaginary trend line steepens.  And I thought that decade was just about big hair and bad fashion!

One consequence of things getting warmer is something you can observe with a cocktail of your choice — ice melts.   Actually ice melts all the time when it seasonally gets warmer, just as ice forms all the time when it seasonally gets colder.  The issue is that more ice melts and less ice forms when average temperatures rise.  Ice, like ice at the polar ice caps.  Ice, like ice in glaciers in places like Greenland.  Ice, like ice at higher altitudes, like in the Himalayas or the Andes or the Rockies.

Here’s a little science experiment you can do at home.  Pour 6 ounces of bourbon into an Old-Fashioned glass, or any drinking glass if you don’t have special barware.  Mark the level of the liquid on the outside of the glass.  Then add ice and wait for it to melt.  Don’t drink it!  When the ice has melted, mark the new level of the liquid in the glass.  Now you can drink it.

Think of the bourbon as kind of like the sea.  And your ice cubes as land-locked polar, glacial or high-altitude ice.  Yup, this is what you get.

20 centimeters, BTW for the metrically challenged, is just short of 8 inches. (There’s a joke there somewhere, but I’ll save it for another blog.)

Wow.  The slopes of these lines just keep repeating themselves!

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the global average sea level will rise by 7.2 to 23.6 inches by 2100.  That’s their lower range.  There’s an upper range, if ice flow were to increase in step with global average temperature rise — and that’s 19.2 to 31.6 inches.  That’s just the average sea level.  It doesn’t take into account storm surges like what you get from nor’easters and hurricanes and typhoons.

That’s a problem, because the other consequence of higher temperatures is increased frequency and intensity of those storms.  Watch the Weather Channel, and they’ll explain to you why.

Here’s a couple of fun facts to go along with this:  the average elevation above sea level in New Orleans is 1-2 feet.  (We might have to rethink Mardi Gras and JazzFest.)  In New York City, it’s about 7 feet.  That’s the average, which means that some areas are a lot lower, as some New Yorkers found out last year during Hurricane Irene.

Melting ice and rising seas are already observable phenomena.  It’s just not very real for most of us, because it’s most apparent in places where none of us or very few of us live.  Like Antarctica, where nobody lives, or the North Pole where only polar bears live.  Or Greenland and some islands in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean, where almost nobody lives either.

Some people in Greenland are actually happy about it.  Most of their land was buried under glacial ice for most of the year.  Now, more and more of it is being exposed year-round, and they’re discovering valuable minerals.  Some expect a big boost to Greenland’s not-so-vibrant economy.

Kulusuk, Greenland, August 2008 (Photo: Don Hogle)

On a boat excursion to the bay in front of that glacier in the background, we saw and heard the ceiling of an ice cave collapse, where water running under the glacier from a melt (which we could also hear) had weakened the ice.

Before the celing collapsed

After the ceiling collapsed

Greenland’s northern neighbors inside the Arctic Circle — those adorable polar bears who occasionally have been known to maul a human being when they’re really hungry — are not so happy about it.  Suddenly they find themselves stranded on an ice flow in the sea that’s broken off the weakened ice shelf.  Or the territory over which they can roam looking for food is reduced, since they live on aquatic life.

Photo: copyright Steven J. Kazlowski/Barcroft Med

The other folks who aren’t so happy are the Tuvaluans who live on Tuvalu, those middle-of-nowhere Pacific Islanders I mentioned earlier.  There are not quite 11,000 of them, and they’ve lived on a bunch of islands since who knows when.  They are expected to become the world’s first “climate refugee” nation that has to be resettled elsewhere, because their homeland will be underwater by 2100.

“Tuvaluan kids hang out as extra high tides flood neighborhood.”
Photo: copyright 2005 Gary Braasch/World View of Global Warming

OK., so in the grand scheme of things, 11,000 people is not a lot of people (unless you’re a Tuvaluan.)  They can go live on a big island like Madagascar or something, can’t they?

Bangladesh, however, is another story.  15-20% of the country is within one meter (about 3.3 feet) of the sea level and is home to 13-30 million people as well as most of the country’s rice production.  (http://saburkhan.info/)  Could be difficult to move them all to higher ground and feed them and everyone else in the country.

So, what to do?

If you watch the Weather Channel, you might catch Stephanie Abrams, TWC meteorologist, and a cute little kid in a public service announcement (or PSA as we say in the biz), encouraging you to help the planet out by unplugging your appliances when they’re not in use.  I’ve got to say, I’m not so sure this is really going to help.

First of all, let’s discuss, just on the basis of sheer practicality.  I heard somewhere recently that in 1950 the average American household had two electrical appliances/devices plugged into outlets.  (I assume this excluded floor and table lamps and meant your fridge and a television or console radio.)  Today the average American household is supposed to have 25 such electrical appliances and devices.

Just for fun, I decided to count the appliances and devices I have constantly plugged-in in my home.  Bear in mind, I’m one person living in a one-bedroom apartment.  I don’t have a suburban McMansion or a family of four.  Nor do I have a second home.

For the record, I’m not counting floor lamps or table lamps.  Maybe I should, because they’re all plugged into dimmers.  Dimmers require electricity, but as far as I know, only gay men require dimmers.  We’re less than 10% of the population, so I think it’s fair to exclude the dimmers.

I came up with 39 continuously plugged-in electrical appliances and devices, 11 of which display the time, some of which have to be reset if the power is disconnected for any length of time.

I work in advertising, and if we don’t move real behavior, we don’t move product, and we get fired.  So most of the time, we try not to dick around with shit that ain’t gonna work.

Let’s face it, you and I are not going to go around unplugging our appliances every time we leave the house.  Nor should we, because as David J.C. MacKay points out in his book, Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, that energy savings is infinitesimally small, even if “everybody” does it.

I think it’s actually irresponsible, bordering on dangerous, for the Weather Channel to be running that PSA.  Because it gives you the false sense that if you unplug your appliances, you’re actually doing something about energy consumption and climate change.  When, in fact, you’re probably not.

Contrary to what the Brits say — “Every little helps” — every little doesn’t help in this case precisely because it’s little.  And when you add up all the little littles you just get a Big Little, which is different from a Big Big.  And a Big Big is what is needed to solve the energy consumption/climate change issue.  Big changes in how we get our energy and big changes in how we use it.

As Donald Sadoway from MIT said at TED2012, “If we’re going to get this country out of its current energy situation, we can’t conserve our way out, we can’t drill our way out, we can’t bomb our way out. We’re going to do it the old-fashioned American way: we’re going to invent our way out, working together.”

He also said, “We need to think about the problem differently. We need to think big. We need to think cheap.”  “We need to design [solutions] to the market price point.”

And there-in lies the rub.

If the development of solar and wind as methods of generating energy has stalled, it’s because technology has been developed that has dramatically lowered the price of extracting natural gas through hydraulic fracking (which has its own environmental issues.)  Now you can make a lot of money selling natural gas.  More than you can make selling solar panels or wind turbines.

As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein in Watergate, you have to “follow the  money” to get to the truth.  Does someone have a financial reason for not wanting to solve the energy/climate conundrum today?

You betcha.  And it includes those folks who tell us how they’re mucking around in algae to meet our energy needs.

Source: seekingalpha.com, Bob van der Valk

See ya at the gas pump!

Oh wait, I don’t own a car!  But you know what?  I’ve no reason to be smug.  My carbon footprint has wings and travels at 30,000 feet 5-10 times a year.

Just wait until the Chinese and Indian middle classes start taking foreign vacations.

The Taj in Agra’s smog, November, 2007 (Photo: Don Hogle)

Postcard from London: Life on Tour

It’s morning in London.  And a sunny one, after a grey and rather damp day yesterday.  Outside my window at the Zetter Hotel on Clerkenwell Road, the sun is lighting up the Priory of the Knights Hospitallers at St. John’s Gate across the square.

During the 16th century, the buildings housed the offices of the Master of the Revels, and thirty of Shakespeare’s plays were licensed here.  Dr. Samuel Johnson had his first job here, writing reports for The Gentleman’s Magazine. (Dr. Johnson’s most well-known quip is “A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”)  And at the end of the eighteenth century, when the Gate was a pub, Charles Dickens hung out here.

St. John's Gate from the Zetter, March 2012

I’m not sure the hotel’s Wi-Fi catches vibrations from the past, so please lower your expectations for the literary content of this proximate missive.  (However, I’ve never used the phrase “proximate missive” in a sentence before, so who knows!)

I feel as though I’m on tour.  Perhaps this is a premonition of my life to come, as I enter this new phase of working independently.  Perhaps this is that life, already arrived.  Whichever, I like it.

On Wednesday, at a lunch-and-learn session at the agency, I spoke for two hours about TED, sharing some of the ideas that most stirred me up two weeks ago while at TEDActive in Palm Springs.  It’s not often that you get to talk about climate change, energy independence, racial injustice, citizenship, how technology is altering human relationships, secrets, sex education, introversion, vulnerability and creativity all at a bat.  (It sounds like a long, drawn-out bar conversation over too many pints, but that’s coming up, minus the pints.)

Thursday was a day crammed with appointments and meetings.  On Friday, I ran errands, packed, and headed off to the airport at 9:00pm.  I made it to JFK in almost record time — 30 minutes. British Airways has a great business-class option for “pre-flight dining” in their Terraces Lounge, so you can have your meal before boarding and just go right to sleep after take-off.

I love mobile boarding passes, and I’m delighted that so few people are using them yet.  When that red light scans the image on my cellphone at security and at the gate, and people behind me are clutching their desperate pieces of paper, I get a surge of technological superiority and celebrity coolness that seems to evade me everywhere else in life, despite my best efforts.

Celebrity Mobile Boarding Pass

Onboard my midnight flight, I have the tiny welcome champagne and three rather ineffectual Somminex, read a little in Edith Wharton’s Morocco in preparation for a trip there in May, and sleep after a fashion until we arrive in London the following morning.  I never can really sleep on an airplane, unless I’m totally drugged, drunk or both, which I’m loath to do anymore however you mix it up.

The Brits have got it right about coming into town from the airport, and New York would do well to take note.  As I emerge from Customs after reclaiming my luggage, a uniformed guy is selling tickets for the express train into Central London from a hand-held machine.  I buy one for GBP 20, board the train, and fifteen minutes later I’m in Paddington Station. The taxi to the Zetter actually takes longer.

I rinse the plane off in the shower and head out to get some air and some lunch. Right across from the hotel is a cute place called Giant Robot.  It seems to be modeled after an American diner, as is the menu.  I’m not ashamed to say that I had a cheeseburger (with American cheese!), because it was a really good burger. Well worth the 22 pounds (cost, not added personal weight) which included a bloody mary.  A post-script on the menu says “This is not L.A., so don’t ask for substitutions.”  I don’t; I try to follow the rules when abroad.

St. Paul’s Cathedral is about a fifteen-minute walk from my hotel. In the several times I’ve been to London, I’ve never seen it.  So I decide to get a little exercise and go there. I arrive about 3:30pm, or should I say 15:30?  An earnest young man at the ticket seller’s booth wants us to be very clear before we pay our entry fee that the Cathedral closes in an hour.  “If you want to see the Galleries, please do so at once,” he implores.

A grey day at St. Paul's Cathedral

As I always follow instructions when abroad, I wander briefly on the main floor, before heading up the stone spiral staircase to the Whispering Gallery at the base of the dome.   It’s so named because a whisper, spoken into the wall of the dome, travels in waves around it and can be heard anywhere in the circumference.  A clap produces four echoes.  I’m more interested in the views than the acoustics: the ceiling mosaics are spectacular, as are the bird’s-eye sightlines of the aisles and transepts below.

Whispering Gallery, St. Paul's

After descending, I do a drive-by of the crypt, seeing the tombs of a few famous dead people like Admiral Nelson and end up, of course, in the gift shop.  I buy some postcards and trinkets.

2012 is the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Elizabeth II’s sixty-year reign, and the gift shop is also selling fine bone china, commissioned by the Royal Collection for the occasion.  It seems de rigeur to get a commemorative coffee mug painted with the Royal Coast of Arms and trimmed with 22k gold, “not suitable for use in dishwashers or microwave ovens,” as an inserted card advises.

London is impossible to navigate.  It’s a warren of block-long streets, none of which run perpendicular or parallel to any other, but rather meander in twists and turns in maddening semi-circles.  You can know precisely the direction of your destination, but you cannot get there from here.  At least, that’s my experience.  I get slightly lost, trying to return to my hotel by a route slightly different from the way I came, but eventually manage to return to St. John’s Square.

After an hour’s nap, I shower again (I was totally schvitzed after climbing the winding staircase to the Whispering Gallery), and dress a bit more nicely.  (That means a Loro Piano cashmere sweater over my t-shirt and jeans and my Baume-Mercier watch.)

I go down to Bistrot Bruno Loubet, the hotel’s restaurant, and have a light dinner at the bar.  Envying my dessert, another bar diner starts chatting me up.  He’s a young guy with dark, wavy, mid-length hair, slicked back; dark eyes; jeans and a stylish black-leather jacket; a gold cross dangling from a chain around his neck over a t-shirt.

He’s Sicilian, though raised in the north of Argentina where his father was a geologist; currently lives in Monaco, though he just purchased an apartment in Berlin; lives two months out of the year in the Trump Tower on 59th and Park in New York (read very expensive); sells impressionist art for a living; and just finished a week-long course about diamonds at the Gemological Institute here in London.  He thinks diamonds are going to be the thing in terms of safe investments in the apocalyptic future.  Money isn’t even paper anymore; it’s digital.  Gold, you can’t carry it around with you. But diamonds — “you put one in your mouth, and off you go,” he contends.

We talk over dessert about diamonds, advertising, our iPhones, the amazing internet, the Arab Spring, Syria, the U.S. dependence on foreign oil, U.S. aircraft carriers in the Straits of Hormuz (I know all about this from TED), traveling unintentionally with hashish in and out of Singapore (his girlfriend), airport security questioning you about an accidentally switched-on CD player in your luggage, which also contains a small amount of pot packed into some Marlboros (it was a really long time ago, OK?), and how cold and stand-offish British girls are (he discusses this, having had a bad reception while trying to make conversation with five girls in the restaurant the night before.)

He’s doing much better with me.  He’s either got a really fascinating life, or he’s a fascinating pathological liar.  Either way, he’s a charming conversationalist, and it’s better than sitting at the bar reading Edith Wharton’s Morocco.  Even the bartender gets involved, who turns out to be from Morocco.  So we discuss my trip in May, and he and Tomasso — my gemological and maybe pathological friend — have a conversation in French that I can follow enough to know there was some mention of hashish.

I leave Tomasso with his red wine and the bartender and head to bed.

I’ll meet a colleague at the agency’s offices not far from here in a couple of hours to go over everything for tomorrow.  For two days, I’ll be leading a strategy training for fifty people from various European offices with a colleague from Paris.  Then we head to Lisbon on Tuesday night, where we’ll do it all over again for more people, plus a half-day version for clients.

I’ve done this training several times in New York, once each in Toronto, Paris, and Uruguay, and three times in Dubai.  I enjoy it every time.

I return to New York on Saturday.  On Wednesday, I head down to Virginia to my alma mater, Washington and Lee University, for a get-together of students interested in marketing and advertising with alumni who work in the field. I’ll give a talk on semiotics and participate in a panel about careers in advertising.

Meanwhile, we’ve set a date in April for a repeat performance at the agency of my talk on TED, so more people can attend.  I’ve requested a lavalier mike this time.  It’s very hard to refer to note cards, sip from a bottle of water, and mop your brow with a handkerchief (I schvitz giving talks as well), while speaking into a hand-held mike.

And so continues my life on tour — somewhat tiring, a bit crazy, but certainly never dull.

Postcard from TED: My Favorite TED Things

Last night, I was casting about for a way to highlight some of my favorite moments from the first three days of talks from TED 2012. I wanted to find a way to say “these are few of my favorite things” from TED.

I absolutely abhor when people of any particular stripe live up to the clichés and stereotypes of their stripe. I’m supremely disappointed when that happens.

For example, years ago when I was studying acting, I worked in a night club and disco on the far west side of Manhattan with several of my acting school friends. We were all cute, young white kids, and we had jobs as hostesses, ticket takers, busboys, elevator operators and bartenders.

Then there was a group of young black kids who worked as the bathroom attendants. One evening, after the club had closed, I walked into the kitchen and there the black kids were, eating fried chicken out of a big KFC bucket, with a cut-up watermelon in front of them. I looked at them and said, teasingly, “you people should be ashamed.”

So as a gay man, I tell you with extreme embarrassment, that when I considered how best to share “a few of my favorite things” from TED, I thought of a show tune.

My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music is, of course, a wonderful structure that Maria uses to catalog her favorite things. So in the wee hours last night, after a long day of over-stimulation, I wrote my own TED version.

It will make immediate sense to anyone who attended TED or TEDActive or watched on TEDLive. But for those who didn’t, I will explain the references immediately afterwards. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy the wordplay itself and also be intrigued by some of the talks to watch them when they’re posted on ted.com.

My Favorite TED Things
Sung to the tune of My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music

Quadrotor robots that fly in formation
Poetry readings with wry animation
Stiff carbon taxes for fossil fuel flings
These are a few of my fav’rite TED things.

Checklists for surgeons that stymie infection
Introvert lawyers with time for reflection
Secrets on postcards that end up in rings
These are a few of my fav’rite TED things.

Hope versus fear in the climate conundrum
Flowers with nectar and bats’ tongues that plund’r ‘em
Possums in trash cans and book-jacket kings
These are a few of my fav’rite TED things.

When the gas fracks,
When my boss acts
Like a psychopath,
I simply remember my fav’rite TED things
And crowdsource an ox’s mass.

And now, the song decoded. A couple of these talks are already posted on ted.com, and I will link to them. As others are posted over the next few weeks, I’ll update this post with the links. Each talk is no longer than 18 minutes, which is the TED format. And each is so worth the time to view it.

Vijay Kumar from UPenn and two of his students demonstrated the four-propeller, palm-sized robots they have developed that are capable of flying unguided, avoiding obstacles and each other in formation. Vijay concludes his talk with a video they made just for TED, with the quadrorotors, as they’re called, programmed to play the James Bond theme on some customized instruments.

Billy Collins, the former Poet Laureate of the United States, shared several of his poems that had been charmingly animated. One of my favorites was called “In the Country,” and was about his unease when told by his host at a house in the country not to leave matches out, as mice might carry them off to build nests and accidentally strike one inside a wall, igniting a fire. You can imagine the animation of a mouse, Prometheseus-like, bringing fire to his fellow rodents.

Climatologist James Hansen made a strong case for the carbon tax on fossil-fuel consumption. A counterpoint to his talk, was that of T. Boone Pickens, referenced in the chorus of the song, who made a case for natural gas — obtained through the process known as “fracking” — as the “bridge fuel” for the U.S. from foreign oil to whatever becomes our dominant source of domestic energy, which he suggested just might be — natural gas.

Atul Gawande is well-known for demonstrating that a large percentage of infections acquired while IN the hospital could be avoided if surgeons used a simple procedural checklist that included among other things — making sure they’d washed their hands. I had heard this point before, and when I unfortunately had the occasion to have three minor surgeries over the past three years, I asked the assembled staff in the operating room each time before they put me out, “Has everyone washed their hands?”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june10/gawande_02-08.html#

On the very first day, Susan Cain gave a wonderful talk about how a society that extols extroverts should learn to value its introverts. As a Meyers-Briggs-typed introvert (and I know some people will find that hard to believe), I was deeply moved by her defense of the value of introverts. She said, “True creation only happens as a solo endeavor.” Something I know to be absolutely true from my career in the creative field of advertising. Teams build on the ideas of individuals within the team, and the ultimate creation will be different and better than what any individual could have conceived. But it is the individual moments of creativity that move the process forward.

Frank Warren created the PostSecret Project, which began with him handing out self-addressed postcards, asking people to send him their secrets, which he posted on a website, postsecret.com. Today, people from all over the world send him postcards and emails with drawings and photos, revealing an incredible range of behaviors, activities and feelings.

One of his stories was about an unmarried couple who used to read the postsecret posts together every weekend. The man sent in a picture of his hand holding the engagement ring with which he was going to propose to his girlfriend, alongside the couple’s cat. The picture was posted on the site, to the man’s surprise and delight. As he and his girlfriend read each other the posts that day, at one point his girlfriend looked at the post and said, “is that our cat?”

She said “yes” and they were married, and a picture of the woman’s hand, holding the cat and wearing a wedding ring, was posted on the site.

http://www.postsecret.com/

In a previous blog, I mentioned the debate that started the conference between Paul Gilding’s talk, in which he stated we need to feel the fear of the inevitable climate crisis to move us to act, vs. the faith in what technology will accomplish, expressed in the hopeful message of Peter Diamandis.

Natural history filmmaker, Karen Bass, shared some gorgeous film from her recent projects filming the earth’s natural phenomena. Included was footage of the tube-lipped nectar bat — with a tongue three times the length of its body — which is the sole pollinator of the flower of the Centropogon nigricans plant.

Tube-lipped Nectar Bat
Photo: Dr. Nathan Muchhala

Jennifer Pahlka runs a program that places tech-savvy interns into local government bureaucracies to help them come up with tech-enabled solutions. One of her examples was a site developed in Boston called Citizen’s Watch. Someone posted something about finding a possum in their garbage can and not knowing whether it was dead or alive nor what to do about it. The post was seen by one of their neighbors, who walked over, ascertained that the possum was alive, and tipped the can on its side so that the possum could get out.

She had a broader point to make about our roles as “citizens” in a democratic community and what we would contribute to that community vs. what we expect to receive from it.

One of the most delightful talks was given by Chip Kidd, a book jacket designer who was also the “gayest ” of TED presenters. He was a bit like Paul Lynde (if you remember him from Hollywood Squares) on acid. His graphic designs for book jackets — he discussed how he captures the essence of the idea of the book in an appealing way that makes your want to read it — were brilliant.

Chip Kidd, Bookjacket Designer
Photo: James Duncan Davidson

T. Boone Pickens spoke about natural gas as the bridge fuel that we need to get us off our dependence on foreign oil — cheap, abundant and most importantly to him, “ours” as the U.S. has vast stores of this natural resource.  I’m not a fan of hydraulic fracking, the process used to extract natural gas, so it wasn’t actually one of my favorite talks.  But “fracks” rhymes with “acts,” so some times you have to compromise for art.

Jim Ronson did a rap with animation about his explorations into the world of psychopaths. As it turns out, a checklist of traits that qualify you as a psychopath would also apply to many CEOs.

And finally, Lior Zoref repeated in real-time a classic experiment that exhibits the power of crowd-sourcing. I have read the book The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. In it, he points out that on the TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? the most effective of the three “lifelines” in answering a question was polling the studio audience. Surowiecki also discussed the original crowd-sourcing experiment. The weight of an ox at a county fair was more accurately guessed by the average of the crowd’s guesses than by the estimates of a handful of cattle experts.

Crowd-Sourcing an Ox's Mass
Photo: James Duncan Davidson

At TED, 500 txt’d guesses of the weight of an ox brought onto the stage averaged 1792 pounds. The guesses ranged from a low of 800 pounds to a high of 8000 pounds. The actual weight of the ox was 1795 pounds.

You gotta love that.

Postcard from TED: Hope vs. Fear

Sometime after I started working in business, a question popped into my head to which I could discern no answer.  It had to do with growth, or more specifically, the expectation of growth on the part of a business.  Business leaders were always discussing where their companies’ growth would be coming from in the future.  Analysts evaluated companies’ potential for growth, and the performance of a company’s stock seemed to depend on the perception that it would grow.  Quarterly and annual reporting was about growth rates — how much have we grown this quarter vs. last or vs. this quarter a year ago?

Growth, of course, meant size, scale, expansion — in  a word, more.  The expectation — and the demand — was that there always would be growth, that there always be more.

The question I couldn’t imagine an answer to was this: why does a company have to grow?  What if its goal is to achieve X, whatever X is, and when it reaches X, it says, “Great, we’ve gotten there.  We’re happy here.  Now let’s do what we need to do to stay here.”  What law of business or of the world or of nature dictated that it had to keep growing in size or in revenue?

I make a distinction between growth as in “scale” and growth as in change, evolution, or development.  Things can change for the better; they can improve.  And they can change with the times; they can evolve to meet changing needs.  They can develop in all sorts of ways; they can even increase — in quality, in the value provided, in relevance, in significance, in usefulness.  But none of these things necessarily have anything to do with size.

But while businesses may have goals surrounding these other kinds of increases, they are measured — they are deemed to succeed or fail — on the basis of increases in revenue and profits, of always bringing in more.

Two of the speakers in the first session of TED presented back-to-back counterpoint views on the future of our planet that Chris Anderson rightly said have laid out a debate that will probably continue throughout the conference.

Paul Gilding is, among other things, a former global CEO of Greenpeace.  He’s the author of a recent book entitled The Great Disruption.  His message was this — “The Earth is full.”

We have already surpassed the limits of the finite resources of the Earth to sustain the growth in population, in standard of living, and in consumption that the developed world enjoys and that billions in the developing world desire to achieve as well. 

He went on to say we are past the point of averting the crisis.  The crisis is inevitable.  Now the important question is how we will respond to the crisis — in panic to ensure our individual survival or in some considered way that ensures the survival of our civilization.

He stressed the need not to be in denial about the inevitable crisis.  Because denial would prevent us from feeling the fear that he claimed was necessary we feel to motivate us to take action.  That we mustn’t delude ourselves with hope.

It was not an uplifting presentation.  It was sobering; it was uncomfortable; it was frightening.

It was immediately followed by Peter Diamandis, who is the CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation which offers a huge cash prize for a specific accomplishment around some of the planet’s most significant goals — things that may seem impossible or out of reach.

His was a message of hope.  He cited a catalogue of statistics that demonstrate that more “progress” has been made in the last 100 years than in the entire history of the planet before that time.  Substantial increases in life expectancy, levels of economic well-being, infant survival, literacy, etc.  He also discussed the power of break-through technologies to solve our most pressing issues.

But his greatest hope, he said, was the 3 billion people projected to come “online” in the next decade or so through inexpensive communications  and the internet — voices yet to be heard in the global discussion about the future of our planet.

It was a very uplifting and upbeat presentation.  It received a much more resounding round of applause than did Gilding’s.

I’m reminded of one of the maxims of the est training, which I did in 1978.  est was a personal development seminar that purported to bring about a personal transformation over the course of a weekend.  There was something uncomfortably cultish about the organization, but there were things about the training that I remember to this day because of what seemed to be their absolute truthfulness.

One of these was a discussion about hope.  How the biggest thing that prevents human beings from doing what they have to do to have the things they want, is the hope that somehow magically those things will occur.  The training taught that once you gave up the “hope” of something happening, you could marshal the intentionality to make it happen.

At the end of the two presentations, host and TED curator Chris Anderson asked for an applause meter from the audience as to whom they sided with.  He estimated it was about 55% for hope and 45% for fear.

I’m fairly sure I fall in with that slim minority that believe hope may prevent us from facing reality.

http://paulgilding.com/the-great-disruption

“The crisis represents a rare chance to replace our addiction to growth with an ethic of sustainability, and it’s already happening. It’s also an unmatched business opportunity: Old industries will collapse while new companies will literally reshape our economy. In the aftermath of the Great Disruption, we will measure “growth” in a new way. It will mean not quantity of stuff but quality and happiness of life. Yes, there is life after shopping.”

http://www.diamandis.com/

“The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself!”

“We are living during an age of maximum personal impact. Today, individuals and small teams can accomplish what only large corporations and governments could once do. Exponential technologies and the tools of collaboration are allowing each of us to transform industries and address humanities grand challenges.”

Postcard from TED: My Top TED

What follows is a highly selective and personal list of my top talks from TED2010.  There are more that moved, inspired, delighted and amazed me than I’ll recount here.  Eventually, they will all be posted at ted.com, and it’s well worth your visit there to watch them.  Wonderfully, the TED formula constrains people to 18 minutes.  Watching these talks, you realize it’s more than enough time to say something incredibly meaningful (Corporate Powerpoint presenters PLEASE take note.)

 

When I was a child, I used to think about the amazing year in the future when the millenium would turn, the magical year 2000.  I would be 47, an unimaginable age.  And the forty years until then, an unfathomable duration of time beyond my comprehension. 

In what was I think the most important talk at TED2010, Bill Gates talks about a roadmap to 2050 — 40 years into our collective future — by which we need to reduce CO2 emissions to Zero.  The issue of climate change is at heart an issue of  energy consumption and production.  And we need to make as wholesale a shift in how we obtain our energy, as the shift brought about by the industrial revolution from burning wood to burning coal and oil.  Bill’s talk is concise, pragmatic and unmistakably clear.  And the roadmap he lays out is simple, even if fulfilling its wish is challenging and requires the miraculous:  20 years to innovate the technologies to produce electricity in ways that don’t emit CO2, and 20 years to deploy them.  It’s that simple; it’s that daunting.

 

If reducing CO2 emissions to Zero is the most important task to ensuring the future quality of life for everyone on our planet, Sam Harris talks about what he believes is the greatest threat to life as we know it — religion.  Sam is a prominent neuroscientist, defender of secular values, and best-selling author of two books — The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. 

This was the talk which struck the loudest personal chord for me.  On my Facebook profile, in the field labelled “Religious beliefs,” I wrote “are dangerous to have.”  I am deeply and profoundly (and apparently redundantly) anti-religious, believing that more evil is done in the name of religious beliefs than from anything else on earth.   And that evil far outweighs any good that is done — good that the natural impulse for human kindness, generosity and empathy brings about anyway, without the trappings of religion. 

For me, his most compelling (and perhaps most controversial) stance is this:  we have arrived at a point in the development of our globalized civilization that we can and should make moral judgements on even an entire culture, if its beliefs contribute to an increase in human suffering or repression.  There’s a very powerful moment when he ask the audience to let a thought “detonate in your head for just a moment” about a particularly egregious belief — that the rape of your daughter brings so much shame on your family that you should kill her.  He lets that thought detonate in his own head, the head of man who clearly has a daughter whom he deeply loves.  It’s a very poignant moment.

You also might might interested in reading his book, Letter to a Christian Nation , which lays out Sam’s arguments in a little over an hour’s read. 

 

One of the most moving talks was given by Kevin Bales, who is an anti-slavery activist.  He states there are 27 million slaves in the world today, mostly in Southeast Asia and Africa, who are forced to work without pay under threat of violence and unable to walk away.   There are more people in slavery now than at any time in our history; yet the smallest percentage of the world’s population is enslaved today, compared to any other time in history.  There is no country in the world where slavery is legal, and the “cost” to free all the world’s slaves (not purchasing people from their slaveholders, but helping them escape and funding their re-introduction into normal life) is less than the cost of the Big Dig, a major urban highway project, in Boston. 

One of the goals of Kevin’s efforts to free the world’s slaves is “No Botched Emancipations.”  As these words hung on the screen behind him, he pointed out that today in the United States,we are still paying the price for one of the largest botched emancipations in history, the freeing of 4 million plus slaves in 1866 with no support for their entry into normal society.  It was perhaps the most striking moment of clarity of the entire conference.

This is also a link to Kevin’s organization. 

http://www.freetheslaves.net/Page.aspx?pid=183 

Elizabeth Pisani is another activist, an epidemiologist combating the spread of HIV.  She’s written a book, The Wisdom of Whores, that points out the flaws in public health policies and programs, stemming from a refusal to understand and accept the emotional logic of the groups of people those policies and programs are trying to influence.

Example:  some policies suggest the best way to stop the spread of HIV among sex workers in Malaysia is to get them jobs in the many textile factories there, so they don’t have to engage in sex work for their income.  Reality:  definition of poverty = living on <$1/day; average salary of a Malaysian textile factory worker = $2/day; average income of a Malaysian sex worker = $10/day.  Clearly, fucking for pay trumps sewing any day. 

One of my favorite moments in this talk is right before Elizabeth shows a video clip of a conversation with a transgendered Malaysian sex worker, and she says “that’s a chick with a dick.”

  

Elizabeth was a delightful presenter.  Several other talks make my list for pure delight. 

Temple Grandin talks about the autistic mind (hers being one of them) and how we need to develop minds based on an understanding of the different ways that different minds work.  (Her life is the subject of an HBO film Temple Grandin starring Claire Danes.)  Temple describes how she sees the world in pictures.  And how that orientation helped her understand how animals view the world, which enabled her to design more humane systems for cattle-handling facilities. 

She is brilliant, outspoken, a total character, and utterly delightful.  And wins my award hands-down for best TED presenter’s outfit. 

 

Raghava KK is an Indian artist whose talk describes the different phases of his artistic output as his “avatars.”  His delight in life is infectious; his caring is moving; and his creativity the sum and whole of how he lives his life. 

 

Mark Roth is a biochemist and cell biologist, who gives a surprisingly delightful and entertaining talk about something that seems to belong in the realm of science fiction — suspended animation — the temporary suspension of life in a human being who is subsequently revived with no adverse effects.  His inquiry into suspended animation was inspired by cases of people found exposed to extreme cold, who appeared to be dead, but who were revived with no apparent negative effect.  He describes the biochemistry that produces the miracle, his successful experiments with it on mice, and the potential application for treating patients with severely traumatic injuries. 

For charm, I recommend Dan Barber’s talk on his love affair with two fishes.  He’s a celebrity chef, who discovers a fish farm in Spain that creates its own self-sustaining ecosystem. 

For amazement, LXD, the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers.  No words can describe their fantastic movement.

And Jake Shimabukuro, who’s first set playing the ukulele included flamenco, Ave Maria and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.  When once in London for work, I was taken to see The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, whose most memorable song was their cover of The Theme Song from Shaft.  Jake is a match for them in terms of musicianship and inventiveness. 

Jake Shimabukuro (Photo credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson)

Lastly, Andrew Bird performed several times.  He creates sounds and loops them as backdrop to his performance, sings, whistles, plays violin and basically sounds like an angel descended to Earth.  Original, unusual, haunting, and adorable. 

 

Here’s a taste of Andrew from a live concert until his TED performance is posted. 

 

Since I’ve posted my best of TED2010, I probably should mention my “Worst” and spare you viewing them. 

People loved Jane McGonigal, a video game designer, who talked about an entire generation of young people, growing up playing hours of video games, who as a consequence have developed very specific skills.  She painted a fascinating picture of a gamer and gave me some insight into them I’d never had before.  She lost me completely, however, when she claimed that we could take people who played 20 hours a week of World of Warcraft online and transfer that passion to a video game that teaches about climate change.  Somehow, I don’t think they’d get quite the same payoff, Jane. 

Denis Dutton had some really interesting stuff to say about beauty, one of my favorite obsessions.  Specifically, despite its renowned “in the eye of the beholder” quality, there are concepts of beauty that are universal to the human species.  He mentions one of my favorite facts: that human beings, when asked to describe their ideal landscape, will inevitably (despite where they live or what they have or have not seen) describe a landscape that closely resembles the African savannah from which as a species we supposedly emerged and spread out into the world.  That he could discuss beauty with not one single visual to support his talk, and that he read it word for word from a document, even stopping once and re-reading a paragraph that he’d stumbled over, as he said,  ”for the editing of the video,” as if we in the audience were not even there, was a bit beyond the pale. 

And lastly, Natalie Merchant sang some songs she’d written to poetry, an endeavor she’d spent the last six years on.  I’ve always found her to be self-indulgent.  And her TED performance was more of the same in my opinion.  But she jumped the shark on egotism, when she sang her last song,  a rousing number entitled something like “I Just Want to Thank You.”  At one point, the audience, inspired by the song, begins to clap in time to the music.  But Natalie stops them, tells them to curb their enthusiasm, that it’s her 18 minutes, and later instructs them how to clap the right way to her song.  Self-indulgence is a really boring quality in a person, but self-indulgence coupled with a controlling nature is just fucking deadly.  As a TED buddy said to me as we were getting on a bus to one of the evening parties after I expressed my opinion about Natalie’s performance, “I enjoyed it. But now that you point that out, I realize you’re absolutely right, and you’ve ruined it for me.”

As a footnote to my TED2010 experience, my application to TED2011 has been approved, but this time to the main conference in Long Beach, not the simulcast in Palm Springs.  As my TED girlfriend Danielle said, who was accepted to the main conference next year as well, “We’ll go, and if we don’t like it, at least we’ll have each other.  And we can go back to TEDActive in 2012.”

Postcard from TED: In Beanbags and Bathrobes

It’s the morning of the second day of TED2010; at 8:30am, it’s an earlier start than yesterday’s 11am opening session.  On the stage at Long Beach, TED’s curator and host Chris Anderson kicks off the day.  A packed auditorium — 1500 or so fill the rows of seats — is listening intently.  This is an important gathering of some heavily-networked, $6000-paying, progressive-thinking movers and shakers who are here to hear others of their ilk talk about the important work they’re doing, under this year’s conference theme — What the World Needs Now.

“And I’d like to extend a warm welcome to our friends and associates  in Palm Springs who are joining us by simulcast,” Chris says.  And a camera and sound feed cut to the conference center at the Riviera Resort in Palm Springs.  On the massive screen onstage behind Chris, the Palm Springs contingent comes into view:  400 people leaping out of bright red, beanbag chairs — many in their pajamas or the hotel’s long brown bathrobe — screaming, clapping, cheering, whistling and waving their arms above their heads, like inmates in a psych ward’s bipolar unit on manic day.

Welcome to TEDActive, as it’s officially and (based on our introduction to the Long Beach audience) appropriately called.  Or Baby TED, TED Jr., Faux TED, Loser TED, B-list TED, TED Lite, Kiddie TED or any of the other self-deprecating names its attendees like to use.  Some are here because they weren’t “accepted” for the “real” TED, or couldn’t afford it, or waited too late to apply.  But others are here because they prefer it.  And seeing the Long Beach audience on the screen, looking stiff in their seats; and listening to their self-proclaimed credentials as they offer help to TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver when he makes his wish to end child obesity in America, I’m feeling very happy in my bean bag and bathrobe, like I’m right where I belong.

The "Showlounge" at TEDActive

Some of us are in our PJs and bathrobe because Rives, a New York slam poet who is one of the Palm Springs co-hosts, said “8:30?  That’s so early!  Just come in your pajamas.  And if you don’t wear any, cover up with the bathrobe from your hotel room.”  That so many people actually did is testimony to the spirit that’s here.  It will probably become a TEDActive tradition.

As will the awarding of the co-hosts’ reserved, front-row center chairs — the Thrones — to two different people at every session, by criteria arbitrarily chosen by Rives and the other co-host, Kelly.  Some times it’s people who have distinguished themselves in special ways.  Like the guy who shaved the word TED into his hair.  Or the two guys who brought their dogs with them.  Or the couple who had come with their baby, born just a short time before.  Once, the honor went to the youngest and the oldest attendees.  Aside from the baby, a 12-year old boy who came with his Dad was a clear choice.  But the oldest had to be determined by a show of hands and process of elimination.  Rives started the count for the oldest at 50, which tells you how young most attendees were.  Thankfully, there was a handful older than 56.  And at 70, Kelly’s mom got the chair.

I had organized a dinner (if sending an email and making a reservation can be called “organizing”) on Tuesday night for other gay TEDsters.  Rives and Kelly were wandering the restaurants of downtown Palm Springs, visiting TED tables.  And when they came upon ours and learned we were TEDGays, they said, perfect.  You guys can choose a man and a woman from your group to take the Thrones tomorrow morning, and we’ll have a Queen and a Queen.  Being the organizer of the dinner, I was chosen.  Thus I was outed to 399 people the next morning as Queen for a Session and did my best to be fay.  (No smart remarks, please.)

The Thrones

People were open, friendly, curious about each other, and totally willing to talk — about themselves, about the Talks, about the state of the world.  Fast friendships formed.  On a pre-conference bike ride through Earthquake Canyon which straddles the San Andreas fault, I met my TEDActive girlfriend, Danielle.  We kept finding each other at sessions and evening meals.  Hung out with others over glasses of red wine, discussing everything.  Ogled Current TV hotties and attendees Max Lugavere and Jason Silva.  And pulled groups together for lunch, when picnics for six were set out in baskets: if you were going to eat, you had to grab five people to join you — a clever way to keep mixing us up with each other.  When we missed each other for a couple sessions and finally met again, it was like we’d been separated against our will for weeks.

I suppose there are many things that come together to create an environment like this.  I can guess at some: an intellectual hunger, a passion for life, a willingness to learn, a sense of delight…  but there also seems to be just a little bit of magic.  Whatever it is, it’s something that the world most definitely needs now.

Coming soon, as promised:  my TTT4TTT —  Top TED Talks for 2010.

Postcard from TED: Pre-Tedding

A  four-day conference in Palm Springs in February?  The decision to add a few days on before was a tough call.  But I’m a highly-compensated advertising executive.  I’m paid to make tough calls.

Yes, I’ll add a few days on to lie by a pool.  Yes, I’ll bring  a swimsuit.  Yes, I’ll fly first-class on Frequent Flier miles.  You just do what has to be done.

I left on Saturday.  In southern New Jersey, they were digging out of 20+” of snow.  In the City, we knocked a few flakes off our soles, but that was it.  Even so, my flight was cancelled.   But I was rebooked on a flight an hour later.  I arrived in Palm Springs about 8pm.  The ground was soaked.  It had rained here steadily for two days.

Palm Springs gets 5.23″ of rain annually on average.  My cab driver claimed they’d gotten that in the past two days.  But the Sunday forecast was for sunshine with highs around 68.  I checked into my hotel undeterred.

I like to have nothing planned on the first day of a vacation; and this is a vacation of sorts.  Sunday was a perfect day.  Fatigue allowed me to sleep in  until 7:30am; a rarity for a first night on the west coast.  I went to the fitness center and did  a little cardio.  Had a late breakfast.  Made a reservation for a massage late in the afternoon.  And by 11am, was esconced in a lounge chair by the pool.

I moved once.  To have some fish tacos in the shade by the pool bar.  Other than that, I read a few chapters in Al Gore’s new climate book — a TED gift.  Browsed articles in the New York Times on my Kindle.  And listened to a Genius playlist from my iTunes library on my brand new iPhone.  (For the uninitiated, that’s a playlist made instantaneously from your library of songs on the basis of one song you select.  I’ve rediscovered the ’80′s part of my music collection with the playlist generated off “Been in Love Before” by Cutting Crew.)

I had my massage.  Took a little steam.  Soaked in the whirlpool.  Found a nice little restaurant not far from the hotel, serving homemade Mexican food.  Had two margaritas with a taco/tamale combination.  And retired happily to my king-sized, fluffy-pillowed bed, having passed the day without the slightest hint of TED-ness anywhere in the air.

On Monday, I got ensnared via email in dramas back at work.  And I had a bit of my own drama to deal with: as I made my way to the fitness center, I discovered a hole in the elbow of my favorite cotton zip-up jacket — my  cover-up of choice for chilly airplanes, conference centers and desert evenings, and the only warming layer I’d brought with me.  I was starting to see a number of earnest-looking, young hipsters walking around the resort, talking into iPhones — clearly the TEDster advance guard.  I had stumbled across several earlier, when I was looking for the registration area, which turned out not to be set up yet.  Four young men were having an intense conversation, and before I interrupted them I heard, “but at Long Beach (the live TED conference vs. the simulcast I’m attending here) you get to hang out with all the A-listers who like to go there.  You don’t get that in Palm Springs.”  I was suddenly glad I was in Palm Springs and not Long Beach.  And I was thanking god I’d had the foresight to get an iPhone just two weeks ago.  But I knew I couldn’t walk around in a faded J Crew zippered cotton jacket with a hole in the sleeve.

So I spent the better part of the day walking the mile and a half or so into town in search of a substitution.   There was nothing anywhere that I could be seen in that fit.  Until I finally found a zippered hoodie sweatshirt in a souvenir shop with nothing more than a tasteful Palm Springs logo over the left breast.   Perfect.

I did finally register.  Among the things I was given was an official TED ID badge I was instructed to where at all times and for all activities that are part of the conference.  It is the largest nametag I’ve ever seen, to be worn on a lanyard around the neck.  I photographed it with the camera on my iPhone (so I could email it to myself and download it to my laptop to attach it to this blog.)  My wristwatch is laid next to it for scale.

Today, the pre-conference activities began in earnest.  I’d signed up for a bike ride through Earthquake Canyon, which straddles the San Andreas fault.  I met the first of my co-TEDsters in the van on the way there.  There was a lively conversation about “IP sniffing” as it relates to search, instigated by my asking the marketing director of Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, how it was doing.  The T in TED does stand for “technology”  (the rest for “Entertainment” and “Design”).  So the IP sniffing conversation is excusable.  And everyone in the van other than me did work in some way in software.

The bike ride through the Canyon was great.  We came out of it into the vineyards and produce fields of the Coachella Valley.  A field of what I think were kumquat trees scented the air.  We finished the ride just as more rain started to roll on in.

Dinner was on your own; but restaurants were hosting TED tables, where you could reserve as a single and be seated with other TEDsters.  This was followed by some music in the hotel bar, provided by Jill Sobule and some musician friends.

The theme of this year’s TED conference is “What the World Needs Now.”  And as their closing number, Jill and the band sang a kind of punk rock/country version of the Burt Bachrach/Dionne Warwick hit from the ’6os– “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.  It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”  One of the few songs that, for some reason, I know the lyrics to, and which I used to sing to myself all the time in junior high school.

Tomorrow, the conference begins in earnest.

What the World Needs Now is larger nametags