Paul MacCready speaks at TED 2

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1. 

   listenupgirl Posted 10:10 am
   24 Oct 2008

   Got me thinking.I really enjoyed this. Doom and gloom but hope too. I'm interested in his comments on how nature is the infallible designer--it doesn't make mistakes. Gary Snyder talks in a similar vein in a 1979 interview, though he proposes rather a different direction from MacCready:
   "our technologies and all our refinements are crude compared to what plants and photosynthesis are able to do, or compared to what takes place in the process of digestion in any body. We should learn to work with biology rather than to clumsily reconstruct it with nuts and bolts."
   (Gary Snyder, The Real Work: Interviews & Talks 1964-1979, p. 149)

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2. 

   amazingdrx Posted 12:14 am
   26 Oct 2008

   Surveillance
   When this is the focus of a world class scientist/inventor speaking at an event that gathers the best and brightest, what's 10 years down the road?  Is it electric cars or solar planes?
   Nope, it's cyborg insect surveillance of anti-war rallies.
   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007 ...
   And the military industrialists can't even get this right. Over in Afghanistan it's Custer's last stand, Vietnam firebase redux.
   "We never see the enemy", says a soldier interviewed at a forward position on the border.  They are firing mortars with white phosphorous pretty much at random, while their machine guns still jam, like they did in Vietnam.
   So what's next?  They go out and try to lure the enemy into attacking them, just like in Vietnam and Iraq.  Like redcoats marching down a revolutionary era dirt road, fired on from cover by america's first patriots.
   Our culture is as dumb or dumber than duuhbya and Palin.  We can't even get evil oily empire right.  Much less, renewable energy re-evolution.
   No wonder we got bushwacked.  Twice.
   
   http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

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