TED talks

The first of the podcasts from the 2008 TED Conference has started to be released. I've only seen one so far - on the World Wide ... Wait for it ... Telescope, and that knocked my socks off. (I can't say the same for T who thought it was perhaps as make-believe as some people thought man landing on the moon was). World Wide Telescope is a Microsoft project which is doing the same for the universe as Google did for Earth by putting together high resolution images of the universe and making them available to the public. The pod included a demonstration of one of the tours which shows dramatic images of some very spectacular space features (as opposed to space creatures which are more the domain of Hollywood studios). The WWT won't come only until next year, but when it does, access will be free and, may, as the speaker suggested, change the way we think about the universe.I haven't seen the other one I'm interested in yet ... or read in full about it ... but it's presented by the same psychologist (Zimbardo) who conceived of and ran the Stanford Prison Experiment (note the capitals) which plucked university students unannounced from their homes and randomly assigned them as either prisoners or warders in a prison environment - and then sat back and watched as human nature kicked in and people began to "be" their roles - regardless of their underlying personalities. Well, that's how I remember it anyway. His TED 2008 - How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib.