Mona Lisa is one of the best-known faces on the planet. But would you recognize an image of Leonardo da Vinci? Illustrator Siegfried Woldhek uses some thoughtful image-analysis techniques to find what he believes is the true face of Leonardo.

Translated into Chinese by Zachary Zhao
Reviewed by Jing Yu

Lewis Pugh talks about his record-breaking swim across the North Pole. He braved the icy waters (in a Speedo) to highlight the melting icecap. Watch for astonishing footage — and some blunt commentary on the realities of supercold-water swims.

Translated into Chinese by An Li
Reviewed by Zachary Zhao

Nina Jablonski says that differing skin colors are simply our bodies’ adaptation to varied climates and levels of UV exposure. Charles Darwin disagreed with this theory, but she explains, that’s because he did not have access to NASA.

Translated into Chinese by Zachary Zhao
Reviewed by An Li

As of 2005, only 15 percent of the world was mapped. This slows the delivery of aid after a disaster — and hides the economic potential of unused lands and unknown roads. In this short talk, Google’s Lalitesh Katragadda demos Map Maker, a group map-making tool that people around the globe are using to map their world.

Translated into Chinese by Wang-Ju Tsai
Reviewed by Zachary Zhao

“The 99″ and 4Shbab are just two of many examples of this sort of Islamic cross-cultural hybridization. We’re not talking here about a clash of civilizations. Nor is it some sort of indistinguishable mash. I like to think of it as a mesh of civilizations, in which the strands of different cultures are intertwined.

Now, while 4Shbab and “The 99″ may look new and shiny, there is actually a very long tradition of this. Throughout its history has borrowed and adapted from other civilizations both ancient and modern. After all it’s the Quran which encourages us to do this. “We made you into nations and tribes so that you could learn from one another.” And to my mind, those are pretty wise words, no matter what your creed. Thank you.

Translated into Chinese by Chunlei Chang
Reviewed by Zachary Zhao

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story, and to start with, “secondly.” Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have and entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.

Translated into Chinese by Zachary Zhao
Reviewed by Ting Gao

And later I can find a wall, anywhere, and start browsing those photos or maybe, “OK, I want to modify this photo a little bit and send it as an email to a friend.” So, we are looking for an era where computing will actually merge with the physical world. And, of course, if you don’t have any surface, you can start using your palm for simple operations. Here, I’m dialing a phone number just using my hand. The camera is actually not only understanding your hand movements, but, interestingly, is also able to understand what objects you are holding in your hand.

Translated into Chinese by Coco Shen
Reviewed by Zachary Zhao

The Beatles did not invent teenagers. They merely decided to lead them. That most movements, most leadership that we’re doing is about finding a group that’s disconnected but already has a yearning. Not persuading people to want something they don’t have yet.

When Diane Hatz worked on The Meatrix, her video that spread all across the internet about the way farm animals are treated, she didn’t invent the idea of being a vegan. She didn’t invent the idea of caring about this issue. But she helped organize people, and helped turn it into a movement.

Hugo Chavez did not invent the disaffected middle and lower class of Venezuela. He merely led them.

Bob Marley did not invent Rastafarians. He just stepped up and said, “Follow me.”

Translated into Chinese by Chunlei Chang
Reviewed by Zachary Zhao

via ted.com

 

There are two Achilles’ heels of globalization. There is the Achilles’ heel of growing inequality. Those that are left out, those that feel angry, those that are not participating. Globalization has not been inclusive. The second Achilles’ heel is complexity. A growing fragility, a growing brittleness. What happens in one place very quickly affects everything else. This is a systemic risk, systemic shock. We’ve seen it to the financial crisis. We’ve seen it in the pandemic flu. It will become virulent and it’s something we have to build resilience against.

… …

An individual for the first time, in the history of humanity, will have the capacity, by 2030, to destroy the planet, to wreck everything, through the creation, for example, of a biopathogen. How do we begin to weave these tapestries together? How do we think about complex systems in new ways? That will be the challenge of the scholars, and of all of us engaged in thinking about the future. The rest of our lives will be in the future. We need to prepare for it now. We need to understand that the governance structure in the world is fossilized. It can not begin to cope with the challenges that this will bring. We have to develop a new way of managing the planet, collectively, through collective wisdom.