Accordiing to The Atlantic, Jason Silva is a ''full-time walking, talking TEDTalk." Being exposed to his ideas has, for me, been akin to a Zen type of immediate satori enlightenment. Finally the universe and everything in it begins to make some sort of cosmic sense.
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The order Coleoptera [beetles] includes more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known life-forms. Some estimates put the total number of species, described and undescribed, at as high as 100 million, but a figure of 1 million is more widely accepted.
J.B.S. Haldane was once asked what his study of biology had taught him about God.
He said that the Creator, if he exists, has “an inordinate fondness for beetles.”
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The Birds-of-Paradise Project reveals the astounding beauty of 39 of the most exquisitely specialized animals on earth. After 8 years and 18 expeditions to New Guinea, Australia, and nearby islands, Cornell Lab scientist Ed Scholes and National Geographic photojournalist Tim Laman succeeded in capturing images of all 39 species in the bird-of-paradise family for the first time ever. This trailer gives a sense of their monumental undertaking and the spectacular footage that resulted. Filmed by Tim Laman, Ed Scholes, and Eric Liner. Spectacular beauty and unusual behavior by some of the planets most amazing creatures.
The Birds-of-Paradise Project website was just launched today.
Here's some of what the site contains:
35 videos and 2.5 hours of running time
A breakdown of the main parts of a male's display: sounds, color, unique feathers, shape-shifting poses, and dance steps
The crucial role of the females in choosing their mates
Key concepts of evolution illustrated and explained in simple terms
Secrets and techniques of how we captured such detailed footage
A gallery of extraordinary sounds
Interactive features to walk you through the birds' diversity, how they get their colors, and why they evolved in New Guinea's isolated mountains and islands
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Documentary about the Coelacanth, a prehistoric bony fish believed to have been long extinct until one was caught in 1938 off the southern coast of Africa. No trace was found again until May 2000 when a colony of the fish were discovered and filmed.
The Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) is an enigmatic and important species of fish. It is the only living member (along with a recently discovered second species of Latimeria) of the lobe-finned fishes, a group believed by some to be the sister-group of the terrestrial vertebrates.
Early naturalists, who had studied the fossil records, had long been puzzled and intrigued by this creature, with its lobed, limb-like fins. But it was only with the publication of Darwin’s Origin Of the Species, in 1859, and his theory of evolution, that its true significance first became apparent.
For here was a fossil species that answered the critics who poured scorn on the very idea that fish could somehow have walked out of the sea and later diversified into the huge variety of land-based animals around us today – including man himself.
Yet even after Darwin’s theory became widely accepted, no naturalist ever imagined that coelacanths might have survived into the modern age. At least, not until Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer made her astonishing discovery amid the foetid heat of that South African dockside.
Marjorie’s find turned conventional scientific thinking on its head. But it was by no means the end of the coelacanths mystery. Not by a long chalk. For in the decades after that discovery, the coelacanth continued to defy man’s best attempts to study it.
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A Timothy Leary for the Viral Video Age [The Atlantic]
"Meet Jason Silva, the fast-talking, media-savvy "performance philosopher" who wants you to love the ecstatic future of your mind.
If you ever wondered what would happen if a young Timothy Leary was wormholed into 2012, complete with a film degree and a Vimeo account, you have your answer: Jason Silva. If Silva, who was born in Venezuela, seems to have natural screen presence, it's because he's no stranger to media; he worked for six years as a host at Current TV before leaving the network last year to become a part-time filmmaker and full-time walking, talking TEDTalk.
Like Leary, Silva is an unabashed optimist; he sees humankind as a species on the brink of technology-enabled transcendence. Silva is an avid evangelist for the technological singularity---the idea that technology will soon bring about a greater-than-human intelligence. ....."
"We Are The Gods Now" was Jason Silva's keynote speech at the "Festival of Dangerous Ideas" - which took place at the Sydney Opera House in December 2012.
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"The Birds-of-Paradise Project reveals the astounding beauty of 39 of the most exquisitely specialized animals on earth. After 8 years and 18 expeditions to New Guinea and Australia, Cornell Lab scientist Ed Scholes and National Geographic photojournalist Tim Laman succeeded in capturing images of all 39 species in the bird-of-paradise family for the first time ever. This trailer gives a sense of their monumental undertaking and the spectacular footage that resulted."
Explore more: http://www.birdsofparadiseproject.org
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Journey Of Man: Genetic Odyssey (PBS Documentary)
"Where did we come from? Spencer Wells, a 33 year old population geneticist, has closed the door on his laboratory and is embarking on the biggest adventure of his life. His mission to retrace the most extraordinary journey of all time, a journey that involves every man, woman and child alive today. He offers his thoughts on this puzzling question, employing the latest in DNA research and technology to track the migration of humanity across the globe.
By collecting blood samples from thousands of men living in isolated tribes around the world and analyzing their DNA, Spencer and his colleagues discovered that all humans alive today can be traced back to a small tribe of hunter-gatherers who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago. Following this genetic trail, Spencer has charted the ancient journey of our ancestors as they populated the planet.
Spencer scours the world for indigenous people with deep roots in one place, asking for samples of DNA to test, in order to piece together our "big family" genetic tree. In Indiana Jones mode, Wells tacks down common ancestors and comes up with some surprising candidates. He shows with DNA results the diverse ways in which people and tribes react to the news of what science says about their arrival and relations. View this as adventure travel or as a painless way to begin your genetic literacy."
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"Douglas Adams was the best-selling British author and satirist who created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In this talk at UCSB recorded shortly before his death, Adams shares hilarious accounts of some of the apparently absurd lifestyles of the world's creatures, and gleans from them extraordinary perceptions about the future of humanity."
Having discovered this video when it was first posted on YouTube over four years ago, I have revisited it several times. And with each viewing I realize anew what a loss humanity suffered with the untimely death of Douglas Adams, of a heart attack at the age of 49.
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. . . and a more lyrical view of the same concept by that poet/astronomer Carl Sagan:
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From the World Science Festival.
Immanuel Kant, who coined the term genius in the 1700s, defined it as the rare capacity to independently understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person. Since then, the spectrum of abilities that we call genius has widened, but pivotal questions remain: What exactly is genius? Where do the remarkable abilities of genius come from? Is genius something that lives within all of us, or is it a categorically different way of seeing the world that is bestowed upon only a few?
With the emergence of new imaging technologies and a fundamental shift in the understanding of how information is spread through our brains, we’re beginning to find some answers. We joined neuroscientists, psychologists, renowned thinkers, and special performers as they untangled the complicated nature of genius, creativity, and exceptionality.
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