Replace Your Lawn With a Meadow

Nature Deficit Disorder is the lost connection between humans and nature, according to Dennis vanEngelsdorp. He says that this is the main cause for loosing 30% of the bee colonies over the winter... for the second year in a row. I don't see how it is possible to perform counts accurate enough to report that 30% of the bee colonies have died over the winter, but he says recovery is easy and all that must be done is to split the remainder of the hive and introduce a new queen to the half without one and they will be able to increase their population once again. Yet, where are theses queens coming from? vanEngelsdorp simply states, "in the mail,"(Dennis vanEnglesdorp). What happens to those hives that these queens are being taken from, and what happens when they run out? It appears that it will be an issue that won't even result in being addressed since hive keepers can only afford to repeat this process up to 3 years in a row, since the 'solution' is so costly. It hardly seems like a solution if it is so unsustainable.

1/3 of the food eaten by humans is either directly or indirectly pollinated by bees. If all of them are to die, humans may be able to survive off the other pollinators, such as butterflies and bats. But they too are struggling for life. Bats are dying off at incomprehensible rates, even faster than the bees. What are we to do in a world where pollination ceases in existence? Where do we go from there? No fruits, no vegetables, no plants and the rest of earth on life starts heading down the same path. Education on this topic needs to be spread an a quickened pace if the world seeks to solve the mystery of dying pollinators. Without them life for any of us is impossible.

Dennis relates the topic even further to the audience through talking about the families who survive solely on their hives. These nomadic families move their bees and lives twice a year to give the bees areas to pollinate. With the loss of these bees, thousands of people are loosing not only their livelihood but a special connection they have developed with nature and those sharing the same profession.

Colony Collapse Disorder faces millions of hives world wide. Toxic pesticides are infecting bees upon contact with many crops, and within minutes are killing them. Telephone radiation has also been experimented and shown to alter a bee's navigation system, making it difficult for them to return home to the hive, and dying in the process.

So how can we fix this disconnect between human and nature? A simple solution is Dennis vanEnglesdorp's answer,  make meadows, not lawns. A meadow is an ecosystem teeming with life compared to the starch, desolate areas we use for yards. Lawns are entirely void of life and dissuade the process of it within its parameters. If humans were to step back and give nature the reigns once again a safe and quick recovery is ensured. However it is not a total hands off approach, little things such as planting a pesticide free garden and buying organic at all times possible encourage and aid the recovery of our falling pollinators. 

The Path of Ushahidi or LOLcats

During June of 2010, Clay Shirky opened his TED talk with the story of unrest in Kenya, which occurred in 2007 after the presidential election. The government shut down media output as an attempt to keep the citizens uneducated on the state of the country. One blogger, a woman by the name Ory Okolloh became a necessary source for the people of Kenya to understand where violence was taking place in their own country, due to the lack of media. Her followers supplied her with information as to what was happening in different areas of the country. More comments and information poured in until the point that Ory was incapable of posting all the events due to lack of time. Two of her followers then designed the program Ushahidi. The program took reports from her commenters and aggregated it and then placed it on a map to further simplify the understanding of all the commotion. The program has since become open source and has been successfully launched to track snow removal in Washington D.C. and other various subjects such as after shock from the Haitian earthquake.

He then goes on to say, "Now what Okolloh did would not have been possible without digital technology. What Okolloh did would not have been possible without human generosity," (Clay Shirky). He refers to a situation in which those two circumstances exist as cognitive surplus. Cognitive surplus is composed of the world's ability to volunteer, collaborate and contribute to large projects and free time and talents of the world's population. Media and tools allow the talent to then become material. However he says the world has a total of over a trillion hours of free time. Estimating the population of the planet to be around 6.9 billion that means each person would have around 143 hours of free time a year. Now I am curious what he defines free time as, because I personally know that I have over a half hour of free time per day. Unless he wouldn't refer to that as free time. An experiment of that magnitude seems as though it would become more inaccurate as you applied it to a larger group of people. Never the less, this is what he says.

He begins another story, the one of LOLcats.

These developments are a form of cognitive surplus. Despite their insignificance, they stand on the same level of the Ushahidi program, being defined by the characteristic that their creator did something instead of nothing. However LOLcats are of communal value, they provide use and enjoyment for the participants of the cause. Ushahidi on the other hand is of civic value, providing benefits to not only the participants of the cause, but to all of society. I find the LOLcats to be of very little value, quite honestly, not only does our world have this supposed trillion + hours of free time, they are, in my opinion, wasting it on something such as these. This contrast he poses to the audience I find shocking, and especially effective at opening my mind. Although hard to understand at first his words are starting to penetrate my thoughts, and his speech marks the beginning many what if... thoughts which multiply quickly.

If humans have the growing free time and generosity that Shirky says they do, why aren't they directing it towards projects of more civic value? It's although most people are 90% there, they just have to make a small but different decision to direct their free time and talent towards a cause that would help more people.

In the conclusion of his TED talk I feel although he poses a challenge to me,

"There is a trillion hours a year of participatory value, up for grabs. That will be true year-in and year-out. The number of people who are going to be able to participate in these kinds of projects is going to grow. And we can see that organizations designed around a culture of generosity can achieve incredible effects without an enormous amount of contractual overhead. What's going to make the difference here is what Dean Kamen said, the inventor and entrepreneur. Kamen said,'Free cultures get what they celebrate.' We have got a choice before us. We've got this trillion hours a year. We can use it to crack each other up, and we're going to do that. That we get for free. But we can also celebrate, and support, and reward the people trying to use cognitive surplus to create civic value." (Clay Shirky). Going back to what I previously said about seeking to use more of your time for increasing civic value, I think Shirky asks a hidden question in his words, 'which will you be?'. Will you be a person who uses their free time and creativity as a useless attempt to spread a worthless idea? Or will you take the basic simplicity of what you have naturally been bestowed with, and change the world for the better?

Although unspoken, his words ask me this. Upon hearing this question and visualizing the difference between the two I know that I will try my hardest to be the latter. I understand that every once in awhile everyone seeks out that time specifically for themselves, but I think that society has been taught to always put themselves first. Few people are educated on the unfortunate lives of others, and rarely have that thought pass through their minds. When it is necessary, take care of yourself, but direct free time towards people and causes in need. When specifically directed, all the cognitive surplus could result in a world full of LOLcats, or a magnificent place, full of helpful programs like Ushahidi, where people direct their talent and free time to projects that can provide benefits to all, and positively alter our future.

Clay Shirky's TED talk:

Many others can be found at ted.com

Would a Sweeter Carrot Entice You?

Dan Pink opens his TED talk with the candle problem. Those who complete the challenge will be compensated based on how competitive their time is. You must hang the candle on the wall without having any of the wax drip on the table, simple enough, yet becomes a challenge once most see the design of the situation. They are presented with this scenario.

It takes quite some time, but after some cognitive work, people end up with this as a result after several attempts such as trying to attach it to the wall with tacks or melted wax from the candle itself.

However when presented with this situation people were able to knock up to three minutes off the time it took to solve the puzzle. In fact, those who were offered the compensation during the first trial did even worse when the factor of a prize was added into the equation. There seems to be no logical answer to this. We have lived in a society where people are constantly rewarded for the 'good' they do and quite simply punished for the 'bad' as an effort to encourage better performance. Yet in this situation it didn't work, and there seems to be no reason for it.

In repeated studies, as Dan Pink points out, "that once a task called for rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance," (Daniel Pink). People assume that to improve your performance you must simply be enticed by either a sweeter 'carrot' or sharper 'stick'. However the reward produced the exact opposite effect that it was designed for, it worsened the performance.

When the tacks are in the box, the situation requires more cognitive skill, a right brained approach. However when the tacks were removed and the participants were aware of their reward, the mechanical skill kicked in and improved their performance. Once aware of a reward, the pressure of the 'out of the box' thinking caused the people who were given the situation with the tacks in the box, to perform worse than the other trial. Quite simply put, rewards work for situations requiring mechanical skill, and improve performance, however rewards act in the exact opposite way when applied to cognitive tasks, and prove to have a negative impact on performance.

It has also been found in multiple studies that when given the time to direct themselves in work, people do the most innovative and creative work. In many situations the best improvements for software and other products have been thought of when very little to nothing rode on the outcome of a person's thinking. Autonomy gives people the freedom to persue their interests which ultimately leads to better results.


In 1995 Microsoft began to develop a encyclopedia to be named Encarta, written by experts on each topic and would be entirely free and on the internet for anyone to utilize. A similar encyclopedia also took form that year, also to be published online and free as well. But the difference in this one was that the second encyclopedia would be entirely written by volunteers. No pay, no motivation, yet the idea caught on. The Encarta was discontinued in 2009 while the other encyclopedia, referred to a wikipedia, now stands as the number one online encyclopedia in the world. The results shocked countless economists, it seems implausible that an entirely volunteer based network would ever out perform one made by experts. Yet it did.


Each one of these experiments leads back to intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation in humans, which is Dan Pink's ultimate point. He says, "mastery is the urge to get better at stuff, we like to get better at stuff, this is why people play instruments on the weekend. You have all these people who are acting in ways that seem irrational economically," (Dan Pink). Yet people do this for satisfaction, for entertainment. We are more motivated by what we see as worthwhile, what we enjoy. We seek less reward when we are motivated to do a task intrinsically. Also stated by Dan Pink, "Management is great if you want compliance, but if you want engagement, which is what we want in the workforce today, as people are doing more complicated sophisticated things, self direction is better," (Daniel Pink). When self directed by intrinsic motivation ideas arise that would have remained unthought of, and not only that, people are willing to do the work for little or no compensation because it is done by what drives them.

Doing tasks for ones own sake is the number one motivator and Pink continually refers back to this point one way or another throughout his speech. It is especially effective when he repeats the saying that, "there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does," (Dan Pink). His passion about the topic often spills over as he shouts out to the audience that intrinsic motivators will always overcome extrinsic, but every point he makes is valid.

No one wants to live a life where they are stuck in a position doing work that they don't even like. If the world is able to digest this information it would lead to a future of more innovation and happiness. People must be educated about how humans are motivated and what they personally are motivated by to help the human race progress through the future. With this knowledge in hand I look to follow my interests more because not only will they lead to a better performance from me, but it will also lead to more innovation and creativity which will ultimately aid the world and our race as we enter the uncertain future.

Dan Pink's TED talk:

For those seeking more information on Intrinsic v. Extrinsic motivation :

http://p2pfoundation.net/Intrinsic_vs._Extrinsic_Motivation

Eating Their Death

Today, most Americans will poison themselves. That is considering poison a substance that causes death or injury, and the food eaten by most Americans today is exactly that.

Jamie Oliver opened his TED talk with brutal truth and honesty. He looks out to the audience, and tells all the parents that this world of food that they have surrounded their children with will result in a death ten years earlier than their own. He continues to grasp the attention of the startled audience when he pulls up this chart on the enormous screen behind him. Full of passion and drive, he speaks,“We spend our lives being paranoid about death, murder, homicide, you name it. It’s on the front page of every paper, CNN. Look at homicide at the bottom for God’s sake. Right? Every single one of those in the red is a diet-related disease.” (Jamie Oliver).

From the top: Heart Disease, All Cancers, Stroke, Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease, Accidents, Diabetes, Alzheimer's Disease, Influenza and Pneumonia, Kidney Disease, Septicemia, Suicide, Chronic Liver Disease, Hypertension, Parkinson's Disease, Homicide

He proposes a simple solution. Worthwhile and inexpensive; he wants to educate children about food.

Innovation and creativity are vital to our survival as a species, but even more important is health. Without it humans can't even expect to live to a point where they are able to create and make a difference in the world. Jamie alerts the audience to another disturbing statistic,“Fact. Diet-related disease is the biggest killer in the United States, right now, here today,” (Jamie Oliver).  New inventions or improvements in education will do the human race no good if all have already died due to health issues. Jamie pulls a picture of a young 16 year old girl. Severely obese, her doctors don't expect for her to live for six more years. Immediate action needs to be taken to save her life. Many other things in this world are important and must be fixed, but right here and now health must be put as the top priority.

People around the world are eating themselves to death. Jamie believes that with simple education on food this problem can be fixed. He shows this clip during his TED talk, showing the disturbing lack of education on food in America.

The crowds' mouths hung open in astonishment. He quickly tells them how fixable the problem is. Within 2 one hour sessions every child in the room could name each of the vegetables with ease. Knowing what the food is not only makes them more likely to eat it, but also to eat less of the processed foods that they love since they now know the consequences of them.

We won't live to see the future of tomorrow if these health problems aren't fixed today. He brings out a wheel barrel full of sugar cubes, and dumps them on the stage. The milk drank by the children of America contains nearly as much sugar as a soda drink and the amount he dumps on stage represents the amount of sugar consumed through five years of elementary school... from milk only. Something supposed to be good and healthy for humans is nearly as processed and as detrimental to health as a soda. Most students are served two meals a day 180 days out of the year at school. Having a lack of cutlery at school means that most of the food being served is fast food. The big companies must make a change soon for the betterment of society and must hold themselves to a moral standard at which they can supply healthy, decent food to these schools.

Every word spoken during Jamie Oliver's TED talk is drenched in passion, depth and devotion. As a parent, these food issues with children hit home with him. He is almost frantic moving across the stage in a zig zag formation, bursting with the knowledge he wishes to spew out to the people of the world. He is exciting to watch, upbeat and optimistic, yet sobered by the truth and reality of the situation that many other countries, like America, have gotten themselves into.

A drastic change needs to be made  in society immediately, for there is no way to continue life this way. Children must be educated about food and what they choose to put in their bodies. You truly are what you eat, because any nutrient your body requires comes from consuming food, and I doubt we live in a world where everyone wants to be made of disgusting food that is fried and processed beyond recognition.  With simple education not only is obesity preventable, but also the disease caused by it. 

I personally didn't eat any fried or processed foods prior to this and try to eat organic when I can, but this TED talk has shown me that I must do much more. It is my responsibility to spread the knowledge I already have about eating healthy fresh food combined with the new things I have learned from Mr. Oliver to inspire people to take their health into their own hands, and especially to encourage their  kids to do so, since they are the future of this planet. 

By spending a little time teaching children about how food effects their bodies, the world can slowly work to a better more positive future with children living longer, not shorter than their parents, with every generation to come.

Jamie Oliver's inspirational TED talk:

You can also find other TED talks similar to Jamie Oliver's at http://www.ted.com/themes/food_matters.html

The Death of Creativity and the Path Which It Will Take Us Down

"We need to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children,"(Ken Robinson). As Sir Ken Robinson opens his TED talk he immediately shows through the cookie cutter methods of teaching conformity in schools world wide, we have found ourselves to be living in societies which ruin the creativity and imagination of many. He continues to say we are "educating people out of their creative capacities,"(Ken Robinson). Negligence of society has lead down a road where children live in fear of being incorrect. It is in schools world wide, which are meant to challenge and expand the minds of children, where they are told that being wrong, or having an incorrect answer is the ultimate atrocity. Instead of letting their minds bloom with the innovative thoughts floating through their brains, they restrict them, tell them right from wrong, and emphasize the importance of being correct in this world. Those thoughts, the open-ended and creative ones, are crushed for fear of being wrong in a place driven by right.

Sir Ken Robinson draws our attention to each and everyone of these points through the candid delivery of his speech. The bare truth is spoken through his mouth in every word and one cannot deny the questions that are unleashed through his argument. "Am I guilty of suppressing the creativity in others? In myself?" By bringing his audience to a point where they question not only those around them, but also themselves, he captures their attention to the very last sentence. He speaks of Gillian Lynne, a young girl whom is thought by her teachers to have a learning disability, however, upon being observed by a doctor the conclusion is brought up that she is merely a dancer. As he continues, he shines validity on the rarity of what took place, stating that most other people would have just put her on medication and told her to sit still. But rather someone saw past what was considered right and wrong, and down to the creativity of the young girl. She took her creativity, which hadn't been thoroughly destroyed through the correctness of society, and expanded it to become the choreographer of plays such as Cats, and the Phantom of the Opera. Through her story he drives home the concept of changing our thinking, our standards, and our education.
How are we ever to prepare for a future society that we know nothing about if we are to continue down this path of right and wrong? We rely on creativity to expand and propel the world forward, and in this system of education where it is so frowned upon, there is only one route to our future, which Sir Ken Robinson says will negatively effect all of life on the planet. However allowing the gift of the human imagination to expand and thrive will lead to limitless and exponential developments unthinkable to man as of now. I take his words as incentive to open my mind, let my thoughts wander, and to expand my own creativity as should the world. I take them as a preventative measure to let no one tell me that something innovative I have thought of as wrong, and to not let the standard of conformity be a barrier for me or the people surrounding me. He has shown me that originality is the fuel to a better future, and although it remains unseen, the limitlessness human creativity can constantly lead the world, and education to a better tomorrow.

Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk: