Highlights from TEDxUSC.

This week marked the second annual TEDxUSC conference--a local offshoot of the famed (and occasionally infamous) TED conference. While the program had its ups and downs, it was, overall, an inspiring and uplifting day of speakers, performances, and screenings. (Which says a lot as I'm generally not easily moved. They don't call me Cruella for nothing...no, they don't really call me that, you nincompoop.)

Here are some highlights.

* Raul Fernandez' short film/music video, 'The Woods: The Final Breaths of a Main Character.' The film is beautiful and creative and worth watching. The video is below for your viewing amazement.
* Paul Frommer spoke on creating the made up language, Na'vi, for communications on the land of Pandora (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you were clearly out of the planet for the last Oscar season).
* Jazz musician Charlie Parker apparently invented bee bop because he suspected that white musicians would not be able to copy the style. This somehow related to Johanna Blakley's talk about the lack of copyright protection in the fashion industry (don't ask me to explain my notes 3 days later, please).
* Short film 'Amelie and Alchemy' portrayed a father's quest to have his four year old daughter pose and hold still for a photograph taken by a century old camera device. I wish I could find the short in full online to show you as it was fantastic.
* Navigenics is a company founded by speaker Dr. David Agus. You: spit in a vial. They: give you a full report on your chances for disease as compared to the average population. Fascinating. Advanced. Likely insanely expensive. But still fascinating!

View talks from the 'real' (okay, okay-original) TED conference online. You will be so glad you traded in that hour of Real Housewives for something more inspired.

TED vs. Sarah Silverman. A tale of tweet wars, spineless men and 'retards.'

You don't ask your drunk of a cousin to give your grandma's eulogy, the tone deaf student to lead the choir, or the one-armed deaf, dumb and blind kid to captain the baseball team. Unless you want a shit show. But sometimes you do want a shit show. Cause it's funny. And entertaining. And then you call in Sarah Silverman.

TED, the annual conference for smart and/or wealthy people who can understand and/or pay to pretend to understand giant and innovative ideas, invited Silverman to speak at this year's event in Long Beach. Silverman delivered her usual brand of subversive humor, peppered with politically incorrect banter and misappropriation of the word 'retarded.' This is highly offensive if you're not a fan of Sarah Silverman, insanely funny if you are.

Well, Chris Anderson, TED's curator and the person who would have orchestrated Silverman's participation himself, responded to her presentation with a scathing and incredibly inappropriate [and now deleted] tweet...

To which Silverman replied in true Silverman fashion...

Kudos to @TEDChris for making TED an unsafe haven for all! You're a barnacle of mediocrity on Bill Gates' asshole.

I could not have said it better myself. Though mediocrity might be too kind of a word to describe Anderson's professionalism. For a community of supposedly superior intellect, the TED folks have proven themselves to be a bunch of stodgy, pretentious white men with sticks up their behinds [or, in the words of Silverman herself, just plain 'retarded']. And Anderson has shown himself to be a spineless leader who, when confronted with the consequence of his own poor judgement, found it easier to throw out insults instead of defending his choice and his speaker.

As someone who has long dreamt of attending the TED Conference, I can now say that if and when I should ever be able to afford the several thousand dollar entry fee, I would rather spend a fraction of the ticket price for a front row seat to a Sarah Silverman shit show.

Mind f**k: rad optical illusion.

Just because it's Monday and you obviously need a break, let me present to you the greatest mind f**k of the century, or at least of today--Monday, July 6th.

Take a look at the below (not for too long--I tried that and will now likely vomit) and notice the green and the blue spirals...

Now ooh and aah when I tell you that those spirals are actually the same flipping color. The orange spirals do not in fact go through the 'blue' spirals as they first appear to and the 'blue' is contrasted with a magenta, playing all sorts of wild tricks on our eyes.

Don't believe me? Well, I didn't believe in Santa Claus and then a reindeer landed in my backyard one day, so there you go.

[Via TED Blog via DISCOVER Magazine]