This talk by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor was universally considered the best talk at the TED conference last month. In it, she describes the lessons she learned from studying her stroke from inside her own head as it was happening.
And in that moment my right arm went totally paralyzed by my side. And I realized, "Oh my gosh! I'm having a stroke! I'm having a stroke!" And the next thing my brain says to me is, "Wow! This is so cool. This is so cool. How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain from the inside out?"
If you're curious as to what designers mean when they talk about design, check out Paola Antonelli's talk from last year's TED conference. (BTW, TED has made publicly available a great number of talks from their conferences...like 40-50 hours of material.)
Read it and weep: the TED 2007 speaker list...unless you've already got a ticket, you're not going (the waiting list is like 1000 people long). Lots of interesting speakers tho.
TED is releasing audio and video of some of their talks for free on the web. Current offerings include Al Gore, David Pogue, and Gapminder's Hans Rosling. They'll be adding one talk a week from their archives.
Update: Here's a post about the release from TED Blog.
TED (the conference folks) have got themselves a blog. If you enjoy kottke.org, it looks like TEDBlog may hold your interest as well.
