TED Complaints

“Hank, at the end of this year I started to think that a lot of life is about doing things that don’t suck with people who don’t suck.” - John Green


"Biography is different from Geography. Geography is about maps, while biography deals with chaps." - Edmund Clerihew Bentley (that's the first quote from my new Quote Book- the first section is all about biography.)


As you know, I've been watching a lot of TED videos recently. I have enjoyed all of them.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsSd2nmoKNA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1KJAXM3xYA


It makes me sad when videos such as the two above-- almost always videos with female speakers-- get lots of comments to the tune of "@#$% this $%&#. All of the TED Woman talks suck except for like, one."


I'm assuming that when it first started out, TED was mostly about science, and had a lot of male speakers. Since then, they have expanded. There are talks on literature and spirituality. There are talks about social interaction and understanding each other (like the two I've linked to above). Why is it so bad that the lectures are encompassing MORE content? They aren't badly written, and the content is sound, researched stuff. Yet they are hated all the same, because they belong to different categories.


I mean, so what if she uses terms such as The Warrior and The Mystic? She's compartmentalizing different portions of herself so as to be better-understood. If you have a problem with her New Age-y language, translate it into something else. Warrior and Mystic are archetypes that the human image-oriented mind can understand.


The guy viewers complain that there's TEDWoman, but making TEDMan would be sexist. Fair point, but perhaps they created the TEDWoman conference because some women didn't feel welcome at the regular event due to people like this.


I'm sorry. It just makes me really mad. 


Science isn't the only thing that matters. Even if you're not religious yourself, spirituality matters to others, and others affect you, which means that spirituality ought to matter to you as well. Living in harmony with each other matters, even if it sounds fruity.


Also, I really think that "each other" should be made into one word, but all of my spell checkers flip out when I try to write "eachother."
Those two words in that order are used as their own separate word, and they should be spelled as such. 


Also Also: Hi to all of the readers from the Netherlands and Ukraine! Google Stat has informed me that views from your area are growing. I assume that means you're not spam-bots.


IMPORTANT ALSO: Sometimes I post lyrics I've written on here, but I finally actually got around to making a video of one of my songs (yes, it's a wizard rock song). The video/audio quality isn't terribly good (as my camera sucks at video-- the iSight is debatably better), but here's the link to that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMJ0z-v1W9I