It worked! Thanks to the crowdfunding site SETIstars.org, the necessary $200,000 has been raised to get the Allan Telescope Array back online over the next few months. SETIstars.orgwill stay up to help contribute to ongoing costs of running the array. More details in this Nature Blog story >>
TEDPrize Updates
Update on SETIstars.org: Crowdfunding the SETI search
Monday, August 15th, 2011Riz Khan interview with Karen Armstrong
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011Inside Out action in Cape Town
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than it’s opposite.” – Nelson Mandela
A transformative group action recently took place in Cape Town, South Africa. Celebrating Mandela Day and breaking down cultural divides, youth from the local communities worked together to execute this action.
Leading up to Mandela Day, July 18, 2011, high school students at Hout Bay High School in Cape Town communities learned about portrait photography from notable South African photographers Hasan and Husain. Students were paired from Hangberg’s Cape Coloured community with learners from the Imizamo Yethu’s Xhosa (Black African) community. Though they attend the same school and their communities are neighboring, racism between the two sides is rampant, an enduring legacy of segregation from the apartheid era. Kids who would never have spoken to each other before forged deep friendships through getting to know and ultimately celebrate their partners’ dreams and aspirations.
They learned about each other through conversation and exchange as they photographed each other. The week leading up to Mandela Day, they posted their portraits on each others’ homes and in each others’ communities to showcase the beauty and shared values they found in their new friends. Large-scale versions of the portraits were created by JR and pasted throughout various communities in Cape Town – notably the central library and kiosks around the Town Hall. A high school assembly themed around the IOP action and Mandela Day was followed by a communal pasting session with JR’s crew on a series of large shipping containers overlooking the school. The kids were filled with so much pride as their pictures went up around town.
Announcing the Inside Out web series and YouTube channel
Thursday, July 14th, 2011Today at TEDGlobal JR launched the Inside Out web series, documenting his work and the work of individuals around the world on his TED Prize wish.
Thousands of participants have been working on their own part of the Inside Out Project since it was unveiled in March. Now, participants can upload video content of their pasting actions to an Inside Out YouTube channel. These submissions will be used in the creation of a final film.
“When I made my wish for Inside Out, I sought to become the printer and simply give people the tools to stand up for what they believe in,” said JR. “The Inside Out channel is a platform for participants to reveal their work and observe other actions around the world.”
Director Alastair Siddons is making a series of short films – featuring different Inside Out group actions – which will be featured on the YouTube channel. One video will be released each month, with the first in the series out today, highlighting a remarkable action in Tunisia.
“The pieces being contributed shine a different light on the Inside Out Project as a whole,” continued JR. “Most important is for everyone to offer their own perspectives, so at the end we’ll have one platform with many images, ideas, and stories. This way we can really see the impact of Inside Out.”
“JR’s TED Prize wish is reaching every corner of the planet – from the South Bronx and Brooklyn to Japan, Pakistan, Brazil, and Germany,” said Amy Novogratz, TED Prize Director. “Imagine what we’ll see when Inside Out Project participants begin sharing their films and perspectives on a collective channel. JR wished to turn the world Inside Out, and once he weaves together hundreds of stories, I have no doubt he will achieve this while demonstrating the power of global participation.”
Inside Out group action in Edinburgh
Tuesday, July 12th, 2011This week, while TEDGlobal takes place, a group of University of Edinburgh students are pasting their own Inside Out group action.
Edinburgh is the UK’s most closely watched city, with CCTV cameras on every corner. Working with JR, a crew of local students is looking at faces on both sides of the camera. Printed on enormous posters, the faces of the surveillants — and those they watch over — are pasted across buildings in the historic center of Edinburgh.
AIMS feature in Nature magazine
Friday, July 1st, 2011This week Nature released an Africa special supplement. Featured in the issue is a long article by TED Prize winner Neil Turok on the African Institue for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) and the Next Einstein Initiative.
From the article…
This September, AIMS will open an institute near an ecological reserve just south of Dakar in Senegal. Next year, it plans to open one in Ghana. The governments of Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania have also expressed strong interest. Developing a sustainable funding plan is our main challenge. We need to convince national governments that an AIMS centre will be a jewel in their educational system. After four years, AIMS in Cape Town became recognized as a national asset, with a line item in the education budget. We must do the same for every new centre.
Meanwhile, we are finding support from many sources. Last year, the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper committed Can$20 million (US$20 million) towards AIMS centres in South Africa, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and Ethiopia or Tanzania over the next five years. The Next Einstein Initiative also won a Google Project 10100 award of US$2 million towards construction costs for the centres. And Google gave US$1 million dollars for scholarships. The government of Senegal committed 656 million francs (US$1.4 million) in cash and land towards AIMS–Senegal. In Ghana, 7 hectares of land was donated by a diaspora organization, and the president committed 2.7 million cedi (US$1.5 million) towards construction of AIMS–Ghana.
A full scholarship at AIMS costs just US$10,000 a year, one-fifth of the cost of educating a graduate student in Europe or North America. This simple calculation underlies our One for Many programme. The idea is that a university in the developed world contributes the cost of one graduate fellowship on their campus to support many students studying at an AIMS centre. This is an excellent way for the university to engage with Africa at a manageable cost. Its faculty can visit to teach, and it recruits AIMS alumni to its PhD programmes. Just ten institutions are needed to support the entire scholarship costs of a new AIMS centre. So far, five Canadian universities and one French university have joined, and many more have expressed an interest.
Launching 15 AIMS centres will cost US$120 million over the next ten years. We think this is a bargain — just 0.03% of the projected international aid to Africa over that period. But convincing donors to support advanced education is hard. To them I say, “Who will teach the next generation of teachers?” And “How will Africa ever develop without a technical base?” Without such investments, the long-term prospects for the continent are meagre. When compared with India and China (each of which has half a million science and technology graduates a year), 750 skilled graduates is the bare minimum Africa needs.
The idea for the Next Einstein Initiative came from AIMS students. In 2007, I was lecturing at the Institute on how Einstein described the whole cosmos with an equation. I said, as an aside, “Of course, we hope there will be an Einstein among you.” I explained how Einstein too came from a disadvantaged group, the Jews, and, with his peers, revolutionized physics. Next day, Esra was giving a talk to a prospective donor. She ended by saying: “We want the next Einstein to be an African.”
Celebrate science with SETI
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
The imapct of TED on Neil Turok
Tuesday, June 28th, 2011On the 5th anniversary of TEDTalks, the TED blog asked speakers “How did your TEDTalk impact you?”
Here is the answer from 2008 TED Prize winner Neil Turok:
The talk I gave at TED2008 was simply transformative. I spoke about the importance of mathematical skills in modern society and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS). I expressed the wish that the next Einstein be African.
The talk gave huge and immediate visibility to our then-small AIMS project, which was struggling from one funding crisis to the next. When I proposed a plan to create 15 AIMS centres all over Africa, this generated enthusiasm and, ultimately, funding.
And our alumni, many of whom saw the talk online, were inspired by the thought that an organisation like TED, representing the most forward-looking thinkers, creators and entrepreneurs in the world, cared about them.
Help SETI resume scanning the skies for signs of intelligent life
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
A couple months ago the SETI Institute, home of 2009 TED Prize winner Jill Tarter, put the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) into hibernation due to lack of funds for the project. This shutdown came at a particularly bad time. With new planets being discovered in the habitable zones of distant stars, for the first time we know where we might look for intelligent life beyond earth. This knowledge would allow SETI to significantly more efficient; they can point their instruments at specific regions of the sky rather than sweeping the entire sky. The ATA is the only instrument available full time for listening for radio signals from possible intelligent sources.
Public support for getting the ATA back online has been tremendous. And so now the team at SETI has created SETIstars. “It’s a site to focus the activity of SETI enthusiasts who want to help support our search for extraterrestrial life. As a first step, [they] are seeking $200,000 in contributions by August to get the ATA back online. And if [their] predictions about your enthusiasm are right, we’ll be rolling out additional challenges soon — including a couple of firsts for Institutes like SETI.”
Learn more and donate at https://setistars.org/
Searching for the TED 2012 Prize Winner — With Your Help
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011From TED Prize Director Amy Novogratz --
Each year we award the TED Prize to an exceptional individual who is making a difference in the world — and we grant this recipient one wish. This isn’t just an ordinary wish, but a wish that allows them to dig deeper, activate people across the globe, and truly change the world.
From Bono and Bill Clinton to Karen Armstrong, Sylvia Earle, Jill Tarter, and this year’s winner JR, our wishes are engaging people on every continent.
Now, we are looking for the TED 2012 Prize winner — and just as our TED Prize wishes necessitate global participation, we need global input to find the next recipient.
We want this person to be someone whose work and ideas could foster global participation — someone who can make a wish that lets everyone participate.
If you know someone who could fill this role, no matter where they’re from, I encourage you to nominate him or her.
What each TED Prize winner receives: $100,000 along with the resources and dedication of the remarkable TED community. Members of this community literally work with the winners to build their wishes and transform ideas into change. It goes from a person on stage throwing an idea into the world, to people literally stepping up and making the seemingly impossible happen.
TED has helped past recipients start a food revolution, spur a global art project, invest in the future of our oceans, and empower Earthlings everywhere to search for cosmic company.
As these TED Prize wishes continue to unfold, help us uncover the next remarkable TED Prize winner so we can keep changing the world in new and unexpected ways.
