Along with Jim and Carole Young, the TEDx SMU conference was coordinated by Geoffrey Orsak. Geoffrey Orsak, PhD “has been called one of this nation’s key leaders in engineering research and education and its impact on economic development and global competitiveness. The editors of EDN – a leading international publication for the fields of engineering design and innovation wrote that Dr. Orsak is ‘one of the brightest minds in the world in engineering education’. And in 2006, the editors of EE Times magazine called him a ‘true pioneer and visionary’ and named him their first ever Educator of the Year in engineering and science.”
In my interview with Geoffrey Orsak while backstage at Tedx SMU, I asked: What was your purpose in bringing TEDx to Dallas and SMU?
Geoffrey says, “I love these big, crazy ideas, and sharing ideas with people all over the community. Our theme is: What Will Change Everything?”
Geoffrey Orsak and his team will have follow up with attendees to keep each thinking and addressing that question. They’ll also be showing clips of the presenters on their TEDx site.
Join us to see and hear what he has to say. His excitement over these“big, crazy ideas” is catching.
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Niki Nicastro McCuistion
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HEALTH
President Obama quickly declared victory after the U.S. House health care vote this past weekend, but the finish line remains in the distance.
For one thing, few people expect the health care bill passed by the House to survive in the U.S. Senate.
NATIONAL
Fort Hood shooting suspect conscious, talking, hospital says
(CNN) — Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in last week’s mass shooting at the Fort Hood Army Post, is conscious and talking, according to a spokesman for the Army hospital where he is being treated.
Authorities have not identified a motive in Thursday’s attack that left 13 dead and 42 others wounded.
ECONOMY
OIL FUTURES: Crude Higher On Concerns Over Hurricane Ida
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Crude futures rose above $79 a barrel Monday on concerns about the threat Hurricane Ida poses to U.S. oil and gas production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. A weakening in the dollar was also supportive to prices.
Light, sweet crude for December delivery recently traded $1.65, or 2.1%, higher at $79.08 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude on the ICE futures exchange traded $1.58, or 2.1%, higher at $77.45 a barrel.
Hurricane Ida is currently moving through the Gulf of Mexico but has weakened to a Category 1 storm. It is projected to make landfall in the U.S. early Tuesday, striking the northern Gulf coast between the eastern Mississippi coast to the western half of Florida, according to the National Hurricane Center.
INTERNATIONAL
Berliners celebrate fall of Wall
Celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall are under way.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and former Polish President Lech Walesa in a walk across a former checkpoint.
Earlier, a service was held at Gethsemane Church, where protests went on for the months before the wall fell.
The wall’s fall led to the collapse of Communist power, German reunification and the Cold War’s end.
We recently had the privilege of interviewing some dynamic influencers and inspirational minds at the TEDx SMU Conference and are looking forward to sharing those interviews with you. TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. TED speakers have ranged from Al Gore, to Jane Goodall who in 18 minutes “give the talk of their lives”. The world renowned TED conferences had its own smaller debut in Dallas- as a special TED xSMU independently organized TED event.
The theme of the conference was What Will Change Everything?
In their 18 minutes of the ‘talk of their lives’, the speakers educated, informed, used humor, music, inspiration, photos and demonstrations to challenge and inspire us. Coordinated by Geoffrey Orsak: Dean of the Lyle School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University and Carole and Jim Young, ardent TED conference devotees, the conference was a success that we hope will come back again and again.
Attendees had to apply for admittance, answering fairly strict questions and submitting an essay- as to why they wanted to attend and how they see using what they learned. Thousands applied and 500 or so were admitted. I’m glad to report that Dennis McCuistion and I (Niki Nicastro McCuistion) were admitted- and we were sweating it. How embarrassing to be asked to conduct interviews and not “pass” the entry “exam”! So due to our good fortune we attended, learned and interviewed. In the next couple of weeks you’ll get to see and hear a few of the presenters who joined us:
- The organizers, Geoffrey Orsak and the Youngs,
- William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, who wrote: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind,
- Amory Lovins with the Rocky Mountain Institute who we had interviewed for a prior McCuistion TV program, on the End Oil Game,
- Turk Pipkin with the Nobelity Project,
- Rogers Hartmann on her life with Dystonia,
- Arthur Benjamin- the Mathemagican, Professor at Harvey Mudd College,
- Greg Harper with Harper Vision & Gadget Off, and
- Tanya Pinto, a media relations person who took off for India to work at Mother Teresa’s orphanage.
Join us and our TEDx guests as we talk about things that matter with people who care as we post a series of posts over the coming week of exclusive backstage interviews with these speakers. And go to TED’s website for more information on TEDx SMU.
Here’s what some household names have to say about TED international conferences:
Thank you a thousand times for inviting me to your wonderful TED conference. I regret not only that I was not at every moment of it, but especially that I missed all the previous ones! It was a great and stimulating experience as well as a lot of fun.”
– Rupert Murdoch, chair & CEO, The News Corporation
“I wasn’t prepared for this conference to be so profound. The combined IQ of the attendees is incredible.”
– Bill Gates, Microsoft
I wish I’d started coming earlier.”
– Richard Dawkins, biologist
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Niki Nicastro McCuistion
Afghan Election Officials Declare Karzai Winner
Afghanistan’s Election Commission has declared President Hamid Karzai the winner of the country’s disputed election after canceling a second round of voting.
CIT Group Files Bankruptcy, Seeks to Reduce Debt (Update1)
Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) — CIT Group Inc., the 101-year-old commercial lender that saw its funding dry up in the credit crunch, filed for bankruptcy in an effort to cut $10 billion in debt following a failed debt exchange and U.S. taxpayer bailout.
GLOBAL ECONOMY-Global factory output expands, points to recovery
LONDON/BEIJING, Nov 2 (Reuters) – Factory activity in the euro zone expanded for the first time in 17 months in October and also picked up in Britain and China, suggesting global economic recovery is underway, surveys showed on Monday.
The upbeat data comes ahead of policy meetings of the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England this week with policymakers facing a mass of conflicting signals.
The next health-care fight has already started. It’s the one to define the bill that President Obama eventually will sign as a victory for consumers, taxpayers and the common good.
You might say this view is premature. Legislation has yet to pass the House or the Senate, there are differences between the two bodies, and some moderates still have doubts.
