Its like TED but with more fluffy armchairs, tents and english accents
June 22, 2011 2:39 AM Subscribe
HowTheLightGetsIn is an annual festival of philosophy and music where "Leading thinkers in every field mix with cutting edge musicians to excite the imagination and renew the spirit." Talks from the 2011 event have recently been posted online and are well worth a watch. Highlights include Gerald Moore, Lewis Wolpert & Mark Vernon discussing faith , Richard Schoch on happiness, Lauren Booth discussing her conversion from "hedonistic libertarian to islam" Frank Furedi on the rules of the political elite and the Funny Women Awards
which does what it says on the tin.
Thank you! I had been hoping to attend, but then I suddenly needed to move to America, and so I missed it.
posted by honest knave at 2:56 AM on June 22, 2011
posted by honest knave at 2:56 AM on June 22, 2011
TED Talks, Bilderburgers, Conventions for this and that: do Westerners actually do anything anymore, or is anything besides standing about and yakking outsourced to India and China?
posted by orthogonality at 3:19 AM on June 22, 2011
posted by orthogonality at 3:19 AM on June 22, 2011
orthogonality: do Westerners actually do anything anymore?
O tempora o mores!
Having abandoned Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber in droves for AC Grayling, Richard Dawkins, and Ben Hammersley, all Westerners have laid down their social consciences and military industrial complexes before the humanist opiate of videos about ideas, leaving vast ghost towns of former government offices, investment banks, and the now-deserted makeshift digs of Oxfam and The International Red Cross.
Metafilter, it is said, is a particularly potent opiate of the masses, feeding a widespread escapist predilection for well argued paragraphs instead of more politically relevant rallying cries of the American Tea Party. And even Metafilter has changed irrevocably. First they came for the youtube videos, then they came for the McSweeney's posts, and I said nothing. And now look at us: bereft of cat scans, we link only to Arts and Letters Daily, Nature, and Foreign Policy with nary a Tower Combat in sight.
What we need now is some good old fashioned Internet Porn to wake us from our lecture-induced slumber. Alas, we have used all our bandwidth on TED talks.
posted by honest knave at 5:21 AM on June 22, 2011
O tempora o mores!
Having abandoned Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber in droves for AC Grayling, Richard Dawkins, and Ben Hammersley, all Westerners have laid down their social consciences and military industrial complexes before the humanist opiate of videos about ideas, leaving vast ghost towns of former government offices, investment banks, and the now-deserted makeshift digs of Oxfam and The International Red Cross.
Metafilter, it is said, is a particularly potent opiate of the masses, feeding a widespread escapist predilection for well argued paragraphs instead of more politically relevant rallying cries of the American Tea Party. And even Metafilter has changed irrevocably. First they came for the youtube videos, then they came for the McSweeney's posts, and I said nothing. And now look at us: bereft of cat scans, we link only to Arts and Letters Daily, Nature, and Foreign Policy with nary a Tower Combat in sight.
What we need now is some good old fashioned Internet Porn to wake us from our lecture-induced slumber. Alas, we have used all our bandwidth on TED talks.
posted by honest knave at 5:21 AM on June 22, 2011
Having abandoned Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber in droves for AC Grayling, Richard Dawkins, and Ben Hammersley...
I've never been made to blush by a metafilter comment before. Good lord.
It was a lovely event. Very small, and most of the talks were in big yurt-like tents. It was in Hay-on-Wye, for goodness sake. A tiny Welsh village, bereft of cellphone signal. My dogs came on stage, there was Pimms on tap, and there was a lot of pie to eat. So much better than TED. Or Davos, come to that.
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 11:00 AM on June 22, 2011 [1 favorite]
I've never been made to blush by a metafilter comment before. Good lord.
It was a lovely event. Very small, and most of the talks were in big yurt-like tents. It was in Hay-on-Wye, for goodness sake. A tiny Welsh village, bereft of cellphone signal. My dogs came on stage, there was Pimms on tap, and there was a lot of pie to eat. So much better than TED. Or Davos, come to that.
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 11:00 AM on June 22, 2011 [1 favorite]
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