Reinventing the encyclopedia game
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0:01 - 0:04So, last month, the Encyclopaedia Britannica announced
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0:04 - 0:06that it is going out of print
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0:06 - 0:10after 244 years, which made me nostalgic,
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0:10 - 0:15because I remember playing a game with the colossal encyclopedia set in my hometown library
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0:15 - 0:16back when I was a kid,
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0:16 - 0:18maybe 12 years old.
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0:18 - 0:20And I wondered if I could update that game,
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0:20 - 0:22not just for modern methods,
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0:22 - 0:24but for the modern me.
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0:24 - 0:25So I tried.
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0:25 - 0:27I went to an online encyclopedia,
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0:27 - 0:29Wikipedia, and I entered the term "Earth."
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0:29 - 0:32You can start anywhere, this time I chose Earth.
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0:32 - 0:35And the first rule of the game is pretty simple.
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0:35 - 0:36You just have to read the article
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0:36 - 0:39until you find something you don't know,
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0:39 - 0:42and preferably something your dad doesn't even know.
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0:42 - 0:45And in this case, I quickly found this:
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0:45 - 0:47The furthest point from the center of the Earth
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0:47 - 0:49is not the tip of Mount Everest, like I might have thought,
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0:49 - 0:53it's the tip of this mountain: Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador.
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0:53 - 0:56The Earth spins, of course, as it travels around the sun,
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0:56 - 0:58so the Earth bulges a little bit around the middle,
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0:58 - 0:59like some Earthlings.
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0:59 - 1:04And even though Mount Chimborazo isn't the tallest mountain in the Andes,
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1:04 - 1:06it's one degree away from the equator,
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1:06 - 1:09it's riding that bulge, and so the summit of Chimborazo
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1:09 - 1:12is the farthest point on Earth from the center of the Earth.
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1:12 - 1:15And it is really fun to say.
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1:15 - 1:16So I immediately decided,
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1:16 - 1:18this is going to be the name of the game,
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1:18 - 1:20or my new exclamation.
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1:20 - 1:20You can use it at TED.
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1:20 - 1:22Chimborazo, right?
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1:22 - 1:24It's like "eureka" and "bingo" had a baby.
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1:24 - 1:25I didn't know that;
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1:25 - 1:27that's pretty cool.
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1:27 - 1:29Chimborazo!
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1:29 - 1:32So the next rule of the game is also pretty simple.
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1:32 - 1:35You just have to find another term and look that up.
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1:35 - 1:37Now in the old days, that meant getting out a volume
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1:37 - 1:39and browsing through it alphabetically,
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1:39 - 1:40maybe getting sidetracked,
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1:40 - 1:41that was fun.
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1:41 - 1:43Nowadays there are hundreds of links to choose from.
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1:43 - 1:45I can go literally anywhere in the world,
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1:45 - 1:47I think since I was already in Ecuador,
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1:47 - 1:50I just decided to click on the word "tropical."
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1:50 - 1:55That took me to this wet and warm band of the tropics
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1:55 - 1:56that encircles the Earth.
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1:56 - 1:59Now that's the Tropic of Cancer in the north
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1:59 - 2:00and the Tropic of Capricorn in the south,
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2:00 - 2:01that much I knew,
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2:01 - 2:03but I was surprised to learn this little fact:
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2:03 - 2:05Those are not cartographers' lines,
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2:05 - 2:09like latitude or the borders between nations,
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2:09 - 2:12they are astronomical phenomena caused by the Earth's tilt,
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2:12 - 2:13and they change.
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2:13 - 2:16They move; they go up, they go down.
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2:16 - 2:19In fact, for years, the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn
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2:19 - 2:22have been steadily drifting towards the equator
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2:22 - 2:24at the rate of about 15 meters per year,
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2:24 - 2:25and nobody told me that.
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2:25 - 2:26I didn't know it.
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2:26 - 2:28Chimborazo!
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2:28 - 2:33So to keep the game going, I just have to find another term and look that one up.
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2:33 - 2:37Since I'm already in the tropics, I chose "Tropical rainforest."
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2:37 - 2:39Famous for its diversity, human diversity.
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2:39 - 2:45There are still dozens and dozens of uncontacted tribes living on this planet.
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2:45 - 2:49They're all over the globe, but virtually all of them live in tropical rainforests.
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2:49 - 2:54This is the only place you can go nowadays and not get "friended."
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2:54 - 3:03The link that I clicked on here was exotic in the beginning and then absolutely mysterious at the very end.
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3:03 - 3:10It mentioned leopards and ring-tailed coatis and poison dart frogs and boa constrictors and then
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3:10 - 3:12coleoptera,
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3:12 - 3:15which turn out to be beetles.
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3:15 - 3:17Now I clicked on this on purpose,
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3:17 - 3:19but if I'd somehow gotten here by mistake,
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3:19 - 3:21it does remind me, for the band, see "The Beatles,"
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3:21 - 3:23for the car see "Volkswagon Beetle,"
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3:23 - 3:25but I am here for beetle beetles.
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3:25 - 3:29This is the most successful order on the planet by far.
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3:29 - 3:34Something between 20 and 25 percent of all life forms on the planet,
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3:34 - 3:35including plants, are beetles.
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3:35 - 3:38That means the next time you are in the grocery store,
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3:38 - 3:40take a look at the four people ahead of you in line.
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3:40 - 3:43Statistically, one of you is a beetle.
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3:43 - 3:48And if it is you, you are astonishingly well adapted.
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3:48 - 3:53There are scavenger beetles that pick the skin and flesh off of bones in museums.
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3:53 - 3:57There are predator beetles, that attack other insects
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3:57 - 3:58and still look pretty cute to us.
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3:58 - 4:02There are beetles that roll little balls of dung
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4:02 - 4:05great distances across the desert floor to feed to their hatchlings.
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4:05 - 4:09This reminded the ancient Egyptians of their god Khepri,
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4:09 - 4:12who renews the ball of the sun every morning,
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4:12 - 4:14which is how that dung-rolling scarab
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4:14 - 4:20became that sacred scarab on the breastplate of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
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4:20 - 4:26Beetles, I was reminded, have the most romantic flirtation in the animal kingdom.
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4:26 - 4:28Fireflies are not flies, fireflies are beetles.
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4:28 - 4:33Fireflies are coleoptera, and coleoptera communicate in other ways as well.
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4:33 - 4:35Like my next link:
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4:35 - 4:38The chemical language of pheromones.
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4:38 - 4:44Now the pheromone page took me to a video of a sea urchin having sex.
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4:44 - 4:47Yeah.
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4:47 - 4:51(Laughter)
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4:51 - 4:53And the link to aphrodisiac.
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4:53 - 4:54Now that's something that increases sexual desire,
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4:54 - 4:56possibly chocolate.
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4:56 - 5:00There is a compound in chocolate called phenethylamine
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5:00 - 5:01that might be an aphrodisiac.
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5:01 - 5:04But as the article mentions,
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5:04 - 5:05because of enzyme breakdown,
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5:05 - 5:09it's unlikely that phenethylamine will reach your brain if taken orally.
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5:09 - 5:12So those of you who only eat your chocolate, you might have to experiment.
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5:12 - 5:16The link I clicked on here,
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5:16 - 5:21"sympathetic magic," mostly because I understand what both of those words mean.
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5:21 - 5:23But not when they're together like that.
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5:23 - 5:26I do like sympathy. I do like magic.
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5:26 - 5:28So when I click on "sympathetic magic,"
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5:28 - 5:32I get sympathetic magic and voodoo dolls.
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5:32 - 5:35This is the boy in me getting lucky again.
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5:35 - 5:37Sympathetic magic is imitation.
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5:37 - 5:39If you imitate something, maybe you can have an effect on it.
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5:39 - 5:44That's the idea behind voodoo dolls, and possibly also cave paintings.
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5:44 - 5:49The link to cave paintings takes me to some of the oldest art known to humankind.
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5:49 - 5:51I would love to see Google maps inside some of these caves.
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5:51 - 5:55We've got tens-of-thousands-years-old artwork.
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5:55 - 6:00Common themes around the globe include large wild animals and tracings of human hands,
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6:00 - 6:02usually the left hand.
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6:02 - 6:06We have been a dominantly right-handed tribe for millenia,
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6:06 - 6:12so even though I don't know why a paleolithic person would trace his hand
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6:12 - 6:14or blow pigment on it from a tube,
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6:14 - 6:16I can easily picture how he did it.
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6:16 - 6:21And I really don't think it's that different form our own little dominant hand avatar
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6:21 - 6:24right there that I'm going to use now to click on the term for "hand,"
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6:24 - 6:30go to the page for "hand," where I found the most fun and possibly embarrassing bit of trivia
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6:30 - 6:32I've found in a long time. It's simply this:
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6:32 - 6:37The back of the hand is formally called the opisthenar.
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6:37 - 6:40Now that's embarrassing, because up until now,
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6:40 - 6:43every time I've said, "I know it like the back of my hand,"
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6:43 - 6:46I've really been saying, "I'm totally familiar with that,
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6:46 - 6:48I just don't know it's freaking name, right?"
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6:48 - 6:52And the link I clicked on here,
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6:52 - 6:56well, lemurs, monkeys and chimpanzees have the little opisthenar.
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6:56 - 7:00I click on chimpanzee, and I get our closest genetic relative.
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7:00 - 7:04Pan troglodytes, the name we give him, means "cave dweller."
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7:04 - 7:06He doesn't.
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7:06 - 7:08He lives in rainforests and savannas.
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7:08 - 7:11It's just that we're always thinking of this guy as lagging behind us,
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7:11 - 7:14evolutionarily or somehow uncannily creeping up on us,
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7:14 - 7:18and in some cases, he gets places before us.
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7:18 - 7:23Like my next link, the almost irresistible link, Ham the Astrochimp.
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7:23 - 7:27I click on him, and I really thought he was going to bring me full circle twice, in fact.
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7:27 - 7:28He's born in Cameroon,
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7:28 - 7:32which is smack in the middle of my tropics map,
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7:32 - 7:38and more specifically his skeleton wound up in the Smithsonian museum getting picked clean by beetles.
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7:38 - 7:41In between those two landmarks in Ham's life,
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7:41 - 7:44he flew into space.
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7:44 - 7:47He experienced weightlessness and re-entry
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7:47 - 7:50months before the first human being to do it,
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7:50 - 7:52Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
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7:52 - 7:55When I click on Yuri Gagarin's page,
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7:55 - 7:57I get this guy who was surprisingly short in stature,
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7:57 - 7:59huge in heroism.
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7:59 - 8:03Top estimates, Soviet estimates, put this guy at 1.65 meters,
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8:03 - 8:06that is less than five and a half feet tall max,
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8:06 - 8:09possibly because he was malnourished as a child.
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8:09 - 8:12Germans occupied Russia.
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8:12 - 8:15A Nazi officer took over the Gagarin household,
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8:15 - 8:18and he and his family built and lived in a mud hut.
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8:18 - 8:21Years later, the boy from that cramped mud hut
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8:21 - 8:25would grow up to be the man in that cramped capsule
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8:25 - 8:26on the tip of a rocket
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8:26 - 8:30who volunteered to be launched into outer space,
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8:30 - 8:34the first one of any of us to really physically leave this planet.
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8:34 - 8:35And he didn't just leave it,
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8:35 - 8:38he circled it once.
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8:38 - 8:40Fifty years later, as a tribute,
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8:40 - 8:44the International Space Station, which is still up there tonight,
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8:44 - 8:48synced its orbit with Gagarin's orbit,
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8:48 - 8:49at the exact same time of day,
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8:49 - 8:51and filmed it,
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8:51 - 8:55so you can go online and you can watch over 100 minutes
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8:55 - 8:58of what must have been an absolutely mesmerizing ride,
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8:58 - 8:59possibly a lonely one,
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8:59 - 9:01the first person to ever see such a thing.
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9:01 - 9:03And then when you've had your fill of that,
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9:03 - 9:06you can click on one more link.
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9:06 - 9:07You can come back to Earth.
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9:07 - 9:09You return to where you started.
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9:09 - 9:11You can finish your game.
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9:11 - 9:15You just need to find one more fact that you didn't know.
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9:15 - 9:17And for me, I quickly landed on this one:
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9:17 - 9:22The Earth has a tolerance of about .17 percent from the reference spheroid,
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9:22 - 9:26which is less than the .22 percent allowed in billiard balls.
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9:26 - 9:29This is the kind of fact I would have loved as a boy.
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9:29 - 9:30I found it myself.
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9:30 - 9:32It's got some math that I can do.
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9:32 - 9:34I'm pretty sure my dad doesn't know it.
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9:34 - 9:40What this means is that if you could shrink the Earth to the size of a billiard ball,
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9:40 - 9:46if you could take planet Earth, with all its mountain tops and caves
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9:46 - 9:51and rainforests, astronauts and uncontacted tribes and chimpanzees, voodoo dolls,
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9:51 - 9:56fireflies, chocolate, sea creatures making love in the deep blue sea,
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9:56 - 9:59you just shrink that to the size of a billiard ball,
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9:59 - 10:03it would be as smooth as a billiard ball,
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10:03 - 10:08presumably a billiard ball with a slight bulge around the middle.
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10:08 - 10:11That's pretty cool.
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10:11 - 10:13I didn't know that.
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10:13 - 10:15Chimborazo!
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10:15 - 10:16Thank you.
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10:16 - 10:16(Applause)
- Title:
- Reinventing the encyclopedia game
- Speaker:
- Rives
- Description:
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Prompted by the Encyclopaedia Britannica ending its print publication, performance poet Rives resurrects a game from his childhood. Speaking at the TEDxSummit in Doha, Rives takes us on a charming tour through random (and less random) bits of human knowledge: from Chimborazo, the farthest point from the center of the Earth, to Ham the Astrochimp, the first chimpanzee in outer space.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 10:46
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Reinventing the encyclopedia game | ||
Ninetta Polydoridi edited English subtitles for Reinventing the encyclopedia game | ||
Darren Bridenbeck (Amara Staff) approved English subtitles for Reinventing the encyclopedia game | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Reinventing the encyclopedia game | ||
Thu-Huong Ha accepted English subtitles for Reinventing the encyclopedia game | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Reinventing the encyclopedia game | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Reinventing the encyclopedia game | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Reinventing the encyclopedia game |