6 ways mushrooms can save the world: Paul Stamets on TED.com

6 ways mushrooms can save the world: Paul Stamets on TED.com
Mycologist Paul Stamets studies mycelium and lists 6 ways that this astonishing fungus can help save the world. Cleaning polluted soil, creating new insecticides, treating smallpox and maybe even the flu ... in 18 minutes, he doesn't get all the way through his list, but he has plenty of time to blow your mind. An audience favorite at TED2008. (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:44.)

>


Watch Paul Stamets' talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.


Subscribe to the TED Blog >>

I love a challenge, and saving the earth is probably a good one. We all know the earth is in trouble. We have now entered in the 6X -- The sixth major extinction on this planet. I often wondered if there was a United Organization of Organisms -- otherwise known as U-O (pronounces it "uh-oh"), (laughter) -- and every organism had a right to vote, would we be voted on the planet or off the planet? I think that vote is occurring right now.

I want to present to you a suite of 6 mycological solutions using fungi, and these solutions are based on mycelium.

(graphic of Earth from space, growing a halo of mycelium; then photo of someone holding up a strand of mycelium pulled from the soil; then photo of mycelium growing on wood)

The mycelium infuses all landscapes, it holds soils together, it's extremely tenacious -- this holds up to 30 thousand times its mass. They're the grand molecular disassemblers of nature, the soil magicians. They generate the humus soils across the land masses of Earth. We have now discovered that there is a multi-directional transfer of nutrients between plants, mitigated by the mycelium --

(drawing of trees with soil cross section, showing mycelium connections)

so the mycelium is the mother that is giving nutrients from alder and birch trees, to hemlocks, cedars, and Douglas firs.

(photo of Dusty Yao walking through northwestern rainforest)

Dusty and I, we like to say, on Sunday this is where we go to church. I'm in love with the old growth forest, and I'm a patriotic American because we have those.

(photo of giant mushroom silhouetted against the sky)

Most of you are familiar with portobello mushrooms. And frankly, I face a big obstacle when I mention mushrooms to somebody. They immediately think portobellos or magic mushrooms, their eyes glaze over, and they think I'm a little crazy. So I hope to pierce that prejudice forever with this group. We call it mycophobia, the irrational fear of the unknown when it comes to fungi.

(series of shots of mushrooms growing on a hunk of organic medium)

Mushrooms are very fast in their growth. (series of cuts illustrating speed of growth, ending with shot of mature mushrooms) Day 21, day 23, day 25.

Mushrooms produce strong antibiotics.

(shot of big mushrooms rotting in the wild)

In fact, we're more closely related to fungi than we are to any other kingdom. A group of 20 eukaryotic microbiologists published a paper two years ago erecting Opisthokonta -- a super-kingdom that joins Animalia and fungi together. We share in common the same pathogens. Fungi don't like to rot from bacteria, and so our best antibiotics come from fungi. But here (refers back to photo) is a mushroom that's past its prime. After they sporulate, they do rot. But I propose to you that the sequence of microbes that occur on rotting mushrooms are essential for the health of the forest. They give rise to the trees, they create the debris fields that fuel the mycelium.

(photo of yellow mushroom on the floor of the forest, exuding spores)

And so we see a mushroom here sporulating. And the spores are germinating,

(photo of a patch of mycelium on the forest floor, dissolving into the undergrowth, with Stamets' foot in photo to show scale)

-and the mycelium forms and goes underground. In a single cubic inch of soil, there can be 8 miles of these cells. My foot is covering approximately 300 miles of mycelium.

(microscopic movie of mycelium growing, branching out and thickening)

This is photo-micrographs from Nick Read and Patrick Hickey. And notice that as the mycelium grows, it conquers territory, and then it begins the net.

(final microscopic shot of fully netted mass of mycelia)

I've been a scanning electron microscopist for many years, I've thousands of electron micrographs, and when I'm staring at the mycelium I realize that they are microfiltration membranes. We exhale carbon dioxide, so does mycelium. It inhales oxygen, just like we do. But these are essentially externalized stomachs and lungs. And I present to you a concept, that these are extended neurological membranes.

(close up of one of the mycelium nets)

And in these cavities, these microcavities form, and as they fuse soils, they absorb water. These are little wells. And inside these wells, then microbal communities begin to form. And so the spongy soil not only resists erosion, but sets up a microbial universe --

(shot of starscape with mycelium superimposed on it -- "The Opte Project")

-that gives rise to a plurality of other organisms.

I first proposed, in the early 1990s, that mycelium is Earth's natural internet. When you look at the mycelium, they're highly branched. And if there's one branch that is broken, then very quickly, because of the nodes of crossing -- internet engineers maybe call them "hot points" -- There's alternative pathways for channeling nutrients and information. The mycelium is sentient. It knows that you are there. When you walk across landscapes, it leaps up in the aftermath of your footsteps trying to grab debris.

So, I believe, the invention of the computer internet is an inevitable consequence of a previously proven biologically successful model. The earth invented the computer internet for its own benefit, and we, now, being the top organism on this planet, is trying to allocate resources in order to protect the biosphere.

(article on dark matter with rendering of "Cobweb of dark matter")

Going way out, dark matter conforms to the same mycelial archetype. I believe matter begets life, life becomes single cells, single cells become strings, strings become chains, chains network. And this is the paradigm that we see throughout the universe.

(photo of Earth from space)

Most of you may not know that fungi were the first organisms to come to land. They came to land 1.3 billion years ago, and plants followed several hundred million years later. How is that possible?

(electron micrograph of mycelium holding mineral crystals)

It's possible because the mycelium produces oxalic acids, and many other acids and enzymes, pockmarking rock and grabbing calcium and other minerals, and forming calcium oxalates. Makes the rocks crumble, and the first step in the generation of soil.

(slide of chemical models of oxalic acid (C2H2O4; HOOCCOOH) and calcium oxalate (CaC2O4))

Oxalic acid is two carbon dioxide molecules joined together. So fungi and mycelium sequester carbon dioxide in the form of calcium oxalates. And all sorts of other oxalates are also sequestering carbon dioxide through the minerals that are being formed and taken out of the rock matrix.

(photo of geologist in the field, examining a large fossil of Prototaxites)

This was first discovered in 1859, this is the photograph by Franz Hueber, this photograph's taken 1950s in Saudi Arabia. 420 million years ago, this organism existed. It was called Prototaxites. Prototaxites, laying down, was about 3 feet tall. The tallest plants on Earth, at that time, were less than two feet. Dr. Boyce, at the University of Chicago, published an article in the Journal of Geology this past year determining that Prototaxites was a giant fungus. A giant mushroom.

(Artist's rendering of Devonian landscape with towering Prototaxites)

Across the landscapes of Earth were dotted these giant mushrooms. All across most land masses. And these existed for tens of millions of years.

Now we've had several extinction events, and as we march forward, 65 million years ago -- most of you know about it -- we had an asteroid impact. The earth was struck by an asteroid, a huge amount of debris was jettisoned into the atmosphere. Sunlight was cut off, and fungi inherited the earth.

Those organisms that paired with fungi were rewarded, 'cause fungi do not need light. More recently, at Einstein University, they just determined that fungi use radiation as a source of energy, much like plants use light. So the prospect of fungi existing on other planets elsewhere, I think, is a foregone conclusion. At least in my own mind.

(satellite photo of the Pacific Northwest)

The largest organism in the world is in eastern Oregon. I couldn't miss it, it was 22 hundred acres in size. 22 hundred acres in size, 2,000 years old.

(overhead shot of forest landscape in eastern Oregon)

The largest organism on the planet is a mycelial mat, one cell wall thick. How is it that this organism can be so large, and yet be one cell wall thick, whereas we have 5 or 6 skin layers that protect us?

(electron micrograph of mycelium mass)

The mycelium, in the right conditions, produces a mushroom,

(photo of mushroom poking through a parking lot)

-- it bursts through with such ferocity it can break asphalt.

We were involved with several experiments. I'm going to show you 6, if I can, solutions for helping to save the world.

(photo of scientists working on experiment described below)

Battelle Laboratories and I joined up, in Bellingham, Washington, there were 4 piles saturated with diesel and other petroleum waste. One was a control pile, one pile was treated with enzymes, one pile was treated with a bacteria, and our pile we inoculated with mushroom mycelium.

(photo of oil getting captured by mycelium ring)

The mycelium absorbs the oil. The mycelium is producing enzymes -- peroxydases -- that break carbon-hydrogen bonds. These're the same bonds that hold hydrocarbons together. So the mycelium become saturated with the oil, and then, when we returned 6 weeks later, all the tarps were removed, all the other piles were dead, dark, and stinky. We came back to our pile, it was covered with hundreds of pounds of oyster mushrooms --

(photo of their pile, covered in mushrooms)

-- and the color changed to a light form. The enzymes re-manufactured the hydrocarbons into carbohydrates -- fungal sugars.

(photo of giant & healthy mushroom on the pile)

Some of these mushrooms are very happy mushrooms. They're very large. They're showing how much nutrition that they could've obtained.

But something else happened, which was an epiphany in my life. They sporulated, the spores attract insects, the insects laid eggs, eggs became larvae. Birds then came, bringing in seeds, and our pile became an oasis of life.

(shot of their pile with grass growing on it)

Whereas the other 3 piles were dead, dark, and stinky, and the PAH's -- the aromatic hydrocarbons -- went from 10 thousand parts per million to less than 200 in 8 weeks. The last image we don't have -- the entire pile was a green berm of life. These are gateway species. Vanguard species that open the door for other biological communities.

(photo of man holding burlap sack full of mycelium)

So I invented burlap sacks -- "bunker spawn" -- and putting the mycelium, using storm blown debris,

(diagram of how to bury sacks for waste cleanup)

-- you can take these burlap sacks and put 'em downstream from a farm that's producing E. coli, or other wastes, or a factory with chemical toxins, and it leads to habitat restoration.

(photo of woman and other workers laying down burlap sacks in a field)

So we set up a site in Mason County, Washington, and we've seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of coliforms, and I'll show you a graph here-

(somewhat illegible graph showing results described below)

-this is a logarithmic scale, 10 to the 8th power, there's more than a 100 million colonies per gram, and 10 to 3rd power is about a thousand. In 48 hours to 72 hours, these 3 mushroom species reduced the amount of coliform bacteria 10,000 times. Think of the implications. This is a space conservative method that uses storm debris -- and we can be guaranteed that we will have storms every year.

(Dusty Yao, posing with mushroom)

So this one mushroom, in particular, has drawn our interest over time. This is my wife Dusty with a mushroom called Fomitopsis officinalis -- Agaricon. It's a mushroom exclusive to the old growth forest, that Dioscorides first described in 65 A.D. as a treatment against consumption. This mushroom grows in Washington state, Oregon, northern California, British Columbia, now thought to be extinct in Europe. May not seem that large -- let's get closer.

(Stamets holding Agaricon, it's as large as his torso)

This is extremely rare fungus. Our team, and we have a team of experts that go out -- We went out 20 times in the old growth forest last year, we found one sample to be able to get into culture.

Preserving the genome of these fungi in the old growth forest, I think, is absolutely critical for human health.

(series of micrographs of mushroom spores)

I've been involved with the U.S. Defense Department BioShield program. We submitted over 300 samples of mushrooms that were boiled in hot water, and mycelium harvesting is (sic) extracellular metabolites -- And a few years ago, we received these results.

(table showing activity of mushroom strains against pox virus)

We have three different strains of Agaricon mushrooms that were highly active against pox viruses. Dr. Earl Kern, who's a smallpox expert of the U.S. Defense Department, states that any compounds that have a Selectivity Index of 2 or more are active, 10 or greater is considered to be very active. Our mushroom strains were in the highly active range. There's a vetted press release that you can read -- it's vetted by DOD, if you Google "Stamets" and "smallpox" -- or you can go to npr.org and listen to a live interview.

So, encouraged by this, naturally we went to flu viruses.

(table of "Highly Active Mushroom Strains Against Flu Viruses" showing reactivity of various species)

And so, for the first time I am showing this. We have 3 different strains of Agaricon mushrooms highly active against flu viruses. Here's the Selectivity Index numbers -- against pox, you saw 10s and 20s -- now against flu viruses, compared to the ribavirin controls, we have an extraordinarily high activity. And we're using a natural extract within the same dosage window as a pure pharmaceutical. We tried it against flu A viruses -- H1N1, H3N2 -- as well as flu B viruses. So then we tried a blend, and in a blend combination we tried it against H5N1, and we got greater than a thousand Selectivity Index. (applause) I then -- I then think that we can make the argument that we should save the old growth forest as a matter of national defense. (applause)

(photo of array of Petri dishes containing spores)

I became interested in entomopathogenic fungi -- Fungi that kill insects. Our house is being destroyed by carpenter ants. I went to the EPA homepage, and they were recommending studies with metarhizium species of a group of fungi that kill carpenter ants, as well as termites. I did something that nobody else had done. I actually chase the mycelium when it stopped producing spores. These are spores -- this is in their spores. I was able to morph the culture into a non-sporulating form.

(two Petri dishes with new cultures)

And so the industry has spent over a 100 million dollars specifically on bait stations to prevent termites from eating your house. But the insects aren't stupid, and they would avoid the spores when they came close, and so I morphed the cultures into a non-sporulating form --

(photo of dish sitting beside a wall, holding new mushroom culture)

-- and I got my daughter's Barbie doll dish, I put it right where a bunch of carpenter ants were making debris fields, every day, in my house,

(photo of ants devouring mycelium)

-- and the ants were attracted to the mycelium, because there's no spores. They gave it to the queen. One week later, I had no sawdust piles whatsoever.

And then, a delicate dance between dinner and death --

(dead ant covered in mycelium)

-- the mycelium is consumed by the ants, they become mummified, and boing --

(ant with a mushroom growing out of it)

-- a mushroom pops out of their head. (laughter and moans of disgust) Now after sporulation, the spores repel. So the house is no longer suitable for invasion. So you have a near-permanent solution for re-invasion of termites.

(shot of exterior of house w/ construction equipment, followed by shot of patent form)

And so my house came down, I received my first patent against carpenter ants, termites, and fire ants,

(photo of more Petri dishes and spore prints, followed by another patent form)

-then we tried extracts, and lo and behold, we can steer insects to different directions. This has huge implications. I then received my second patent -- and this is a big one. It's been called an "Alexander Graham Bell" patent -- It covers over 200 thousand species.

This is the most disruptive technology, I've been told by executives of the pesticide industry, that they have ever witnessed. This could totally revamp the pesticide industries throughout the world. You could fly a hundred PhD students under the umbrella of this concept, because my supposition is that entomopathogenic fungi, prior to sporulation, attract the very insects that are otherwise repelled by those spores.

(photo of "Life Box," "The Way to Re-Green the Planet", then photo of someone opening one)

And so I came up with a Life Box. 'Cause I needed a delivery system. The Life Box -- you're gonna be getting a DVD of the TED conference,

(photo of empty cardboard box in a dish being sprinkled with soil, then being watered, finally shot of spores growing on cardboard)

-- you add soil, you add water, you have mycorrhizal and endophytic fungi as well as spores, like of the Agaricon mushroom. The seeds, then, are mothered by this mycelium.

(photo of mycelium rich soil in box with trees sprouting in it)

And then you put tree seeds in here, and then you end up growing -- potentially -- an old growth forest from a cardboard box.

(photo of path in a forest)

I want to re-invent the delivery system, and the use of cardboard around the world, so they become ecological footprints. If there's a YouTube-like site that you could put up, you could make an interactive Zip Code specific -- where people could join together, and through satellite imaging systems, through Virtual Earth or Google Earth, you could confirm carbon credits are being sequestered by the trees that are coming through Life Boxes.

(shot of UPS guy handing a box of shoes to girl)

You could take a cardboard box delivering shoes, you could add water -- I developed this for the refugee community --

(shot of someone watering soil filled box, which then fills with plants)

corns beans and squash and onions -- I took several containers, my wife said if I could do this, anybody could.

(shot of back porch garden, before and after planting)

And I ended up growing a seed garden. Then you harvest the seeds -- and thank you, Eric Rasmussen, for your help on this --

(graphic -- "Harvesting the seed garden" -- photo of two girls harvesting garden -- "Time from germination to seed harvest: approximately 4-5 months", then photo of Dusty Yao harvesting the corn)

And then you're harvesting the seed garden,

(photo of kernels encased in mycelium, about to be wrapped around cobs)

Then you can harvest the kernels, and then you just need a few kernels, I add mycelium to it,

(photo of wrapped/inoculated cobs, one side beginning to grow mushrooms, the other side starting off empty)

and then I inoculate the corn cobs. Now, three corn cobs, no other grain -- lots of mushrooms begin to form -- too many withdrawals from the carbon bank. And so, this population will be shut down. But watch what happens here.

(points to formerly empty side -- series of shots showing the mushrooms growing on the cobs)

The mushrooms then are harvested -- but, very importantly -- the mycelium has converted the cellulose into fungal sugars. And so I thought, how could we address the energy crisis in this country? And we came up with Econol.

(photo of vial of "Econol" with burning wick)

Generating ethanol from cellulose using mycelium as an intermediary -- and you gain all the benefits that I've described to you already. But to go from cellulose to ethanol is ecologically unintelligent, and I think that we need to be econologically intelligent about the generation of fuels so we build the carbon banks on the planet, renew the soils -- these are a species that we need to join with. I think engaging mycelium can help save the world. Thank you very much.

Alex Steffen argues that reducing humanity’s ecological footprint is incredibly vital now

About this talk

Worldchanging.com founder Alex Steffen argues that reducing humanity’s ecological footprint is incredibly vital now, as the western consumer lifestyle spreads to developing countries.


When I'm starting talks like this, I usually do a whole spiel about sustainability because a lot of people out there don't know what that is. This is a crowd that does know what it is, so I'll like just do like the 60-second crib-note version. Right? So just bear with me. We'll go real fast, you know? Fill in the blanks. So, you know, sustainability, small planet. Right? Picture a little Earth, circling around the sun. You know, about a million years ago, a bunch of monkeys fell out of trees, got a little clever, harnessed fire, invented the printing press, made, you know, luggage with wheels on it. And, you know, built the society that we now live in. Unfortunately, while this society is, without a doubt, the most prosperous and dynamic the world has ever created, it's got some major, major flaws.

One of them is that every society has an ecological footprint. It has an amount of impact on the planet that's measurable. How much stuff goes through your life, how much waste is left behind you. And we, at the moment, in our society, have a really dramatically unsustainable level of this. We're using up about five planets. If everybody on the planet lived the way we did, we'd need between five, six, seven, some people even say 10 planets to make it. Clearly we don't have 10 planets. Again, you know, mental, visual, 10 planets, one planet, 10 planets, one planet. Right? We don't have that. So that's one problem.

The second problem is that the planet that we have is being used in wildly unfair ways. Right? North Americans, such as myself, you know, we're basically sort of wallowing, gluttonous hogs, and we're eating all sorts of stuff. And then, you know, then you get all the way down to people who live in the Asia-Pacific region, or even more, Africa. And people simply do not have enough to survive. This is producing all sorts of tensions, all sorts of dynamics that are deeply disturbing. And there's more and more people on the way. Right? So, this is what the planet's going to look like in 20 years. It's going to be a pretty crowded place, at least eight billion people.

So to make matters even more difficult, it's a very young planet. A third of the people on this planet are kids. And those kids are growing up in a completely different way than their parents did, no matter where they live. They've been exposed to this idea of our society, of our prosperity. And they may not want to live exactly like us. They may not want to be Americans, or Brits, or Germans, or South Africans, but they want their own version of a life which is more prosperous, and more dynamic, and more, you know, enjoyable. And all of these things combine to create an enormous amount of torque on the planet. And if we cannot figure out a way to deal with that torque, we are going to find ourselves more and more and more quickly facing situations which are simply unthinkable.

Everybody in this room has heard the worst-case scenarios. I don't need to go into that. But I will ask the question, what's the alternative? And I would say that, at the moment, the alternative is unimaginable. You know, so on the one hand we have the unthinkable, on the other hand we have the unimaginable. We don't know yet how to build a society which is environmentally sustainable, which is shareable with everybody on the planet, which promotes stability and democracy and human rights, and which is achievable in the time-frame necessary to make it through the challenges we face. We don't know how to do this yet.

So what's Worldchanging? Well, Worldchanging you might think of as being a bit of a news service for the unimaginable future. You know, what we're out there doing is looking for examples of tools, models and ideas, which, if widely adopted, would change the game. Right? A lot of times, when I do a talk like this, I talk about things that everybody in this room I'm sure has already heard of, right, but most people haven't. So I thought today I'd do something a little different, and talk about what we're looking for, rather than saying, you know, rather than giving you tried and true examples. Talk about the kinds of things we're scoping out. Give you a little peek into our editorial notebook. And given that I have 13 minutes to do this, this is going to go kind of quick. So, I don't know, just stick with me. Right?

So, first of all, what are we looking for? Bright Green city. One of the biggest levers that we have in the developed world for changing the impact that we have on the planet is changing the way that we live in cities. We're already an urban planet, that's especially true in the developed world. And people who live in cities in the developed world tend to be very prosperous, and thus use a lot of stuff. If we can change the dynamic, by first of all creating cities that are denser and more livable ... Here, for example, is Vancouver, which if you haven't been there, you ought to go for a visit. It's a fabulous city. And they are doing density, new density, better than probably anybody else on the planet right now. They're actually managing to talk North Americans out of driving cars, which is a pretty great thing. So you have density. You also have growth management. You leave aside what is natural to be natural.

This is in Portland. That is an actual development. That land there will remain pasture in perpetuity. They've bounded the city with a line. Nature, city. Nothing changes. Once you do those things, you can start making all sorts of investments. You can start doing things like, you know, transit systems that actually work to transport people, in effective and reasonably comfortable manners. Right? You can also start to change what you build. This is the Beddington Zero Energy Development in London, which is one of the greenest buildings in the world. It's a fabulous place. We're able to now build buildings that generate all their own electricity, that recycle much of their water, that are much more comfortable than standard buildings, use all-natural light, et cetera, and over time cost less. Green roofs. Bill McDonough covered that last night, so I won't dwell on that too much.

But once you also have people living in close proximity to each other, one of the things you can do is -- as information technologies develop -- you can start to have smart places. You can start to know where things are. When you know where things are, it becomes easier to share them. When you share them, you end up using less. So one great example is car-share clubs, which are really starting to take off in the U.S., have already taken off in many places in Europe, and are a great example. If you're somebody who drives, you know, one day a week, do you really need your own car?

Another thing that information technology lets us do is start figuring out how to use less stuff by knowing, and by monitoring, the amount we're actually using. So, here's a power cord which glows brighter the more energy that you use, which I think is a pretty cool concept, although I think it ought to work the other way around, that it gets brighter the more you don't use. But, you know, there may even be a simpler approach. We could just re-label things. This light switch that reads, on the one hand, flashfloods, and on the other hand, off. How we build things can change as well. This is a bio-morphic building. It takes its inspiration in form from life. Many of these buildings are incredibly beautiful, and also much more effective. This is an example of bio-mimicry, which is something we're really starting to look a lot more for. In this case, you have a shell design which was used to create a new kind of exhaust fan, which is greatly more effective. There's a lot of this stuff happening, it's really pretty remarkable. I encourage you to look on Worldchanging if you're into it. We're starting to cover this more and more. There's also neo-biological design, where more and more we're actually using life itself and the processes of life to become part of our industry. So this, for example, is hydrogen-generating algae. So we have a model in potential, an emerging model that we're looking for of how to take the cities most of us live in, and turn them into Bright Green cities.

But unfortunately, most of the people on the planet don't live in the cites we live in. They live in the emerging megacities of the developing world. And there's a statistic I often like to use, which is that we're adding a city of Seattle every four days, a city the size of Seattle to the planet every four days. I was giving a talk about two months ago, and this guy, who'd done some work with the U.N., came up to me and was really flustered, and he said, look, you've got that totally wrong, it's totally wrong. It's every seven days. So, we're adding a city the size of Seattle every seven days, and most of those cities look more like this than the city that you or I live in. Most of those cites are growing incredibly quickly. They don't have existing infrastructure, they have enormous numbers of people who are struggling with poverty, and enormous numbers of people are trying to figure out how to do things in new ways. Right?

So what do we need in order to make developing nation megacities into Bright Green megacities? Well, the first thing we need is, we need leapfrogging. And this is one of the things that we are looking for everywhere. The idea behind leapfrogging is that if you are a person, or a country, who is stuck in a situation where you don't have the tools and technologies that you need, there's no reason for you to invest in last generation's technologies. Right? That you're much better off, almost universally, looking for a low-cost or locally applicable version of the newest technology. One place we're all familiar with seeing this is with cell phones. Right? All throughout the developing world, people are going directly to cell phones, skipping the whole landline stage. If there are landlines in many developing world cities, they're usually pretty crappy systems that break down a lot, and cost enormous amounts of money. Right? So I rather like this picture here. I particularly like the Ganesh in the background, talking on the cell phone. So what we have, increasingly, is cell phones just permeating out through society. We've heard all about this here this week, so I won't say too much more than that, other than to say what is true for cell phones is true for all sorts of technologies.

The second thing is tools for collaboration, be they systems of collaboration, or intellectual property systems which encourage collaboration. Right? When you have free ability for people to freely work together and innovate, you get different kinds of solutions. And those solutions are accessible in a different way to people who don't have capital. Right? So, you know, we have open source software, we have Creative Commons and other kinds of Copyleft solutions. Right? And those things lead to things like this. This is a Telecentro in Sao Paulo. This is a pretty remarkable program using free and open source software, cheap sort of hacked together machines, and basically sort of abandoned buildings -- has put together a bunch of community centers where people can come in, get high-speed internet access, learn computer programming skills for free. And a quarter-million people every year use these now in Sao Paulo. And those quarter-million people are some of the poorest people in Sao Paolo. I particularly like the little Linux penguin in the back.

So one of the things that that's leading to is a sort of southern cultural explosion. And one of the things we're really, really interested in at Worldchanging is the ways in which the south is re-identifying itself, and re-categorizing itself in ways that have less and less to do with most of us in this room. So it's not, you know, Bollywood isn't just answering Hollywood. Right? You know, Brazilian music scene isn't just answering the major labels. It's doing something new. There's new things happening. There's interplay between them. And, you know, you get amazing things. Like, I don't know if any of you have seen the movie "City of God?" Yeah, it's a fabulous movie if you haven't seen it. And it's all about this question, in a very artistic and indirect kind of way.

You have other radical examples where the ability to use cultural tools is spreading out. These are people who have just been visited by the Internet bookmobile in Uganda. And who are waving their first books in the air, which, I just think that's a pretty cool picture. You know? So you also have the ability for people to start coming together and acting on their own behalf in political and civic ways. In ways that haven't happened before. And as we heard last night, as we've heard earlier this week, are absolutely, fundamentally vital to the ability to craft new solutions, is we've got to craft new political realities.

And I would personally say that we have to craft new political realities, not only in places like India, Afghanistan, Kenya, Pakistan, what have you, but here at home as well. Another world is possible. And sort of the big motto of the anti-globalization movement. Right? We tweak that a lot. We talk about how another world isn't just possible, another world's here. That it's not just that we have to sort of imagine there being a different, vague possibility out there, but we need to start acting a little bit more on that possibility. We need to start doing things like Lula, President of Brazil. How many people knew of Lula before today? OK, so, much, much better than the average crowd, I can tell you that. So Lula, he's full of problems, full of contradictions, but one of the things that he's doing is, he is putting forward an idea of how we engage in international relations that completely shifts the balance from the standard sort of north-south dialogue into a whole new way of global collaboration. I would keep your eye on this fellow.

Another example of this sort of second superpower thing is the rise of these games that are what we call serious play. We're looking a lot at this. This is spreading everywhere. This is from "A Force More Powerful." It's a little screenshot. "A Force More Powerful" is a video game that, while you're playing it, it teaches you how to engage in non-violent insurrection and regime change. Here's another one. This is from a game called "Food Force," which is a game that teaches children how to run a refugee camp. These things are all contributing in a very dynamic way to a huge rise in, especially in the developing world, in people's interest in and passion for democracy. We get so little news about the developing world, that we often forget that there are literally millions of people out there struggling to change things to be fairer, freer, more democratic, less corrupt. And, you know, we don't hear those stories enough. But it's happening all over the place, and these tools are part of what's making it possible.

Now when you add all those things together, when you add together leapfrogging and new kinds of tools, you know, second superpower stuff et cetera, what do you get? Well, very quickly, you get a Bright Green future for the developing world. You get, for example, green power spread throughout the world. You get -- this is a building in Hyderabad, India. It's the greenest building in the world. You get grassroots solutions, things that work for people who have no capital or limited access. You get barefoot solar engineers carrying solar panels into the remote mountains. You get access to distance medicine. These are Indian nurses learning how to use PDAs to access databases that have information that they don't have access to at home in a distant manner. You get new tools for people in the developing world. These are LED lights that help the roughly billion people out there, for whom nightfall means darkness, to have a new means of operating. These are refrigerators that require no electricity, they're pot within a pot design.

And you get water solutions. Water's one of the most pressing problems. Here's a design for harvesting rainwater that's super cheap and available to people in the developing world. Here's a design for distilling water using sunlight. Here's a fog-catcher, which, if you live in a moist, jungle-like area, will distill water from the air that's clean and drinkable. Here's a way of transporting water. I just love this, you know -- I mean carrying water is such a drag, and somebody just came up with the idea of well, what if you rolled it. Right? I mean, that's a great design. This is a fabulous invention, LifeStraw. Basically you can suck any water through this and it will become drinkable by the time it hits your lips. So, you know, people who are in desperate straits can get this. This is one of my favorite Worldchanging kinds of things ever. This is a merry-go-round invented by the company Roundabout, which pumps water as kids play. You know? Seriously -- give that one a hand, it's pretty great. And the same thing is true for people who are in absolute crisis. Right?

We're expecting to have upwards of 200 million refugees by the year 2020 because of climate change and political instability. How do we help people like that? Well, there's all sorts of amazing new humanitarian designs that are being developed in collaborative ways all across the planet. Some of those designs include models for acting, such as new models for village instruction in the middle of refugee camps. New models for pedagogy for the displaced. And we have new tools. This is one of my absolute favorite things anywhere. Does anyone know what this is?

Audience: It detects landmines.

Exactly, this is a landmine-detecting flower. If you are living in one of the places where the roughly half-billion unaccounted for mines are scattered, you can fling these seeds out into the field. And as they grow up, they will grow up around the mines, their roots will detect the chemicals in them, and where the flowers turn red you don't step. Yeah, so seeds that could save your life. You know?

(Applause)

I also love it because it seems to me that the example, the tools we use to change the world, ought to be beautiful in themselves. You know, that it's not just enough to survive. We've got to make something better than what we've got. And I think that we will. Just to wrap up, in the immortal words of H.G. Wells, I think that better things are on the way. I think that, in fact, that "all of the past is but the beginning of a beginning. All that the human mind has accomplished is but the dream before the awakening." I hope that that turns out to be true. The people in this room have given me more confidence than ever that it will.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Winter Olympic Sports: Sledding

Winter Olympic Sports: Sledding
Hosted by: Rebecca Brayton
Evolved from sleds used for travel, sledding sports began in the 1870s in Switzerland. Bobsled, luge and skeleton were developed shortly after, and have since gained popularity through such international competitions as the Olympic Games. The beginning of a sled race is crucial for various reasons. Sled racers must gain momentum at the start to get to a competitive racing speed. Also, mistakes near the beginning of a run are especially taxing, because they can potentially decrease the speed of the sled for the remainder of the track. In this video, WatchMojo.com prepares you for the Olympics by showing you more about the three sledding sports: Bobsled, Luge and Skeleton.

COMMUNITY

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/218694

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee titled "Factors Affecting Efforts to Limit Payments to AIG Counterparties" to examine the collapse and federal rescue of AIG (American International Group), in particular the compensation of AIG credit default swap counter-parties.
2 hours,

Video – How To Report The News, According To The BBC

Warning: Coarse language!

Apple iPad Review

Cheers To Time Warner… At Least Someone Besides Apple Is Reinventing The Magazine

Current Music Presents: Embedded with Imogen Heap, Black Lips and Seasick Steve

A four-time Grammy nominated English singer/songwriter who hit the billboard top ten with her latest album, Ellipse. We follow her during the nervewracking days up to the release of this chart-topping electronic album. We also go rare instrument shopping and see her harness technology that allows her direct connection to a fiercely loyal fanbase. Plus we join the notorious Atlanta garage rockers Black Lips as they storm a Southern California skate park and record store. And Seasick Steve performs in a hotel room in Paris.

Current Music Presents: Embedded puts you on the ground and behind the scenes with unrivaled access to your favorite musicians. We've traveled the world, going beyond performances to bring you the most intimate and unfiltered moments in artists' lives. When others stop the cameras, we capture the real story of today's top musicians.

Watch more at http://current.com/embedded.

infoMania: Best Clips, Week of 01.21.10

Mania indeed!!!



The Massachusetts election, kid pageant shows, online wine tasting, the start to Awards Season, and the Tonight Show drama.

infoMania is a half-hour satirical news show that airs on Current TV. The show puts a comedic spin on the 24-hour chaos and information overload brought about by the constant bombardment of the media. Hosted by Conor Knighton and co-starring Brett Erlich, Sarah Haskins, Ben Hoffman, Bryan Safi and Sergio Cilli, the show airs on Thursdays at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific Times and can be found online at http://current.com/infomania/ or on Current TV. And make sure to check out our facebook profile for special features at http://infomaniafacebook.com.

The death of MySpace [video]

The death of MySpace [video]
Posted Jan 22nd, 2010 at 4:18 PM and seen 630 times

Current’s clever animation team has once again tackled the world of social networking, this time documenting the slow death of MySpace. Will Craig man-up and push the delete button on his MySpace account or remain haunted by the ghost of Tom Anderson? Cue dramatic music…

Cambridge Ideas - The Crime Experiment

Cambridge Ideas - The Crime Experiment from Cambridge University on Vimeo.

Eminent criminologist Prof Lawrence Sherman has just set up a long term experiment with the police, to scientifically study crime in Manchester and come up with some solutions. This experiment will study crime hot spots and try out a technique Prof Sherman has developed in USA to lessen crime throughout the city by changing policing at these locations. This is the first time such a systematic experiment on city crime has been mounted in the UK. Part of the Cambridge Ideas series.

Bird Tango - From Cambridge Ideas

Bird Tango - From Cambridge Ideas from Cambridge University on Vimeo.

Professor Nicky Clayton researches the social behaviour, intelligence and dance credentials of birds! As an accomplished dancer in her own right she has fused her passions by collaborating with Rambert Dance Company to produce a Darwinian inspired ballet called The ‘Comedy of Change’.

The Music In Me - From cambridge Ideas

The Music In Me - From cambridge Ideas from Cambridge University on Vimeo.

Studies at the University of Cambridge have revealed that many of us use musical taste both as a means of expressing our own identity, and to form and refine our opinions about other people.

Researchers found that sample groups of subjects regularly make the same assumptions about peoples personalities, values, social class and even their ethnicity, based on their musical preferences. Rock fans, for instance, are commonly held to be rebellious and artistic, but emotionally unstable. Classical music-lovers, on the other hand, are seen as personable and intellectual, but unattractive and a bit boring.

The studies have been led by Dr Jason Rentfrow, from the Universitys Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, who is conducting ongoing research into the links between personality and musical taste.His work forms the subject of this short film.

How Many Light Bulbs? - From Cambridge Ideas

How Many Light Bulbs? - From Cambridge Ideas from Cambridge University on Vimeo.

Cambridge University physicist, David Mackay, in a passionate, personal analysis of the energy crisis in the UK, in which he comes to some surprising conclusions about the way forward. The film is based on his new book 'Sustainable Energy – without the hot air', in which Prof Mackay has calculated the numbers involved for the alternatives to fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil.

He debunks some myths about energy saving - unplugging our phone chargers, does not make any appreciable difference. After showing us what won't work - he goes on to show what will make a difference at home, like turning your thermostat down.

But, his big point is that this will not be enough - individual efforts are not enough. Instead we need to make 'sweeping national changes' to our energy production, and we can't reject everything available to us. If we are going to follow the advice of climate scientists, and get off fossil fuels by 2050, which currently provide 90% of our energy, Britain's main options are wind power and nuclear power. But to make this huge change in our power supply, Mackay says that we 'have to get building – now'!

For more information – go to David Mackay’s website
withouthotair.com

Speech by Bill and Melinda Gates: Why We Are Impatient Optimists

October 27, 2009
Speech by Bill and Melinda Gates: Why We Are Impatient Optimists
“LIVING PROOF: Why we are Impatient Optimists” is a story about success. Millions of lives have been saved, improved and empowered because of the investments in global health made by the United States and its partners around the world.



We have seen the remarkable successes—living proof that these investments are paying off. There are millions more success stories yet to come.

In their presentation at Sidney Harmon Hall in Washington, D.C., Bill and Melinda Gates explained why they are Impatient Optimists, and encouraged their audience to share the proof and become Impatient Optimists as well.

The live comments section is now closed. However, we encourage you to continue the dialogue on our Facebook page, and on Twitter at #IOChat.









October 27, 2009
Remarks by Bill and Melinda Gates, co-chairs

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Bill and Melinda Gates.

BILL GATES: Thank you.

Well, good evening. It's great to see all of you here. If you came for the hockey game, you need to go across the street. If you came for Shakespeare, you need to come another night.

A lot of times when people come to the capital, it's to criticize government programs and talk about how they should change. How often do you hear about a very large, bipartisan program that's working better than expected?

Well, tonight we want to talk about one. We're here to say two words tonight you don't often hear about government programs: Thank you.

Back in 2000, when Melinda and I started our foundation, we saw there were incredible inequities in health. There were millions of poor people dying of diseases that we'd cured in this country. And we decided to make that a major focus of our giving.

Now, about the same time, the U.S. government was starting to increase its own spending on global health. In fact, it's been increasing for each of the last 10 years.

And so we're here to thank America's leaders and America's taxpayers, and we want to show you the proof that these investments are really working. We want you to hear this good news and then help us share it with other people so that we can do even more.

MELINDA GATES: When it comes to global health, Bill and I are optimists, but I have to say that we are impatient optimists. We're optimistic because of the people that we meet on the ground, in the developing world, whose lives are absolutely transformed by American investments.

Just a couple of years ago, Bill and I visited an AIDS clinic in Durbin, South Africa, and we expected to see in this clinic what we see a lot of places in the developing world, an overworked staff, long waiting lines, not many drugs available.

But, in fact, we saw something completely different than that in this AIDS clinic. We saw a well trained staff, we saw an ample supply of medical drugs, and we saw patients being counseled about how to live with HIV. And this clinic was completely paid for by the American people.

So, as we left, we thought, my gosh, if every American could see what we see when we travel around now on the ground now, particularly in Africa, they would understand how amazing these investments have been. And yet when we come back home and you pick up the newspaper, you look on the Internet, you hear just the opposite, you hear all the negative stories.

So, we are optimists: The world is definitely getting better.

But it's not getting better fast enough, and it's certainly not getting better for everyone. For every two people who go on the antiretroviral treatments that we saw in this clinic in Durbin, South Africa, five more people become infected.

Now, we know how to prevent these infections, but they do happen anyway, and that's the kind of thing that makes us impatient optimists.

We want you to hear tonight the good news that we are seeing in global health so you'll be just as optimistic as we are. And it's why we're here launching this initiative called the Living Proof Project. It's about real people whose lives have been transformed and changed, people who are literally alive today because of the U.S. commitments. They are the living proof.

BILL GATES: I want to start by showing you what I think is the most beautiful picture I've ever seen. Not that one. No, not even that one. Not that one either. Yep, it's the chart.

This shows the progression of child mortality in the last 50 years. What you see is that in 1960, over 20 million children died before their fifth birthday. And it goes down every year until last year it was measured at under 9 million children dying.

Now, during this time the number of births and therefore the number of children rose by about 25 percent. So, we are reducing the number of deaths by more than a factor of two while there's even more children alive.

I think this is one of the greatest accomplishments of the last hundred years.

Now, why did it happen? There's two things that came together. The first is higher incomes that meant a better diet, better sanitation, and that accounts for part of it. The second was the smart spending on global health.

Now, the United States gives over a quarter of all the money given for global health. So, you might think, wow, this is a huge amount of money, it must be a large part of what the country spends. Well, actually it's a lot less than most people think. The overall federal budget, of course, is 3.6 trillion. That's the pie that we start with here. Foreign aid, which often people say is perhaps 10 or even 20 percent of the budget, is actually a bit less than 1 percent. And of that foreign aid, the piece that goes on global health, the things we'll talk about tonight, is around 8 billion. And so roughly that's .22 percent or a little less than a quarter of 1 percent.

Now, this number has gone up. Back in 2001, it was about a billion and a half. In 2005, it was just over 3 billion. So, it's reached its peak level, this 8 billion, this year.

Now, how does that compare to other givers? Well, our foundation, by making global health our top priority, and spending a bit over half of all the money we spend on it, we put in 1.8 billion a year, so less than a fifth as much overall for global health.

We're committed to global health. For our entire lives we'll be doing the best we can, spending the majority of the foundation's grants on this cause.

But it's America's investments and the investments that it causes others to make that are saving the large number of people, and so that's what we'll be talking about tonight.

Let's look at another really beautiful picture. This is a child receiving a vaccine. Right now, the child might not be too excited about it, but this is the best way to save lives that the world has.

Investments in vaccines have an incredible payoff. Let me give you some living proofs of this. Smallpox was a terrible disease. Back even in the 1950s, over 50 million cases a year were experienced around the globe. Now, a quarter of those people died. Of the remainder, many were scarred or made blind. So, it had an unbelievable disease burden.

There was actually a type of vaccine going all the way back to 1796. In fact, the very word vaccine comes from the gener work on trying to inoculate a young boy.

But that vaccine was not very reliable, it wasn't delivered to many people, and it wasn't until the 1970s that the world decided that we could get the vaccine out to everyone.

It was tough because the disease would break out in different places. And a brilliant public health expert, Bill Fahey, came up with the idea of looking at each outbreak and understanding who you had to vaccinate in that area, and very quickly going in and doing that, and that tactic worked. By 1977, this disease had been eradicated, the first and so far the only disease to be eliminated from the planet.

Well, this was actually an amazingly inexpensive activity. It was 130 million from the U.S. over the 10-year period. And because of that, no country has to spend on vaccinating people or treating them. The savings for the U.S. alone since the eradication is over 17 billion.

So, when you think, okay, would I spend 130 million over 10 years to save the 17 billion, and to save untold human misery as well, of course you would take that bargain. And that's why I say vaccines are a phenomenal value.

Now, smallpox is the only disease that we're completely done with. We have another disease which we're fairly close on, and that's polio.

Polio has been eliminated in the United States, and it's an amazing story. There's books like the "Polio: An American Story" by David Oshinsky that tell this story. It goes back to President Roosevelt and creating the March of Dimes and getting lots of contributions. It goes back to the great scientific work of Salk and Sabin and figuring out how to make vaccines safe and get them out in very large numbers.

And so today, we just take it for granted that no kids in the United States have this disease. It's been gone for over 30 years.

Now, there is progress around the world. The U.S. government is the biggest funder on this. Rotary International has really activated people and made this an important cause. And between their efforts and others, over 2 billion people have been immunized. That's a lot of polio drops.

And we are seeing progress. Let's take and show representation that is equal to how many people had polio back in 1988. So, we'll light up part of the audience and that represents that number. Then if we take how much polio we have today, it would be down a great reduction from this, it would be down literally to one person. Sorry. And so that's a 99 percent reduction.

We have four countries left where we have a substantial number of cases: India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. And unfortunately as the disease transmits there, it does tend to spread out, and so we get a small number of cases in other countries as well.

So, this is a very tough disease to go after. The cases are more silent than the smallpox cases. Many of them show no symptoms at all, and when you do see the symptoms, it's well after the disease has struck and perhaps spread to other children.

When I was in a slum outside of Delhi about a year ago, I met a nine month old named Hosmon (ph), who you see here, and Hosmon is a polio victim. I talked with her mother, and her mother talked about how Hosmon doesn't know it yet, but she'll never be able to go out and play with her friends, never kick a ball. And certainly when you see Hosmon, talk to her mother and think about the consequences, the reaction is we need to end this. We are so close, we cannot let up now. We have the pieces in place. We have vaccines, we have lab tests, we have surveillance infrastructure, and we've got a global commitment.

So, we're going to have to keep putting in resources for a number of years, and then when we achieve this triumph, it will invigorate the whole field of global health. Just like the smallpox elimination did, this will be another really incredible victory.

Well, now Melinda is going to come out and talk about another great chance to save a lot of lives, and that's rotavirus.

MELINDA GATES: So, in the early 1990s, Bill and I read a newspaper article about something called rotavirus, and we said, my gosh, what is this thing called rotavirus? We'd never heard about it. And yet when we read in this article, we learned that yet 500,000 children were affected by rotavirus and died every single year. We said, oh my gosh, this can't possibly be true, rotavirus, but if it is true, there must be something that we can do about it.

So, what is rotavirus? Rotavirus is a diarrheal disease that many, many children get in the poor world.

Now, children in our country get diarrhea and it's pretty simple. You go to the drugstore and you get an over the counter medication, or you might take them to the doctor, and they live. But that's not the case in the developing world, because poor children become severely dehydrated.

But because our country doesn't face rotavirus, there's really very little incentive to create a vaccine.

But I'm pleased to tell you tonight that we do have a new vaccine for rotavirus. It was developed by Dr. Paul Offit. He worked in his lab for over 26 years tirelessly on this vaccine, and he was supported by the pharmaceutical company Merck.

It's a fantastic success story. It's a case where we've created a vaccine for the poorest children on the planet, and it's just beginning to reach them.

And I'd like to show you a short video of what it's like to get a vaccine like that from Dr. Offit's lab in Pennsylvania out to a remote village in Nicaragua.

(Video segment.)

MELINDA GATES: So, you've just seen what it takes to get a vaccine into one country, and because of the U.S. investments and the commitments that we've made as a country, we're now going to start delivering it to every poor child that needs it in all the developing countries that need it around the world.

You know, often in the U.S. we talk about if somebody here saves one life that they're a hero. But what do you say to somebody who's already saved hundreds of lives, and possibly is on their way to saving hundreds of thousands of lives? And I think the only thing that I know what to say to that person is thank you. And so I'd like to have Dr. Paul Offit stand and be recognized tonight. Thank you, Paul.

Vaccines really are the great miracles of our lifetime, vaccines for smallpox, polio, measles. Since 1980, we've been able to bring down cases of diphtheria 93 percent, tetanus cases 85 percent, measles 93 percent.

So, where we have these vaccines, where we have this lifesaving advance, we need to deliver those to the developing world. And where we haven't yet invented the vaccines, we need to do that.

Now, some vaccines, like in the case of HIV/AIDS, are years or possibly even decades away. And so I think a right question would be tonight, in the interim is there still an argument for optimism, particularly when it comes to AIDS, and I would tell you yes there is.

There are 3 million people today in Africa receiving antiretrovirals. That's up from 155,000 people just five years ago. People are alive because of the investments as a country we've made in things like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and because of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, otherwise known as PEPFAR.

PEPFAR has been incredibly generous. This is a case where American people recognized the fact that we could get these drugs in our country, but you couldn't get them in the developing world. And so what was happening? Poor people were dying. The American people said, poor people shouldn't die just because they can't afford these drugs.

Now, I'll let you in on a little known fact, and that is there has been a huge price decline in these drugs over the last two years, thanks to what's happened, and it's because of that drug price decline that America's generosity can have a much larger impact than it would have otherwise.

Now, there were many partners who were involved in this work, and I want to show you though first a little bit about what's happened with these costs of the drugs.

We put up a chart here that's going to show the cost of just first line drugs for antiretrovirals in Uganda. Now, this chart is going to show only the cost of the drugs. It doesn't include personnel costs or the cost to deliver the medications, but it's a great proxy for how much progress we've actually made.

So, in 1998, the cost for the drugs was $12,000 per person per year; can't buy many drugs like this for poor people in the developing world at that price. But as I said, many partners got involved in this and recognized that the price was too high. And pharma agreed eventually to two-tiered pricing; that is, a price for the developing world that would be much, much lower. So the cost dropped to $7,000 per person per year, then 2,000, then 140. Last year, it was less than $90.

So, a decade ago, where $12,000 would have bought enough drugs for one person, that now buys enough drugs for 130 people.

So, that's the chart and some of the statistics on AIDS, but I want to show you the human face of AIDS. I want you to see what we're dealing with here.

I've a film of a little girl and her name is Avelile, and she lives in South Africa.

Avelile is seven years old. And as you can see, she weighs about the same amount as a one year old. Her mother had HIV and she passed the virus onto her daughter during childbirth. And her mother died during childbirth. And Avelile became very, very ill, and quite frankly the nurses were not very hopeful about her condition.

Now, this is Avelile one year later. She got antiretrovirals and medical care. It's hard to believe this is the same little girl. She's not just alive, she's thriving. You can see why they call this the Lazarus effect.

So, this is what treatment does. This is what it does and what we have to build on.

But I have to tell you that the cost of the drugs has now leveled off at that $90 price that I showed you, and that makes it hard to fund treatment for everybody that needs it, because as I said earlier, for every two people that get infected who get the treatment, five more people are becoming infected.

So, we have to move upstream, we have to work on reducing the number of infections, and that means focusing on prevention.

Now, we haven't made as much progress so far on prevention as on treatment, but there is still some good news. We're starting to do a better job protecting babies. In 2004, just 10 percent of the mothers who were HIV positive when they were pregnant were able to get the lifesaving medicines they needed in low income countries, 10 percent. But in 2008, that number is 45 percent; that is women in the developing world can get the drugs they need to not pass on HIV during the childbirth process. So, there are thousands of children who won't go through what Avelile experienced.

So, with America's help we're also finding that the countries themselves are finding really innovative ways to prevent HIV, and education is a really key step here, because with education you can start to demystify HIV, both how you get it, how you can contract it, and what you do about it, and you ultimately break down the stigma about the disease.

I'd like to give you just one example tonight. In Namibia there's a five-man a cappella group named Vocal Motion. They started 10 years ago in their hometown of Rundu, and they won Namibia's version of American Idol.

And what they do through a PEPFAR funded program since 2006 is they tour Namibia singing prevention messages, and they performed before 85,000 students in Namibia. They're kicking off a short U.S. tour, and they're here tonight, as you see, and they've agreed to sing for us.

(Musical segment.)

MELINDA GATES: That was beautiful. I bet you didn't know HIV prevention could be so gorgeous.

So, Bill and I are hopeful about HIV, both because of what's happened so far, but also because of what's yet to come. And I would like to talk a little bit about yet what is to come.

Researchers have been working to simplify treatment. When the PEPFAR program first started, and when antiretrovirals were first getting out there early on, it took 16 pills a day when you were on antiretrovirals. That's now been simplified, and it's down to one pill a day. And the pills are much safer on the human body, and much easier for the patients to take. Now, the next step, of course, would be if you could get an injection where you just got it once a month, because that would, of course, even more simplify the treatment, and the more you can simplify the treatment for people, the more they're going to adhere to it. The more they'll tolerate it. They'll reduce transmission, and ultimately, of course, we'll save lives.

On the prevention side, there are also a few other reasons to be optimistic. And one of them that you might not know about is male circumcision. Research has found in the last couple of years that, in fact, a male can be protected by up to 60 percent if he's circumcised from not contracting the virus from his female partner. Now, if we had a vaccine that was that effective, we would be jumping for joy. But we are working as a community to make sure that male circumcision happens, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Researchers, though, are also working on pills, microbicide gels, indirectable drugs, because we need to have everything we can find to work on protection against this virus. Right now, there are seven clinical trials going on of drugs that are being tested against high risk cases of HIV, and we'll start to see the results of those trials in 2011.

Now, of course, a vaccine is the ultimate prevention tool. We are making slow, but real progress. Scientists have gained the crucial insights, the characteristics of this virus, and how it invades the immune system. And every time they learn something about this, it makes it possible to have a more promising vaccine candidate come forward. You may have heard about the trials that we all learned about from Thailand last month, the 16,000 healthy volunteers that participated in that trial. It showed that a vaccine could actually provide partial protection against HIV infections, and that was an important advance. That advance was funded almost entirely by the U.S. Government.

So, let me be clear, this virus is ingenious. An effective vaccine could be years, it might realistically be decades away. But American tax dollars are contributing to progress where not long ago there was completely a sense of hopelessness. So, we need to keep making these investments.

BILL GATES: HIV is the most recent disease to affect millions. The oldest is probably malaria. There are Chinese medical texts from over 5,000 years ago that talked about malaria. And the symptoms are the same today as they were back then, chills, fever, weakness, inability to work or eat. And if you're undernourished, or quite young, there's a good chance it will kill you. In fact, over 800,000 deaths a year are caused by malaria, and an additional burden from all the suffering from malaria.

Now, this disease used to be all over the world, not just in the poor countries. In the United States, it was most severe in the deep south, but it was also significant here in Washington, D.C. In fact, there was a proposal that a wall at the height of the Washington Monument be built around the entire city to somehow block it out.

So, if you look at 1900, the map of where malaria was, it was basically everywhere. In fact, it wasn't until a bit after 1900, that a British military doctor figured out that it was transmitted by these mosquito bites.

So, this terrible disease received a lot of attention, and by 1970, the rich countries had made unbelievable progress. In fact, it was eliminated from the rich countries.

How did this happen? We had DDT as an insecticide. We had a number of drugs that were quite effective. But once it was eliminated from these rich countries, the energy dropped off. It was there in the poor countries, but there wasn't that kind of market demand. There wasn't the incentive.

DDT had side effects when it was used broadly particularly in agricultural applications, and there started to be resistance, both to the insecticides, and the popular drugs. And so government funding went away from these programs, and malaria, in fact, reached its peak death toll subsequent to 1970.

So, let's look at where we are today. Well, in the last decade, new energy has gone into working on malaria, particularly investments by the U.S. Government. There are new organizations, like Malaria No More, Nothing But Nets, that are drawing in people to help with this cause.

When Melinda and I a few years ago had a meeting of malaria experts, we raised in the discussion the idea of could it possibly be eradicated, you know, starting, reducing the map, but eventually getting all the countries. And people felt, yes, that is something that could eventually be done. The strategy today you see on this map is to take the countries in yellow, and go all out to try to achieve local elimination. In the countries in red where it's more difficult, the idea is to dramatically reduce the number of deaths, to get new drugs out there, and get other new interventions. So, we have a long way to go, but we are making substantial progress for the first time since the 1970s.

The American funding is paying for a lot of things. It's paying for indoor spring, which is using DDT, but in a very focused way. It's paying for bed nets that are very, very effective. And between 2004 and 2008, Africa received over 190 million bed nets. They still need more, but that gets you to one or every four people in Sub-Saharan Africa, and in the years ahead we'll reach total coverage.

Now, when you go in with these interventions, what's the effect? It wasn't known for sure. There was a lot of hope that if you scaled up for a big community, and did multiple things, that it would really bring the cases down. Well, in the last three years, that's what we've seen. In Rwanda, the cases are down 45 percent. In Cambodia, they're down over 50 percent, in Zambia also over 50 percent; the Philippines even more, 76 percent, and Eritrea, down over 80 percent. And even in those countries, there's more that can be done.

So, I'm optimistic about this disease. We have not only the U.S. Government, but now more nonprofits, we have drug companies pitching in to help out with various things, the cost of the key drugs that are very effective will continue to go down quite a bit. There's great work going on on a vaccine. In fact, there's a partially effective vaccine going into late stage trials, and hopefully would be available as a new tool within the next five years. And there's lots of research that isn't proven yet, but some of which will give us new things. The idea of spatial repellents that don't require the indoor walls, that it just is like a chemical window screen, and it keeps the mosquitoes out.

We're doing computer modeling, very sophisticated approach, to understand exactly what we need to do to achieve these eliminations, and that's guiding us so that our investments are most effective.

It's hard to predict when an eradication might be possible. Year by year, we're going to make progress, and my work at Microsoft taught me that when you're making year by year progress, sometimes people can expect too much in the short-term, but they often underestimate what can happen as a result of those long-term efforts. And so here I would say, it can't be eradicated in the short-term, but in the long-term I do think this is a significant possibility.

So, let me take some of the things that Melinda and I have talked about, and summarize. Smallpox was eradicated; polio, down 99 percent, still some work to do, but a great chance of eradication there; measles, down 93 percent; AIDS, four times as many mothers receiving these preventative drugs; and with malaria, many things including the 190 million bed nets out there in just the last for years.

Now, America is the biggest contributor to every one of these things. Europe is also very generous. In fact, I believe that generosity here leads to more generosity. The U.S. has the biggest economy, as we step up to our part of this it really is very helpful at maintaining and increasing the donations that come from others.

So, the conclusion here I think is pretty inescapable. The spending that the United States does on health for the world's poorest people is the best investment we make for improving and savings lives, bar none. The way to reduce the number of children who die is to support this spending on global health.

Now, there are people who even look at what we've talked about and they have doubts about whether this will work out, whether it's an appropriate thing to do. There are skeptics everywhere. Some of them might even be here in Washington, D.C. So, we want to address some of the more common arguments that we run into.

The first one is really about corruption. After all, if you look back at the history of aid some of it was not done very carefully, some of it ended up in the pocket of the local dictator. So, why is this different? Well, here, particularly for the health interventions, we can measure the impact. We can see that vaccines are really getting out to those children. W e can make sure that the resources are not being taken away from the desired impact.

Global Fund is a great example of this. They do independent auditing. They bring in people like KPMG or PriceWaterhouse, those firms do reports that are published up on the Global Fund Web site. And, in fact, in several cases they've found places where the money wasn't being used in the best way, and that money was cut off. So, there is real accountability.

There are other measures that we're using to make all the groups who work on these things more accountable. The United Nations, which historically had not been that coordinated in thinking about how these things come together, adopted in 2000 the Millennium Development Goals. And those are clear-cut, very ambitious goals to show that these new efforts are making a difference. It measures things like the bed nets and vaccinations and it can be independently verified.

Another mechanism that's been used for broad development grants is the Millennium Challenge Corporation. And here you actually have to qualify on a number of criteria before you're even eligible to get the aid. You write an overall compact, you show how it's going to have a strong return, how it can be sustainable. And so this rewards good governance, it rewards economic freedom. In fact, there's many countries, even before they got the pact, or even who didn't get the pact, who looked at these measures and were able to take what would otherwise be unpopular measures and drive them through and therefore benefit their country, even independent of their opportunity to get aid.

Another skeptic would ask, what's the long-run picture, will we have to give this aid forever? Are we even creating a sense of dependence? Doesn't the aid actually in some ways hold the incentive structure back and prevent them from developing their economies? Well, certainly, the goal here is to help countries become self-sufficient. That is how aid in the past has really been the most impactful.

If you go back to the 1960s the set of recipient countries for aid was much, much longer than it is today, almost double the number of countries. It included money and Peace Corps volunteers going to Brazil, or Thailand, or Egypt. Today these countries are not net recipients of aid. Brazil donates money and expertise to global health. Thailand actually is paying back the loans it originally received for aid. So, aid done properly can help a country unleash their potential.

Certainly, improving the health of a country with vaccines, and bed nets allows the country to do a lot better. Tanzania was able to double its health budget since the 1990s, because by improving health there was more economic activity. Poor health blocks economic activity. So, health is really a necessary thing. If you don't improve it in a country you're never going to get self-sufficient. If you do improve health, then you've taken one of the key steps that's always been there to be on this road to constant improvement and being self-sufficient.

So, I think as we look ahead we'll see several things. We will see countries graduate. We will see them become self-sufficient. We'll also see the number of people in these countries who need aid go down. So, I expect, like we've seen in the past, the number of countries, say, in just the next two decades, that we give aid to, we will be able to reduce it by half.

MELINDA GATES: I'd like to address another comment that we often hear, another skepticism. And that is, if we improve health, aren't we just going to have more people in the world? We can't afford to risk over-population. Quite frankly, this is something Bill and I worried about a lot when we started working in global health. In fact, we initially focused on reproductive health, and we wondered when we moved to these other global health areas, because we said, if there are more people on earth it's going to be a lot harder to educate them, to sustain the environment.

So, we even asked ourselves, don't these investments make things worse off for the world? But, I think we should look at the data. I'm going to put up here a chart from Hans Rosling. He's a brilliant professor of public health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

This chart shows the relationship between health, as measured by life expectancy, and family size, as measured by the number of children per women. In a minute we're going to plot every country based on where it was back in 1960, and you're going to see two clusters. In the upper left quadrant you're going to see rich countries with good health and small families, and in the lower right quadrant you're going to see the rest of the world with poor health and large families.

So, let's add the countries now. Each country here is represented by a bubble, and the size of the bubble represents the population of that country. And you'll notice two clusters: on the upper left developed countries, good health, small family, and on the lower right you see the developing countries, poor health, and large families.

We've marked here India and Bangladesh in particular so you could follow those countries, and in a moment we're going to animate this chart, and show you what's changed since 1960.

Health is going to improve, life expectancy overall is going to go up. But, if better health causes larger families India and Bangladesh should go straight up on this chart, because you'd expect these countries to just continue having these large families. But, let's see what happens. The poor countries don't move straight up, they go up, and to the left, because women choose to have smaller families when they know more children of theirs will survive into their adulthood years.

So, by 2007 you get this huge cluster of countries up in the left-hand corner, with good health and small families. Now, this is a result of health investments that have been made. When people have smaller families it's easier for them to feed their children, it's easier for them to send them to school, they make more money, the children have better nutrition, the economy in that country improves and life by every single measure gets better.

Now, there's one last counter-argument that I think I should mention, and that is the counter-argument of, it's not all good news, is it? And I have to say, unfortunately, this one is exactly right. There's on area that we've made very little progress on as a world, and that is keeping mothers and very young babies healthy. We have made, as Bill pointed out earlier, amazing progress on child mortality, that is the deaths of children under the age of five-years-old. But, in that first 30 days of life, that newborn period, we've made very little progress at all.

There are still 4 million babies that die in that first 30 days, most of them are in poor countries, and three-quarters of those babies die in the very first week of life. Many of these deaths happen in rural, remote parts of Africa. And what we hear from the parents when you go out and visit them is they don't even name their babies, because they tell us it's just a little bit less heartbreaking to bury a baby that has no name.

In addition to these newborn deaths, there are half-a-million mothers that die every single year in childbirth. Now that, alone, is a tragedy. But when you think of what happens to that family, and how it destabilizes the family, and the father, and the other children and that newborn, it's absolutely horrific. Without a mother, the family often can fall apart.

So, I would like to introduce tonight Liya Kebede. She's a fashion model. You might have heard of her from Ethiopia. In 2005, she was named WHO's Global Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health. And she's seen the real challenges, and progress in Ethiopia on these newborn and maternal issues.

(Video segment.)

MELINDA GATES: So, Liya is here with us tonight. Liya, will you stand and be recognized. The video you've just seen shows why there's been very little progress on these newborn births. Conditions for giving birth are very, very tough in these rural areas. But we do have a chance to turn things around, and it starts with health workers. We have to have people, that is that staff these very remote health clinics, and who can visit expecting mothers at home, and give them the basic medical supplies that they need. And countries like Ethiopia are starting to make this happen. They're seeing the benefits. I visited Ethiopia twice in the last 12 months, and I was completely blown away to see these 30,000 health extension workers that they have trained, and these 15,000 remote rural health clinics where a woman can come in and deliver her baby, or the rural health worker can go out and visit the woman in her home. These new workers are just starting to make a difference in Ethiopia.

Most newborns die of a few basic conditions. They die from severe infections. Often a woman will wash her baby right after it's born, and that can introduce an abrasion, and then an infection through the skin. Many of these babies die of hypothermia. And we know what one of the main causes is of mothers dying during childbirth, and that's hemorrhaging. So, these health workers who work in these remote places, they don't have to know everything about pregnancy, they just have to know the key things that can make a really, really big difference in tackling this. And they have to be able to treat those conditions.

Now, some of the solutions are actually really very simple, and they're cultural. And that is, teaching a woman not to wash her baby when it's first born. Keep the vernix on the baby, and to wrap the baby up, and keep the baby warm. That goes a very long way in terms of preventing hypothermia. A mother who breastfeeds her baby right away gives the baby's immune system a chance to begin to develop, and to work.

There are also two very inexpensive drugs that can prevent postpartum bleeding for a mother so that she doesn't hemorrhage during childbirth. One of them they get when they come into a remote health clinic, or another one we're looking at eventually being able to deliver to the woman so she could take it home with herself. And if there's not someone to attend to the birth, she could give it to her, herself. And it's less than a dollar.

So, Bill and I are optimists, but sometimes the word "impatient" quite frankly feels too polite to me. We're optimistic, because the world knows what the main causes are of these maternal and newborn deaths. And we've developed low-cost solutions to these things. But the solutions won't solve anything if we don't deliver them to the mothers who need them.

Every human life is precious, and a child's death is absolutely tragic. So, whenever we see an urgent need, and we're not meeting it, it can be really, really frustrating for us, but it can also be deeply motivating.

BILL GATES: One of the big reasons for these huge inequities is that he people who see the worst of it don't have the resources to defeat it. And the people with those resources don't often see the worst of it. We have one last piece of footage that we'd like to show you, and this was shot in a remote part of Tanzania. It's a bit hard to watch, but I think it will give you an even better sense of what we're up against.

(Video segment.)

BILL GATES: I've seen that video several times now and it doesn't get easier to watch. All Shayla needed was malaria medicine, and that costs just a little bit more than what most of us would pay for a cup of coffee every day. Fortunately, most of us have never been through what that mother did. If it happened here in large numbers there would be a large outcry, the government would act in ways to stop it. The market demand would be large, and it would drive a lot of brilliant research, and resources of all types around the country would be brought to bear. But, Shayla wasn't born in the United States, and that made all the difference.

Now, I'm optimistic that we can make progress. We've got continuing tragedies like Shayla, and that gives us a sense of urgency. We've got great science. We've got more resources, and that gives us the optimism. So, that's why Melinda says we are impatient optimists.

Let's just look at one metric of this, which is that child mortality figure. We talked about how it's gone down from 20 million to under 9 million in less than 50 years. My view is that it won't be too difficult to more than cut it in half again, and this time a lot faster, in well under 15 years. How would this work? What would it take? Fortunately, a few interventions make a dramatic difference. And so we actually looked, did some modeling working with some people at John's Hopkins, and tried out different scenarios on the big interventions. If there's no new investments then, because we have additional births the death rate actually goes up a little bit, to 9.3 million. So, let's take four interventions and apply them one at a time and see this cumulative effect.

First, let's take the vaccines we have and get them out there in a widespread fashion. That brings us down to 8.3 million, a big difference. Now, let's take malaria and get all the interventions out there in large numbers, and here again a big difference. Now, we're down to 7.7 million.

Next, let's take some of the care for newborns that Melinda talked about, and get that out to a significant part of the world. And there we see a huge reduction. We're down to 6.3 million. And finally, let's take two of the diseases that we have new vaccines and drugs for, the diarrhea and pneumonia, and apply those on a global basis. And those four steps alone get us down to this target of 5 million deaths. Now, new inventions, faster ways of getting this out can beat what I'm showing on this chart. So, this is well within the realm of possibility.

Now, how is this all going to come together? Well, we have countries that are leading examples of all of those things I talked about. Rwanda practices like breastfeeding have allowed them to reduce newborn mortality. In Ghana they've gotten their vaccine coverage up to very high percentages. So, what it takes is the continued investments, and sharing best practices so that all the countries become as good as the ones that are leading the way.

Now, our Foundation will be doing everything we can as part of this, funding research, working closely with the U.S. government and others. We're excited that we have more foundations, other nonprofits. We've got the pharmaceutical companies, a broad range of actors that see this as very important. The U.S. government role, though, is absolutely central. Foundations like ours can do some research funding, we can test pilot programs. But, it takes the capacity, the resources, the expertise, the leadership of the rich world countries, with the United States doing the largest share, to get out there and deliver these interventions that will save the millions of lives.

That's why I think it's important to get the word out that these investments work, that even in tough times where there no doubt are going to be tradeoffs that have to be made in government spending, that these investments are so effective that they're worth continuing.

MELINDA GATES: We found that people are interested in supporting global health when they know that it works. And that is why we need to share the proof, the living proof of what is working, and that U.S. investments save lives. So, through this living proof project we want to attract great storytellers, filmmakers, and writers to bring their talents to bear on this work. In fact, this will be a bit of my own focus over the next couple of years.

So, we've invited you here, because you can help. Your opinions are important to what shapes the nation's beliefs. And so, we've given you each a DVD tonight that has some of the stories that we showed you here. Those are also available on the Web site, Livingprojectproof.org. And we simply ask that you do one thing, and that is if you believe what you've heard tonight is to take those stories and share them with one person whose opinion you respect. That would go actually a very long way. If we have convinced you of anything, we hope that we've convinced you tonight that America's global health investments are, in fact, saving lives.

BILL GATES: Some say that the United States has a responsibility to do this, because we're the richest country. And I'd certainly agree with that. But, I think saving lives goes beyond that, and it connects to something that's fundamental in the unique beliefs of this country, our belief in equality. The country was founded on this idea, that everyone deserves a chance to make the most of their talents.

Melinda and I were very lucky to be born here, and we had a chance to take advantage of all of our abilities. And every child, no matter where they're born, should have that opportunity. So, investing in health really makes a profound statement about our belief in equality, not just for Americans, but for everyone in the world.

The United States has already done a lot for the health of the world's poorest people. We've proven that it works. We've proven we have the skills, knowledge, and the resources to do even more. Tonight, you've seen the living proof. Now, please help us share it.

Thank you, and good night.

WHAT STOPS POPULATION GROWTH?

What stops population growth? from Gapminder Foundation on Vimeo.

About this Video
Hans Rosling is once again debunking myths. Watch this high-definition video to find out what population growth really is.

KIPP

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Most Amazing Cinematic Car Crash Ever

Topps releases mind-bending webcam hologram baseball cards

The Fordson Snow Motor

Dual Electronics’ XGPS300 adds a little GPS to your iPod touch

Nope, I’ve never heard of Dual Electronics either, but it looks like that’s about to change. Well, it did, in fact, just change, technically speaking. Let’s just get on with it. The XGPS300 is a normal looking cradle-dealie for the iPod touch that grants it the ability to use GPS. Handy, yes. It should be out sometime in the first quarter of this year.

It’s not too hard a concept to explain: you stick your iPod touch inside the cradle and then you’re able to use real life GPS applications. (A special version of NavAtlas will be released alongside the little guy, but you’ll be able to use any GPS app you want. Remember, this is real GPS, not phony GPS; any App should work.)

The Antikythera Mechanism — The Amazing Ancient Greek Device Decoded

Did you find this year’s new technology presented at CES boring? The Antikythera device has been described as being so sophisticated for a 2100 year old machine that it’s discovery 100 years ago was like discovering a functioning Buick in the middle ages. Recent technological advances in 3D imaging have allowed us to see that that may be putting it mildly.




The Antikythera Mechanism — The Amazing Ancient Greek Device Decoded

his video shows what happened when we recently took several touchscreen systems out for a test drive:

DIY Touchscreen Analysis from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo.

Video – If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care

Tasty Low-Cal Treats From 'Hungry...

Lisa Lillien explains how to eat what you want without the calories and guilt.

Winter Hazard: Snow-Covered Traffic...

LED lights don't emit heat to melt snow on traffic lights, hiding signals.

How to Prevent Cancer

Dr. David Servan-Schreiber discusses integrative medicine in preventing cancer.

How Not To Look Like a Jerk While Wearing a Bluetooth

This is Part 1 of 7 for Flash Developers, Using Unity 3d.

DESCRIPTION

This is Part 1 of 7 for Flash Developers, Using Unity 3d.

http://waterxbread.blogspot.com/2009/06/unit3d.html

1) Capabilities
2) Basic Scripting
3) Prefabs
4) Mouse Interaction
5) Tutorial 5
6) Basic Physics
7) Basic Collision Detection

推薦一個不錯的Unity教學網站Unity Tutorials，裡面有七篇寫給Flash開發者的教學影片，有興趣的朋友可以看看

Capabilities http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/54/r-h--1-of-7
Basic Scripting http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/60/r-h--2-of-7
Prefabs http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/59/r-h--3-of-7
Mouse Interaction http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/58/r-h--4-of-7
Tutorial 5 http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/57/r-h--5-of-7
Basic Physics http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/56/r-h--6-of-7
Basic Collision Detection http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/55/r-h--7-of-7

Thank You Richard

The crash can happen again Pt4

The crash can happen again Pt4

Robert Johnson: Nothing in current financial reform legislation will stop another crash

Financial New Year's Resolutions

Three tips for making the most of your money in 2010.

The World Welcomes 2010

Russia's Leaders In Red Square Dance

This is kind of Russian folk musik called "Chastushki". They consist of small quatrains with 4 short lines in each.
1st:
Medvedev:
It became a fashion
To resume the year
Putin:
So we will take a turn
And resume it.
2nd:
P: I was driving Jak Rogg in (president of International olympic commettee) in Sochi (Russian city- host of winter olympic games of 2014)
In Niva (Russian car- implied that it is not safe to drive)
M: And his desire to find faults dissapeared.

Russian TV viewers get a surprise with a cartoon duet from their President and Prime Minister immediately after Dmitiri Medvedev's official New Year's Eve address.

Russia's Ruling Pair Dance Cartoon TV Duet

4:07pm UK, Friday January 01, 2010

Julian March, Sky News Online
Russian TV viewers were treated to a surprise cartoon duet from their President and Prime Minister immediately after the latter's official New Year's Eve address.

In the two-and-a-half-minute animation, caricatures of President Dmitri Medvedev and his sidekick Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reviewed their year in a jaunty ditty while playing the accordion and tambourine on Red Square.

The ruling pair take turns to sing lines in the song, and when one of the men embellishes his performance with a flourish, he is immediately congratulated by his partner.

At one point the judo black belt Putin slaps his own bottom with his tambourine.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a cartoon duet reviewing 2009

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an unusual guise. Pic from 'Mult Lichnosti'

Russians are more used to seeing him hunting with a gun or sitting in the cockpit of a fighter jet.

When President Medvedev wishes the Russian people "A Happy New Year for the second time", his predecessor gently reminds him that "one of us has done that nine times already".

There's an indication that this comedic appearance was not just a one-off.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a cartoon duet reviewing 2009

Putin & Medvedev indulge in a bit of cossack dancing. Pic from 'Mult Lichnosti'

The pair have been added to the cast of Mult Lichnosti, a twice-weekly show poking fun at political figures which runs on Russia's state-owned Channel One.

The station's director, Konstantin Ernst, said that he was not obliged to consult the Kremlin before developing his latest characters.

"We have to be careful," he told the New York Times.

"One shouldn't do anything insulting.

"In any case, our authors have no desire to insult them."

PC Magazine_ November 2006 _Special Double Issue_

PC Magazine_ November 2006 _Special Double Issue_ -

Charlie Rose - Tom Friedman 11/20/09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajzwSd03a7c


Charlie Rose - Tom Friedman 11/20/09

Charlie Rose - Mark Pincus 12/28/09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exi-n5hXZQY

Charlie Rose - Mark Pincus 12/28/09