Photos That Changed the World

One of my dreams in life is to be able to attend a TED conference, where the brightest -- and often the least known -- minds in the world gather to share ideas that make the world a better place.

TED.com is a treasure trove of short video presentations from previous conferences, and one released this month is titled "Photos That Changed the World." Jonathan Klein of Getty Images discusses some iconic photographs as well as some I had never seen before that remind you quickly how much power superb photographs contain.

Some of these images aren't for the faint of heart, but neither are some of the world's challenges.

Whoops!

The March issue of Racecar Engineering has an "exclusive" that isn't so relevantGreat moments in bad timing:

Just saw on newstands the latest edition of Racecar Engineering magazine, which features an "exclusive" look at the new car from U.S. F1. "Inside a New Breed of Grand Prix Team," the teaser reads.

One problem: U.S. F1 earlier this year missed deadlines to race in 2010, and earlier this month laid off all employees.

D'oh!

"How to wreck a nice beach"

Souncheck has a fun and illuminating segment on the vocoder that tracks the history of the technology from Trans-Atlantic communication and military security to pop-music abuse by the likes of Cher and T-Pain.

Dave Tompkins is author of "How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War II to Hip-Hop, The Machine Speaks" -- the core title is a play on bad translation of "How to recognize speech" -- and chronicles all kinds of wrinkles on a technology that started out to clean up speech but now is used artistically to distort speech.

From the book's website:

"We see the vocoder brush up against FDR, Solzhenitsyn, Stanley Kubrick, Stevie Wonder, JFK, Eisenhower, Neil Young, Kanye West, the Cylons, Walt Disney, Henry Kissinger, and Winston Churchill, who boomed, when vocoderized on V-E Day, 'We must go off!' "

Fascinating stuff. Let's hope society takes the vocoder back in a better direction, such as restoring voice to people, like film critic Roger Ebert, who can no longer speak.