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Comment by yurylifshits | Hacker News Reader

Check out TED 2012 lineup and make your own decision. Did the headline TED event lower its bar? I feel, the answer is YES. The average level goes down, while the program still has a few stars to watch.

http://blog.ted.com/2012/01/11/ted2012-speaker-lineup-reveal...

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TED was already beyond redemption several years ago when Tim Ferris and a number of other self-help guru's took the stage.

The plural of guru is gurus. Don't use apostrophes for plurals.

On behalf of everyone who comes to HN for grammar lessons (and come on, that's all of us, right?): thank you.

You forgot the endless sarcasm. What's HN without a sarcastic reply for everything on the webbernets?

I believe the collective noun for a group of self-proclaimed gurus is "a douche of gurus".

I'd be quite happy to see Sarah Parcak (satellite imaging applied to archaeology), Atul Gawande (checklists for medicine), Peter Diamandis (X Prize/Singularity University), Wade Davis (ethnobotanist), Regina Dugan (DARPA director), maybe Edward Glaeser (city growth), Steven Pinker et al, Bill Nye, , T Boone Pickens, Prof Sadoway (materials science), Tali Sharot (neuroscientist), Frank Warren (PostSecret). Maybe not worth $6k for the speakers themselves, but worth it for the other people at the event.

I think part of the reason for having ~50% of the speakers being "entertainment" is to give people at the event a break intellectually, and to get to socialize with other attendees. It doesn't produce great video for home viewers, though.

I think I might go to the BIL conference (free, and run in parallel) and shoot video/live stream it.

Is it really notably lower than TED 2011 lineup? That is an honest question, I don't feel qualified to say who the most qualified deep sea explorers are.

http://conferences.ted.com/TED2011/program/schedule.php

Wow, I hadn't realized how bad the 2011 lineup was! Seriously, McChrystal, the general that "retired" because he bad-mouthed the VP in front of a reporter? Amazing.

David Brooks, Jason Mraz, someone from Pepsi, puppeteers??? Mindblowing.

I actually listened to the Ford Motor dude's presentation and it was awful. It seems like TEDTalks now are just a way for business people to feel like they changing the world for the better (when in actuality they usually aren't). Instant gravitas.

I'd listen to GEN McChrystal about 1) "how to not talk to reporters or 2) JSOC secret squirrel stuff. His role running Afghanistan operations was comparatively minor compared to what he did in Iraq. Of course, there's no way he could talk about what he did in Iraq.

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