Andrew Wirtanen » Politics

Bill Gates on innovating to zero CO2 emissions

Andrew Wirtanen — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:14:09 +0000

TED 2010 was held on February 9th-13th this year. To attend TED, you have to fill out an application and be invited for the privilege to pay and $6000 to spare (a tax-deductible donation, but a heavy one). Luckily for us normal people, all of the talks from the conference are posted online.

For the past two years, I’ve enjoyed watching Bill Gates. His keynote talks for Microsoft were always pretty boring, but his TED talks are informative and inspiring. Last year, he famously released mosquitoes into the audience. This year, he released fireflies (they didn’t quite leave the jar though). His speech was on why it’s important for us to innovate in energy production, whether you believe in climate change or not.

“If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years… I can pick who’s president, I can pick a vaccine–which is something I love, or I could pick that this thing that’s half the cost with no CO2 gets invented, this is the wish I would pick. This is the one with the greatest impact.” – Bill Gates

Click here to view the embedded video.

[via TED.com]

Video: The Decade in Seven Minutes

Andrew Wirtanen — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:11:18 +0000

Transitioning online from printed journalism isn’t easy. Most companies saw this coming 30 years ago, so recent newspaper circulation trends weren’t exactly a surprise. Some companies have figured out how to survive in the age of digital journalism. One that I really enjoy is Time Video (see my previous post on Ze Frank’s video series featured on Time’s website).

This week, the Time video “The Decade in Seven Minutes” went viral. Check it out!

Ze Frank on Labor Day and Socialism

Andrew Wirtanen — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:06:27 +0000

Ze Frank is probably my favorite Internet celebrity, and you should check out his weekly show “That Makes Me Think Of” on Time Magazine’s website. The show is kind of like a modern Andy Rooney, but Frank’s segues make a lot more sense. In his latest episode, he ties together Labor Day, socialism and the health insurance reform debate.

Redesigning an ineffective healthcare flowchart

Andrew Wirtanen — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:40:43 +0000

Republican John Boehner recently presented a very ugly chart that outlined the Democrats’ health plan. From a graphic design standpoint, it is a disaster. Intentional or not, the chart clearly evokes negative feelings into the reader who most likely will be overwhelmed by words in ALL-CAPS, different and competing colors, shapes, and sizes.

Over on Flickr, a graphic designer took it upon himself to write a letter and redesign the chart. Much better.

[flickr.com via information aesthetics and washingtonpost.com]

Illustrating reCAPTCHA Phrases

Andrew Wirtanen — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:23:24 +0000

The reCAPTCHA Project takes words from books that computers can’t read (via OCR) but humans (hopefully) can. For more info, see my overview of reCAPTCHA back in 2007. Well, this weekend, the folks at Something Awful and Buzzfeed are having some fun with the random phrases that are generated… here’s my contribution to the party:

Original pictures (the first one may be more amusing than my remix):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davesag/20785424/

[via Waxy Links]

Obama’s First Weekly YouTube Address

Andrew Wirtanen — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:14:30 +0000

President-elect Barack Obama has started posting weekly video addresses on YouTube. As president, Obama will will deliver both the traditional weekly radio address and a weekly YouTube address. The “weekly fireside coffee talks” are a throwback to FDR, who delivered 30 evening radio addresses between 1933 and 1944 (Wikipedia: Fireside chats).

I think the weekly YouTube address will have a much larger audience than the radio address. The radio address is also available as a podcast (iTunes: The President’s Weekly Radio Address).

Here’s the first YouTube address by President-elect Barack Obama (interestingly enough, comments are closed for the video):

Click here to view the embedded video.

[via Gizmodo]

If the World Could Vote?

Andrew Wirtanen — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:51:43 +0000

The President of the United States has a large global influence, yet the world has no say in who we elect president. If the world could vote? is a website that detects your location based on IP and let’s the whole world vote (albeit, entirely unofficially).

http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com/

Sarah Palin Strikes Out in PA

Andrew Wirtanen — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 04:53:12 +0000

On her stop in Pittsburgh, Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin congratulated the Philadelphia Phillies on their World Series victory. Pirates fans didn’t like that.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Baseball Statistics vs. Electoral Projections

Andrew Wirtanen — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:39:50 +0000

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight was interviewed earlier this month by Dan Rather. In the interview, he talks about his interest in statistics with baseball, how it compares to political projections, and how projections are done. Silver created the baseball PECOTA sabermetric system in 2002-2003, and sold it to Baseball Prospectus in 2003. Silver is a Managing Partner of Baseball Prospectus.

Silver was also interviewed by Keith Olbermann and interviewed by Stephen Colbert.

Wazzup, Eight Years Later

Andrew Wirtanen — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:05:18 +0000

The original Budweiser Whassup? advertising campaign ran from 1999-2002. Now, the original cast members are back in a politically motivated video posted to YouTube:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s the original if you don’t remember:

Click here to view the embedded video.