New club connects internet videos
Stacey Goldberg
Issue date: 3/12/10 Section: News
TED.com is a website that brings together topics related to Technology, Entertainment and Design by uploading free-to-the-public videos of lectures pertaining to "ideas worth spreading." Recently, five students have come together to create a club that meets every other week to watch one of these lectures. In the past, the five members who choose the videos have decided on topics relating to the oppression of creativity at schools, human evolution, psychology, and most recently, a talk revolving around what we eat by Jamie Oliver, who is currently hosting an anti-obesity project in Virginia.
Oliver is a celebrity chef from Britain who, after a series of successful TV shows and books, has decided to take on a more powerful venture: educating people about the risks over-eating and malnutrition. During his dramatic TED lecture, Oliver interacted with the audience and made it known that what we are feeding ourselves and, more importantly, our future generation in cafeteria food, will be the cause of our demise. "Diet-related disease is the biggest killer in the United States right now here today," Oliver said.
Every other Monday in Pardee 217 at 12:15 anywhere from 20-50 students gather to listen and discuss the TED video being shown. As a relatively new club, started last semester, with no budget, the founders see this as an impressive turnout and it is conducive for intellectual and multi-sided conversations. This week, the discussion started out with the role of exercise in a proper diet, and then escalated into a campus-related discussion about Sodexo.
"Today, people are too busy to cook and to teach their children how to cook [which makes] food another product of corporate capitalism, where profit is the driving force," Martín Melendro '11, new-found vegetarian and president of the TED club, said. "Consumers health and well being is completely irrelevant - check out Sodexo's sustainable, local, organic options for food in the food court; there are very few real options, if any."
Oliver is a celebrity chef from Britain who, after a series of successful TV shows and books, has decided to take on a more powerful venture: educating people about the risks over-eating and malnutrition. During his dramatic TED lecture, Oliver interacted with the audience and made it known that what we are feeding ourselves and, more importantly, our future generation in cafeteria food, will be the cause of our demise. "Diet-related disease is the biggest killer in the United States right now here today," Oliver said.
Every other Monday in Pardee 217 at 12:15 anywhere from 20-50 students gather to listen and discuss the TED video being shown. As a relatively new club, started last semester, with no budget, the founders see this as an impressive turnout and it is conducive for intellectual and multi-sided conversations. This week, the discussion started out with the role of exercise in a proper diet, and then escalated into a campus-related discussion about Sodexo.
"Today, people are too busy to cook and to teach their children how to cook [which makes] food another product of corporate capitalism, where profit is the driving force," Martín Melendro '11, new-found vegetarian and president of the TED club, said. "Consumers health and well being is completely irrelevant - check out Sodexo's sustainable, local, organic options for food in the food court; there are very few real options, if any."