{"id":18926,"date":"2013-12-19T01:51:11","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T01:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/let-me-tell-you-a-story-i-was-at-a-presentation\/"},"modified":"2013-12-19T01:51:11","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T01:51:11","slug":"let-me-tell-you-a-story-i-was-at-a-presentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/let-me-tell-you-a-story-i-was-at-a-presentation\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Let me tell you a story. I was at a presentation that a friend, an Astrophysicist, gave to a potential donor. I thought the presentation was lucid and compelling (and I\u2019m a Professor of Visual Arts here at UC San Diego so at the end of the day, I know really nothing about Astrophysics). After the talk the sponsor said to him, \u201cyou know what, I\u2019m gonna pass because I just don\u2019t feel inspired\u2026 you should be more like Malcolm Gladwell.\u201dAt this point I kind of lost it. Can you imagine? Think about it: an actual scientist who produces actual knowledge should be more like a journalist who recycles fake insights! This is beyond popularization. This is taking something with value and substance and coring it out so that it can be swallowed without chewing. This is not the solution to our most frightening problems \u2014 rather this is one of our most frightening problems.So I ask the question: does TED epitomize a situation where if a scientist\u2019s work (or an artist\u2019s or philosopher\u2019s or activist\u2019s or whoever) is told that their work is not worthy of support, because the public doesn\u2019t feel good listening to them? I submit that Astrophysics run on the model of American Idol is a recipe for civilizational disaster.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class='attribution'><a href=\"http:\/\/azspot.net\/post\/70417264944\/we-need-to-talk-about-ted\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">AZspot<\/a>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bratton.info\/projects\/talks\/we-need-to-talk-about-ted\/\">We need to talk about TED<\/a> \u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me tell you a story. I was at a presentation that a friend, an Astrophysicist, gave to a potential donor. I thought the presentation was lucid and compelling (and I\u2019m a Professor of Visual Arts here at UC San Diego so at the end of the day, I know really nothing about Astrophysics). After [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-quote"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-4Vg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}