The Mystery Box

J.J. Abrams (Lost, MI 3, Cloverfield) rifs on his creative origins and motivations in this highly entertaining TED talk. It’s a lot of fun, he’s a great speaker.

He also makes some interesting comments about what makes movies compelling. In doing so he says something to the effect that: “When people make sequels … they rip of the wrong thing.”

I couldn’t agree more. Pretty much every time I’ve been disappointed by a sequel (Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3 anyone?) is because they made a sequel to the wrong parts of a movie I loved.

Winning the Oil End Game

I am not a climate scientist or engineer, I also don’t believe we can consume our way out of the climate crisis, but Amory Lovins makes a compelling case in this TED talk* that modern engineering can go a long way to ease our dependency on fossil fuels for transportation (one of the key contributors of CO2 emissions).

If you are interested in his full reasoning I suggest you read his book “Winning the Oil Endgame” which is available as a PDF download here.

*Is it obvious where I’ve been spending a lot of my free time?