Ian Nagoski says he was first drawn to foreign records as a teenager. He would go to a yard sale and, for example, find an entire box of 78s, all in Russian, and “90 percent of them were terrible…and then there’d be two good ones in the box,” he says.
Such finds were rewarding. “It was this transformative thing where I got obsessed with one singer, and then in order to learn her story I had to learn about every one around her, her scene.”
For the second time this year, North Carolina’s loss is Baltimore’s gain.
The next time you hear someone talk about debugging a computer program, think of Grace Hopper, the U.S. Naval officer and pioneering computer scientist who once removed an actual bug (okay, a moth) from a glitchy machine. Hopper is also known for being one of the first software engineers, inventing the compiler, and generally being a bad-ass lady computer scientist when that world was very much closed off to women. And although things have changed, the computing world is still overwhelmingly male. Which is why it’s extra-exciting (and important!) that Baltimore plays host to the international Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing this week.
In case you’re not already familiar, TED talks are the source of brain-bursting ideas, viral videos, inspirational speeches from today’s top thinkers, whether they be neuroscientists or architects or writers or ex-presidents. Think of it like a Malcolm Gladwell essay performed live: TED speakers give a brief, technology-aided lecture about the most inspiring or revolutionary aspect of their work, the crowd laughs/cries/gasps and everyone goes home enlightened.
Maybe you’ve watched one of the many TED videos posted online and considered attending the conference in person — until you found out that tickets cost $6,000. Eep. Lucky for the non-millionaires among us, though, TED also sponsors what they call TEDx events, which are independently organized events worldwide that are inspired by the same spirit of deep discussion and open-sourced wisdom. And now Towson University is bringing that TEDx spirit to its campus with the first-ever TEDxTowsonU conference, “aimed at inspiring lifelong personal and social responsibility and encouraging individuals to be an agent of change for a better world.”
