Dear Grandpa, Can We Talk?
It's Not America's World Anymore
Asia is Rising and will reclaim
It's Traditional Role As
The World's
Leader
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The Asian Century: How and When
Some Additional Videos by Hans Rosling
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An Imaginary Letter
Dear Grandpa, I miss you so much, and I can't wait to see you over the holidays. I miss our talks. Here in college I am taking a course called Global Studies. My professor uses TEDTalks by Hans Rosling to help introduce students to the state of the world: www.ted.com. Rosling is a professor of global health from Sweden, and he can make statistics come alive in ways you'd never imagine. One of the talks is about how India and China are rising in power and cultural influence. I've included it on the left. I know that this is not the world you grew up in. You are such a proud American. I am, too. But I am wondering if we -- you and I - might both need to accept the fact that it's a very new world. And maybe even an exciting one. After all, we are Christians. We don't want or need to be number one at things. That seems arrogant. You once said to me that life is not about winning and losing, but about caring and sharing. I agree with you. Will you watch the videos? After you do, let's go down to Baker's Cafe and have some coffee. I want to hear what you think. Love, Cynthia ******** More on Hans Rosling From the TEDTalk Profile: "Even the most worldly and well-traveled among us will have their perspectives shifted by Hans Rosling. A professor of global health at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, his current work focuses on dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world, which (he points out) is no longer worlds away from the West. In fact, most of the Third World is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity, and many countries are moving twice as fast as the west did. What sets Rosling apart isn't just his apt observations of broad social and economic trends, but the stunning way he presents them. Guaranteed: You've never seen data presented like this. By any logic, a presentation that tracks global health and poverty trends should be, in a word: boring. But in Rosling's hands, data sings. Trends come to life. And the big picture — usually hazy at best — snaps into sharp focus. Rosling's presentations are grounded in solid statistics (often drawn from United Nations data), illustrated by the visualization software he developed. The animations transform development statistics into moving bubbles and flowing curves that make global trends clear, intuitive and even playful. During his legendary presentations, Rosling takes this one step farther, narrating the animations with a sportscaster's flair. Rosling developed the breakthrough software behind his visualizations through his nonprofit Gapminder, founded with his son and daughter-in-law. The free software — which can be loaded with any data — was purchased by Google in March 2007. (Rosling met the Google founders at TED.) Rosling began his wide-ranging career as a physician, spending many years in rural Africa tracking a rare paralytic disease (which he named konzo) and discovering its cause: hunger and badly processed cassava. He co-founded Médecins sans Frontièrs (Doctors without Borders) Sweden, wrote a textbook on global health, and as a professor at the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm initiated key international research collaborations." |
