God I am so bummed I can’t go to TED this year


But my people forgot to send in the paperwork and now it’s sold out and that’s that. Which sucks because I really wanted to hear Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (photo) talk about the World Bank and sing those heart-breakingly beautiful Portuguese moma songs about her native Cape Verde. Plus they’ve got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar talking about particle physics, a cartoonist from the New Yorker talking about the human genome project, Tracy Chapman and Henry Louis Gates Jr. on architecture and industrial design, respectively. All that plus Paul Simon explaining his global warming research. You can see the whole lineup of non-famous famous people here. And yes, I know people say TED stands for “totally empty-headed dipshits.” I guess if you’re not out here in the Valley it’s hard to understand how important TED is, and how seriously we take ourselves. As this year’s totally unpretentious TED slogan says: “Icons. Geniuses. Mavericks.” God I should be there! It’s so driving me nuts!