I'm finally back from two weeks of almost non-stop travel. Florida for PMA and a great visit with Mike's family (where we narrowly escaped getting lost forever inside the Disneyworld machine), and then Monterey, CA for TED2005.

This year's focus was "Inspired by Nature," and the speakers might as well have been determined by pulling down books from my shelf and inviting their authors.

The big highlights for me included hearing Janine Benyus' amazing talk about the importance of understanding nature in engineering (I loved this woman!), learning about the broken heart that kept James Watson hard at work during his quest for understanding the structure of DNA, joining a drum circle led by Mickey Hart.

I also enjoyed Craig Ventner's talk on identifying new microbes around the world, though later, more than one person described their reaction to his presentation as "scared."

The conference ended with Paul Sereno discussing his adventures in fossil hunting and science education, William McDonough talking about his work to create environmentally friendly architecture for millions of people in China, and Thomas Barnett giving his overview on how to create a future military force capable of creating stability and peace in the future.

And then there's the other best part of TED, meeting up for four days in Monterey with the most wonderful group of people imaginable, coming up with great ways to change the world.

As an aside, when traveling to Florida during the Daytona 500 weekend, remember to make your rental car reservations early. We were there to celebrate Mike's Grandfather's birthday, not for the race, and when we went to get a rental car, they were completely out. Undaunted, Mike decided we'd take a limo service to the hotel, and it turned out they were pretty booked up too, so somehow we ended up getting the super upgrade package.

We got picked up from the airport by this lovely Nascar racing stretch limo (www.racinglimos.com - really!). We were the talk of the Ocala Best Western. When you come out of a Nascar racing limo in Ocala, people notice. And when they say "WOW! You guys must be HUGE NASCAR fans!", the ONLY ONLY ONLY possible response is "YUP!"

Here are the Ocala wildlife pictures. The buzzard was circling around a dead tortise.

Posted by Hello

posted by Lorna Brown at 10:56 AM