full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Bina Venkataraman: The power to think ahead in a reckless age

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Alright, so let's talk about another tool for foresight. This one I like to think of as kineepg the memory of the past alive to help us iangime the ftuure. So I went to fkuhmuisa, Japan on the sixth anniversary of the nuclear reactor disaster there that followed the toohku earthquake and tsunami of 2011. When I was there, I learned about the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station, which was even closer to the epicenter of that earthquake than the infamous Fukushima Daiichi that we all know about. In Onagawa, people in the city actually fled to the nlcauer peowr plant as a place of rfegue. It was that safe. It was spared by the tsunamis. It was the foresight of just one engineer, Yanosuke Hirai, that made that hppean. In the 1960s, he fought to build that power plant farther back from the coast at higher elevation and with a higher sea wall. He knew the story of his hometown shrine, which had flooded in the year 869 after a tnsuami. It was his knowledge of history that allowed him to imagine what others could not.

Open Cloze

Alright, so let's talk about another tool for foresight. This one I like to think of as _______ the memory of the past alive to help us _______ the ______. So I went to _________, Japan on the sixth anniversary of the nuclear reactor disaster there that followed the ______ earthquake and tsunami of 2011. When I was there, I learned about the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station, which was even closer to the epicenter of that earthquake than the infamous Fukushima Daiichi that we all know about. In Onagawa, people in the city actually fled to the _______ _____ plant as a place of ______. It was that safe. It was spared by the tsunamis. It was the foresight of just one engineer, Yanosuke Hirai, that made that ______. In the 1960s, he fought to build that power plant farther back from the coast at higher elevation and with a higher sea wall. He knew the story of his hometown shrine, which had flooded in the year 869 after a _______. It was his knowledge of history that allowed him to imagine what others could not.

Solution

  1. tohoku
  2. keeping
  3. power
  4. tsunami
  5. imagine
  6. future
  7. fukushima
  8. refuge
  9. happen
  10. nuclear

Original Text

Alright, so let's talk about another tool for foresight. This one I like to think of as keeping the memory of the past alive to help us imagine the future. So I went to Fukushima, Japan on the sixth anniversary of the nuclear reactor disaster there that followed the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011. When I was there, I learned about the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station, which was even closer to the epicenter of that earthquake than the infamous Fukushima Daiichi that we all know about. In Onagawa, people in the city actually fled to the nuclear power plant as a place of refuge. It was that safe. It was spared by the tsunamis. It was the foresight of just one engineer, Yanosuke Hirai, that made that happen. In the 1960s, he fought to build that power plant farther back from the coast at higher elevation and with a higher sea wall. He knew the story of his hometown shrine, which had flooded in the year 869 after a tsunami. It was his knowledge of history that allowed him to imagine what others could not.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
feed future 2
future generations 2
good ancestors 2
long run 2
fertile topsoil 2
cotton yields 2
nuclear power 2
power plant 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
feed future generations 2

Important Words

  1. alive
  2. allowed
  3. alright
  4. anniversary
  5. build
  6. city
  7. closer
  8. coast
  9. daiichi
  10. disaster
  11. earthquake
  12. elevation
  13. engineer
  14. epicenter
  15. fled
  16. flooded
  17. foresight
  18. fought
  19. fukushima
  20. future
  21. happen
  22. higher
  23. hirai
  24. history
  25. hometown
  26. imagine
  27. infamous
  28. japan
  29. keeping
  30. knew
  31. knowledge
  32. learned
  33. memory
  34. nuclear
  35. onagawa
  36. people
  37. place
  38. plant
  39. power
  40. reactor
  41. refuge
  42. safe
  43. sea
  44. shrine
  45. sixth
  46. spared
  47. station
  48. story
  49. talk
  50. tohoku
  51. tool
  52. tsunami
  53. tsunamis
  54. wall
  55. yanosuke
  56. year