full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Stephen Petranek: 10 ways the world could end

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Now, what will happen? What if they come to, you know, suck up our oecnas for the hdogyren? And swat us away like flies, the way we swat away fiels when we go into the rainforest and start logging it. We can look at our own history. The late psisyhict Gerard O'Neill said, "Advanced Western civilization has had a destructive effect on all primitive civilizations it has come in contact with, even in those cases where every attempt was made to protect and guard the primitive civilization." If the ainles come visiting, we're the primitive civilization.

Open Cloze

Now, what will happen? What if they come to, you know, suck up our ______ for the ________? And swat us away like flies, the way we swat away _____ when we go into the rainforest and start logging it. We can look at our own history. The late _________ Gerard O'Neill said, "Advanced Western civilization has had a destructive effect on all primitive civilizations it has come in contact with, even in those cases where every attempt was made to protect and guard the primitive civilization." If the ______ come visiting, we're the primitive civilization.

Solution

  1. oceans
  2. aliens
  3. hydrogen
  4. flies
  5. physicist

Original Text

Now, what will happen? What if they come to, you know, suck up our oceans for the hydrogen? And swat us away like flies, the way we swat away flies when we go into the rainforest and start logging it. We can look at our own history. The late physicist Gerard O'Neill said, "Advanced Western civilization has had a destructive effect on all primitive civilizations it has come in contact with, even in those cases where every attempt was made to protect and guard the primitive civilization." If the aliens come visiting, we're the primitive civilization.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
black holes 5
bt corn 4
magnetic field 4
black hole 3
national science 3
advanced civilization 3
ozone layer 3
universe works 2
billion dollars 2
world health 2
health organization 2
clinically depressed 2
severe depression 2
drug companies 2
psychoactive drugs 2
remote idea 2
start logging 2
science foundation 2
united states 2
natural laboratory 2
human food 2
food supply 2
solar flares 2
studying stars 2
million people 2
public health 2
billion miles 2
miles wide 2
million dollars 2
dedicated observatory 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
world health organization 2
national science foundation 2

Important Words

  1. aliens
  2. attempt
  3. cases
  4. civilization
  5. civilizations
  6. contact
  7. destructive
  8. effect
  9. flies
  10. gerard
  11. guard
  12. happen
  13. history
  14. hydrogen
  15. late
  16. logging
  17. oceans
  18. physicist
  19. primitive
  20. protect
  21. rainforest
  22. start
  23. suck
  24. swat
  25. visiting
  26. western