full transcript
From the Ted Talk by William McDonough: Cradle to cradle design
Unscramble the Blue Letters
So, all of a sudden, here I am, graduating from high school in 1969, and this happens, and we realize that "away" went away. Remember we used to torhw things away, and we'd piont to away? And yet, NOAA has now shown us, for example — you see that little blue thing above Hawaii? That's the Pacific Gyre. It was recently dragged for plankton by stesctinis, and they found six times as much plastic as plankton. When asked, they said, "It's kind of like a giant teolit that doesn't flush." Perhaps that's away. So we're looking for the degsin rules of this — this is the highest bitdeisiorvy of trees in the world, irain Jaya, 259 species of tree, and we described this in the book, "Cradle to Cradle." The book itself is a polymer. It is not a tree. That's the name of the first chapter — "This Book is Not a Tree." Because in poetics, as Margaret Atwood pointed out, "we write our history on the skin of fish with the blood of bears." And with so much polymer, what we really need is technical nutrition, and to use something as elegant as a tree — imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxgyen, sqrueestes carbon, fixes nitrogen, dltiisls water, accrues slaor energy as fuel, makes complex suargs and food, creates microclimates, changes colors with the seasons and self-replicates. Well, why don't we knock that down and write on it?
Open Cloze
So, all of a sudden, here I am, graduating from high school in 1969, and this happens, and we realize that "away" went away. Remember we used to _____ things away, and we'd _____ to away? And yet, NOAA has now shown us, for example — you see that little blue thing above Hawaii? That's the Pacific Gyre. It was recently dragged for plankton by __________, and they found six times as much plastic as plankton. When asked, they said, "It's kind of like a giant ______ that doesn't flush." Perhaps that's away. So we're looking for the ______ rules of this — this is the highest ____________ of trees in the world, _____ Jaya, 259 species of tree, and we described this in the book, "Cradle to Cradle." The book itself is a polymer. It is not a tree. That's the name of the first chapter — "This Book is Not a Tree." Because in poetics, as Margaret Atwood pointed out, "we write our history on the skin of fish with the blood of bears." And with so much polymer, what we really need is technical nutrition, and to use something as elegant as a tree — imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes ______, __________ carbon, fixes nitrogen, ________ water, accrues _____ energy as fuel, makes complex ______ and food, creates microclimates, changes colors with the seasons and self-replicates. Well, why don't we knock that down and write on it?
Solution
- solar
- design
- throw
- distills
- sugars
- irian
- oxygen
- sequesters
- point
- toilet
- biodiversity
- scientists
Original Text
So, all of a sudden, here I am, graduating from high school in 1969, and this happens, and we realize that "away" went away. Remember we used to throw things away, and we'd point to away? And yet, NOAA has now shown us, for example — you see that little blue thing above Hawaii? That's the Pacific Gyre. It was recently dragged for plankton by scientists, and they found six times as much plastic as plankton. When asked, they said, "It's kind of like a giant toilet that doesn't flush." Perhaps that's away. So we're looking for the design rules of this — this is the highest biodiversity of trees in the world, Irian Jaya, 259 species of tree, and we described this in the book, "Cradle to Cradle." The book itself is a polymer. It is not a tree. That's the name of the first chapter — "This Book is Not a Tree." Because in poetics, as Margaret Atwood pointed out, "we write our history on the skin of fish with the blood of bears." And with so much polymer, what we really need is technical nutrition, and to use something as elegant as a tree — imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, accrues solar energy as fuel, makes complex sugars and food, creates microclimates, changes colors with the seasons and self-replicates. Well, why don't we knock that down and write on it?
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
solar energy |
3 |
million people |
3 |
chinese government |
3 |
biological nutrition |
3 |
operating system |
2 |
fundamental issue |
2 |
white house |
2 |
technical nutrition |
2 |
technical nutrients |
2 |
color photograph |
2 |
million dollars |
2 |
Important Words
- accrues
- asked
- atwood
- bears
- biodiversity
- blood
- blue
- book
- carbon
- chapter
- colors
- complex
- cradle
- creates
- design
- distills
- dragged
- elegant
- energy
- fish
- fixes
- flush
- food
- fuel
- giant
- graduating
- gyre
- hawaii
- high
- highest
- history
- imagine
- irian
- jaya
- kind
- knock
- margaret
- microclimates
- nitrogen
- noaa
- nutrition
- oxygen
- pacific
- plankton
- plastic
- poetics
- point
- pointed
- polymer
- realize
- remember
- rules
- school
- scientists
- seasons
- sequesters
- shown
- skin
- solar
- species
- sudden
- sugars
- technical
- throw
- times
- toilet
- tree
- trees
- water
- world
- write