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

  1. solar
  2. design
  3. throw
  4. distills
  5. sugars
  6. irian
  7. oxygen
  8. sequesters
  9. point
  10. toilet
  11. biodiversity
  12. 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

  1. accrues
  2. asked
  3. atwood
  4. bears
  5. biodiversity
  6. blood
  7. blue
  8. book
  9. carbon
  10. chapter
  11. colors
  12. complex
  13. cradle
  14. creates
  15. design
  16. distills
  17. dragged
  18. elegant
  19. energy
  20. fish
  21. fixes
  22. flush
  23. food
  24. fuel
  25. giant
  26. graduating
  27. gyre
  28. hawaii
  29. high
  30. highest
  31. history
  32. imagine
  33. irian
  34. jaya
  35. kind
  36. knock
  37. margaret
  38. microclimates
  39. nitrogen
  40. noaa
  41. nutrition
  42. oxygen
  43. pacific
  44. plankton
  45. plastic
  46. poetics
  47. point
  48. pointed
  49. polymer
  50. realize
  51. remember
  52. rules
  53. school
  54. scientists
  55. seasons
  56. sequesters
  57. shown
  58. skin
  59. solar
  60. species
  61. sudden
  62. sugars
  63. technical
  64. throw
  65. times
  66. toilet
  67. tree
  68. trees
  69. water
  70. world
  71. write