A comment on another thread says about UNCA, “As for the media doing a bit of investigative reporting?  It will not happen.  Reporters who have shown an interest in digging deeper have been called off by the editors.”
Does this apply to the situation at Mission Hospitals that has been revealed through heated anonymous comments in a local blog?  I was eagerly awaiting this week’s authoritative investigative report - with facts, not rumors, with attributed comments, not anonymous accusations.  When will Mountain Express step up to the challenge?  Surely our hospital is more important to more people (more readers?) than people giving speeches at the Orange Peel?

I’m sure the organizers of TEDx would disagree. They have been working hard to assemble this event and deserve every word of publicity they can garner. People like Jennifer and the speakers are Asheville’s and the world’s hope. As important as Mission is, ultimately their problems will have to be solved by Mission.

So is this event in any way affiliated with the Sapling Foundation or have any of the organizers ever even been invited to attend the TED conference? I see they post disclaimers all over their website about not being organized by TED. I hope this is not another example of people in Asheville trying to hijack the name of national noteworthy initiatives for their own ego worship. If legitimately carried out, the aspirations seems sound and admirable in principal, but if it’s not authorized or affiliated with their namesake, I would hope this community could do something genuine of their own merit without more fraudelent name dropping.

James L, a little research on the Web and you will see that the TED organization encourages these independent ventures:
http://www.ted.com/tedx

“the speakers are Asheville’s and the world’s hope.”

groan…

oh boy…Call it more Asheville narcissistic self-adulation and hype.

I love ya Express, but this puff piece makes me wanna barf. I know a couple of the featured speakers and well, I find September Girl’s suggestion above (like the article itself) to be so preposterous to almost qualify as obscene.

It’s nice to see Asheville’s intellectual capital hangs on the nail of the man that brought you the Happy Meal and the guy who did for interactive technologies what Buckminster Fuller did for modern housing.

ugh…sorry for sounding like such a hater, but let’s get real, please.

Ex-Pat, if you don’t like it, don’t go, but your sanctimonious drivel adds nothing of value. Sorry, but it is beyond asinine to describe the above article as a puff piece, as if you were really making a point. It’s an event listing, and nobody is twisting your arm to go.

Ragging on Buckminster Fuller, who has a very important place in the history of this area, and an extremely important place in the future of technology and design, was particularly lame of you. I for one am extremely grateful to have the Director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute here in Asheville, not just because he is a close friend, and I very much look forward to his talk.

Your self-righteous rant says a lot more about your lack of character than the people involved in this event. If Ashevillains want to share their ideas at the TEDx Avl event, good for them.

Emoticon,

I cannot help but suspect that I know the source of your sensitivity about Fuller’s domes.  Fuller may have a place in the future of design, but for now he is as the Cratylus is to liguistics, elegant and fascinating, but without practical relevance. His local relevance exists in that he allows us to imagine that this has always been a hotbed for the creative class (apologies to Merce and John, RIP) as always, history is a means of talking about ourselves (though I’m psyched your friend got a job out of the deal), which brings us to the actual participants, who are billed as “our intellectual capital.”  Zimmerman is best known for designing Happy Meal boxes, McConville transformed a bank into some type of Anne Rice theme park.  You’re killing me! 

The piece above appeared in “Buzzworm News Briefs,” which by its very label makes it something a bit more than an event listing. It’s advocacy is explicit in its placement in this section, as well as it’s editorial and prosaic flourishes, clocking in at over 500 words. Event listings also don’t typically involve quotes from more than one organizer and enjoy authorship by a staff writer.

But really, it’s TEDx that’s the puff piece -“TED is an annual event where some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about.”

In any case, I sincerely apologize for ruffling your feathers. I hope you have a fabulous time.

Ex-Pat, exactly what is it that makes you so goddamned superior to Buckminster Fuller, David McConville (Director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute) and virtually everyone in Asheville apparently? 

An Anne Rice theme park? Sorry, but you are completely full of crap. NASA, NOAA, and a remarkable roster of world leaders have been directly involved in some of the amazing things going on in that old bank building, and it sure as hell isn’t about Anne Rice.

You talk a lot of crap about things that you clearly know very little about. I’m still waiting to hear what makes you so superior to Buckminster Fuller. This should be rich. I guess your life’s work has had a profound affect on the development of nanotechnology and the future of design as well. Currently the Buckminster Fuller Challenge is offering $100K grants for people offering solutions to some of humanity’s most pressing problems, and the results have been amazing so far. I can’t wait to hear about what you are doing that is so flipping superior.

It’s an events listing, not an expose. Apparently the buzzworm ate your brain there Ex-Pat. And speaking of Happy Meals, you seem to be a few fries short of one.

Again, nobody is forcing you to go to this event of local people sharing their exceptional ideas, and nobody is forcing you to suffer through being so superior to the rest of us here. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Send a post card from whatever country you land in.

A link for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge: http://challenge.bfi.org/

Oh, calm down, will you? I don’t think I’m superior to anyone.

Really. That’s the problem. You obviously seem to be hung up on the “great man theory of civilization.” And sorry if I don’t believe that strategic consumer engineering, technological band aids, “world leaders” and the aerospace industry are poised to save us all. I honestly don’t believe anything less than a larger systemic challenge will suffice to effectively deal with the enormity of our problems at this late hour. If you want to, that’s fine. Those are very comforting ideas. Particularly for the professional class.

As far as what I do, I devote a very great deal of my time addressing the world’s problems in my own way. More than most. I could say a lot more about this, but I don’t feel like forfeiting my anonymity, especially for someone as hostile as you.

Again, I sincerely apologize for upsetting you. I’ve just lost patience with the popular embrace of feel-good solutions and belief systems currently in vogue that fail to address the root causes of the world’s problems.

I’m on your side.

Calm down yourself you hypocrite. You are the one who came here sanctimoniously attacking people who are guilty of nothing more than trying to help the planet and share their ideas. You come here and make up nonsense about my closest friend here and self-righteously put people down, and you want me to believe that you are on my side? Now that’s rich. You are on your own side.

It’s no surprise that you couldn’t back up what gives you the right to act to goddamned superior to Buckminster Fuller and the people of Asheville. Your “great man” theory is a straw-man argument that is particularly asinine in light of tonight’s presentations focussing on systems theory approaches.

All that crap about world leaders and the aerospace industry solving our problems is just a ridiculous confabulation on your part, and is the antithesis of what many of tonight’s speakers have to offer. It has about as much basis in reality as your asinine claim about the Elumenati being some kind of Anne Rice theme park. Here is the website for what the Elumenati actually does: http://www.elumenati.com/

The more approaches the better. Your cartoonishly misleading characterizations of tonight’s TEDx talks are specious at best. Your insistence on trying to pawn off a bunch of crap that you just made up as fact doesn’t really make you a trustable source.

The dome is pretty freakin’ cool.

Again, I sincerely apologize for upsetting you. I’ve just lost patience with the popular embrace of feel-good solutions and belief systems currently in vogue that fail to address the root causes of the world’s problems.

a-freaking-men, EP.

I’ll add a holy-freakin-amen to that as well. We could solve all the world’s energy problems if we could just harness a fraction of the self important ego driven hot air generated by this community. I’ve seldom seen such acclaim put forward from a populace with so little genuine accomplishment.

Sounds like Greenville and Charlotte would be right up your alley then. Bon voyage.

I think the members of this community who have actually invested themselves in meaningful work for decades and are not obsessed with patting themselves on the back and singing false praises will be happy to take our community back from the fly-by-night posers and wannabes thanks very much. If you want to pretend to be a big fish, at least have the courage to find a bigger pond. Not everyone in this town is buying your spray painted taxis and snake oil anymore.

JamesL, first you come here and talk a bunch of crap about how the TEDx event was fraudulently hijacking the TED conference, and when it was pointed out that your careless aspersions had no merit whatsoever, and that in fact the TED organizers have been very, very supportive of the Asheville event, you didn’t even have the character to just apologize.

Several hundred people attended the event, and 400+ more had to be turned away at the door. It was a huge success. Your crap about TEDx people patting themselves on the back and singing false praises is just bs that you made up. Without exception, the speakers showed kindness and humility, and all argued that the problems were much bigger than any one person and require a broader systemic approach.

Again, if you hate so many people here, why not just move to any other bland, generic, right-wing town like Charlotte or Greenville, since that is clearly what you want? There is no shortage of towns without the quirky, taxi painting Ashevillains that you despise so much. There are thousands and thousands of run-of-the-mill towns with nobody to offend you. For those people that you despise so much, there are no other options like Asheville for them.

“Again, I sincerely apologize for upsetting you. I’ve just lost patience with the popular embrace of feel-good solutions and belief systems currently in vogue that fail to address the root causes of the world’s problems.”

“a-freaking-men, EP.”

Cynicism is often just an excuse to do nothing.

Cynicism is often just an excuse to do nothing.

True.

Of course, it is also often an outgrowth of working tirelessly for years on real projects like ‘radical’ newspapers and community gardens, while all the attention and resources go to theoretical ‘intellectuals’ only interested in gaining tenure and selling books, while placating the public with ‘feel good’ ideas that never really address the root causes of the problems in the first place.

That also makes some of us a bit cynical, yes.

Why the self-righteous, sanctimonious drivel? To dismiss all the TEDx speakers as “theoretical ‘intellectuals’ only interested in gaining tenure and selling books, while placating the public with ‘feel good’ ideas that never really address the root causes of the problems in the first place” is complete hogwash.

You think you are the only person who ever worked on “real projects,” and the only person whose projects are “real”?!? What an absolute load of crap. There were plenty of people there who are doing some pretty amazing, real projects, that most certainly do address the root causes. You aren’t exactly the only person to ever work on a community garden or an alternative newspaper. Sheesh.

It’s nice that you think you are so frickin’ superior to the rest of us, but seriously, give it a rest.

How ironic that you claim others purport to be superior to you. You come across as one of the most sanctimonious people on these blogs.

That’s real brave of you “not entopticon.” I gave a perfectly legitimate example, and all you can do is make vague accusations. I could a give a flying f@#k whether you like me or not. My point stands that the sanctimonious criticisms of the TEDx organizers and presenters, who worked hard with great care and humility, were not warranted.