So, last month, the Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that it is going out of print after 244 years, which made me nostalgic, because I remember playing a game with the colossal encyclopedia set in my hometown library back when I was a kid, maybe 12 years old. And I wondered if I could update that game, not just for modern methods, but for the modern me.
Prošli mjesec, Encyclopaedia Britannica je najavila da prestaje s tiskanjem nakon 244 godine, što me učinilo nostalgičnim, zato što se sjećam da sam igrao igru s divovskim enciklopedijskim kompletom u knjižnici svog grada kada sam bio dijete, možda sam imao 12 godina. I pitao sam se mogu li modernizirati igru, ne samo zbog modernih metoda, već zbog modernog sebe.
So I tried. I went to an online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and I entered the term "Earth." You can start anywhere, this time I chose Earth. And the first rule of the game is pretty simple. You just have to read the article until you find something you don't know, and preferably something your dad doesn't even know.
Pa sam pokušao. Otišao sam na jednu enciklopediju na internetu, Wikipediju, i unio pojam "Zemlja". Možete početi bilo gdje, ja sam ovaj put odabrao Zemlju. Prvo pravilo igre je jednostavno. Samo trebate čitati članak dok ne naiđete na nešto što ne znate, po mogućnosti nešto što čak ni vaš tata ne zna.
And in this case, I quickly found this: The furthest point from the center of the Earth is not the tip of Mount Everest, like I might have thought, it's the tip of this mountain: Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador. The Earth spins, of course, as it travels around the sun, so the Earth bulges a little bit around the middle, like some Earthlings. And even though Mount Chimborazo isn't the tallest mountain in the Andes, it's one degree away from the equator, it's riding that bulge, and so the summit of Chimborazo is the farthest point on Earth from the center of the Earth.
U ovom slučaju, brzo sam našao ovo: Točka najudaljenija od središta Zemlje nije vrh Mount Everesta, kao što sam mislio, već vrh ove planine: Mount Chimborazo u Ekvadoru. Zemlja se okreće, naravno, kako putuje oko Sunca, tako je Zemlja malo izbočena oko sredine, poput nekih Zemljana. Iako Mount Chimborazo nije najviša planina u Andama, nalazi se jedan stupanj od ekvatora, sjedi na toj izbočini pa je tako vrh Chimboraza najudaljenija točka na Zemlji od njezinog središta.
And it is really fun to say. So I immediately decided, this is going to be the name of the game, or my new exclamation. You can use it at TED. Chimborazo, right? It's like "eureka" and "bingo" had a baby. I didn't know that; that's pretty cool. Chimborazo!
A i zabavno je izgovarati to. Pa sam odmah odlučio da će to biti ime igre, ili moj novi uzvik. Možete ga korisiti na TED-u. Chimborazo, zar ne? To je kao da su "eureka" i "bingo" imali dijete. Nisam to znao; to je stvarno cool. Chimborazo!
So the next rule of the game is also pretty simple. You just have to find another term and look that up. Now in the old days, that meant getting out a volume and browsing through it alphabetically, maybe getting sidetracked, that was fun.
I sljedeće pravilo igre je zbilja jednostavno. Samo morate naći još jedan pojam i istražiti ga. Nekada je to značilo izvaditi volumen enciklopedije i listati ga abecednim redom, možda skrenuti s puta, to je bilo zabavno.
Nowadays there are hundreds of links to choose from. I can go literally anywhere in the world, I think since I was already in Ecuador, I just decided to click on the word "tropical." That took me to this wet and warm band of the tropics that encircles the Earth.
Danas možete birati između stotina poveznica. Mogu otići doslovno bilo gdje na svijetu, a kako sam već bio u Ekvadoru, odlučio sam kliknuti na riječ "Tropski". To me odvelo na ovaj vlažan i topao pojas tropa koji je obujmio Zemlju.
Now that's the Tropic of Cancer in the north and the Tropic of Capricorn in the south, that much I knew, but I was surprised to learn this little fact: Those are not cartographers' lines, like latitude or the borders between nations, they are astronomical phenomena caused by the Earth's tilt, and they change. They move; they go up, they go down. In fact, for years, the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn have been steadily drifting towards the equator at the rate of about 15 meters per year, and nobody told me that. I didn't know it. Chimborazo!
Ovo je Rakova obratnica na sjeveru i Jarčeva obratnica na jugu, toliko sam znao, ali iznenadio sam se ovom činjenicom: To nisu kartografske linije, poput paralela ili granica između zemalja, to je astronomski fenomen koji nastaje zbog promjene kuta Zemljine osi i obratnice se mijenjaju. Pomiču se; idu gore, idu dolje. U biti, godinama su se Rakova i Jarčeva obratnica neprestano kretale prema ekvatoru brzinom od 15 metara na godinu, a nitko mi to nije rekao. Nisam to znao. Chimborazo!
So to keep the game going, I just have to find another term and look that one up. Since I'm already in the tropics, I chose "Tropical rainforest." Famous for its diversity, human diversity. There are still dozens and dozens of uncontacted tribes living on this planet. They're all over the globe, but virtually all of them live in tropical rainforests. This is the only place you can go nowadays and not get "friended."
Da bi se igra nastavila, samo moram naći novi pojam i istražiti ga. Kad sam već u tropima, biram "Tropsku kišnu šumu". Poznata je po svojoj raznolikosti, raznolikosti ljudi. Još uvijek postoje deseci i deseci plemena koja žive na ovom planetu, s kojima nismo došli u doticaj. Posvuda su po planetu, ali doslovno sva žive u tropskim kišnim šumama. To je jedino mjesto na koje danas možete otići, a da vam netko od njih ne pošalje zahtjev za prijateljstvo.
The link that I clicked on here was exotic in the beginning and then absolutely mysterious at the very end. It mentioned leopards and ring-tailed coatis and poison dart frogs and boa constrictors and then coleoptera, which turn out to be beetles.
Poveznica na koju sam kliknuo u početku je bila egzotična, a na kraju posve zagonetna. Spominjali su se leopardi i prstenorepi lemuri i Dendrobatoidea žabe i kraljevske boe i red Coleoptera, za koje ispada da su kornjaši.
Now I clicked on this on purpose, but if I'd somehow gotten here by mistake, it does remind me, for the band, see "The Beatles," for the car see "Volkswagon Beetle," but I am here for beetle beetles. This is the most successful order on the planet by far. Something between 20 and 25 percent of all life forms on the planet, including plants, are beetles. That means the next time you are in the grocery store, take a look at the four people ahead of you in line. Statistically, one of you is a beetle.
Namjerno sam tu kliknuo, ali kada bih nekom greškom došao ovdje, to me podsjeća na, za bend, pogledajte "The Beatles", za auto pogledajte "Volkswagen Beetle" (Buba), ali ja sam ovdje zbog kukaca kornjaša. To je bez premca najuspješniji red na planetu. Negdje između 20 i 25% svog života na planetu, uključujući biljke, su kukci. To znači da sljedeći put kada budete u dućanu, bacite pogled na četvero ljudi u redu ispred vas. Prema statistici, jedan od vas je kukac.
And if it is you, you are astonishingly well adapted. There are scavenger beetles that pick the skin and flesh off of bones in museums. There are predator beetles, that attack other insects and still look pretty cute to us. There are beetles that roll little balls of dung great distances across the desert floor to feed to their hatchlings. This reminded the ancient Egyptians of their god Khepri, who renews the ball of the sun every morning, which is how that dung-rolling scarab became that sacred scarab on the breastplate of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
A ako ste to vi, nevjerojatno dobro ste se prilagodili. Postoje kornjaši strvinari koji skidaju kožu i meso s kostiju u muzejima. Postoje kornjaši predatori koji napadaju druge kukce, a i dalje nam izgledaju slatko. Postoje kornjaši koji koturaju kuglice izmeta na velike udaljenosti preko pustinjskog tla da bi nahranili svoje potomke. To je stare Egipćane podsjećalo na njihovog boga Kheprija, koji obnavlja sunčevu kuglu svakog jutra te je tako kotrljan koji kotrlja izmet postao sveti kotrljan na grudobranu faraona Tutankamona.
Beetles, I was reminded, have the most romantic flirtation in the animal kingdom. Fireflies are not flies, fireflies are beetles. Fireflies are coleoptera, and coleoptera communicate in other ways as well.
Kornjaši, prisjetio sam se, imaju najromantičnije udvaranje u životinjskom svijetu. Krijesnice nisu muhe, krijesnice su kornjaši. Krijesnice spadaju u red Coleoptera, a Coleoptere komuniciraju i na druge načine, naravno.
Like my next link: The chemical language of pheromones. Now the pheromone page took me to a video of a sea urchin having sex. Yeah.
Poput moje sljedeće poveznice: Kemijski jezik feromona. Stranica o feromonima me odvela do snimke seksa morskih ježinaca. O, da.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And the link to aphrodisiac. Now that's something that increases sexual desire, possibly chocolate. There is a compound in chocolate called phenethylamine that might be an aphrodisiac. But as the article mentions, because of enzyme breakdown, it's unlikely that phenethylamine will reach your brain if taken orally. So those of you who only eat your chocolate, you might have to experiment.
I do poveznice s afrodizijacima. To je nešto što povećava libido, vjerojatno i čokolada. U čokoladi se nalazi spoj feniletilamin koji bi mogao biti afrodizijak. Ali kao što članak kaže, zbog raspada enzima, malo je vjerojatno da će feniletilamin doći do vašeg mozga ako ga uzmete oralno. Dakle, oni od vas koji samo jedu čokoladu možda će morati eksperimentirati.
The link I clicked on here, "sympathetic magic," mostly because I understand what both of those words mean. But not when they're together like that. I do like sympathy. I do like magic. So when I click on "sympathetic magic," I get sympathetic magic and voodoo dolls.
Ovdje sam kliknuo na poveznicu "Simpatička magija", većinom zato što razumijem što obje riječi znače. Ali ne kada su spojene zajedno. Volim simaptiju. Volim magiju. Kada kliknem na "Simpatičku magiju", dobijem simpatičku magiju i vudu lutke.
This is the boy in me getting lucky again. Sympathetic magic is imitation. If you imitate something, maybe you can have an effect on it. That's the idea behind voodoo dolls, and possibly also cave paintings.
To se dječaku u meni opet posrećilo. Simpatička magija je imitacija. Ako oponašate nešto, možda možete utjecati na to. To je ideja iza vudu lutaka, a moguće i iza špiljskih crteža.
The link to cave paintings takes me to some of the oldest art known to humankind. I would love to see Google maps inside some of these caves. We've got tens-of-thousands-years-old artwork. Common themes around the globe include large wild animals and tracings of human hands, usually the left hand.
Poveznica špiljskih crteža vodi me do nekih od najstarijih umjetničkih djela poznatih čovječanstvu. Volio bih vidjeti Google Karte unutar nekih od ovih špilja. Imamo na desetke tisuća godina stara umjetnička djela. Uobičajena tematika diljem svijeta uključuje velike divlje životinje i ocrtavanje oblika ljudskih ruku, obično lijeve ruke.
We have been a dominantly right-handed tribe for millenia, so even though I don't know why a paleolithic person would trace his hand or blow pigment on it from a tube, I can easily picture how he did it. And I really don't think it's that different form our own little dominant hand avatar right there that I'm going to use now to click on the term for "hand," go to the page for "hand," where I found the most fun and possibly embarrassing bit of trivia I've found in a long time. It's simply this: The back of the hand is formally called the opisthenar.
Bili smo pretežno pleme dešnjaka tisućama godina, pa iako ne znam zašto bi čovjek iz paleolitika ocrtavao oblik svoje ruke ili puhao boju na nju iz cijevi, vrlo lako mogu zamisliti kako je to učinio. I mislim da se zbilja ne razlikuje toliko od naše male dominantne ruke (strelice) ovdje koju ću koristiti da bih kliknuo na pojam "Ruka", otići na stranicu za "ruku" gdje sam našao najzabavniju i moguće najsramotniju trivijalnost koju sam našao u dugo vremena. A to je ovo: Zadnja strana šake formalno se zove dorzalna strana.
Now that's embarrassing, because up until now, every time I've said, "I know it like the back of my hand," I've really been saying, "I'm totally familiar with that, I just don't know it's freaking name, right?" And the link I clicked on here, well, lemurs, monkeys and chimpanzees have the little opisthenar.
To je sramotno, jer do sada, svaki put kada sam rekao: "Poznajem te kao dlan svoje ruke", ustvari sam govorio: "Skroz sam upoznat s time, samo što ne znam prokleti naziv". Poveznica na koju sam ovdje kliknuo, dakle, lemuri, majmuni i čimpanze imaju male dorzalne strane šake.
I click on chimpanzee, and I get our closest genetic relative. Pan troglodytes, the name we give him, means "cave dweller." He doesn't. He lives in rainforests and savannas. It's just that we're always thinking of this guy as lagging behind us, evolutionarily or somehow uncannily creeping up on us, and in some cases, he gets places before us.
Kliknuo sam na čimpanzu i dobio našeg najbližeg genetskog rođaka. Pan troglodytes, ime kojim je zovemo, znači "stanar špilje". Ali nije stanar špilje. Živi u kišnim šumama i savanama. Mi uvijek razmišljamo o tom malcu kao da zaostaje za nama, da nam se evolucijski i nekako jezivo prikrada, a u nekim slučajevima, dospijeva na neka mjesta prije nas.
Like my next link, the almost irresistible link, Ham the Astrochimp. I click on him, and I really thought he was going to bring me full circle twice, in fact. He's born in Cameroon, which is smack in the middle of my tropics map, and more specifically his skeleton wound up in the Smithsonian museum getting picked clean by beetles.
Kao u mojoj sljedećoj poveznici, gotovo neodoljivoj poveznici, Ham Astročimpanza. Kliknuo sam na njega i zbilja sam mislio da ću tako, u biti, napraviti puni krug dva puta. Rođen je u Kamerunu, što je točno u središtu moje karte tropa, točnije, njegov kostur je završio u Smithsonian muzeju i ondje ga čiste kornjaši.
In between those two landmarks in Ham's life, he flew into space. He experienced weightlessness and re-entry months before the first human being to do it, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
Između te dvije zemljopisne oznake u Hamovom životu, letio je u svemir. Iskusio je bestežinsko stanje i povratak u atmosferu mjesecima prije prvog čovjeka, sovjetskog kozmonauta Yurija Gagarina.
When I click on Yuri Gagarin's page, I get this guy who was surprisingly short in stature, huge in heroism. Top estimates, Soviet estimates, put this guy at 1.65 meters, that is less than five and a half feet tall max, possibly because he was malnourished as a child.
Kada kliknem na stranicu Yurija Gagarina, dobijem ovog tipa koji je bio začuđujuće nizak, a velik heroj. Prema najboljim sovjetskim procjenama, bio je visok 1.65 m, što je manje od pet i pol stopa najviše, možda zato što je bio pothranjen kao dijete.
Germans occupied Russia. A Nazi officer took over the Gagarin household, and he and his family built and lived in a mud hut. Years later, the boy from that cramped mud hut would grow up to be the man in that cramped capsule on the tip of a rocket who volunteered to be launched into outer space, the first one of any of us to really physically leave this planet. And he didn't just leave it, he circled it once.
Njemci su okupirali Rusiju. Nacistički časnik zaposjeo je Gagarinovu kuću pa su on i njegova obitelj živjeli u kućici od blata. Godinama kasnije, dječak iz te skučene blatne kućice odrastao je u čovjeka u onoj skučenoj kapsuli na vrhu rakete koji je volontirao za lansiranje u svemir, prvi je od svih nas koji je fizički napustio ovaj planet. I nije ga samo napustio, jedanput ga je obletio.
Fifty years later, as a tribute, the International Space Station, which is still up there tonight, synced its orbit with Gagarin's orbit, at the exact same time of day, and filmed it, so you can go online and you can watch over 100 minutes of what must have been an absolutely mesmerizing ride, possibly a lonely one, the first person to ever see such a thing.
50 godina kasnije, kao odavanje počasti, Međunarodna svemirska postaja, koja je večeras još uvijek gore, uskladila je svoju orbitu s Gagarinovom, u isto doba dana, i snimila to. Tako možete otići na internet i gledati preko 100 minuta jednog zasigurno očaravajućeg leta, vjerojatno samotnog, bio je prva osoba koja je vidjela tako nešto.
And then when you've had your fill of that, you can click on one more link. You can come back to Earth. You return to where you started. You can finish your game. You just need to find one more fact that you didn't know.
A kada vam je dosta toga, možete kliknuti na još jednu poveznicu. Možete se vratiti na Zemlju. Vraćate se odakle ste počeli. Možete završiti svoju igru. Morate naći samo još jednu činjenicu koju niste znali.
And for me, I quickly landed on this one: The Earth has a tolerance of about .17 percent from the reference spheroid, which is less than the .22 percent allowed in billiard balls.
A ja, ja sam brzo našao ovo: Zemlja odstupa 0.17% od sferoida, što je manje od dozvoljenih 0.22% kod biljarskih kugli.
This is the kind of fact I would have loved as a boy. I found it myself. It's got some math that I can do. I'm pretty sure my dad doesn't know it. What this means is that if you could shrink the Earth to the size of a billiard ball, if you could take planet Earth, with all its mountain tops and caves and rainforests, astronauts and uncontacted tribes and chimpanzees, voodoo dolls, fireflies, chocolate, sea creatures making love in the deep blue sea, you just shrink that to the size of a billiard ball, it would be as smooth as a billiard ball, presumably a billiard ball with a slight bulge around the middle.
To je činjenica koja bi mi se dopala kao dječaku. Sam sam je našao. Ima nešto matematike koju sam mogu izračunati. Prilično sam siguran da moj tata ne zna ovo. To znači da kada biste mogli smanjiti Zemlju na veličinu biljarske kugle, kada biste mogli uzeti Zemlju, sa svim njenim planinskim vrhovima i špiljama i kišnim šumama, astronautima i nepoznatim plemenima i čimpanzama, vudu lutkama, krijesnicama, čokoladom, morskim bićima koja vode ljubav u dubokom plavom moru, samo je smanjite na veličinu biljarske kugle, bila bi glatka poput biljarske kugle, pretpostavljam, poput biljarske kugle s malom izbočinom oko sredine.
That's pretty cool. I didn't know that. Chimborazo!
To je zbilja cool. Nisam to znao. Chimborazo!
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)