“The more you find out about the world, the more opportunities there are to laugh at it.” - Bill Nye

image via wethesciencey

Bill Nye the Science Guy made science cool for an entire generation. He did so much more than explode baking soda and vinegar volcanos on his eponymous television show. He turned Morrissey songs into music video physics lessons, and he proved you could be a smart goofball without necessarily being a nerd.

Nye is one of the speakers closing out the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach this afternoon, and he’s the only presenter this week who really knows how to pull off a bow tie.

(Source: bigthink.com)

On August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit stepped out onto a tightrope stretched out between the New York’s Twin Towers, over 1,000 feet in the air. He spent the next hour performing high above the city, before being placed under arrest by the NYPD. Philip Petit is one of today’s presenters at the 2012 TED Conference.

The pipe organ pizzeria was one of America’s strangest restaurant fads.

It all started in the early 1960s, when a California restauranteur bought a big old Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ from a closed silent movie theater, installed it in a strip mall restaurant, and named it Ye Olde Pizza Joynt. The instrument was huge. It was crazy looking. It played music that was the perfect accompaniment to kind-of-terrible pizza. And the idea caught on.



Imitators sprang up across the country from Arizona to Michigan, places where families could dine to the sounds of the Stars and Stripes Forever and Take Me Out to the Ball Game. At Uncle Milt’s Pizza in Vancouver, Washington, the house organist regularly performed in a full-body Pink Panther costume.



At the height of this craze in the 1970s, there were fourteen pipe organ pizza parlors in California alone. But over the years, these combination businesses closed or burned down one by one. There are maybe five left in the country.

Image Source: Puget Sound Theater Organ Society

Cameron Carpenter is a 30-year old organist virtuoso and showboat. He takes classical music and arranges it into wild pipe organ performances with flair and pointy white shoes. He’s also one of this afternoon’s speakers at TED Full Spectrum.

Check out this video of him rocking Chopin at Trinity Church Wall Street.