The Daily Collegian TEDx conference to be held at Penn State Innovative thinkers will gather at an upcoming conference to discuss new ideas in the fields of technology, entertainment and design. By Joshua Glossner FOR THE COLLEGIAN As Mark Poblete watched a Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) confer ence for the first time during his junior year of college, it inspired him to get organ ize a TEDx event. During Blue and White weekend, Poblete, TEDxPSU communications direc tor, helped organize an executive commit tee to start planning for the event. “Just iike [the Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon] and Homecoming, TEDx is one of those events that take a year to plan for,” Poblete, Class of 2007, said. TED allows anyone who has creative and innovative ideas to speak about them at the conference. As long as applicants have a new big idea that has never been brought to atten tion, Poblete said, they would get a chance to speak about it. Steve Garguilo, TEDxPSU executive director, said he wants to have people share their ideas to open the minds of the audience watching. “It’s a great way to showcase people who are in the community who have unique ideas,” Garguilo, Class of 2009, said. The committee is still finalizing who is going to speak at the conference, said Garguilo. “We will choose anywhere from 15 to 20 speakers,” he said. “We will announce who those speakers are within the next few weeks when it is closer to the fall semes ter.” Sam Revello (freshman-premedicine) said the conference sounds very interest ing and caught her attention. “I think it’s a really cool way to give us a unique and fresh perspective on different topics,” Revello said. On October 10, 2010, TEDxPSU will be held in the Schwab Auditorium for the Muslim employees not allowed to wear scarves By Maryclaire Dale ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER PHILADELPHIA Prison officials can ban employees from wearing religious headscarves out of concerns they pose a safety risk, a U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia ruled Monday in a split 2-1 decision. Prison officials have legitimate concerns the headscarves can hide drugs or other contraband, or be used by an inmate to strangle someone, the majority said. The ruling dismisses a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of three Muslim women employed at the Delaware County Prison in suburban Thornton. The EEOC had said they were being forced to compromise their religious beliefs to keep their jobs. The suit was filed against the Geo Group, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based contrac tor that formerly operated the facility. After the prison implemented a ban on hats and headscarves in 2005, nurse Carmen Sharpe-Alien was fired for refus ing to remove her headscarf, or khimar, at work. Intake clerk Marquita King and cor rectional officer Rashemma Moss, after some deliberation, agreed to remove their headscarves on the job. U.S. District Judge John P Rillam had dismissed the EEOC lawsuit, and two of three judges on the appeals panel agreed with him. They called it a close call, but said the prison’s need for order trumped the women’s right to wear the religious attire at work. lb THE Up PAPER V PLATE DINING GUIDE •••••••••• Delivery Take Out Dine-In goto PSUCOLLEGIAN.COIVI whole day. Poblete said the executive com mittee, which makes decisions on the TEDx plans, decided to hold the confer ence on Homecoming weekend since stu dents and alumni will be in town. People will be able to see the talks live at the Schwab Auditorium, but those who are unable to attend can tune in, too. “We will have a live stream of the confer ence on our website,” Poblete said. “We will also have viewing parties available all around the state.” Garguilo said TEDx has been veiy suc cessful with other colleges, such as cam puses in Illinois and Michigan. “TEDx is also a wonderful way to give back to the community” he said. “This is essentially what we are doing.” Poblete said volunteers are welcome to help by getting the word out about the con ference and discuss their favorite TED talks and what they want to see at the Penn State conference. “By getting the word out there, we are able to come into contact with different communities and engage with people,” Poblete said. Poblete was inspired by a video of a TED talk from author Malcolm Gladwell that he saw during a course his junior year. Gladwell spoke about the paradox of choice and how it can lead to happiness, Poblete said. He said Gladwell’s speech was unique because he compared the general idea of choice-making to making a decision on which spaghetti sauce to purchase. “It was an out-of-the-box concept, and that’s a perfect example of what we’re looking for,” Poblete said. Though the event may tackle serious topics, entertainment is still a large part of the conference. “We will most likely get local bands to perform among other entertainment,” Poblete said. “As of right now, we are not sure what entertainment will be there because we have to choose the speakers first and then build on from there.” Garguilo said the talks will primary be the main entertainment because they will enlighten the audience with fresh and new ideas. TEDxPSU’s website is tedxpsu.com. “...a prison is not a summer camp and prison officials have the unenviable task of preserving order in difficult circumstances.” “The EEOC has an enviable history of taking steps to enforce the prohibition against religious discrimination in many forms,’’ U.S. Circuit Judge Dolores K. Sloviter wrote. “On the other hand, ... a prison is not a summer camp and prison officials have the unenviable task of pre serving order in difficult circumstances.” An EEOC spokeswoman said the agency was disappointed by the decision and was reviewing its options. Prison officials had argued that baseball hats, headscarves and other head cover ings make it difficult to identify people and can be used to hide drugs and other con traband. Lawyer Walter E Kawalec HI, who argued the case for the Geo Group, did not immediately return a call for com ment. In his dissent, Justice A. Wallace Tashima, a senior judge the 9th U.S. Circuit, said the Geo Group had not been made to prove that the use of head scarves by employees posed an undue bur den. In a related case, the U.S. 3rd Circuit ruled last year that Philadelphia police could likewise bar a female officer from wearing a headscarf under her police hat. LOCAL Dolores K. Sloviter U.S. circuit judge Courtesy of Matt Kenyon The Tardigotchi connects a living mircoorganism to a vitrual avatar, cared for through Facebook. Man creates avatar Professor wins award for virtual pet By Kathleen Loughran COLLEGIAN STAFF WRITER Matt Kenyon has merged two pets into one design. With his Tardigotchi artwork, the School of Visual Arts new media assistant profes sor has linked a microorganism to an “arti ficial life avatar,” Kenyon said. After submitting his artwork to a com petition sponsored by Festival Intemacional de Linguagem Eletronica (FILE), the project won first place in the Digital Language category of the interna tional FILE Prix Lux competition. Kenyon said the banquet for award win ners, held in Brazil, felt like being at the Academy Awards. Kenyon said he worked with Douglas Easterly and Tiago Rorke to develop the project. He said Tardigotchi received its name from the Japanese “pocket pets,” which were toys for children. “It’s similar to that except it’s a brass sphere, and inside of this sphere there’s a microorganism and there is also an artifi cial life avatar," Kenyon said. “The little creature that lives inside is a water bear... They look like little gummy bears that move around they’re really cute. One millimeter is as big as they get.” He said that the artwork was made using digital fabrication tools to connect the real life to the artificial life. “A big part of the project is social net working. The Tardigotchi has a Facebook page, and you can friend him and keep up to date with what’s going on in his life,” Kenyon said. “You hit this button to play with it and feed it, and when you feed the Tuesday, Aug. 3,2010 I 5 “You hit this button to play with it and feed it, and when you feed the artifical life, the real life gets fed.” Matt Kenyon assistant professor of new media artificial life, the real life gets fed.” Kenyon said the main reason the water bear was selected as the microorganism is because it hibernates for up to 100 years if it is not given food or water. “We’re not too worried if something bad happens,” he said. “It might even outlast us.” But Facebook is not the only social net working device that can be used with the project, Kenyon said. He said the artwork is also connected to mobile phones with Android technology. Shark Arm Studios Programmer Curt Kling developed the Android applications for the Tardigotchi. “[There are] buttons that send information to a server telling it if a user can feed it at a certain point or play with it and that is interpreted by the physical part of the piece,” Kling (junior computer science) said. Though Kling said he didn’t have much influence on the development of the art work, he said it “feels good” to be a part of a first place award-winning project. “It’s a really good project that shows how something digitally can also affect the real world, so I just thought it was cool to be a part of it,” he said/ To e-mail reporter: krlslo6@psu.edu
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