TEDEd series of animated videos. The series pairs professional educators with top-notch animators to create short video lessons on a huge variety of topics in science, medicine and history.
This episode features several of the early attempts to fight smallpox, a disease caused by a highly infectious, often fatal virus that plagued humanity for at least 10,000 years and wasn’t fully eradicated until 1979. Physician Edward Jenner (1749–1823) is credited with developing the first vaccine against smallpox, but as the video points out, he probably wouldn’t have gotten far without a young boy named James Phipps, a cow and milkmaid Sarah Nelmes. And more importantly, and in a bigger picture, it features and reminds us that we are all connected. The deceases that arise from lack of resources to meet basic human needs affect everyone at the end. A little food for thought on our health care system and distribution of resources. On the other side, there's the problem with the capitalization of vaccines which make companies add all kinds of harmful additives to vaccines that have been linked to autism etc. There are alternatives to those, ask your MD for most pure forms of vacs sans the harmful additives...
Michael C. McMillen is a mixed-media artist based in Santa Monica, California, whose installations and sculptures made out of recyclable materials, or as he calls them "the cast-offs of our material society," play around the themes of time, change, and illusion as a means to create what he refers to as "visual spiritual poetry." It's very interesting work with a magic of its own. The two friends I've brought with me to view his work have referred to his pieces as post-apocalyptic. I see it more as a beautiful display of decay. They had a similar eerie effect on me as when I visited a ghost town of the Gold Rush era, here in California, for the first time. Like a glimpse at the ancient ruins of the future. To fully appreciate his installations you really must experience them. You can view his work in person at an upcoming exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California from April 16, 2011 to August 14, 2011, entitled Train of Thought .