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ideaCity08 Presenters

If you attended ideaCity last season, you saw an amazing performance by the youth troupe of 7 Fingers, the highly acclaimed Montreal-based dancers who mix circus acrobatics into their routines. Well, we’ve been promised a bespoke piece for 08 by the original performers who founded the ensemble in 2002. This means you’ll be seeing a performance designed with you in mind; this will be the only time anyone have a chance to see it.
There is an Italian proverb, which posits that ‘there is no thief like a bad book.’ Margaret Atwood, one of recent history’s most-honoured authors, could never be accused of this kind of larceny. She will however, be taking 20 minutes of your time while on our stage. We hope you won’t mind. We’ve been after her for years! 08 is it!
Do you know that insurance company statistics suggest that a baby born this year in the western world could have a life expectancy of 120 years? Why? How? Dr. Ben Bova, author of more than 115 futuristic novels and nonfiction books, explores the science and morality of extended life spans and immortality. Check out his book, Immortality: How Science is Extending your Life Span and Changing the World.
Alan Broadbent, CEO & Chairman of Avana Capital Corp and Chairman of the Maytree Foundation, has created a blueprint for reconnecting citizens to their nation and government. This plan forms his innovative, new book, Urban Nation: Why We Need to Give Power Back to the Cities to Make Canada Strong. Through Avana, Broadbent initiates multiple civic engagement projects to strengthen public discourse on sustaining civil society, including: Ideas That Matter, which fosters progressive ideas concerning the public good.
Millions have seen the Canadian Brass on such shows as The Tonight Show, Today, and Entertainment Tonight Canada, or heard them on 96.3 FM. They have appeared as guest artists on Evening at Pops with the Boston Pops and numerous PBS specials. As the Washington Post writes: These are the [folks] who put brass music on the map: with their unbeatable blend of virtuosity, spontaneity and humour, they brighten concert halls, international festivals and orchestra series throughout the world.
Pascal Cotte: engineer and founder of Lumiere Technology, Cotte made headlines when his technologies helped to uncover the true colours of the original Mona Lisa painting. Aged by sunlight, dust and more than a few greasy fingerprints, the original colours of this masterpiece were revealed through a complex process that involved scanning the painting along a variety of digital channels - from ultra violet to infra red- and then isolating and subtracting from the digital files to virtually reveal the surface of the painting when it had freshly exited Leonardo da Vinci's workshop. WOW!!! Come and find out more about how Cotte has revolutionized the art world by enabling the in-depth study of fine art paintings without touching or damaging the fragile works.
Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a Cambridge, UK-based biomedical gerontologist who is working on tissue-repair strategies that will revitalize the human body and allow indefinite lifespan. As the chairman and chief scientist of The Methuselah Foundation, he too is dedicated to reversing and ending the aging process. Age, aging, longevity and life extension will all be carefully addressed at 08. Be sure to attend lest you miss the secret to living forever.
Matthew Diffee has been a regular cartoonist for The New Yorker for nine years having contributed over 150 published cartoons. He was recently singled out by the New York Times as the most prolific of the new generation of cartoonists. For art that was too risqué for even NYC magazine stands, Diffee edited two popular book compilations titled The Rejection Collection: Cream of the Crap and Cartoons You Never Saw and Never Will See in The New Yorker.
Josh Dolgin: aka Socalled, Dolgin is a Canadian rapper and producer, known for his eclectic mix of hip hop, klezmer, drum & bass and folk music. A pianist and accordion player, he has taught at Klezfest London, a Klezmer celebration in the UK, where he has also run workshops in 'hiphopkele', the melding of Jewish rhythms, modes and melodies with contemporary technological music forms. His most recent album, Ghettoblaster (2007), is what really caught our attention.
Bill Friedman was once a workaholic lawyer, who provided well for his family; well enough to live in a comfortable mansion in the suburbs. Aside from material wealth, however, he had given little else to his family, which ultimately led to two broken marriages and decades of resentment from his sons. Soon approaching 60, what happened next would stun and even embarrass his family. Bill began transforming his body, radically; turning his white-collar love-handles into bulging, ripping muscle. As the focus of a documentary by his son Bryan called The Bodybuilder and I, Friedman has emerged as a poster-boy for aging in new, albeit tanned and rippled way.

Amy G is a revolutionary cabaret comedienne spinning out acts of what we can only describe as ‘elegant absurdity’. She was artistic director and lead clownesse for The Daredevil Opera Company and performs regularly in venues like Just For Laughs, as well as underground downtown speakeasies. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink!

 

 
Zach Galifianakis: he's a comedian on the verge of super-stardom, acting alongside such luminaries as Vince Vaughan and Marcia Gay Harden in the Sean Penn-directed award-winning 2007 film Into the Wild. He just completed a comedy tour with Will Ferrell, performing to a capacity crowd at Radio City Music Hall in New York. But, I'll leave it to Zach who best describes himself: “I am from the foothills of North Carolina. I like teeth. I like croissants. I like when old men at picnics say 'pull my finger.' I like when ivy overtakes trees. I like watching people mis-communicate. I like how America used to be, before it got crazy with false pride. I dislike guys who wear two cell phones. I dislike fake Christmas trees. I don't understand those who read People magazine. Nor do I understand 0% financing.” We know you'll LOVE him!
Forbes ranked businesswoman, Christie Hefner, has been the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Playboy Enterprises, Ltd. since 1982. Taking charge of the magazine created by her famous father, Hugh Hefner, she launched Playboy Magazine onto the World Wide Web in 1994 and produced the first ever interactive magazine on the Internet. On top of her online venture, Hefner continues the expansion of the Playboy brand via video games, concept stores, entertainment venues and more.
John Houston is the son of Inuit art pioneer James Houston, (author of dozens of novels, including The White Dawn which was published in 11 languages and adapted to a feature film for Paramount Pictures). John himself is Director and co-writer of the Arctic Trilogy, a collection of three award-winning films. He’ll also be bringing along some fine Inuit throat singers and drum dancers. We’ll update you with their information as it becomes available.
Betty Krawczyk is a 79-year –old member of the BC Raging Grannies, a powerful group of grandmotherly social activists who take on a number of issues including the rights of women, the environment, and the elderly. Betty has spent over three years in prison for anti-logging disputes and on March 5, 2007, she was sentenced to 10 months in the big house for her role in protesting highway construction in West Vancouver. Working our magic, we’ve managed to secure her a pass to our stage, and you don’t want to miss this.
Meet world renowned innovator, entrepreneur, and author, Ray Kurzweil. Often compared to Thomas Edison, his multiple inventions include the first text-to-speech synthesizer and the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind. His creation of computer based music has bonded the close friendship between Kurzweil and musician, Stevie Wonder. Having owned four previous enterprises and writing five critically acclaimed books, he has been recognized with the National Medal of Technology and the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame.
The Canadian musical powerhouse band known as Leahy have won Junos for ‘Best New Group’, ‘Best Country Group’ and ‘Best Instrumental Album’. Comprised of eight talented brothers and sisters, their life story is so entertaining that it became the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary called The Leahy’s: Music Most of All.
Rounding out this eclectic first wave is Ezra Levant. He’s a publisher, columnist, lawyer and political activist known to be on the far right wing of Canada's conservative movement. On February 14, 2006 he garnered some dangerous notoriety; the magazine he edited, the Western Standard, was one of the very few that reprinted controversial editorial cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Is there a fatwa on him? Come and ask him yourself.
David Levy is a chess champion and artificial intelligence (AI) expert. His fiftieth book, Love and Sex with Robots, was just published in November 2007, a few weeks after he was awarded a PhD by the University of Maastricht for a thesis on the same subject, entitled ‘Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners.’
If you're going to live to 110, you might as well be happy, non? Corinne Maier is a young mother of two spearheading a rebellion against what she calls oppressive "baby mania" that makes a pariah of anyone who does not want children. In her most recent book, No Kid: Forty Reasons For Not Having Children, Maier draws mercilessly on her experience of raising her two children with her boyfriend. She rails against everything from giving birth and breastfeeding to dull holidays, no sex, stupid child-talk, Disneyland Paris and McDonald's. Maier spoke at ideaCity06 about her bestseller, Hello Laziness, a slacker's guide to working less. She delighted our audience with her wry, dry wit and unique perspectives. We expect the same this season.

Terry Mosher, aka Aislin, political cartoonist extraordinaire will be co-curating a session on cartoons and comics and the men and women that who create them. We’ll be picking from a variety of genres so I suspect that along with laughter, there will be some guffaws, shaking of the heads and even some mouths agape.

 
Her dramatic stage presence and stunning vocal qualities have established this Soprano as one of the rising stars on the international stage today. Sondra Radvanovsky has been hailed as one of the great Verdi singers of the new generation. Recent highlights include critically acclaimed performances of Cyrano de Bergerac with Plácido Domingo in New York and London, and an appearance at the re-launch of Classical 96.3 FM that knocked everyone's socks off.
While our eyes gaze outwards, there is still much ado about what is going on inside, deep within our bodies and cells. Michael Rae is six feet tall, 115 lbs., and will be talking about eating less and living longer. A Canadian living in the U.S., Rae is a poster child for Calorie Restriction (CR), an approach to eating based on a body of evidence that suggests that severely cutting calories increases overall health and longevity. Mice, fish, yeast and rhesus monkeys on CR diets have lived to the human equivalent of 110 years, with a few experts claiming some could even live to 140. Rae has been a follower of the CR diet for almost nine years.
Bob Richards is heading up the first company to enter the Google X Prize, race to the moon. A Founder of the International Space University with over 20 years of commercial space experience and presiding over multiple spaceflight programs, his most recent project, Odyssey Moon is the first team to complete registration for the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE competition. The company made its first public debut this past December, unveiling its plans to make history with the first private robotic mission to the surface of the Moon. The inaugural Odyssey Moon mission will involve a unique small robot designed to deliver scientific, exploration and commercial payloads to the surface of the Moon.
In 1991, Michael Rose published Evolutionary Biology of Aging, offering a view of aging that was a complete departure from the views that had dominated the field since 1960. In 2004, he published a summary of his work on the postponement of aging, Methuselah Flies, followed in 2005 by The Long Tomorrow, a title which clearly speaks for itself. Rose has also published general books on evolution: the wide-ranging Darwin's Spectre and the copiously illustrated Evolution and Ecology of the Organism (with L.D. Mueller).
Deb Roy, Director of the Cognitive Machines group at MIT, studies how children learn language and designs machines that learn to communicate in human-like ways. He has taken a personal approach to his research by installing 11 fish-eye cameras and 14 microphones to record every waking minute of his young child’s home life. On top of all that, he has authored numerous scientific papers on artificial intelligence, cognitive modeling, human-machine interaction, data mining and information visualization.
There have been some exciting new military medical technologies developed since Richard Satava spoke at ideaCity in 2004. Satava is Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington Medical Center, and Senior Science Advisor at the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command in Ft. Detrick, MD. He’s chuffed to show off some of these miraculous inventions: micro-robots inside the body, virtual autopsy, synthetically grown organs now in patients, controlling robot arms with thoughts - to mention a few- along with the huge philosophical issues such as, if one replaces nearly all her body parts is she still human?
Steve Scherer is a molecular geneticist and member of CIFAR’s Genetic Networks program. He received international acclaim for his discovery of the regions of the human chromosome that contain genes linked to autism. At the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, he is a senior scientist in Genetics and Genomic Biology, the Director of The Centre for Applied Genomics and the Associate Chief of Research, Infrastructure. If anyone can unveil what the future of genetics has in store for us, it’s him!
Jill Sobule: singer and songwriter Sobule began playing guitar and writing songs in 1966 at the age of five. In 1975, she smoked pot for the first time and began reading Herman Hesse. She moved onto waitressing in the 80's (serving Madonna once and not getting tipped) and then tried her hand as a wedding photographer in the 90's. Lucky for us, she came back to music, releasing her most recent cd Underdog Victorious in 2004. Currently back in the studio, Jill's folk-inflected compositions alternate between ironic, story-driven character studies and emotive ballads, reminiscent of such 1970s American songwriters as Warren Zevon and Randy Newman. Autobiographical elements, including her Jewish heritage and her adolescent battles with anorexia and depression, frequently occur in Sobule's writing. We're excited to have her magic on our stage.
Curtis Suttle is a biologist and member of CIFAR’s Integrated Microbial Biodiversity program. His research focuses on discovering new and unusual viruses in the ocean, and investigating both their biology and their role in the creating the basis for the oceans food web and global ecosystem. Despite their ubiquity in nature, a teaspoonful of seawater contains a billion viruses!
Always had a hankering for what lies beyond our planet/galaxy/universe? American astronomer, Dr. Jill Tarter is one of the world's most prominent leaders in the field of SETI. She holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research and is Director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute. Tarter was one of the inspirations for the character of Ellie Arroway, the protagonist in Carl Sagan's novel Contact. In the film version, Tarter is played by Jodie Foster. Her work in astrobiology and her success as a female scientist have earned her achievement awards from Women in Aerospace and NASA, amongst others.
Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, Ann Telnaes marvels readers with her editorial art in such prestigious publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Los Angeles Times. Currently, she keeps us laughing by animating editorial cartoons for Washingtonpost.com and contributing to Women's eNews. In 2004, Ann was highlighted with a solo exhibition in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress and has published some hilarious books including Dick, a collection of Dick Cheney cartoons.
Celebrated Canadian astronaut Dave Williams will also be in attendance. After a successful career as an emergency physician, Williams decided to become an astronaut. Now he’s set the record for the most spacewalks by a Canadian. He’s going to fill us in on his most recent visit (last August) to the International Space Station where he completed three successful spacewalks.

Click here to view past years ideaCity presenters.