Make Love, Not Porn: Technology’s Hardcore Impact on How We Act

Last month, TED made a bold first move into publishing with the launch of TEDBooks — a revolutionary model for adapting the most compelling TED talks into low-priced ebooks under Amazon’s new Kindle Singles imprint for short nonfiction. Today, we’re thrilled for the release of Make Love Not Porn: Technology’s hardcore impact on human behavior — the excellent new TEDBook by our friend Cindy Gallop, whose project of the same name tackles one of the most underaddressed yet important facets of contemporary culture.

Sample the book with Cindy’s fantastic 2009 TED talk:

Coupling TED’s unshakable curatorial vetting with the radically low price point, we hope Make Love Not Porn will serve as a potent conversation starter for wrapping our collective mind around an issue we have failed to address intelligently, even though it permeates nearly every aspect of our lives, from our media habits to our private selves to our public personas.

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Seafood Sexytime: Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno 3

What Pizza Neapolitana has to do with orgies and the future of the oceans.

Early last year, iconic Italian actor, filmmaker, author, philanthropist, and model Isabella Rossellini made waves when she signed on to do Green Porno, a series of short films for Sundance Channel exploring, to put it bluntly, the sex life of bugs.

Now, she’s back with Green Porno 3, charmingly weird and brilliant as ever. This time, she explores the hot-and-steamy of marine life.

From anchovy orgies, to elephant seal harems, to the 3-heart, 18-arm, 2-penis sexomatic squid, the series is every bit as awkwardly amusing as it is enlighteningly educational — a delightful intersection of scientific accuracy and old-timey theatrics.

We couldn’t help appreciating the subtle environmental commentary of the series. Each episode opens with a cooking scene, then delves into the magnificent, intricate marine system that somehow ended up on the plate — a timely reminder that our collective choices are precisely what caused the rather serious current overfishing crisis.

Catch Green Porno 3 online for some nerdy-artsy edutainment, and if you happen to be on the iPhone team, do the oceans a favor by grabbing Seafood Watch, a nifty free app that helps you make sustainable food choices.

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The Ancient Book of Sex and Science

The alchemy of erotica, or what’s making Walt Disney blush in his grave.

This summer, four insanely talented Pixar animators — Scott Morse, Nate Wragg, Lou Romano, and Don Shank — got together and released a racy side project exploring, in broad color and evocative commentary, humanity’s most popular topic from the least likely of angles.

The Ancient Book of Sex & Science was born.

In 80 whimsical pages, the collection of vintage-inspired artwork is a voyage into the human mind, with all of its carnal obsessions and romantic mythologies.

The book traces the full spectrum of sex and science — sex and aliens, sex and robots, sex and math, sex and the tools of innovation, sex and the Atomic Age — with pure, playful whimsy that disarms any preconceptions of vulgarity.

As I began working on this book, I found myself heavily inspired by the cover artwork of old science books. A favorite series of mine is the “How and Why Wonder Books.” As I looked over the entire series, I thought to myself, “There is no Sex and Science issue.” This gave me the perfect excuse to create my own volume for the series. The end result is the long lost “Sex and Science” edition that was never published. ~ Nate Wragg for Nerve

The Ancient Book of Sex & Science is the second in a series grouped around themes the animators couldn’t explore in their regular work. The first, titled The Ancient Book of Myth and War, sold out in a matter of weeks and is now available — and priced — as a collector’s item.

Miraculously, Amazon still has this one.

The Pixar team is planning two more.

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