Mike Rowe at TED

i'll only post the link for this video instead of the embed so you can choose to view it on your own, but i think you should.
I think that the TED conference talks are at the same time fascinating and galling. What you will find quite often on the stage are bourgeois ideas about the world being fed by a bourgeois to other bourgeois. These are often nebulous, meaningless, and sadly impractical talks of importance to only the people in the audience. And that impracticality, that wasted time, money and energy, that is often used for nothing more that intellectual masturbation, hurts me. Take the General Tso's chicken video i posted a while ago. While it was an amazing talk, and while it left me thinking about the impact culture has on foods new to it, what i was ultimately left with was a feeling of "so what?" Yes, it added to the wealth of human knowledge, but what is the value of such an idea?
What is often left out of these talks is practical application. Not always, many of the talks detail real world applications for new technologies or the impact thinkers and innovators are having on their communities and the world. But not often enough. This talk by Mike Rowe, i think, sets a necessary precedence. The main idea of his speech can have lasting, national importance and affect. I think it lives up to the promise made by conferences like TED. It makes me want to look at more TED talks to prove myself wrong and to watch Dirty Jobs.
tell me what you think.