Website to Waste Time: The best bits of TED, from the barmy to bizarre

What would we be without information? Probably still knuckle-dragging cave men, finding hours of enjoyment exploring the depths of our own armpit hair. Thankfully then there are cool websites like TED.com.

In all fairness, there's an awful lot humans don't know - unless you're Stephen Hawking. In fact, we could fill countless warehouses with the stuff we don't know. That's not to say we're stupid, though, but the breadth of information out there is staggering.

While knowledge and learning have long gotten a bad rap as nerdy or uncool, nothing could really be further from the truth. The way the economies of the world are headed means those who are most mentally agile and creative are best equipped and most celebrated.

Surely it's time to get our nerd on? Damn right it is and where better to start than with the insanely interesting talks from TED? The talks have been running for over 28 years now and have been available free on their website since 2006.

The talks can run from just five minutes to 20 minutes, but they've all got one thing in common; once you start watching you can't stop. It may be wasting time, or it may well be investing time - who knows?

Take this talk below, for example, on wireless electricity. Eric Giler talks about what our lives will be like when, not if, electricity goes wireless. There will be so many benefits of having electrical items charging when they need it, all by themselves.

With over 900 videos, there's plenty of talks on things aside from technology. This presentation is one of the coolest things you'll ever see in the sea. I'll be completely honest with you, I wasn't expected to be dazzled or surprised by these image. But amazing is all they could be described as.

Keep an eye out for the octopus who's a master of camouflage.

If that doesn't grab you then what about one man's experience staring death in the face during a plane crash? We all like to think we'd be as hard as steel, but would we really?

Ric Elias was on the flight that famously crashed landed into the Hudson river. He has a few things changes he made to his life as a result.

So grasping life with both hands is important, but how best can we do that? According to this guy, Stefan Sagmeister, every seven years or so you should take a sabbatical. That might not be a possibility for most of us, but isn't it nice to dream? On a side note, he's got some weird, creative ideas too.