What is it about TED, the iconic conference founded an astonishing 25 years ago, that gets so many people who don’t go in a lather?

Read one tweet from Mathew Ingram of GigaOm, for example: “and so it begins–all the pretentious and annoying tweets from people at TED, just to prove that they are that special :-)”

Yes, that’s it! Maybe because they did not get enough hugs as kids! (Personally, I would tweet from, like, a fist-pumping party with the “Jersey Shore” cast to prove I was special.)

All kidding aside and back to TED, I suppose it could be the high cost of the ticket or the fact that it is hard to get in at all for any price, since it sells out so quickly, or that the presentations from the stage by some of the world’s top thinkers are so incredibly highbrow.

All true. Nonetheless, TED still represents one of the best venues for deep and varied thinking on a wide range of important issues, even if there are moments that might seem twee and elitist to some.

TED2010 officially opens tomorrow morning in Long Beach, Calif., although events at the conference actually began last night. Speakers run the gamut and will talk on a wide range of topics, from poverty to clean tech to global warming to ukulele playing.

There are celebrities and billionaires in the crowd too, which also includes a lot of Silicon Valley’s movers and shakers. All that Davos-in-California vibe is what probably irks people, but it is a lot less annoying than you might imagine.

In fact, as someone who runs another conference–D: All Things Digital–with Walt Mossberg, I can appreciate how well TED is managed, run and presented.

To the naysayers, I would also have to point out this: The entire content of TED–as well as other TED events across the globe–pretty quickly gets put up on the Web, on one of the better designed and more innovative Web sites out there, for all to experience. Embeddable and free.

While it might not be the same as schmoozing real time, if it is quality content you care about–and I do–then anyone with Internet access can eventually see it.

And it is indeed well worth exploring that nonprofit conference–originally created by Richard Saul Wurman, using the acronym for “Technology, Entertainment and Design,” and now run by Chris Anderson–digitally.

So even if you are overly annoyed that you aren’t there–Chris, you might want to invite Sarah stat anyway to stop her from writing another heartbreaking diatribe next year–see it for yourself online from the TEDTalks site.

Here is one video of activist Eve Ensler, for example, talking about “girl cells” at TEDIndia, which is just amazing to hear–and there are plenty like it to choose from:

Former VP and full-time envirogod Al Gore, who appeared at the fourth D: All Things Digital in May 2006, turned out to be a very funny guy onstage.

And he’s funny on television too, as you can see from his hysterical appearance this past weekend on “Saturday Night Live.”

In the bit, Gore talks about getting his crazy on to get folks to not forget about global warming.

Enjoy the video:

While you might have seen it everywhere by now, BoomTown promised this would actually be the last post of the multitude of video spoofs about Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that have popped up on the Web of late.

Thus, here is Tina Fey’s version–which, as I expected, is the best–of Palin on “Saturday Night Live” this past weekend. She is joined by Amy Poehler, who does a perfect slow-burn impression of New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

The parody deftly managed to be funny without being sexist–even though it mocked the issue of sexism in politics–although some surely will accuse it of being so. They’re wrong.

In any case, the best line was actually Fey/Palin’s interpretation that global warming was “just God huggin’ us closer.”

While Palin did not give an official reaction to the much-anticipated comedy sketch, reporters on the campaign trail reported she did watch it and overheard her comment that she once dressed up as Fey for Halloween.

Life is truly stranger than fiction.

Here’s the video, which will doubtless be one of the most popular on the Internet this week:

The future of renewable energy is anaerobic manure digestion? That statement sounds like a bunch of BS (sorry, had to), but according to utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PCG) and BioEnergy Solutions, it’s anything but.

Soon California will be lighting and heating its homes with power derived from cow dung. Yesterday PG&E and BioEnergy Solutions announced the Vintage Dairy Biogas Project, which will see BioEnergy Solutions passing gas (again, sorry) generated at its manure-to-gas facility (see photo above) in Fresno, Calif., to PG&E’s power plants.

The companies hope the effort will produce enough cow dung biogas to power 1,200 homes a day. That may sound like a cow-pie-in-the-sky aspiration (enough already, I know, I know), but BioEnergy Solutions founder David Albers thinks it’s a reasonable goal. “When most people see a pile of manure, they see a pile of manure,” he said. “We saw it as an opportunity for farmers, for utilities and for California.”

No word yet on how the project will impact global warming. Cow flatulence is over 200 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of absorbing the infrared radiation that contributes significantly to global warming.

The future of renewable energy is anaerobic manure digestion? That statement sounds like a bunch of BS (sorry, had to), but according to utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PCG) and BioEnergy Solutions, it’s anything but.

Soon California will be lighting and heating its homes with power derived from cow dung. Yesterday PG&E and BioEnergy Solutions announced the Vintage Dairy Biogas Project, which will see BioEnergy Solutions passing gas (again, sorry) generated at its manure-to-gas facility (see photo above) in Fresno, Calif., to PG&E’s power plants.

The companies hope the effort will produce enough cow dung biogas to power 1,200 homes a day. That may sound like a cow-pie-in-the-sky aspiration (enough already, I know, I know), but BioEnergy Solutions founder David Albers thinks it’s a reasonable goal. “When most people see a pile of manure, they see a pile of manure,” he said. “We saw it as an opportunity for farmers, for utilities and for California.”

No word yet on how the project will impact global warming. Cow flatulence is over 200 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of absorbing the infrared radiation that contributes significantly to global warming.

Here is that video from MarketWatch about the joint interview PBS’s Charlie Rose did with John Chambers of Cisco and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, where they trotted out that old saw about coopetition.

In other words, how the tech giants might compete, but also interoperate for customers’ sake. Let’s say we keep this one near the top of the pile, just in case it turns out differently.

“The Newspaper Is Dead. Long Live the Newspaper.”

That’s a nice kicker at the end of an excellent essay on the shift in newspaper reading from Slate’s Jack Shafer (full disclosure–I once worked for him when I was but a wee lass).

Shafer’s not saying much new here: Guess what? People are increasingly getting their news on the Web and they like it that way!

But, as usual, he says it well:

Horrible as it may sound, on many days the newsprint front page tastes of already chewed gum.

“I’m not the average reader, but anecdotes convince me that the average reader is becoming more like me every day—reading tomorrow’s news today.”

And he has some good suggestions for the troublesome trend, too: more succinct stories; better use of graphics on heftier inside pages; and, of course, acceptance of inevitable change.

I would add: Pray fervently that the trend is not moving quite as fast as it actually is.

Go Ahead and Use That SUV and Feel Better–Not

OK, I will admit I have been somewhat dubious about these carbon-offset credits you can buy to balance out your energy consumption.

Now, I am even more disturbed after seeing this video about the topic, given that Michel Gelobter of the think tank Redefining Progress and founder of Climatecooler.com says some companies that can cause increased global warming are being planned, so we can pay them not to be created.

In the meantime, also read Valleywag Owen Thomas’s entirely on-point screed about the global warmingness of the techie-heavy Burning Man event, now taking place in the Nevada desert.

Confused?

Here’s the video: