Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Month: May 2011

  • How the other half lives

    When we say “the other half” usually it is poor or middle class people referring to rich people. But here, I am saying that all of us in Tokyo live so close together, with so much concrete and so many people, it is hard to imagine how some people with lots of sky and lots of space and lots of time, can live. It changes how they see the world and see each other. Let’s travel to Marfa, Texas. There, they have a group of very interesting people in what LOOKS LIKE a boring town, but it is not. Take the 5 minutes to watch what people do there. (via BoingBoing)

     

    No Place Like Here: Marfa, Texas from Etsy on Vimeo.

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  • Life advice from a cartoonist

    Lisa Hanawalt
    Lisa Hanawalt

    Over at BoingBoing, Mark Frauenfelder found cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt’s advice on getting things done. I like most of them. Execute dumb ideas beautifully is especially interesting. Another is “Don’t worry about how good it will be, just make it and do your best.” Words to live and learn by.

  • Crystal Ball Gazing

    Looking into the future, or prognosticating, predicting, punditry, or guessing, is a skill. Recent results from a study at Hamilton College shows that some are better than others.

    “We discovered that a few factors impacted a prediction’s accuracy.  The first is whether or not the prediction is a conditional; conditional predictions were more likely to not come true.  The second was partisanship; liberals were more likely than conservatives to predict correctly.  The final significant factor in a prediction’s outcome was having a law degree; lawyers predicted incorrectly more often. Partisanship had an impact on predictions even when removing political predictions about the Presidential, Vice Presidential, House, and Senate elections.”

    So there you have it. Conservative lawyers are the worst. Liberal economists are the best.

  • Fast Food and Society

    Super Size Me

    I teach Rhetoric and Hamburgers, a class about how to convince people about eating things like hamburgers. I start with a book, Fast Food Nation, then do a movie (documentary) Super Size Me, and finish with a computer game (McDonald’s).

    Two interesting posts related to this topic came to me while browsing at Slate. One is about a guy that went on a beer-and-water diet for lent (40 days). Another is about violence at fast food restaurants. The more I see, the lest I like about fast food. My next movie is Food, Inc. Even better than Super Size Me.