Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: culture

  • My father, the President

    Dad has been going on and on about his recent election to the local Golden Kiwanis volunteer club in Loveland, Colorado. Loveland is a great town, and people like Dad, taking over from people like him, have made it that way. Deliberate, safe, full of life, slow, and yet with just enough cosmopolitanism to make it purple instead of red(neck).

    He insisted on having someone sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” because he was inaugurated on his birthday. Check out how the rabble responded. Tom Ryan for President!

    He was elected President of a club where the average age is in the mid-80’s. Dad is a spry 78. He is on the tail end of this elderly-boom in the local culture. The younger (non “golden”) regular Kiwanis are not interested in shifting and renewing. New organizations will take over, such as my brother’s Optimist Club, where he is past president. I’m guessing between the members of my family, we have at least 100 memberships, and probably 20 past-presidencies. I’m currently in charge of about 800,000 $US for our local teacher’s organization JALT as Director of Treasury. Next month I step down. Dan, Dad, Ginger, and Marie. Let’s count them up.

  • Voting and Elections

    There are elections in the US coming up soon, and it looks likely that there will be elections here in Japan as well. I’m really saddened that in both of “my” countries, only about half the people vote. I have to spend a lot of time to vote in the US, and I can’t vote here in Japan, and I can’t understand people that CAN vote, but DON’T. Sad. Watch this YouTube video and see what these famous actors think.

  • Boycott Thomson Reuters

    I use an excellent program for research, called Zotero. It helps me catalog everything I find about my research subjects into one easily accessed place. One of the best features is that it can pull the bibliographic information off a web page such as Amazon, and put it into a traditional format, such as APA or MLA. This has long been the most time-consuming part of research for me, getting all those niggly little commas, underlines, and dates, names and titles in the correct order and format. It helps tremendously. Highly recommended.

    Now, Thomson Reuters, publishers of a similar software, endnote, are suing Zotero because Zotero can read endnote’s formatted files and put them into an open standard. (Reported by Liberal Education and EdTechPost). Trying to close down research by suing a company that can read files your customers make is unconscionable.

    If you order Thomson Reuters textbooks, I urge you to switch to another brand.

  • Banned Books Week

    Lisa Gold is an accurately self described Research Maven, who help Neal Stephenson write the Baroque Trilogy, about late 17th Centery and ealry 18th Century physics, banking, and world politics. Here she points out that Banned Books Week is September 27 to October 4. Noting Sarah Palin’s propensity to block purchases to her local library, this is an especially important year for observation. Follow her links.

  • The Ellsberg Paradox

    Close-up of two bottles of marbles

    Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing is reading Gregory Bern’s Iconoclast. He talks about the Ellsberg Paradox. Read his description of aversion to ambiguity.  Which one would you choose?