Category: Uncategorized

In a recent article in the Asahi News, the trend started in America years ago is starting to affect women’s universities here in Japan. A group of 5 women’s universities in Tokyo (not Showa Women’s where I work) have banded together to study the problem.  A couple of warning-laden statistics:

the number of women-only four-year universities has dropped nearly 20 percent over the past decade to 82, from a peak of 99 in 1998.

and

There were 4.8 applicants for every vacancy at 75 private women’s four-year universities for this school year, compared with 6.8 for all private universities.

The women’s universities advocate that it is a good place to teach leadership skills without men interfering, the closed nature of the management in Japan this reason is not borne out.

only 10 percent of those in managerial positions in Japan were women, far lower than 37 percent in Germany and 43 percent in the United States.

The outlet for an advanced education not accesible to women historically also rings false.

In 1970, only 6.5 percent of female high school graduates went on to universities or colleges; the ratio was 40.6 percent in 2007.

So my question is, when will my university go co-ed? I have a sneaking suspicion that it may be too late when they finally do decide. I just hope I can retire before then.

Microsoft has gotten its act together in forming a small team to develop software independently. The results are amazing. Photosynth is online software that “stitches” you photos together. We used to do this with paper pictures, taking many shots of the same thing, and pasting the pictures together in kind of a collage. Here it is done automatically, and beautifully. There are a million ways to exploit this. I’m going to make my first one this afternoon.

Some great art work of Tokyo scenes like Shibuya as if all humans were gone for about 50 years. Tokyo Genso (Fantasy). Reminds me of the book out a couple of years ago, The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman.

A very interesting linguistic analysis of the Beatles songs, and how meaning is conveyed by chord change. Written by Ger Tillekens from the Netherlands, this requires some knowledge of music, and of linguistics, but is an amazing look at how the two interact to provide meaning.

Young Me Now Me is a fascinating web site. It has pictures of people. One picture is when each person was young, the other is a current picture of the person in the same pose. I can’t stop looking at them.