Presentations 6/17

I really liked Yusuke's presentation, his talking was very uptempo making it easy to follow. I could see the influences of stand up comedy in his talking, the way that he talks is absolutely hilarious. Anyway, his message that in history, there are no good guys and bad guys, only humans was something he always says in his blogs. It is obvious that he has a lot of passion for history and he showed in the presentation. He lent me a comic book by Howard Zinn which illustrates the contradictions of American history. I am looking forward to making the information inside a part of myself.

Izumi's presentation on photojournalism was interesting also. I never knew that she was a photographer, but moreover I never had considered the ethical sides of photography. I can't imagine how much pressure the photographers take on when taking photos in areas where ethical problems are brought up. Something new to consider when taking photos.

The Corporation 4~6

I honestly think that if you've watched the movie, there is no point in reading the book. The movie illustrates the topics the book covers and it is much easier to understand than the book. Anyway, it was quite obvious for me that corporations work for profit, and not humanitarianism. It is quite obvious that many corporations and celebrities give money to charity just to boost their public image. A friend of mine from the states taught me this concept when he was SEVEN years old. He used to watch the history channel and discovery channel all the time, and he had very intellectual parents, which was probably the reason he always so realistic, telling me on Christmas that Santa didn't exist etc.

I am interested in the fairly new kind of business, social business, which Koji pointed out in his presentation. There is actually another girl who is a friend of mine that is looking to shoot a documentary in Bangladesh about street children, and how there needs to be a way to start these social businesses in these areas. In ICU, there are many students who are aware of what corporations can accomplish to help educate and expand the economy in the less developed countries.

Corporations have so many negative effects on various aspects of our lives, and becoming a part of one seems like the norm especially in Japan but I really do not want to. First off, salarymen in Japan have the terrible quality of life. They work long unproductive hours and their life revolves around work. Stress levels are obviously high and although there are many merits of working in a company, I just think that it does not align with my value system. Secondly, what do salarymen actually do? I'm assuming that you do what your boss tells you to do which diminishes your creativity. Lastly, there are more interesting things one can do other than joining a company. If joining a company can accomplish your goals, then I think that is fine, but just joining one because everyone is joining one seems like a path for boredom in the future. Just my opinion though.

6/14 Presentations

The first presenter today was Koji, and I felt that his presentation was very impressing. His use of effects on keynote were fantastic, and the entire flow was great. I read his essay and thought that his perspective on what corporations could possible accomplish concerning poorer countries was interesting..

I also had read Narumi's essay after the presentation because I found the topic to be interesting. Psychopaths a.e depicted in movies such as Hannibal, and the I assume the characters were accurate in their characteristics. I wonder what motivated Narumi to select this topic, and if she likes movies like Hannibal.

Kenta's topic about blood type was entertaining because I've always thought the Japanese' obsession with blood type categorization was absurd. Obviously, there were no connections between blood type and personality. I guess it is just another form of fortune telling where the fortune teller says things that can apply to anyone.

Overall, I think everyone's presentations were informing and I had a great time listening to them!

6/12 Presentations

The topics of the presentations today were particulary of my interest because they were about food and creative arts in education. I used to have a great interest in food when I was studying sports nutrition and training. The problems America, Australia, England, and other western countries face is enormous; the food quality is rubbish. The culprit in the increase in obesity rates is sugar, not fat. The government in the U.S. in, I think it was the 1970s, sent out a message saying that fat was evil when in fact sugar was the culprit of people getting bigger. I really think that a lot of things are messed up and corrupted in America, and food is one of the issues that has turned into a major problem that cannot be fixed easily.

The quote from Picasso goes as follows: "All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up." I agree with this quote and I think that modern education kills creativity, as Ken Robinson said in his TED speech a few years back. The implementation of the arts in education is definetly a great thing, but in Japan I don't think it would be as effective as in other western countries. Japan has cultural aspects which would not correspond well with arts in education. First, Japanese value grades from standardized testing, but creative things cannot be measured by numbers. If they are, I feel that creativeness is lost in the process. Second, Japanese people tend not to express their feelings. This goes against the self expression that is supposed to happen when creating art. If it is in the form of drawing, perhaps students would be able to better express themselves because those forms of arts are not directly seen by peers. However, forms of art like dance are direct shapes of their body, therfore one can predict that Japanese students will become uncomfortable. I think it is extremely difficult to implement creative arts effectively in the education system in Japan (or in any country actually.) The only way for this to happen is for the paradigm to change, which will not happen easily. In the future there may become a time when the people realize that modern education is ineffective in embracing creativity and real knowledge and skills, not just undigested crammed information.

Some interesting videos

Here are some interesting videos somewhat relating to my presentation, about the salaryman lifestyle:

The Corporation Chapter 1-3

I think that this book gives strong points on how the corporation is morally harmful. The corporation is a psychopath, according to this book, when compared to human traits of a psychopath. I agree to this, and it was a new way of looking at things. It was very convincing and made me look at it from a new perspective.

On the other hand, people like Koji disagree with this, and say that not all corporations are evil and some strive to do good in society. I haven't done any research on this topic, but I have a bias that corporations only do good for society in order to raise the company`s image. Corporation`s role to increase profit, not to necessarily do good in society. That is why volunteer groups, NPOs, and groups like those exist and have meaning in society. According to the book, there is even a law stating that the corporation's main purpose must be to make profit. This lead to a contradiction, as mentioned in the book, that doing good for society and sacrificing profit for it is immoral. However, maybe there can be a compromise between profit and doing good for society.

I don't think it is meaningful to complain again and again about how horrible and evil corporations are, because that is quite obvious and it doesn't lead to any solutions. The problem is, the corporations own almost everything, so there is no way to fight against this, and no way to get out of this cycle of destruction. Also, the people that are in the corporations are not particulary evil, they are just doing their jobs. Which leads me to think that it is impossible to solve this problem because people would not feel bad at all for the negative effects of their corporations, because they are just doing their job well. The system is the problem, but fixing this problem is impossible. I am looking forward to Koji's presentation as he might offer some creative solutions about this topic.

6/11 Presentation Feedback

It was amazing receiving feedback from a specialist in presentations. Rab emphasized the design of the slides, and he repeated the mistakes over and over so we got it in our heads. Following the CRAP principles were key in making the slides. The points Rab made were clear, and I learned a lot today about the design aspect of presentations. The size and alignment of the photos were emphasized as well as the repetition of font style. These were all part of the CRAP principles, and I missed some of them in my slides.

I am looking forward to watching myself present, and figuring out what kind of unnecessary movements I have in my presentation. I want to take Rab`s presentation class in the winter semester because I am sure that it will help in the future when trying to share new ideas to people.

6/10 Presentations

I did my presentation today about corporal punishment, and I came across some problems. The first problem was that we did not have remote controllers so that we could slide through our powerpoints remotely while talking. I tried carrying the mouse and the keyboard, but the wires were too short to do so, so I ended up just going back and forth to the keyboard. It would have been better if I had just programmed some of the actions so that the slides would be more smoother. Another problem was time. We had 4 people in our group, which meant we only had about 6-7 minutes to talk. We had to cram everything in to get everything to fit in, but ended up having little time for questions. I liked how Rab was strict about the time, because in a professional setting the same rules apply. I needed to take out the unnecessary words in my talking to make it fit into the time, which I will try to do next time. The final problem I encountered was movement. I forgot all about walking around to make the presentation more interesting. I was distributing eye contact throughout the class, but I didn't move around enough in a natural way.

I felt Joki did a great job talking about his subject, which he was obviously passionate about. His integration of music in the slides and the points he made with it were clear and had an impact. It actually convinced me to listen to some old hip hop. He was calm throughout the presentation, and had very interesting points.

Next time I do a presentation I think I will take more photos by myself, as finding images were difficult. Also, the video I took was messed up because I took the video using the iPhone, but it wasn`t in landscape mode so the width was too short. I uploaded the videos, so you can take a look again if you want.

 

The Old Man and the Sea lecture

Mr. Paul Wadden gave us an interesting lecture about the Hemingway and the Old Man and the Sea. I had checked some information about the novel so some of the things he talked about were reviews from what I learned by looking it up. I found the approach of looking at the author's background and trying to make connections to his/her life was interesting, because doing so would lead to a much different view of the world of literature.

It was funny of him mentioning how he has friends that are authors, and how he needs to be careful because you never know when you might appear in the next novel. I can imagine how honoring that would be. Anyway, the story had a few points that were surpirising.

The first was that Hemingway showed clues of Christianity throughout the book. I wonder what motivated him to write the book. I am not too familiar with the bible, so I could not relate to the references, but Mr. Wadden explained to us the similarities in the book.

The second was how the story seemed like an old tale like Mr. Wadden mentioned. Santiago seemed to be an impossibly great human as all stories of this sort has. I question why although Hemingway was a realistic writer, this novel was more of a fantasy. What changed his writing style and what made this novel more relavant than others?

The Future of Technology is Obvious

We had a lecture from a gentleman with a great smile, Mr. Ken Enochs. He talked about technologies that is said to take over this world based on a book called "Radical Evolution" by Joel Garreu. I looked at reviews of the book, and found out that what Mr. Enochs talked about today was probably basically a summary of the book. Although I haven't read the book, the concepts Mr. Enochs talked about were all from the book. I agree with the 4 technologies that are said to take over the world (Genetic Engineering, Robotics, Intelligence, Nanotechnology) and the way he dissected them into strong and weak forms of each technology, and the 3 possible outcomes of the future, but I felt like I had felt nothing new. The things we learned today were obvious in a way, and just rephrased to make them seem like complex new things. However, I don't think Mr. Enochs was trying to give us an in depth view about this topic, but instead was trying to give us an introduction to this topic which he did a fantastic job on. I especially like his introduction slide with all the cool effects and sci-fi background music.

It is interesting to think about how technology will evolve in the future, as newer and newer technology keep coming out every year. The recent Google product, the Google Glasses, look like they have the potential to become something big. Right now, they are too expensive and too chunky to become something that normal people can use, but like a lot of digital products, after it gets more slimmer and more accessible, it is sure to become a popular product. I am predicting that someday there will be a product that is like Google Glasses, except in the form of contact lenses, or in a form that is not visible to other people. I wonder if Rab has tried them out already, because he is a member of Google. If these glasses become popular, I'm predicting that a "megane boom" might occur in Japan.

ARW 6/3

Watching TheYoungTurks' videos was entertaining and informative at the same time. I had watched their videos before, and back then I thought that they were hilarious but had no credibility, However, I checked Google if they were credible or not, and it turned out that they have a big fan base because of the way they present various news, balanced and neutral. Rab emphasized that he recommends them to us students, and because he is extremely educated and has gained my trust, I am convinced that they are a good source of information. The thing Rab mentioned at the end, saying that politics involves everything, not just war, was very interesting. The topics we discussed concerning TheYoungTurks were not all about politicians, such as the girls fight in a soccer game, the sexy Italian teacher, etc. It gave me a new perspective on politics, because Rab mentioned that people getting fired and getting sued for fighting in sports are part of politics, and I never considered those things.

We had a discussion about if the girl that punched another girl for tripping her should have been charged of assault. I felt that this would not have happened in Japan, because no one sues anyone unless something drastic occurs. America is famous for people suing people for the smallest things, and I think that played a big part in this incident. Discussing about this topic brought up a confusing question. How come violence and attacking someone in sports is allowed but not allowed in the streets? Why is it allowed in sports when its illegal on the streets? From a nonviolence perspective, sports can be seen as an excuse to commit acts of violence. However from a person that watches or plays a lot of sports, that is just utter nonsense. It's a difficult problem to solve, because it involves more than the law, as it involves cultural aspects as well. Personally, I know from experience in playing in competitive sports that fighting in sports and fighting in the streets are somewhat different. However, if we allow violence in sports, then why is it allowed in sports and not on the streets? If we make exceptions like this to the law, then I feel that there are many places where the law can become exploited in a similar way. There needs to be a clear line of what is allowed and what is not, and currently there isn't because a lot of violence goes on in sports in Japan, not only in games but corporal punishment in practice, violence from sennpais to kouhais, and etc. This is what my essay is going to be on, which I need to work on more and get it finished by the deadline.