Breakfast Links: Tokyo Stories, Second Life & Ravens
Art on a Monday. Nice.
I just found out about this site hitotoki.org. It’s a site where people submit short narratives tied directly to a particular place in Tokyo. I believe that the goal is to have the stories be non-fictional accounts of personal experiences and it maps all the stories onto a Tokyo map where you can see things in action. Like anything, some of the stories are better than others, but I think it’s a pretty darn cool project - somewhat strangely it is all in english but seems to avoid a Lost in Translation-ey feeling. It reminded me a little bit of Tokyo Cancelled, not that I read it.
So some scientist is doing a study of how personal space issues translate into the virtual worlds, like Second Life. NPR did a little thing on it and posted a video. Turns out all the things that make you uncomfortable in real life (IRL as the kids say) also make you uncomfortable online. Too much eye contact and too close proximity all make people “look away” or “walk away”. I like the observation about how when two guys are talking to each other they keep their distance but when a guy is talking to a lady, that distance drops considerably. Good times.
And lastly, I always read that ravens were smart, played with wolves, blah blah. But this article just came out with some research into just how smart ravens are and why they evolved such intelligence. Turns out that stealing food from the world’s predators (wolves, bears, whatev!) as well as from each other makes you smarter. The articles super cool giving examples of ravens’ intelligent behaviour. I love the difference that ravens show when planning on stealing from a predator (they just watch in plain sight) vs when they’re planning on stealing from another raven (all sorts of attempts to appear to not be watching, you know nonchalant style). They totally are disrespecting the whole animal kingdom except for other ravens. It’s a long article, but quite interesting.
