Presentations Day 3 6/14

  Yesterday’s presentations were fun to listen to! Starting with Koji’s, his presentation was really successful in capturing the audience with his slides. For example, his definition of CORPORATION, which I presume he created, was well contrived. Furthermore, he involved the audience in his presentation by asking a few questions, which was great. The only thing I would suggest that could be improved is his organization of the presentation. The presentation itself was compelling, but I didn’t get the content the content too clearly, so maybe present 3 points like most people did?

  Masamune’s presentation was well-organized and easy to understand. One thing that I thought was lower the volume of the video while speaking because I saw how he had to raise his voice to be heard. I had heard about some protests against hosting the Olympics in Turkey, but I did not know that the protests were that devastating. They were more like riots! It’s interesting because according to the news (maybe I can’t trust those anymore because they might be censored but), they said that Japan had the lowest rate of support from the public while the other countries had 70% or more people who wanted to host it in their country. Yet, no protest are going on in Japan or at least I haven’t heard of any. I’m really starting to think that it is IOC is going to select Japan as the 2020 Olympic host.

  The topics of Takumi and Natsuko were similar. The pictures in Takumi’s presentation were big and really easy to look at. I also thought that Natsuko’s slides were concise and well-organized, following the Rab rules. Also I noticed that she voice recorded herself and played it back. I thought that was a brilliant idea, but maybe lower the volume a little since it was a bit distracting. It is said that women do “unpaid work” such as household work and child raising, receiving little recognition. In poorer countries, it seems to be worse. I agree with Natsuko about the importance of education to help the empowerment of these women. I’d like to know more about this or I will visit their websites!

   Although Narumi said she isn’t too good at speaking in front of people, I think she captured the audience with her words. In fact, she got so many laughs that sometimes I couldn’t hear what she was saying. If it is true that psychopaths are not born with some innate evil genes, then some of the things that are said about criminals in the media is misleading. For example, I think I have heard some forensic scientists saying that some people have genes that make them more impulsive or uncontrollable than others. I think that the environment the person is put in has a significant weight in turning one into a psychopath. Stating that some people are born with evil genes that increase the likelihood of him or her becoming a psychopath permits people to conclude that there’s nothing they can do to stop psychopaths since it is beyond their control to remove these evil genes (maybe in the future, it will be possible). Even if some may be born evil, some event has to trigger that and that would be the environment one is placed into.

I really like Kenta’s topic. First of all, I like believing in the connection between blood types and personalities, although I don’t consider them to be true. I find it interesting to be able to have a reason why I act in certain ways. For example, I am a family of four and all of them are blood type AB. I consider my family members to be unique as ABs are thought to be. However, the Native Indian explanation made a lot of sense. If the blood type-personality relationship did really exist, how can the whole entire population of Native Indians be outgoing and rough? Or suppose that they were, how can the society be maintained with only people like that? However, one interesting thing is I don’t always hear positive descriptions of blood type As. (no offense!) Some say they are really picky since they strive too much for perfection. Anyhow, I agree with Kenta that there is no such connection, but I will probably continue to believe in them because it’s just fun to!