Wednesday linkfest
Here are this weeks links:
- A story of working for the New Yorker. The good news is it’s candid and tightly written. The bad news is it’s written in twitter – here’s the archived and easier to read version.
- Small and Special (Seattle) – event in Seattle on June 30th about people who run small and special companies. Run by Hillel from Jackson Fish Market
- Obesity and overweight trends in the U.S. – if only you could buy stock in how fat we are.
- The makers of things. Nice essay on one of my favorite objects in the world – The Brooklyn bridge (here’s my essay on lessons from it)
- Stats on twitter use – it’s a small sample size but the data says about 5% of Americans use twitter.
- The paradoxes of lectures – there’s no way around it. There are strange things about the world of lectures and the quality of speakers. Here’s 3 observations.
As a skinny guy in Canada I’m annoyed because thanks to stout U.S. citizens, according to the newspaper, the Honda civics after 2006 are being built with bigger seats. (I’ve owned two sports car civics)
Perhaps my Toyota Yaris is U.S. sized, because I have to use a bean bag back cushion to keep the head rest from being too forward into my poor neck.
I thought this was mostly a U.S. trend, but obesity rates in most of the western world are on the rise. Not sure it’s as fast in Canada as the U.S. but I bet it’s been trending upwards the last 5 years.
I am awaiting a call back from a human being who would have perspective. For now, the perspective-less government of Canada facts are: over the past 15 years obesity in children has doubled; over the past 25 years obesity has doubled in adults and tripled among children and youth.
Recently there has been concern about kids, a new tax credit for kid’s fitness activity has/will just come in, but there are never news stories about adults in general. Anything about, say, airline seats being widened are always datelined USA. I value such factual stories because they help to break denial by being concrete.
A U.S. blogger in Japan reports that normal Japanese restaurant plate portions would be considered child sized over here.