book – Page 2 – Things Are Good

This Book Can Improve Your Creativity

The recently released book, Jam This Game, explores concepts of creativity and creation in the world of game design. You may find it challenging tot be creative on demand and this book wants to help you overcome that hurdle. The book is about the games industry however the chapters on creativity can be useful to anyone engage in a creative practice. Full discourse, I wrote the foreward to the book and if you follow the link below you will find a secret twist about the creation of the book.

Making video games is a challenge unto itself and getting a start in the games industry is equally challenging. Jam This Game reveals insights into the industry while providing advice to improve your creative process.
Ashton Irving, an industry expert, provides a comprehensive guide to help you think of video game design and how to start your creative process.
With more games being made than ever before how will you ensure your’s stands out? By providing prompts of ideas for a game within the book you will find new ways to come up with video game ideas.
Chapters will help you improve your teamwork and communication, or help you better think about the games industry at large.
If you’re working on a game already – great! These idea prompts are still useful to help you add fun to your game.

5 Ways We Can Improve Cities During the Pandemic

IKEAâ€™s research and design lab in Copenhagen released a book this month on ways we can improve our cities. They start by recognizing we’re presently facing two global crisis: a pandemic and catastrophic climate change. Their proposals to address these two issues within cities is titled The Ideal City and they outright admit that top-down urban planning is inherently problematic. The goal of the book is to demonstrate that change is possible, it’s happening, and we can make the world better by improving our lived environments.

Making Cities Safer

This chapter proposes that in addition to lowering crime, cities need to protect their citizens against extreme weather events and provide a healthy environment that fosters physical and mental well-being. It highlights a small project that makes a big impact: the Tokyo Toilet, a series of 17 public restrooms designed by renowned architects in Tokyoâ€™s Shibuya district. By incorporating colored glass thatâ€™s transparent when the lavatory is empty and opaque when in use, Pritzker Prizeâ€“winning architect Shigeru Banâ€™s design addresses two basic concerns people have with public toilets: cleanliness and how to know if someoneâ€™s inside.

Independent Bookstores Succeeding Despite Pandemic and Amazon

This century bookstores have been struggling to survive due to the rise of Amazon and changing entertainment consumption patterns. When the pandemic started many bookstore owners thought it would be the event that ends the local bookstore. It turns out, the pandemic has actually helped independent bookstores.

Bookstores have started subscription services for readers, home deliveries and got their online stores working better. Some stores have even seen an increase in sales despite everything that’s going on.

As readers hunker down to try and ride out the pandemic, what Saul and other owners have observed is an increased appetite for understanding.
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At children’s bookstore Mabel’s Fables in Toronto, when the pandemic kept some customers from visiting, general manager Lizzie McKenzie started juggling a slew of weekly virtual book clubs.

What Fiction We Read Matters Politically

The fictional worlds we engage with can change how we think about politics and how we justify our political beliefs. According to a study published in the Cambridge University Press people who read dystopian fiction are more likely to support extreme political reactions to things. The point? Read something that is good for you, go read some classic literature and try to avoid overly-dystopian worlds (or at least read them knowing the impact they may have on you).

Given that the fictional narratives found in novels, movies, and television shows enjoy wide public consumption, memorably convey information, minimize counter-arguing, and often emphasize politically-relevant themes, we argue that greater scholarly attention must be paid to theorizing and measuring how fiction affects political attitudes. We argue for a genre-based approach for studying fiction effects, and apply it to the popular dystopian genre. Results across three experiments are striking: we find consistent evidence that dystopian narratives enhance the willingness to justify radicalâ€”especially violentâ€”forms of political action. Yet we find no evidence for the conventional wisdom that they reduce political trust and efficacy, illustrating that fictionâ€™s effects may not be what they seem and underscoring the need for political scientists to take fiction seriously.

We Evolved to Walk and itâ€™s Great for our Health

Walking is great! Most of us have heard that we should get 10,000 steps a day to maintain our health, but walking is more than just taking steps. Shane Oâ€™Mara in his book In Praise of Walking explores what walking is all about (hint: it’s everything that makes us human). It matters where we walk too, so be sure to get out into some nature for a meaningful walk instead of sticking to concrete.

Oâ€™Mara, a professor of experimental brain research at Trinity College in Dublin, writes in straightforward prose, methodically presenting research and studies in support of his thesis that walking has not only been crucial to human evolution but is essential to our health. Studies show that regular walking mobilizes changes in the structure of our brain that can increase volume in the areas associated with learning and memory. He dedicates a chapter to the science behind human navigation and describes how the selective memories of our wanderings are central components of our experiences and ability to make â€œmaps of the world we have experienced.â€

Oâ€™Mara argues that walking influences many aspects of cognition â€” how we think, reason, remember, read, and write. In particular, there is a vital relationship between movement of the body and the flow of thinking. â€œSince antiquity it has been recognized that a good walk is an excellent way to think problems through,â€ he writes.