Daily Stuff--9/4/2012

Languages--Chinese

I watched episode 48 of Travel in Chinese. This episode dealt with buying cold medicine, both western and traditional Chinese medicine.

Articles:

I read several articles from CNBC. One was about the rising suicide rate and mental health issues in Europe since the economic crisis. The trigger is most likely the rising unemployment and the fact that mental health care has been among the first industries to suffer cuts in many countries. So with rising unemployment, people get depressed. They can't get mental health care because now it's too expensive and they don't have the money since they're unemployed. It's a vicious cycle that ultimately makes everything worse in the end.

Another article was about the rising unemployment in Germany. Germany is in much better shape than countries like Spain and Greece, but the debt crisis is still affecting people. This fact could mean that German citizens will be less keen to bail out countries like Greece and Spain. I think that if I were living in Europe, I would definitely want to live in Germany more than any other country. Compared to Greece and Spain, Germans seem to have it fairly easy.

One other trend that has arisen in Europe due to the financial crisis is that more and more babies are being abandoned by families that can't take care of them. This is reminiscent of America during the Great Depression, except, to the best of my knowledge, it was teenagers who chose to leave their families so there would be one less mouth to feed.

Philosophy:

I read about Dewey's social ethics. He stressed the importance of historical context when talking about moral philosophies. Just because a philosophy works for one time period or social group doesn't mean it works all the time in different contexts. So just because something worked for the Ancient Greeks doesn't mean it will work in modern society, according to Dewey. This is a very good point actually. It seems people tend to ignore the historical context of most philosophies, which is why they don't seem to work for a lot of situations.

Internships:

I took a look at the Marketing Manager jobs at Getaround. The job requires quick and strategic thinking, experience in marketing, and the ability to work well in groups.