Daily Stuff--9/5/2012

Languages--Chinese

I watched episode 49 of Travel in Chinese. This episode was a review of topics like losing your wallet and buying cold medicine.

Articles:

I read two articles from the Union Tribune. One was about McDonald's opening completely vegetarian restaurants in India. The ones that are open in the country have already eliminated pork and beef out of respect for peoples' religious beliefs. These new restaurants will be located near places of worship, where the consumption of any meat is forbidden. This isn't the first time McDonald's has changed its menu to suit the diet of a certain country. This is the case in nearly every country that the chain exists in. Some menu items are eliminated completely, while others are made differently, like in India, where the burgers are made with veggie-friendly patties. I think this is a great strategy that allows the company to spread all over the world. By catering to the diets of other countries, McDonald's isn't just limiting itself to America, where things like the Big Mac have obviously been very successful.

The second article was about a San Diego company (Tomnod) that used satellite photos to help locate too missing mountain climbers in Peru. The took the photos of the area and consulted the crowds--friends, family, people in the climbing community. They combed through the photos to look for evidence, like footprints, that would help them find the hikers. The problem is that it took a lot of luck, with there being a big technology conference. A lot of help came from that conference, where it was easy to ask for it. I think besides the fact that it's very expensive to get the resources to do something like this, the biggest hurdle Tomnod will face is people worrying that this is an invasion of privacy. People tend to get very paranoid about stuff like this. But I think, since most of the photos go pretty much untouched (at least at this point), this shouldn't be a problem. No one is going to look at these photos and find out someone's dirty little secret. And it's been proven that this could be a very effective method of conducting search and rescue efforts because it helps narrow down the search in a fairly short amount of time.

Philosophy:

I read about Dewey's political philosophy. He was anti-elitist and believed that for the few who govern the public, they are corrupted by their high position of power. So it doesn't matter if they're smarter or wiser or would ultimately make better decisions. According to Dewey, they wouldn't make those decisions but instead would only care about themselves.

Internships:

I looked up jobs at Tomnod. They have one internship for an experienced hacker but that was all I could really find.