Daily Stuff--9/9/2012

Languages--Chinese:

I watched episode 53 of Travel in Chinese. This episode was about the Summer Palace and what makes it such a popular tourist destination.

Articles:

I read four Wall Street Journal articles.

One was about the unemployment rate and how it could affect the upcoming presidential election. The trend has been a switch from Democrat to Republican or vice versa when the unemployment rate is high at it's highest or lowest point during the presidency. During Obama's presidency, the unemployment rate has dropped at least a little bit and jobs have been created. The problem is that people aren't seeing these changes even though they are happening. People are still having a hard time finding jobs and Obama's reelection will rely on whether or not people feel like he's done anything to improve the country. If people decide that he hasn't done things in a timely manner or that he hasn't done enough, the presidency could very well go to Romney. It makes sense that this would happen since most people, it seems, aren't swayed by facts if they aren't feeling the effects. So in the case of unemployment, even if the unemployment rate has gone down, people aren't likely to see this as a good thing unless they have gotten a job, which a lot of Americans haven't.

The second article was about the French government making budget cuts in an effort to keep the euro crisis out of France. Quite a few people think this is a bad move and from what I understand, it actually seems like it would do more harm than good. If the budget cuts lower government spending, this leads to job cuts, which leads to less people paying taxes, which leads to more budget cuts and it's a never ending spiral. So, I don't think budget cuts are the best solution but I also don't know what would be a better one.

Another article was about Apple's plan to create something similar to Spotify or Pandora--personalized radio stations. The reason why it's easy for Apple to do something like this is because they don't actually have to make that much money off of this, like Pandora and Spotify do. Apple relies mostly on the sales of iPods and iPads and other Apple products and this more than covers the fees necessary to use the songs needed.

The last article was about Apple's plans to design the new iPhone to support LTE. LTE is currently the fasted wireless internet connection available for smartphones and Apple wants it's phone to support it worldwide. The problem is that the technology is very fragmented. There are around 36 LTE bands around the world but it wouldn't be practical for Apple to use all 36 bands in one chip. So they'll have to decide which ones are the most important and which ones will offer the most seamless service around the globe.

Philosophy:

I read about Social Action in Dewey's political philosophy. He believed that people shouldn't have doctrines and social roles placed upon them. The only way for people to assert their individuality is to find out what that means on their own, with no outside help.

Internships:

I found a product engineer internship on internships.com. The company is Mitek Systems and the software they work with allows people to take a picture of a check (or something similar) and then deposit that check using the photo or perform other actions with it. They need someone who can do software testing.