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Recently I read an article about Alibaba launching internet TVs. The article talked about how Alibaba partnered with Haier to help with the TV, and partnered with Lionsgate to provide TV shows. 'Alibaba and its partner Haier Electronics  launched new TVs in China Wednesday that provide users with access to the e-commerce company’s Taobao and Tmall online marketplaces as well as movies and video games... Alibaba said the new TVs also offer entertainment programs from Lions Gate Entertainment , after the two firms announced a partnership in July to make the U.S. production studio’s movies and TV shows available through the Chinese company’s set-top boxes. The product description for the new TVs on Haier’s website shows promotional images of movies such as Hummingbird and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2, both distributed by Lions Gate.' I don't really get why you can't just use a normal TV and a normal computer to do these things (buying stuff online and w...

I really enjoy Lakeside lunch. My favorite meal, which we had the first day of school, was hamburgers (duh!). They gave you a patty, some fries, and a bun, and you could add your own lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, mayo, and whatever. I liked the meal because I like burgers in general. My favorite dessert would have to be the cake. It comes with a thick layer of frosting and also has two different flavors - chocolate and vanilla. It tastes better than normal cake, probably because normal cake has all kinds of other flavorings in it, like the glazes, and sugary fruits. Obviously, I would love it if they had a day with burgers and cake!

Today I read an article about competition between companies spawning new jobs. The main focus of the article was on new jobs like 'head of workplace'. These people make potential workers more likely to join the company. They organize things like yoga classes, pizza nights, and other events and perks that make people want to work there. I think these jobs might be the hardest, though, because you have to think of what people would enjoy the most, etc. You would need to be very creative and have very good communications skills. You would also need a lot of experience with people in general. In conclusion, I don't think this is a job for me! :)

Recently I read an article about automation making us dumb. The article explained that computers were growing very quickly and taking over jobs that humans used to have. For example, computers now control airplanes for pretty much the whole flight. Studies show that instead of making pilots learn and making them smarter, it actually makes them dumber because they have no hands-on practice with flying. A lot of veteran pilots now find that they cannot do as well as they used to be able to, and that probably also accounts to computers taking over the job. In factories, people used to think that automation would make the workers happier because they would be able to do better jobs for more money. But instead, it turned out that the workers got worse jobs - metalworkers turned into button-pushers, and eventually were replaced. Therefore, I think that in the future, people should replace machines so that we don't just turn into lazy ducks who rely on computers for everything.

Today I read an article about the Bebop, a drone that can fly around and capture video. I think it is really cool. First of all, in the video, I saw somebody whacking the drone, but it still stayed upright and didn't flip. I also thought it was awesome because when I saw the video streaming. It was 1080p HD and the streaming was really smooth. Also, you could see from a drone's point of view with an Oculus Rift, which I thought was awesome. Sold separately is the Parrot Skycontroller, which apparently makes your device into an RC-like thing, making the experience more traditional. It also boosts the device's Wi-Fi signal, enabling you to control the drone from farther away, and also making it more stable. In conclusion, I want this for Christmas! (JK)

Recently I have started playing a stock trading game called MarketWatch. The goal of the game is to earn money by investing in stocks. You start out with $10,000,000 and you just buy and sell stocks. The stocks are all synced with the real stock market, and everything is like it would be in the real world. In the game, I would say I'm doing pretty well. I have a lot of money, and I'm in 3rd place. I invest in a wide range of stocks, including IFF, U.S. Silica, and Samsung. Some other stocks I might want to buy are WFM, INVN, and WEN. The game is thrilling because you just watch your money go up and go down and its pretty thrilling. In conclusion, I think the game is really fun!

Today I read the article A Push to Back Traditional Chinese Medicine With More Data on wsj.com. This article was about Chinese medicine's growing popularity in the West. For example, research shows that the idea that there are imbalances in people's bodies - hot and cold - seem to be true so far. People who are diagnosed with hot syndromes have more of certain chemicals in their urine and people diagnosed with cold syndromes have more of other chemicals in their urine. This suggests that in the future there will be two different medicines for each disease or ailment - one for the hot and one for the cold. Another example of this possible development is Yale University pharmacology professor Yung-Chi Cheng ’s work looking at four-herb combination known as PHY906 for reducing the side effects of chemotherapy. The treatment appears to contain more than 60 chemicals. Researchers are studying it for its ability to reduce nausea and diarrhea and to en...

Yesterday I had a soccer game at Lakeside. It was the finals in the Catholic Youth Organization 2014 Fall Soccer season. In the first half, absolutely nothing happened. It was just two teams dribbling the ball up and down the field, and nobody even got close to scoring. Everybody was getting agitated, and I was, too. Nothing was happening at all! This had never happened before. Before, we had always gotten an advantage of at least one point. I was beginning to wonder what would happen at the end of the game if it was still a tie. Would there be a penalty kick shoot-out? Or would the game go into overtime? In the second half, it was the same as the first half. The two teams dribbled the ball around, and whenever one team had the ball, the other team stole the ball from that team. One time, Leo and Eli got it close to the goal, and Eli shot the ball. But the ball went a few feet wide and missed. It wasn't very pleasant on our side. Everybody was unhappy, and everybody thought that ...

Thursday was the Lakeside Band Concert. The band that I play in, the Beginning Band, was the first one to play and also the most basic one, hence the name. First, we played Lightly Row, which I messed up on because I played on the wrong part of the drum. At the end, we played When The Saints Go Marching In. On the second repeat, I totally wiped out. I was forced to improvise, and got back on track by the end of the song. The funny thing is, nobody else noticed that I messed up. I guess mistakes are more obvious when you make them yourself. There were three other bands - the Concert Band, the Jazz Band, and the Upper School Jazz Band. My favorite was actually the Concert Band. There were a lot of players in the band, and so they could afford to have all kinds of instrumentalists - triangle players, timpani players, bass drum players, snare drum players, and everything else that the other bands had. So they could make really dramatic and loud music, which I noticed in their song about ...