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Today was the second day in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  The favorite thing we did today was play on the beach. I made a water pool/tunnel thing that was supposed to act like a tidal pool, but it didn't work because the tunnel kept collapsing when I tried to make it bigger. Plus the water never got to it, and the water that did dried up before more water could come in. Another thing we did that I liked was that Brandon and I had a paper airplane competition. My plane flew farther and better, obviously, and eventually he just totally gave up on it. He started making dumb planes that had around 20 wings and obviously wouldn't fly. I had a lot of fun today and I want to do it again tomorrow!

Recently I read an article about new automated drones that can follow you around without you having to touch the controls. One big danger of this is that they don't have actual motion sensors, so if you run right next to a tree, it'll probably crash and get wrecked. Even worse, if you run right past someone else, the drone could fly right into them, causing significant injuries to both man and drone. If you aren't careful, you could wreck your $900 drone by flying it into a pole. But these drones also have advantages. They can fly around buildings and swivel their camera so that it is always trained on the building. This is a very hard maneuver normally, but automation makes it easy. In addition to easy maneuvering, you can take a dronie, a selfie where the drone continually flies away from you, creating a really cool video. I think these drones have both their benefits and their drawbacks, and if I had one I would never fly it in crowded areas!

我认为中国将来很可能会有很大的潜力。我以后想当一个投资人，所以中国在我的未来中占很重要的角色。 从汉朝到元朝，中国曾经拥有个很大的市场和繁荣的经济文化。丝绸之路建立了中国和世界的桥梁。许多物品和文化流通到了别的国家，其中有各种信仰，有各个地区的知识，有各个国家的食物和艺术。这个路上传递了很多文化，比如佛教，道教，等等。 但这些国家中，还是中国的人最有创造力。他们发明了造纸术，丝绸，印刷术，指南针，和火药。这些科学和技术发展推动了世界文化发展和交流。中国曾经拥有一个大市场，有各个国家的人来来往往。 现在，中国是世界上第二大经济国家。你看为什么很多东西上面都有一行字：“Made in China” 呀？这就是因为中国有很大的制造业，它生产的东西被各个国家的人用到，世界上每个角落都有。中国土地好，能种米和别的粮食，中国人也聪明，能创造世界大的公司。中国创造了很多新技术产业。中国里有很多大公司，有阿里巴巴，百度，联想，中国航空公司，中石化，小米，等等。现在中国还是世界上的最高大的市场之一，许多国家都来中国投资。 中国的未来里很可能会是一个大经济国家。你看，以前，现在，都有千百年了，中国还是一直发展着。如果我以后我要投资，中国对我的事业会有很重要的角色。中国以后如果越来越强大， 影响整个世界，那我必须要了解中国，要不然我不会有很多挣钱互利的投资机会。 中国过去的光辉，现在的发展，和将来的潜力，会在我的生活和工作里有个很重要的角色。

For a long time, maltreating workers in factories and illegal mining has been a problem. Recently, it has gotten even worse with Apple. Reports from the BBC say that Apple iPhone factories in Asia are not improving labor conditions even though it has promised to. The workers are supposed to take a quiz to ask if they are qualified and if they want the job, but that doesn't really help because the employers stand there and tell them what to answer. For example, one supervisor said: "put a check in the two boxes that indicate you are willing. Do not check the two other boxes." They do cruel things like mandating overtime for workers, requiring workers to attend meetings without pay and forcing workers to live in overcrowded dormitories. The BBC said one undercover reporter, working in a factory making parts for Apple computers, had to work 18 days in a row despite repeated requests for a day off. Apparently Apple might also be using tin from illegal mines in its devic...

Recently I read an article about a computer club in Germany. To me, the club sounds like a club for crazy people. First of all, the article said that there were a multitude of drinks and cigarettes and drugs. Guess what the "multitude of drinks" meant? Energy drinks and beers. The energy drinks have twice the caffeine of Coke and are made to suppress hunger and increase energy. In the halls, cigarette smoke and the smell of marijuana is common. Another thing I think is crazy is that these people are all paranoid about security. To contact each other, you have to have the latest encryption and have to jumble up all your cables so that nobody can tell who it was or what you said. You also have to mistrust the authorities and do a lot of other weird things. In conclusion, I would not want to join this club!

Recently I read an article about an Israel-based company, RealView Imaging, creating holographic projectors that can scan a patient and then create a real-time hologram that can be manipulated with your hands or a stylus. First of all, the machine repeatedly scans the patient to create an image of the organ, and it is then projected through the hologram, which can then be moved an turned and measured. Apparently this works by having a half sphere reflecting light at a certain point, which then goes to your retina, producing a color image just floating in free space. For example, they used this machine during a heart procedure in a hospital in Israel, and they produced the image of the boy's heart on the machine, and you could see what was happening real-time through the hologram. The company says that doctors need to be able to visually interact with the object, not just recreate it in their mind, we receive a lot of data through our eyes. In conclusion, I think this could be a ...

Recently I read an article about New York public libraries offering Wi-Fi hubs to checkout. That way, people who cannot afford wi-fi in their homes can finally have it. The program said that at most branches, the computers are being used full-time, and as more of what the library offers is being moved online, it is more and more important that people have access to the Internet and computers so they can access what the library has to offer. You might wonder how this is sustainable. First of all, the program will not be offered to everyone, only people who really need it to learn, like people in adult learning programs, English-language courses, and residents who don’t have home broadband. Of course, the funding for the project will come from the ads that are built in and the fact that major companies like Google and Sprint are sponsoring the project. In conclusion, I think this is a really nice thing to do for the citizens of New York!

Recently Xiaomi, a company that makes phones, expanded into Indonesia. It is already a big company, third in the world behind Samsung and Apple. One thing that surprised me in the article was that 1.5 million rupiahs were worth only $122. I think that the average income, at $1499, is really little, and I don't really get how they buy the phone, pay monthly fees and everything, and eat, even if a meal is only $1. But apparently the phone is really popular in India, considering the first batch sold out in 7 minutes. Another thing that surprised me was that it had sold 100,000 phones in Indonesia already, which means 1 in around 2500 people have one. I still find that surprising because when I think of Indonesia, I think of labor and factories and workers milling away for days. I don't see how anyone could be rich enough to have a phone. In conclusion, I think I still have a lot to learn about the world.