Team Miku

While you may not have heard of Hatsune Miku, you've most likely heard one of her songs. She is a voice synthesizer program created by Crypton Future Media using Yamaha's Vocaloid2 technology to create songs. She is probably the greatest computer program ever made, showing how far technological advancements have come, thanks to Japan. The world is becoming a better place, where even average people can become pop stars. Hundreds of people have become amateur artists, creating songs rivaling and sometimes even exceeding the quality of many "professional" artists. On the popular Japanese video sharing site, Nico Nico Douga, there are thousands of songs and music videos created with Hatsune Miku from metal,to pop and techno. Over iTunes, many of these amateurs have sold hundreds thousands of copies of their songs and are spreading the culture over to the West.

We at Team Miku wish to help spread the word about the greatest program of all time. Join us at our blog, or join our Facebook group under "Team Miku."

Team Miku Awww Yeah

-Weilu Jia

Job openings still declining

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/business/economy/27jobs.html

Over the last year, we've all gone back to our daily lives and most of us probably think the economy is getting better, and it is. However, the job market isn't. Job openings are still decreasing and the unemployed are still rising, though layoffs have slowed down. According to Thomas A. Kochan, a labor economist at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. “There’s too much uncertainty out there, There’s not going to be an upsurge in job openings for quite a while, not until employers feel confident the economy is really growing.”

But how do we know the economy is "really growing". The less jobs everyone has, the less they will spend, and the less money companies make to give out paychecks. It's understandable that companies don't want to risk the economy dropping again and lose money from hiring people, but at times like these, the companies are the ones holding the economy back. 

-Weilu Jia

Palin in Foreign Policy

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0909/Palin_presses_White_House_on_Afghanistan.html

Sarah Palin. Most likely the first thoughts about her would be her inept stupidity. Notably, how she thought that Afghanistan was a neighboring country. Amazingly Palin is able to string together something competent about foreign policy in Afghanistan in a speech yesterday. Imagine that! Surprisingly, she actually makes some decent points about how we should go into Afghanistan rather than stay in Iraq. "Iraq is no longer the central front in the war on terrorism. Afghanistan is. ".... But when did she learn foreign policy? She can hardly manage a state. And where was this speech when Bush was in office. Looks like another case of band-wagoning when things look good. I'm pretty sure everyone thinks that we 'ought to get out of Iraq, not much to restate the obvious Palin.

-Weilu Jia

Twitter Politics

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27464.html

Everyone has heard of Twitter, but now people in Congress are using it too. In terms of Twitter, Republicans are far ahead of the game, with twice the number of Republicans with Twitter accounts than Democrats and nearly four times the tweets. Most notably, Senator John McCain has the most subscribers on his Twitter, making you wonder whether Democrats should step up their twittering and up their grass-root movements. Twitter seems to be a good way to be transparent to the people and help rally people by getting closer.

The article notes that people who use Twitter are more likely to lean left, and that this demographic doesn't seem to help the Republicans, however this will probably sway many people toward the right. Democrats better pick up the pace and start those tweets. A new age of campaigning has begun.

-Weilu Jia

Climate Change Fail

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/science/earth/23climate.html

Now we've all heard about global warming at one point or another and how we keep trying to do things, but never end up doing enough. Well, here we went again today at a UN Conference to talk about global warming. And you guessed it, we aren't doing enough.

China is currently the largest air polluter in the world, closely followed by the United States.  During today's United Nations meeting on climate change, over 100 countries discussed their goals on reducing emissions by 2050.

Most industrialized nations have agreed to "a 25 percent to 40 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2020". However, developing countries like China have said "Due to their low development level and shortage of capital and technology, developing countries have limited capability and means to deal with climate change". Despite this China said they would "cut carbon dioxide emissions by a “notable margin” by 2020 compared with 2005 levels; drastically increase the size of forests; increase the use of nuclear or non-fossil fuels to 15 percent of power by 2020; and work to develop a green economy."

A fairly arbitrary percentage for the more industrialized nations. They need to set a far stricter goal that isn't so vague. China had a slightly more focused plan, actually stating what they want done in a period of time, but the notable margin part is a bit more bleh.

President Obama wants the U.S to invest largely on renewable energy, and giving incentives for cleaner vehicles and clean energy. He also wanted developed countries to provide both financial and technological aid to developing countries to help the world reduce carbon emissions. 

While this looks very nice, none of this has really happened. Frankly, the Cash for Clunkers thing wasn't useful at all. It required you buy a vehicle with a fuel economy of over 22 MPG which is absolutely abysmal.  Older cars from 10 years ago had mileages ranging up to 45 miles per gallon, and after over a decade, all we ask for is 22 miles per gallon? Come on!

Many environmentalists still don't feel we are doing enough to cut emissions, however the target date is so far into the future that Indian environmental minister Jairam Ramesh said that "It is the height of dishonesty to have a target for 2050 because none of us will be around to be held accountable,".

The main problem I've found with climate change, is that no one now actually cares. They won't live long enough to see it, and their children may or may not see it either. Furthermore, all we've done so far is plan. We "plan" to cut emissions by 2050. We "plan" to invest into various clean energy. Not much has actually happened to do anything of the sort. With dates like 2050, as the Indian environmental minister had said, are so far into the future that President Obama can just push the problem onto the next president, and not have to do anything but lay a big speech on how we'll do something about it. We need change now, not in 50 years.

-Weilu Jia