Rules to improve quality of life – Midterm review

What would you do if you had 40 extra days in one year? That’s the amount of time that someone living in a big city as Sao Paulo loses every year stuck in traffic. Roads have been created by Egyptians to make the communication between the cities easier, but after the Factory Revolution, traffic has become a problem to the Governs around the world, and limits to the vehicles have been created trying to make traffic better. In huge cities like Sao Paulo, the restrictions should be bigger than they are: motorcycles have to be included in the license plates restrictions, the carpool lanes must be respected, and toll must be paid to access the city downtown.

A way to improve the traffic in Sao Paulo is expanding the license plate restrictions on motorcycles. Although they have a smaller size than a regular car, the number of motorcycles is increasing and lots of accidents have been occurring disturbing the traffic. Professor Bernardo Codman, a PhD of traffic engineering responsible for the statistics of CET (Traffic Engineering Company) of SP calls the attention to the fact that last year occurred 1 accident involving a motorcycle driver each 10 minutes in the city of SP and every one of those accidents were responsible for around 10km of traffic. He also said that every month there’s an input of 300 new motorcycles in SP. That’s why having few motorcycles driving at the same time, respecting the restriction of the license plate policy, traffic would be improved.

Another important topic is the creation of carpool lanes in SP. Having strict monitoring of carpool lanes for cars with 2 or more people will encourage the citizen to give a lift to the neighbors. Willian Knobel, the engineer responsible for the creation of carpool lanes in the city of Los Angeles said that after the restrict monitoring of the traffic in LA in the last 10 years, people who takes the carpool lanes may arrive up to 45 minutes earlier than other people who don’t use it. Thus, the carpool lanes must be implanted and regulated in SP in order to improve the traffic.

Another relevant topic is the toll payment to access the city center. This is the worst area to the traffic in all cities and a crowd of cars makes it impossible to walk around. Juan Velasquez, the traffic manager of Mexico City said that after they have implanted the toll in Mexico 30% of people start using public transportation reducing the traffic jam in 25%. In SP, a toll must be created to access downtown area because it’s impossible to walk around during the crowded hours.

In SP, the restrictions to the traffic must be enlarged because we’re almost getting stuck. Of course, the traffic engineers must do a wide research on the impacts that every decision will take on citizens’ life but it’s mandatory to start immediately. Paulistanos can’t lose more than a month per year commuting. They deserve a better quality of life.

The Hurricane iPhone – Cause/effect

IPhone sell more than a 150% of the second cell phone brand in Brazil. For many years, the Brazilian market didn’t meet the Apple technology but once it was introduced to the Brazilian’s population it becomes a red spot in sells. Since iPhone has been launched on its first generation around 2 years ago, it has become a number-one in selling around the world even in Brazil, where, due to the taxes imposed, it has the higher price in earth, but keeps being the cell phone most sold in Brazil until now. Some reasons could be raised to explain this blast out such as, having very interactive entertainment games, being innovative in the way old features, like Bluetooth, works, and having the biggest storage capacity.

IPhone has the most interactive platform to play games in market. Apple made a revolution on the way games can be played on cell phones allowing people to use their movements to move the characters on the screen or using the mouth to play a flute. If the clients want to play Ice Age 3D they may lead Scrat or Sid through a pre-historic skate half-pipe and just tilting their iPhone they’ll make the characters go up and down as well right and left. But if they rather to learn how to play the flute they just have to blow the cell phone charger-entrance to have a very good sound! This kind of interactive has never been seen before and helped the iPhone to be the leader into the cell phone-market.

Another advantage that iPhone presents in front of the others smartphones in market nowadays is its innovative Bluetooth. I know almost all phones in stores have this feature included on their platforms but no one works so well as the iPhone. The Apple device is able to transmit any song stored in it to the radio of the car and suddenly the shoppers’ favorite songs would be listened on their car’s sound system. In addition, answering or making a phone call using the voice control and listen to the person on the other side through the cars’ sound with hands-free! Furthermore, the Bluetooth from iPhone protects the rights of a singer or the owner of software because it blocks the transmission of songs and programs between other cell phones even if it’s another iPhone. With such a modern feature iPhone makes lots of points in front of the others smartphones.

Storage space is not a problem to iPhone users anymore. In this generation iPhone comes with the biggest storage capacity in market with up to 32Gb allowing the storage of more than 5000 songs or up to more than 3000 photos or even keep the owners favorite movie to watch wherever they want. With the new iPhone the access of thousands of business applications or getting secure network connectivity without worrying about losing memory is a real fact! Besides that, the Apple processor allows to maintain all those things on the iPhone keeping its velocity. Thus, not only the storage capacity is better in the iPhone but its ability to organize the apps without being slow and more: there’s no need of using other gadgets as Portable Game Players or MP3 players because there’s enough space on it an can be carried as a truth all-in-one device.

The platform used in iPhone makes it so interactive to play games, the Bluetooth so useful and the storage capacity so big that help to explain why it’s selling so much in Brazil. Of course there are so many others features that can catch the attention of the Brazilian’s consumers such as the camera, the compass, mail, GPS and many others that it’s impossible to say that these three are the most important ones. But, after Brazilian’s have been introduced to the iPhone they changed the way they look to cell phones.

Essay #2

A SCHEDULED NIGHTMARE

Loss money, no freedom and health problems. A triad nobody wants to live next to. This is a combo everybody wants to avoid, but open markets bring it to our lives every each week. Open fairs are vey old in history being known by Greeks and Romans, but only after the century XI they started to improve very fast and, of course, also increased the number of problems such as fewer taxes being paid to the government and lots of diseases being spread faster as the Black Death. Recently some epidemics have caught lots of people in many cities as well as Sao Paulo such as cholera and ebola. Street fairs should not be allowed in São Paulo roads because they reduce potential profits of local stores, violates the rights of citizens to come and go and cause healthy-related problems upon the consumptions of deteriorated food.

A reason why open food markets should be banned from Sao Paulo streets is because the businesses around the area lose money. As long as they difficult the access of shoppers to the stores most of the establishments has theirs gains reduced 20% of what they could get on a regular day. That’s the problem of Lucia Pietro, a dentist who has her clinic in the Rua Diogo Jacome in the Vila Nova Conceição. She said that since a fair has been settle in her street every Wednesday one year ago, she has lost 22% of her patients because they couldn’t have access to the clinic. She also said that the clients use to complain of being unsafe to park their cars in the street next to hers. Benjamin Linus, a 75-year-old man had his car damaged while he was in her office making a canal treatment. For this reason, open markets should definitely not be allowed.

Another important reason to remove open food markets from the streets is the disturbance they make to the residents who live on the road they are located. Once they start mounting theirs tends very early in the morning and keeps until early afternoon the citizens cannot make use of their rights to come and go as they wish. For instance, Professor Eduardo Puertas, a senior-professor in the São Paulo Federal University who lives in Rua Professor Tamandaré in the heart of Itaim, has to go work once a week by taxi because he is not able to take his car out of his garage because the vegetables tend blocks his passage way. Furthermore, it’s very common to him be awaken by shouts of “tomatoes, tomatoes a dozen for 1 real”. He said he feels frustrated of not having his rights respected by the govern as long as he pays all his taxes and deserves to be free to leave and arrive at his place. So, open markets disturb the citizen’s lives and should be removed from the streets.

Open food markets should be banned from the streets because they are also unhealthful. Most of the food stored in the streets markets is kept in inappropriate conditions such as lack of freezing accommodation becoming the ideal place to bacteria growing up. About 15 years ago there was an epidemic wave of cholera disease in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The Kanji restaurant in Moema had to close for over 15 days because more than 20 clients had gotten salmonella disease after eating salmon bought from an open fair. Therefore street food markets can be hazardous to the health and should not be allowed to work.

Based on everything above-mentioned it’s evident that street fairs in Sao Paulo make people lose money in their businesses, hurts the citizens’ freedom of locomotion and cause injuries to the health. Authorities should manage the fairs to public areas with appropriated conditions of people circulation, parking lots, and storage of food as big warehouses for example. Everybody deserves to have money, liberty, and health.