LEFT: Jiro Asada 浅田次郎「見知らぬ妻へ」
RIGHT: Carlos Ruiz Zafón "El juego del angel (The Angerl's Game)"
I told my son that the book I was reading is really, really depressing. He said ,"mine too." So we exchanged our books and realized that both authors look amazingly similar.
When Soyuz 1 was launched, Vladimir Komarov knew he'd never make it back to Earth. He flew only to save the life of his friend, Yuri Gagarin (NPR via Gizmodo).
Gagarin, however, couldn't make it through another year; he died 43 years ago today in a MiG-15UTI crash. The cause of the crash is unknown.
Both the first man in space and the first man who died during the space mission were interred in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.
The Pyongyan's official news agency says it has donated $500,000 to Japanese relief. As AP reported below (1:05-), another $100,000 is coming from North Korea's Red Cross.
It's a big chunk of money for a nation where, according to the Bank of Korea, only 520 citizens even made $500,000 in 2009 (TIME ).
On top of that, they're suffering from famine and have asked foreign governments for aid through all its 40 embassies last December...
US Ambassador to Japan, John Roos, debunked the rumor that US Embassy staffs have all evacuated from Tokyo, clarifying, "our employees remain in country and we are absolutely open for business."
Bridge of Death/死の橋 (c) benfairless
爆発音を聞いて住民が様子を見にここに駆けつけ被爆した
Next month marks Chernobyl's 25th anniversary, and, as Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant struggles, tourist arrivals is increasing steadily at Chernobyl.
Tour operators based in the capital city Kiev are offering guided tours for around $200 – $250 per person, taking visitors on a guided tour of Chernobyl’s wastelands and the nearby ghost town of Pripyat. The Chernobyl tour also provides visitors with the chance to get up close and personal with reactor 4’s concrete tomb, which has encased the world’s worst nuclear disaster for almost 25 years. チェルノブイリの廃墟と近在のゴーストタウンPripyatを巡るガイド付き見学ツアーは、首都Kievの観光業者がひとり200~250ドル前後の料金で行っている。チェルノブイリ観光では世界最悪の原発事故を25年近く封印してきたコンクリート詰めの4号炉の墓を間近に眺める機会も提供している―Chernobyl Sets New Standards in Extreme Tourism
But most poignantly, Colton described meeting a sibling in heaven — even though he had no way of knowing that his mother had miscarried two years before he was born, since his parents had never told him.-nbc
An amazing story. I'd like to share this with those who lost loved ones in Japan's earthquake and tsunami (I hope baptizing is not required to go to the Heaven).
Too much, too late. Coalition air forces have targeted Gaddafi's tank divisions
カダフィの戦車から空爆。「今更こんな派手に吹っ飛ばさんでも…」と米メディア唖然
(c) GORAN TOMASEVIC/REUTERS via Guardian
USS Barry (DDG 52) fires a Tomahawk cruise missile
米海軍は巡航ミサイル「トマホーク」をドカーン
審議が揉めてるNPR年間予算分の弾が一晩で消えた
On the anniversary of 'shock & awe' invasion of Iraq (March 19, 2003), the Pentagon-led coalition army launched air attack in Libya.
Eight years ago it was codenamed "Operation Iraqi Freedom," now it's "Operation Odyssey Dawn." -Mankind hasn't progressed a bit.
Effective at noon PT, AP Stylebook is changing its style on e-mail to email, cell phone to cellphone and smart phone to smartphone and the world goes 'round.
Saturday is the extreme 'supermoon'. Closest the moon has been to earth in 18 yrs. The full moonl that will rise in the east at sunset will look 14% larger and 30% brighter than usual. No, scientifically it doesn't cause Apocalyptic phenomenon, let alone quakes and tsunami that hit Japan last week.
...there is no clear evidence that any of these phenomena influenced the Japan earthquake and tsunami. "The earthquake in Japan happened when the moon was close to its average distance to Earth—there was nothing extreme about its position or phase," Anthony Cook, astronomical observer for the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles said. - National Geographics
Paul Nichollson's site "Japan Quake Map" presents time-lapse visualisation of Japan's M9.0 Earthquake and its afterquakes. After a few tremors, a silence falls, and then... the world's fourth largest earthquake of magnitude 9.0 hit, followed by countless after quakes day and night. Up untill now, Japan has experienced 557 quakes.
"It plots earthquake data from USGS on a map using the Google Maps API, with the size of the circle denoting the magnitude (the higher the magnitude, the larger the circle) and the colour showing the focal depth (see the legend below the map)."
A friend sent me a link to this Seattle PI article, featuring a physicist and engineer who helped design the nuclear reactors in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant 40 years ago.
"I'm concerned, I'm very concerned," he says. "I have yet to see anybody from the plant who's an engineer that can actually tell us what's happening - they can't see inside there because it's highly radioactive."[...]
He says these particular plants were started up in the early '70s and were designed to last about 40 years, and many other nuclear power plants like Dai-Ichi have already been shut down in the United States.
40 years! Not only that. As ABC News reported, Daiichi has General Electric-designed boiling water reactor with Mark 1 containment system, whose design was so flawed that three GE scientists resigned in protest 35 years ago.
Dale Bridenbaugh said the "Mark 1" design had "not yet been designed to withstand the loads" that could be experienced in a large-scale accident. - Reuters
The similar system still has 23 sisters in U.S. Germany has four and they already shut down after watching Japan's trouble.
One unusual characteristic of the Fukushima facility involves the spent fuel pools -- where fuel rods are held to cool down after they are moved from the reactor but before they are sent to long-term storage. At the Fukushima site, the fuel pools stand over the the reactors, which means there is a possibility they can spill radioactive material onto the reactors if there is a major accident, one expert said.
"It was done for convenience at a time 40 years ago when convenience as a design criteria was more significant than the safety issues," said Robin Grimes, head of the center for nuclear engineering at Imperial College in London. "It's the only reactor built in that way that I know of. It was a poor decision and we are living with the results of that poor decision. It's a really odd design." - ANALYSIS - Japan crisis a blow to GE, reactor design an issue | Reuters
It makes sense because Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant in nearby location that had deployed Mark 2 sustained the world's fourth strongest earthquake (M9.0) that struck Japan last Friday. Of course we can't simply compare the two unless taking into account other factors, i.e. the magnitude of quake, tsunami, location, etc..
But even if GE's design flaw were found to cause meltdown, the U.S. insurers and analysts believe GE will not be held liable for Japan's disaster.
“GE’s liability for the issues in Japan as a supplier are contractually zero, we believe,” Barclays Capital analyst Robert Cornell wrote in a research note. That’s because of a long-standing channeling law that exists between the U.S., Japan and other countries that ensure liability for nuclear accidents and damage is channeled exclusively to the plant operators and the government, Citigroup analyst Deane Dray notes. - Fox Business
So much for Tomodachi...but if that's what Japan agreed with, we should clean up our own mess... My heart goes out to Fukushima 50 who are risking their lives for the rest of us.
「日本の問題に対するGEのサプライヤーとしての責任は契約上ゼロだと我々は信じる」と、Barclays Capital社アナリストのRobert Cornell氏はリサーチノートに書いている。何故なら日・米・他の諸国の間には、核事故・損害の責任は発電所の運営会社と政府のものとする、という長期に渡るチャンネリング(振り分け?)法が存在するからだとシティグループのアナリストDeane Dray氏は指摘している。 - Fox Business
Dubbed Operation Tomodachi (friendship), U.S. Air Force and Marine helicopter and transport aircraft were moved from Okinawa to the U.S. military bases on Honshu, the mainland, to support relief operations.
Impressed by the move, someone made a fake dramatic speech that President Obama gave to US troops heading to rescue effort in Japan. Pasted below. It reads like one scene straight out of Independence Day.
Independence Day, President Speech;
『インディペンデンス・デイ』大統領演説(たぶん元ネタ);
Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in this history of mankind.
Mankind -- that word should have new meaning for all of us today.
We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore.
We will be united in our common interests.
Perhaps its fate that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution -- but from annihilation.
We're fighting for our right to live, to exist.
And should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice:
"We will not go quietly into the night!
We will not vanish without a fight!
We're going to live on!
We're going to survive!"
Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!
NYT and ABC made interactive map to show images from before and after the magnitude 8.9 (or M9.0) earthquake that hit Japan on Friday.
Those are the satellite images released yesterday by Google / GeoEye, but I could barely see the slides 'till I finally got a reply from my best friend living in the area. Thank God, her whole family was safe... But I know there're a lot more people out there who cannot even take a look at those photos, being too afraid of knowing that they lost their loved ones.
How bad is the current job market? At least 74,040 people would like to work for Charlie Sheen.(今の就職難がそこまでとは…チャーリー・シーンの元で働きたい人が最低7万4040人いるらしい) - AP-Yahoo! News
Yet another sign of coming the end of the world... If he'd come out clean, that might be a very rewarding job.
A team of Stanford University scientists, using the largest-ever genetic analysis of remote tribal people, has determined that the human family tree is rooted in one of the world's most marginal and primitive people -- the Bushmen of southern Africa. - San Jose Mercury News
It's worth knowing that we all came from Bushmen, the great tribe that consumes the least water and calories and leaves the least environmental impact. What went wrong from there?
Hundreds of FBI agents cheated on a mandatory test of new procedures. [...] Suspicions of cheating were raised when more than 200 employees passed the 90-minute exam in 20 minutes. Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that, in one FBI field office, four agents exploited a computer software flaw “to reveal the answers to the questions as they were taking the exam.”-FBI cheated on test of rules - Washington Times
It's even more shocking to me that Japan, the world's most advanced mobile nation, hasn't banned cellphone from exam sites yet.
Japan has been frenzy over Internet cheating that took place bet'n Feb 8 and 26 on four of Japan's most renowned universities, Kyoto, Waseda, Doshisha and Rikkyo, which led to a nationwide manhunt and an arrest of 19-year-old man from northern Japan. Arrest!
He allegedly posted some math and English questions to Yahoo Japan's Q&A website (screenshot above) to get quick answers from other users during the Kyoto University exam. Sitting in the blind spot from proctor, he used his left hand to type in the long sentences, some of which are really complicated math symbols, on his mobile phone. How can this be possible?
I shared the story with my son and asked him who to be blamed for this case. "The proctor's fault. Teachers here ask students to turn off the cellphones and leave them on the table at the door," he said.
We have yet to hear any apology from Kyoto University President, let alone any explanation as to how they'll revise their security measure.
If the Smart Covers for the iPad 2 looks awfully familiar to you, you might have seen either Japanese bath tab lids or Convertible Magazine Jacket by Incase.
Probably in protest to John Galliano's anti-Semitic rant, Natalie Portman wore Rodarte dress and still got praised by many fashion critics, while Nicole Kidman's Christian Dior dress was listed by many among the Worst Dressed at Oscar 2011. Some already started to call him 'Mel Gibson of the fashion world.'
It's Woodward and Bernstein meets Stieg Larsson meets Jason Bourne. Plus the odd moment of sheer farce and, in Julian Assange, a compelling character who goes beyond what any Hollywood scriptwriter would dare to invent. - Guardian
Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks have secured the screen rights to two WikiLeaks books; WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding, and Inside WikiLeaks by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Julian Assange's former colleague.
The Guardian reported last year that a US embassy memo released by WikiLeaks reveals that diplomats or representatives from 14 Arab states gathered in April 2007 and voted to ban all films and other products related to Spielberg or his Righteous Persons Foundation that made a $1m donation to Israel during the 2006 conflict in Lebanon.
スティーヴン・スピルバーグ監督のドリームワークスがウィキリークス本2冊の映画化の権利を買った。ひとつは米国務省外電リークで主導的役割を果たした英紙ガーディアンの記者2人の共著「WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy」、もうひとつはジュリアン・アサンジから離反した元同僚ルーク・ハーディング著「Inside WikiLeaks」だ。
Bill Gates has it. Bono, too. Even Howard Stringer has received the knighthood. Why not Steve Jobs?
The then-Prime Minister refused to knight Mr Jobs in 2009 because he turned down an invitation to speak at the Labour Party conference, a former senior Labour MP said.
[...]A spokeswoman for the former Prime Minister said today: "Mr Brown did not block a knighthood for Steve Jobs". - Telegraph