scientists and an official found guilty due to failing earthquake detect

Lat night, I read a funny article stating that a few scientists were found guilty in Italy for failing to predict an earthquake that took place in April, 2009.

I found the article somewhat very interesting, as a group of world's most well-known scientists (geologies, meteorologists, and archaeologists) were sentence for murder, etc., and were found guilty to be sentenced for 6 years and fees.

The court claimed that a few weeks, months before the earthquake, these officials have provided inaccurate, incomplete and contradicting information to the people who were able to feel the vibration.

Of course, people are against this decision as science and technology do not have the ways and measure of predicting the earthquake.

Because of the laws in Italy for sentences are slightly different, they will not be living the sentence right away, but it would be a very interesting to see what kind of decision would be made.

As an information, with the magnitude of 6.3 earthquake, 308 people lost their lives and the city became a ruin.

obama, romney

Following politics has always been a very difficult task for me to follow since my childhood.

And now that I moved to the states, I paid less attention, especially since I was not legal to vote in both countries.

However, when I start reading articles and also look at my friends posts on Facebook, etc., Obama vs. Romney seem to be one of the biggest topics these days, especially the vote is getting near.

Just at this moment, for some reason, a conversation with my ex-coworker popped in my head.

He stated that he hates Republicans, because they take his money. So I asked him back, "then what about Democrats? Are they better?"

He had a funny laughter for 2 seconds and responded, "they're even worse. They will even take YOUR money."

Well, I am expected to become US citizen some time next year.

Maybe it is time for me to start paying attention to the political b/s, as if it were going to get my citizenship any time sooner.

Good luck to both parties, and whoever else is on the list as possible contenders.

2012 must be a busy year for Activision Blizzard

Some days ago Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 will be on 5/15/2012.

To me personally Blizzard seemed to be a little quiet after WoW started its service in the year of 2004 (maybe earlier, but that's when I was first introduced to Wow).

For past 7-8 years, I never heard of a game for Battle.NET other than the continuing expansions sets of WoW.

Finally, boom! Here we have Startcraft II Wings of Liberty, and Heart of the Swarm is expected to be released soon too.

Now, WoW 5.0, aka Pandaria or some stuff, is coming out this spring/summer as well, throughout the world, with some differences in times for different geos (wonder when China would be getting it...)

Unfortunately I did not have time and chance to participate in the beta runs or read more about them, it's going to be a heck of the game.

Hope that by May I'm a little freed up so I can give a try to this long waited game!



Except the bad part is that I got FM 2012....

Giant's Footprint?

We all know that giant dinosaurs lived many many many many years ago. How do we know that? We were educated since elementary school (or maybe even earlier) that dinosaurs did live, and this could be proven by fossils and other "prints."

Giants, on the other hand, is a little different - giants are big human beings (at least this is how I was told) existing in fantasies of our ancestors. Like the story of Gulliver.

Well, Michael Tellinger, an author and songwriter, claims that he has found a giant's footprint from 200 million years ago.

The footprint, found on January 17th, 2012, is about 4 feet long, and is clearly left on granite wall.

Estimated to be about 200 million to 3 billion years old, this print was first found by a hunter in 1912, and is 'rumored' as a giant's, or maybe even a God's footprint. 

Based on the size of this print, if there really were a giant, this giant is estimated to be about 23 feet tall.

Heroic policeman became the murderer...

I wonder how the society and the world was back in the days of our history.


Interestingly, so many weird things happen these days, unexpected and sudden, making prediction very hard as things bounce around all over the place.


Today, I read about a policeman in India is in the court for contract assassinations.


A Mumbai's serving officer is the main character in this game. He was famous for as the encounter specialist with the Mumbai Encounter Squad, suppressing criminals, as many as 112 of them.


He was dismissed from service in charge of corruption, but soon returned to the service free from those charges.


Well, he's again in charge of something, for contract assassination, pretending it was an execution of official duty.


I hope our justice does not depend on guns and night-sticks, and whatever unbelievable is not true.


Why can't hero and heroin not stay as hero and heroin but get in some sort of trouble at the end?

Penny Stocks?

Today at work, during the break, I was talking to one of my coworkers, and for some reason, our topic was about investing in stocks.Neither of us were very knowledgeable in trading stocks, as even though I was educated in finance (major mandatory), and we were just sharing our stock investment stories.

Oh, now I remember why - he first brought up the topic! He told me that he got some stocks this morning, and I asked what it was. He told me, "Kodak"

So, Kodak's stock price went up a little, from about $0.61 per share yesterday to $0.81 today - which is about 35% increase. We started sharing our investment stories, such as I told him that I usually do not follow financials and put money in for personal reasons - for example, I bought AIG right before they were going out of business, because they were sponsoring Man Utd, which is one OF my favorite teams.

Of course, after speaking of all these investment stories and Kodak stocks, our discussion was mainly for penny stocks.

What are penny stocks? These are often called as Cent stocks in other countries, and means stocks which are less than $1.00 / share price. Penny stocks usually concerns investors, as today the Internet makes stocks to be traded easily and scams/frauds to be done more easily as well. Whether to invest in penny stocks? It's your call (of course, after abundant research)!!

File Sharing is Religious??

We are speaking of the newest religion in the world. Typically religions have long history behind it, whether its Christianity, Buddhism, or supernatural traditions. There is a new religion in the world today, recognized as a religion by the government, as of January 5th, 2012.


The Church of Kopimism became officially recognized in Sweden.


This church claims that information is holy and copying is a sacrament. It further adds that information holds value, and the value multiplies by copying.


I personally agree with what the church claims, but as a Catholic I cannot agree to an item being holy and an action to be a sacrament, other than what I've been taught.


Don't get me wrong - I am not trying to preach or anything, and I do respect other religions. I'm just saying that the words 'holy' and 'sacrament' in this religion's statement.


The statement that this church puts is great - information does certainly have value, and that's why we play the informatics game/war or spying on each other, etc.


Some information is better to be hidden, but many types of information are helping the society, the world and supports humanism when shared.


For example, when there was a natural disaster, people see and hear about this specific information (in this case, news) through TV, Media and the Internet, and they support people to recover, promoting loving other people.


However, share of information and file sharing may be considered different - but who knows how file sharing may help the society as well?


It would be interesting how this religion revolves in few years, when the technology is keep improving.


For more news and information, you can certainly Google it.


Below is the article that I read.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/247315/file_sharing_church_of_kopimism_becomes_officially_recognized_in_sweden.html

North Korean Exodus?

Well, in my opinion, ever since previous US president G. Bush started calling North Korea the "axis of evil" people are more aware of North Korea (or Asia in general) before.

Just a short story of something happened in my middle school - during US history, when we were learning about the World War II and the Forgotten War (at least I think that's what the topic was... my English wasn't good that time), our teacher gave us an in-class assignment of identifying countries and coloring it in its allies.

I was the only Asian boy in that class, and there was another Asian girl in the class - two Asians in a small town's middle school, not bad, huh? Supposedly, all girls went to her, and many boys came to me, asking about countries.

They started asking questions - pointing at Japan and asking if it was Korea, and when I told them it was Japan, they asked back pointing at Taiwan saying that they thought it was Japan. Now I think about it, it's fairly understandable, because I would be still confused with Eastern European countries.

Anyway, to continue the North Korean Exodus, during the Forgotten War, a man buried gold bullion in South Korea before forced to move to NK, and his grandson, about 60 years later, escapes from North Korea for the gold - what a dramatic story.

This is actually a true story, which is currently in progress. A man escaped North Korea in 2008, and now he is claiming that there is gold bullion of about 88 pounds.under the backyard of a temple in South Korea.

The outcome would be very interesting. Personally, best wishes to this guy trying to claim his family's gold.

So, make a name.

It's been a while since I started living in the US as an immigrant - more than a decade now. May be a short time for many people, but to me personally about half of my life. For past a-bit-more-than-a-decade time frame, I never considered having an English (or more of an Americanized) name.


My name has always been a difficult thing to me and people around me - easy to some people but difficult to say or understand to the majority.


Some places an accent in my name - even though there shouldn't be any, some, especially Germans or of different language area do not even know how to read it.


What really ticks me off is when I'm ordering for take-outs from the restaurant - to make it easy, I give name "Jay" then 9 out of 10 times whoever on the phone writes it down as "Jake." Maybe my pronunciation was horrible? I thought Jay was quite English anyways...  Whatever, so be it.


Jake is the name I then chose, at least on WWW world. Had a journey of about three months last year, trying to get a name - I wanted something very unusual and unique yet still English. But when people started writing down "Jay" as "Jake," I thought Jake may be an easier name to say, understand and write down.


Not much thought afterwards, but my English name will be Jake from now and on, and probably a name I will use for ever, whether I like it or not, following the flow. And honestly, I think it's a good fit for me, whatever the meaning of it is (except it seems that my mom doesn't really like it for whatever reason).