ham heiの日記
seoul—north korea fired artillery rockets at south korea's yeonpyeong island near a disputed maritime border tuesday, setting houses on fire in its small villages, and prompting the south to return fire and dispatch fighter jets to the area.
one south korean marine was killed in the skirmish and at least a dozen more were injured, military officials said.
photos sent to south korean tv stations by residents of nearby so-yeonpyeong island showed multiple plumes of smoke rising over its larger neighbor.
a spokesman for south korea's joint chief of staff said scores of rounds were fired by the north.
the whole neighborhood is on fire, said na young-ok, a 46-year-old woman who has lived on the island for 20 years. she was at a bomb shelter when reached by the wall street journal . i think countless houses are on fire, but no fire truck is coming. we have a fire station but the shots are intermittently coming.
ms . na said a military base on the island was on fire. she said she was with about 50 people in the shelter and her child was in a similar shelter at the school on the island. she didn't know whether people were injured.
south korean president lee myung-bak convened an emergency meeting of defense and security-related agencies. he ordered senior officials to carefully manage the situation to prevent the escalation of the clash , a spokeswoman said.
some units of the south korean military had been training in waters near the two islands earlier and north korea complained this week about the exercise, the spokeswoman said. we're examining a possible link between the complaint and the attack, the spokeswoman said.
china is concerned about the shelling and supports peace and stability between north and south korea, a spokesman for the chinese ministry of foreign affairs said tuesday.
we have noted this report, and express concern over the situation. the relevant situation needs to be confirmed. we hope all involved parties will do more to promote peace on the korean peninsula, hong lei said during a regular news conference.
japanese prime minister naoto kan ordered the government to be prepared for any developments on the korean peninsula. mr. kan told reporters he had instructed chief cabinet secretary yoshito sengoku and other officials to do their best to collect information on the situation and be prepared for any kind of unexpected incidents.
the artillery—more than 50 rounds, according to island residents speaking on south korea's ytn television —was fired from positions south of the north korean city of haeju.
the attack started at 2:34 p.m. local time. electricity was cut off on the island and people moved to bomb shelters, residents told ytn.
about 1,200 people live on the island, which is just 10 kilometers, or 6.2 miles, south of the tip of north korea's south coast.
the attack is the second by north korea this year against south korea in the disputed maritime border area of the yellow sea. in march, a north korean submarine torpedoed and sank a south korean warship near an island about west of the island that was hit on tuesday.
the yeonpyeong islands are the eastern-most of five small islands that within close-firing range of north korea. all are just a few kilometers away from the maritime border known in south korea as the northern limit line, or nll, that was drawn up by the united nations after the end of the korean war in 1953.
the north has objected to the line since the early 1970s, arguing in part that the line forces its ships to take lengthy detours to international shipping lanes. its objections intensified in the 1990s and led to two deadly skirmishes in the area in 1999 and 2002.
in 2007, leaders of the two koreas agreed to turn the area into a peace zone . that vaguely-worded agreement was struck just ahead of a south korean election by an outgoing government and never implemented. it was interpreted in north korea as erasing the maritime border and in the south as keeping it.
『 TI-89 Titanium 』
recently, i acquired a new graphing calculator by texas instruments. few weeks back i was considering a purchase of a ti-84 plus silver edition, because the titanium was way too expensive for my taste - the cheapest one i found online was selling for $342. after checking out some local stores i decided to dig around the internet for the cheapest place to get one, and that's when i found the titanium on amazon. the ti-84 plus silver edition was selling for $174, so imagine my surprise when i saw a much superior ti-89 titanium on sale for $139. i had no choice but to grab it while i still could. the tricky part was, amazon charges plenty for shipping to europe, and a package would certainly be intercepted by customs. this would mean i'd have to pay customs 20% of the price, plus 25% tax. i didn't feel like throwing my money away, so i asked my friend djgeki of cryptic allusion to buy it for me and send it to me as a gift. amazon doesn't charge for the shipping within the us, by the way. this way, i have managed to get what i wanted and i ended up saving $175. a graphing calculator might not be the best topic to discuss on a blog focused mainly on gaming, but it just so happens that there are a lot of games written for these calculators, as well as scene demos. there's even a game boy emulator, which thanks to the calculator's motorola 68000 running at 16 mhz, a 160×100 display and tons of memory, is a pretty decent alternative for those, who can't live without games, but won't dare to pull out a real game boy during class. another cool feature is the 3d graphing, which is probably the only visually interesting function of the calculator, so here's a sample video. if you can't be bothered with a nico account, go here and click play. 【ニコニコ動画】『 ti-89 titanium 3d graph 』 if the calculator wasn't enough, when i opened a package i found some additional gifts from djgeki and his wife pam . i got two gashapon capsules, one containing a super mario stylus for the nintendo ds, the other a gyakuten saiban 4 [ 逆転裁判4 ] super deformed figurine of garyū ky。ya [ 牙琉 響也 ]. on top of that, i got a small bottle of maple syrup which, up until now, i have never tasted. i always imagined that maple syrup's taste would be somewhat similar to honey, partially because of the obvious visual resemblance, and because i knew it was sweet and thick. the real taste is hard to explain. it is honey-like, but it has a hint of coffee syrup and malt somewhere in the background. i'll cook up some pancakes soon and we'll see how well these two go together. so thanks again to djgeki and pam for supplying this delicious treat. maple syrup is kind of hard to come by here, and i was told to stay away from the so called pancake syrup, which doesn't have an aounce of maple sap in it. it's always fun to try new things, especially when they're this tasty. before i go, i'd like to ask everyone to come by the cryptic allusion forums and check out the cryptocast section. there's a new podcast recorded every other week, which you can both download from the forums or participate in on justin.tv . follow djgeki's twitter to get the broadcast time and date or register on justin.tv and subscribe to the channel. you'll get a broadcast start notification via email. that's it for now! cheerio!
Small talk in English 英語で話そう！
somehow i have come to teach my niece world history. yesterday while teaching, i found a description in his textbook that america was named after amerigo vespucci who explored south american continent. as far as i know this is not as straight forward as that. the following is based on a book i read a couple of years ago (written by bill brison).
vespucci was rather a man of obscurity running a ship supply business. christopher columbus was one of his customers. it is true that vespucci made a couple of voyages to the land, today america, but always just as a passenger . he was not an accomplished seafarer as many textbooks refers to him . yet letters began circulating in florence, collected under the title new world, which stated that vespucci had not only been captain of these voyages but had discovered the new world. in fact , one of the letters which was allegedly written during a voyage down along the coast of south america said this is worth calling the new world. the general interpretation of this letter is that the author was the first to decide that it was not asia, against the general belief that it was a part of asia ( as columbus insisted). though this interpretation itself is controversial already, even if it's right, the problem is the author of the letters is still controversial even to date.
