San Francisco Boeing 777 Aircraft Crash, What Happened and Why?

  On Sunday morning, I woke up, jumped out of my bed and happened to see the television screen in the living room. TV news said there was a big accident in San Francisco. I was so frightened and checked out what happened.

(Reuters)

  What Happened?

  On July 6th, 2013, at 11:28 a.m. wst, Boeing B-777-28EER, which is the aircraft of Asiana Airlines, crashed the runway in San Francisco airport. That was when the plane was approaching the runway for landing. The aircraft first departed from Shanghai, stopped by in Incheon, then flew to San Francisco. 307 people were on board, and the crash resulted in 2 fatalities and 182 injured passengers. The tail section, landing gear, and both engines were seperated from the fuselage and a fire erupted. Seeing that the aircraft was broken down badly as in the photo, it surely was a hugh accident. 


  Why Happened?

  It is said that the plane was approaching the runway too slow and too low, and that the pilot had tried to speed up before trying to abort landing, but everything happened so quickly within several seconds.
  
  It has not been revealed that what caused the accident, but there are mainly two possible causes-pilot error or mechanical failure-as they are usually the main causes of many other aircraft accidents. As one of the main causes, news articles say the pilot of the Boeing 777 doesn't have much experience of controlling the aircraft type, but he has experience of about 10,000 hours of being on aircraft, which is enough time for the pilot to be considered as a veteran.

  It is also said that the control tower of Sanfranciso Airport corresponded with the pilot so slow that the pilot could not take quick measures, but that seems to need more investigation.

  At present, the press seems to put more emphasis on the role of the pilot. According to PlaneCrashInfo, about 50 percent of plane accidents is due to pilot error, followed by mechanical failure, which accounts for 22 percent. Statistically, there are more accidents caused by pilot error, but that couldn't be the clear answer for this accident in San Francisco.

(Reuters)

 
  Behind Stories

  Many stories are coming out about the accident, and one of the touching stories is one about the cabin manager of the aircraft, Lee Yoon-hye. She is being called a "hero" in the accident spot. After the crash, she never lost her control and evacuated every passengers quickly, contributing to saving a lot more passengers. She was a professional itself.

  Another story covers the two fatalities. It turned out that two Chinese teenagers were killed by the accident. One was killed after the crash, and the other is said to be hit by a car after getting out of the plane. Those two girls are described as close friends, and as smart and nice students at school. They were on their way to summer camp when the accident happened. It is so unfortunate and sad that two youths became the casualties.


  Still Under Scrunity...

  The exact cause of the accident has not been revealed yet. Some news media say the accident is because of the pilot, and some say it is because of other factors. Korea and US are joint investigating the accident to find out the original cause of the accident, and Korean investigators would join to decode the blackbox of the aircraft. Although many facts about the accidents are floating on the internet, it is too soon to jump into conclusion. I hope public opinion would not result in witch-hunt, and the actual cause of the accident would be revealed as soon as possible.




references

http://planecrashinfo.com/index.html
http://planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm

Too Cheaper and Weaker Japanese Yen, What has happened and what to do?

  These days, Japanese currency, Yen seems strange - it is too cheaper than before. It has been reported that Yen has breached the 100 yen to the US dollar mark for the first time since April 2009, in 6 years. This is not an "extremely" radical decline. The sign of the decline has been shown since last year's November, and the yen has fallen about 25% since then. 25% changes of exchange rate is considerable enough to make influences, so this problem has become a hot topic.

< Fall of Japanese exchange rate > (BBC)

  Why ?

  Then, Why on earth has yen fallen that much? One of the most pivotal reasons is so-called "Abenomics," which refers to Japanese economic policy by the incumbent prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe. The main goal of the policy is to resolve deflation problems which continue for about 15 years, and one of the policies, which is "easy money policy," is said to be the main cause of the decline of yen. 

  Someone would ask a question what the easy money policy is. What is it? The easy money policy is based on quantitative easing by which the central bank spreads money and makes the money flow. By easy money policy, the central bank buys financial assets from commercial banks and other private institutions, thus increasing the monetary base. That could relieve deflation because there would be more money supply which is one facter of inflation. However, if there is too much money, the money price would decrease. In this context, Japanese easy money policy has led to cheaper yen.


  What Kinds of Influence ?

  Changes made by weaker yen can be explained by the impacts of depreciation. 

  When there is depreciation of exchange rate, the price of one currency relative to the price of another decreases, so more money needs to be paid to buy foreign currency. In this context, when companies import goods, more money should be paid to import them, and that leads to profit loss. Therefore, importers would become unwilling to import goods. 
  On the other hand, when exporters export goods, the price of goods would be relatively cheap, which makes the goods more competitive. As a result, exporters would enjoy a demand rise of export goods. Those are the most prominent impacts of depreciation. Other than them, it can be said that there would be more travellers from foriegn countries because of cheaper price of currency, so profits of travel industry would rise. 

(Bloodberg)

  Then let's get back to Japenese yen. Nowadays in Japan, importers are suffering from expensive import goods because of depreciation of yen currency, but exporters are smiling because of a demand rise of export goods. In addition, more travellers are visiting Japan because travellers can enjoy cheaper trips thanks to weak Japanese yen. Because of more travellers in Japan, Japanese travel agencies are busy welcoming customers from foreign countries, leading more profits to travel industry.

  It is clear that there are pros and cons of depreciation of Japanese yen, but it is also clear that too much fluctuation of exchange rate doesn't usually lead to advantages but lead to considerably big loss. That's why the news that yen breaches 100 threshold mark against a US dollar is becoming a big issue, and it would be better that such issue should be resolved as soon as possible.


  Solution ?

  Japan is suffering from long-lasting deflation, so Japanese economic policy called Abenomics tries to resolve deflation, but such policy causes weak currency problems, so it seems that detailed solutions which can adjust those two problems at the same time should be made. Japanese prime minister, Abe says that they are considering purchasing foreign debts, but it seems that this plan should be made carefully. 

  When it comes to financial issues, there are both short-term financial issues and long-term financial issues. Resolving what should be resolved right now is important, but I think the most importand thing is considering and dealing with issues in the long run since long-run issues eventually make a biggest impact on economy. I hope Japan would make wise solutions for this problems. Let's watch how Abenomics would work.






references

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abenomics
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22279105

Boston bombings, Ricin letters, Plant explosion. Panicking Situations throughout the USA.

  When I check news homepages in the morning, new massive incidents are happening every day for this whole week, and the thing is, all these tragic incidents are from America. Boston marathon bombing terror, poisonous ricin letters and plant explosion in Waco, Texas. Only one tragic incident like them is panicking enough but three of them consecutively happened in America. America must be in such a chaos. So, what exactly happened in America? What are the three? I'd like to summarise those three.

(Reuters)

Boston Marathon Bombing Terror

  On Monday, April 15th, two bombs exploded near the finish line of the marathon course in Boston. One bomb exploded first, and then the other exploded after around 30 seconds. It was during the 2013 Boston Marathon, and it was Patriot's Day of America. 3 people died, more than 170 people were injured by the bombs. the bombs ripped while amatuer marathoners were coming to the finish line. That was after a few hours of professional marathoners' finishing the course. It seems that the targets were random people, not professionals. In addition, It is said that pressure cookers filled with shrapnels were used as bombs. It has not been found who did this and why it happened. As of Friday, two suspects have been captured by CCTV and FBI is struggling to find out who they are.

(Reuters)

Deathly Poisonous Ricin Letters Case

  On Tuesday, April 16th, There was a statement that letters containing lethal posion ricin had been sent to the White House. The letters were addressed to US president, Barack Obama. After the first letter was acknowledged, it turned out that two other letters had also been sent to a US Senator and a Mississippi justice offical. Fortunately, the letters were blocked before they reached the President and the Senator. Since there were similar cases in the past, the letters could be blocked by strict mail-screening.

  On Wednesday, which was the following day, FBI arrested a Mississippi guy in connection with the letters. It is said that there is no connection with the bombing terror in Boston.

(Reuters)

Fertilizer Plant Explosion in Waco, Texas

  On Thursday, a fertilizer plant exploded in Waco, Texas. It has been reported that between five and 15 people died, and there are up to 200 casualties as of Friday. The emergency services officials said that the explosion is an accident, which was caused by ammonia. Beside casualties it also destroyed numerous buildings including houses, a school and nursing home. Emergency services are finding survivors after the blast.


  Seeing those three misfortunes, the whole United States of America seems in shock and chaos. Those three are not related to one another, but they are happening altogether, which seems truly weird. With those disasters, I am little bit worried that America can't currently consider other issues which are outside the countries because White House is too busy to care about them other than caring for domestic issues. North Korea, for example, could take advantage of this chaos of America since North Korea and America were in a tense situation, but America is now less committed to the situation. 

  Sometimes, America seems the safest country in the world, but sometimes America seems the most dangerous country. However, I think the reason why America is considered an amazing country is that America takes measures really quickly after something happens and quickly but strictly prepare for prevention against same thing's happening. I think it is to be admired.

  I feel so sorry for those who are suffering from the misfortunes, and things get better as soon as possible. I hope FBI would find out who did the terror and bring them to justice quickly. I'd like to present my condolences to the casualties.

Multiple accounts of SNS(Social Networking Service), how do you think?

 

 "How many Social Networking Service accounts are you using?"

 

  It can be said that almost every single person who can get access to the internet is using Social Networking Service which is so-called SNS. As more and more people are using SNS, new kinds of SNS are showing up. 

  Since each SNS is a bit different from one another, people use many other kinds of SNS with many other purposes. For example, people use Facebook usually to connect with their "already-known" friends such as family members, schoolmates or co-workers. Facebook users usually show how they are, what they did and what they are doing right now, and friends can catch up with one another by checking their posts.

  For Twitter users, they also connect with already-known friends, but I think they usually connect with randomly new people. Because of that, Twitter users don't really care about people with whom they connect, so they tweet what they think without any deep consideration. In addition, those who see other people's tweets don't take them that serious and don't really care seriously.

  For bloggers, there is a tendency for bloggers to try to look more professional than when they are on other kinds of SNS, so they deeply consider what they are going to write down, which sometimes takes quite a long time. For blog subscribers, they can get quality information from bloggers' posts.

  Other than those three, there are many other kinds of SNS and I am also using various kinds of it including the three above. The interesting thing that I want to think about is, the characterstics of people change based on which SNS they are on, and more interestingly, I found that people use multiple accounts of one kind of SNS. That is, people have two or three Twitter accounts or multiple Facebook accounts. For me, I don't have more than one account of certain SNS, but I wanted to think about why people would do that.

  I think there are pros and cons of having multiple accounts. For pros, I believe, they can manage their social network more easily. When I leaf through my friends list on Facebook or Twitter, there are hundreds of friends, which sometimes makes me think that is "too much." This could be handled by having multiple accounts, each of which has different groups of friends. Since each account has different groups of people, what users see on news feed would differ, and they could post considering the group of friends. 
  When it comes to twitter, since users connect with mostly random people, they can manage friends more easily by having multiple accounts. Plus, when users would like to start tweeting and friendship again on twitter, they can just make a new account and start again.
  I think one of the reasons why people have multiple accounts is that it is not that complicated to make a new account. people can easily make a new account only with an e-mail address. Because of that, people just don't hesitate to do it.

  It seems that using multiple accounts is a really good thing, but I would like to cast this question. "Can I show 'completely real me' on SNS if I have many other accounts of SNS?" I would say no. It is surely great that people can manage their friends easily by having multiple accounts, but in reality, relationship is not that a simple thing. In everyday's life, we interact with many kinds of groups of people, and based on who we meet, our identity could differ. With multiple accounts, however, people can manipulate what they want to meet on the internet, and they would avoid situations in which they have to show what they don't want to show to other people. In the end, everyone on Social Networking Service would only show their edited characteristics, and friendship would become such a light thing. When something complicated happens, they can just delete everything, make a new account, and start again, which is never possible in reality. 

  In the past, this "managing people" stuff was usually the problem of public figures. Since they are being shown to people publicly all the time, they had to consider which is to show and not to show, and they had to manipulate their images. These days, however, it seems that everybody on the internet is becoming public figures. People are aware of the audience, and they show their edited characteristics and manage their images. Wow. I think this is so interesting.

  In my opinion, I don't think it is a great idea to have multiple accounts and divide my egos based on my accounts, but I also think that could be useful "only if" people wisely use the multiple accounts. Why do we bother to split your characteristics? Well, that is entirely "my personal" opinion. 
  
  So, How do you think?

Blog? Blogger? What is a blog?

  I've been interested in bloging for a long time, and, since I am Korean, I've been using Korean blogging service such as "Naver blog" or "Daum blog."
  
 
  However, I started to divert my eyes to 'wider blog world', and ended up making my new google blog, Blooger. Then, what made me think that Blogger is the wider blog world than my Korean blog? That is because blog is not just a web archives, but a "social networking" archive service in which I can 'interact' with people. In Blogger's case, I can interact with people from all over the world since google is connected with almost every countries. 

  Then, I can now explain that I started to blog here in order to jump into the wider blog world, which is Blogger.

  And, as my first step to a blog, I want to consider what the "blog" is.


Then, what on earth is blog?


 











  

  a Blog is a portmanteau of "web" and "log", so it's a weblog where people freely leave their logs on a website.

  It can be said that a blog appeared after World Wide Web had been created.
At first, the blog was a kind of one-way type, but it started to become 'interactive' type, and these days, it is one kind of the social networking service since blog writers and readers can interact one another.


What for?

  I think a blog has two main types which are

  1) a blog which is mainly for a blogger's own content but the blogger shares it with other people.

  2) a blog which is mainly for spreading a blogger's ideas or certain information to many other people.


  The first type - for a blogger's own content - seems like an open diary. bloggers can write about their ordinary life events, their own thoughts and even their private stuff. They can write about what they did for the weekend, what they saw at the theatre, how they feel right now and what they bought, and share them with other random people or certain blog mates on the internet.

 The second type - for spreading a blogger's idea or certain information - seems more professional than the former. it seems like an open newspaper or leaflets. Each blog has certain purposes. One purpose could be that journalists share their news coverage, and another purpose can be a commercial one that companies write about their products and encourage readers to buy them.
Since the second type of blog has certain purposes, the impact of each blog is much bigger than the first type of a blog.



How influential?

  a blog has characteristics of what internet has - It can be spread to many other people all over the world through the internet whenever and wherever. While the conventional media spread their articles to only subscribers, blog articles can be spread to whomever interested, so it can be more influential than the conventional media.

  when it comes to types of the influence, I think there are mainly two types intentional influence - commercial one and political one.

  If bloggers write about flaws of a certain product on their blogs, then many people would see it and it would be spread to many other people, which would end up decresing selling of the product.
On the other side, if people write about good things about a certain product and recommend it to other people on their blogs, the company of this product could take advantage of promotion effect, so some companies deliberately make their own blogs and use them for promotion. That could be the one example of the commercial influence of blog.

  Another example is the political influence of blog. If a top celebrity shows support for a certain candidate during a campaign period, many people would also follow the celebrity's support, and that would increase the possibility of the candidate's winning the election.
  

  As discussed above, a blog has much more influential power than people really think. The blog is not complete media stuff, but it surely has characterstics of media, so when bloggers write down what they think on their blogs, they should carefully consider what could happen and what could be influenced. Blogs could totally change someone's life or endanger a certain company.



Prospects...

  the number of bloggers are increasing and the professional level of bloggers is also increasing. I think blog service would get bigger and bigger, and the influential power of blog would also do so. This means that the significance of blog media is getting larger and bloggers need to consider their bloging important. 
  If each bloggers tries hard to make their best blog, the blog world would be the most wonderful cyberspace.



  wow, the first post has become such a long text. now, it's time to jump into the blog. :)

  Good to see you all!