Ok, I am no politician and I am certainly not an expert in the foreign affairs, but this bothers me quite a bit.
Reading a news like this makes me wonder where the government should draw a line between having a presence in the foreign country versus respecting the boundary.
This is nothing new. If you look back at the history, every war has indecent stories like this attached to it. US is certainly not alone. However if you look back at last 50 years, US has invaded foreign countries' boundaries more than others. Each time they leave behind scars. People dying in a war is unavoidable. Accidents do happen. However, this is not it. This is a serious crime.
I grew up in Japan hearing news about US soldiers raping girls around the Okinawa US military base. As a kid and not understanding politics the first question that always came to my mind was "why are they allowed in our country?". I understand politics better now, but even then I believe my childhood question is still a valid one. I'm not a judge but if US invades foreign countries in the interest of bringing order to them (and that's a big IF), soldiers raping / murdering innocent people should be considered a 1st degree murder / capital crime. If they are afraid to hand those soldiers a death penalty, I say don't go invading other countries to start with...
My coworker sent me this link:
http://sfbay.listpic.com/
Imagine a website that has iPhoto-like interface that lets you browser photos off of craigslist posts. That's what this is. Whoever wrote the site is brilliant...
All you digg-addicts probably saw this vid, but in case you haven't, this is awesome!!!
Often overlooked Google query language. There are tons of easily remembered shortcuts to making your Google search more fit for your needs. Details are explained here, but I'd like to share a few I find useful.
- Words v.s. Phrases - You can double-quote around a phrase in your Google search to force the phrase search instead of executing on each word separately. The same feature can be accessed by connecting your words using "-" (minus sign) with no spaces inbetween. (e.g. Searching for "Ryo Sode" can be accomplished by typing "ryo-sode" into your search field)
- Definition of a word - A lot of people use wikipedia/dictionary.com to search for the definition of a word. There's a much easier way. Just type "define:" in front of the word you'd like defined, then type the word/phrase and execute your search. For instance, you can find the answer to life, the universe and everything like this.
- Eliminating unwanted searches - you can add "-" in front of a word (leave no space between the minus sign and the word) to make sure the search result does NOT include URL that are associated with the word. For example, you'd like to find an information on Wii component cables, but do not want to get information on DIY (do it yourself) sites, the search query should be this: wii-component -diy . Ok, this one's a bit tricky. There are two parts to this search. The first part is "wii-component", which is the application of bullet point 1 = search on the PHRASE "wii component". The second part is "-diy" meaning do not return results associated with the word "diy".
- Currency Conversion - Since I'm from Japan and the exchange rate between the US and JPY is something I am interested in, here's the currency conversion query I use to find the latest: 1 USD in JPY . This simple query returns the latest exchange rate between US dollars and Japanese YEN. Here, you can see it yourself.
I've always been a big fan of Google and its tools. I hope I'm doing the community a service with this post.
