Slashdot Mirror
Arthur C. Clarke Reports From Sri Lanka
Jeff Patterson writes "Sir Arthur C. Clarke has filed a damage report from his home in Sri Lanka on the Clarke Foundation page. He is fine, however 'among those affected are my staff based at our diving station in Hikkaduwa and holiday bungalow in Kahawa -- both beachfront properties located in areas worst hit. We still don't know the full extent of damage as both roads and phones have been damaged. Early reports indicate that we have lost most of our diving equipment and boats. Not all our staff members are accounted for -- yet.'"
Curiously enough, in my first book on Sri Lanka, I had written about another tidal wave reaching the Galle harbour (see Chapter 8 in The Reefs of Taprobane, 1957). That happened in August 1883, following the eruption of Krakatoa in roughly the same part of the Indian Ocean.
..the tide was predictable, nothing or very little was done. Ok not everybody could have been saved , but even one life was worth it, in my humble opinion.
Maybe some people should have remembered Krakatoa cataclism or just simply should have seen Clarke book. Damn, some people should just read to help prevent disasters.
I know it's dark humor, but what can I say
fyi: bbc radio is reading angry messages from listeners directed at the noaa and the usgs
the criticisms are that all you had to do was pick up the phone and call cnn: 3 hours before it hit indian coastline, something could have been done to save lives
the indian ocean has no warning system like the pacific does in place, and no one knew the extent of the wave, and even if someone had acted like the world was ending, calling everyone in the world, the fact that nothing like this has ever happened before in the indian ocean in a few centuries would mean that the bureaucracy in india, sri lanka, etc., and the media, would have moved slowly... and even if the local authorities had somehow miraculously gotten megaphones on the beach in time, you can be certain people there would have just yawned them away...
additionally, unlike in japan and the philippines, for example, the people in the indian ocean do not know to head for high ground if they feel an earthquake... this is simple education that would have saved thousands of lives
but there is no experience with tsunamis on the south side of sumatra, for example, so for the people there, where a warning system would have made no difference, simply feeling the ground shake would be all the warning that was needed to get the heck to high ground asap
so, given the anger and grief and role hindsight plays in how people judge how their reactions would have been different, and you can see a shit storm of blame and finger pointing coming: "americans don't care if we drown"
just like the tsunami, here comes a massive wave of political shitstorms
it is most important to remember that thousands died needlessly in this event had their been a system of warning buoys in place in the indian ocean like in the pacific, and the onus is on the governemnts in the indian ocean to have done that, but considering the fashionable anti-americanism in the world right now, you can easily see how this tragedy can be spun for political ends
political tsunami warning system activated
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Matt... seriously. Just go google a little. That's a little like saying you didn't know Pink Floyd were into having long hair. Faux pas aside, you've got some entertaining reads ahead. Enjoy.
Human death is always unfortunate, and tens of thousands dying is a major tragedy indeed. But there are so many people now, living on just about every habitable patch of ground on earth, that any kind of a natural disaster happening anywhere in the world kills massive numbers.
The thing is, vast majority of humans today still live in impoverished, technologically backward societies. 6 billion is too many people for a primitve infrastructure to handle.
Actually Earth can easily handle hundreds of billions, but we would need advanced technology like the Puppeteers. And not just advanced technology, but also advanced cultural and societal organization far ahead of what we have today... plus a fundamental change in how people think and behave. Now we can't just suddenly become a herbivorous herd society like the Puppeteers, but we can be nicer to others and try not to be such assholes.
Solution to earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters lie in advanced technolgy. Fleet of Worlds!
It's not only the death toll.
This tragedy affects the life of millions of people.
I was in Sri Lanka two weeks ago and I got to
know a few inhabitants there, who are living from
tourism.
They now have to go back to fishing again (I'm not joking) until the tourists are coming back
(hopefully next year).
Moreover this region is not linked to the pacific ocean tsunami network. There are no bouys here. Now the Indian Govt is planning to place deep sea sensors as well as tsunami detection system. This data will be linked with pacific ocean tsunami network.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
I am no geologist, but I wonder too about the relationship here between Earth's magnetic field changes and the two recent high magnitude quakes. Yes I know that these quakes are linked to subduction zones of the major plates, but at the same time I am thinking about the rotation of earth's magnetic core. If there is a major flip of the field, can we assume it is purely associated with field changes, or might there be some physical turbulence at lower levels, which manifest as quakes.
How can we test this hypothesis? Simple. Do some comparitive measurements of magnetic field strength and direction at the two locations which experienced major quakes. I suspect there may be a correlation, and further predict major tremblors in the near future, linked to an acceleration of magentic field changes, especially ELF magnetic signals.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
A lot of the countries affected are Commonwealth nations. In addition, about 10,000 British tourists were estimated to be in the area.
I disagree. Coverage here in Canada has been massive. The disaster has been the top story, and has been dominating newscasts. The CBC last night even presented twice during its newscast a big list of organizations accepting donations, and how to reach them via phone and the web to do so.
But then again, about twenty years ago it was Canadians that spearheaded sending aid to Ethiopia on a massive scale. I guess our brains are just wired differently.
Yaz.
I doubt England, Iraq, or Brazil are pre-empting their programing either.
Actually in the UK the 3 main news channels (BBC News 24, Sky news, ITV News) haven't left the earthquake / tsunami / asia story at all in the last 48 hours apart from the occasional 2 minute headlines roundup. CNN europe and CNBC are barely touching on it, but that's all I would expect from US owned channels. Our main channels also show news occasionally, and when they do it's 90% about the disaster.
I would say that's enough coverage of the disaster for everyone to know about it, and for anyone who wants it to get round-the-clock coverage. What more is needed?
Steve.
A latent existence
> I still hope that it will soon be gone. Not through some horrible disaster, because that's not a very nice thing to wish on anybody, but through continued political pressure.
The US's lease runs out in 2016, though I can't imagine that the UK would fail to renew it.
BTW, an interesting/informative article about the history and current military/pollitical arrangements at Diego Garcia can be found at globalsecurity.org.
Given its location and elevation (4' average, 22' maximum, according to the article), it's somewhat surprising that they didn't get washed away.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This Sunday times article starts with the latter part of the story. Complete, but brief, story can be found here and here.
This article gives a list of kings, but nothing about the disaster.
The tsunami is detected by buoys that measure the tide. If the tide goes way up at the wrong time, it must be a tsunami. If the buoy is close to the epicenter, we can then warn people that are farther away. The buoys only work when they are in shallow water. It has been reported on the news that the buoys are very expensive and this is why the nations that were hit by this disaster did not invest in tsunami prediction. It seems to me that a shore based tide detector would be very cheap if it was connected by land line.
A massive displacement of the seafloor or an undersea landslide is required to create a tsunami. There doesn't seem to be any theory for predicting this other than going with the intensity measurement of the earthquake. There doesn't seem to be any large effort to place instruments on the ocean floor to detect this movement. (It would probably cost too much)
What about the high energy wave that travels vast distances through the ocean? Shouldn't there be some way to detect this wave?
I heared in the news that in the US, people living near the coast are informed/learn at school that when the sea retreats suddenly, it's time to find out how fast you can run.. Not a bad idea, imho.
Anyway, to the US slashdotters: is this true or not?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
i kill 2 children on a schoolbus on purpose, planning to do it for months, and i am proud of the fact after i do it
versus
i kill 10 children on a schoolbus by accident, rushing medical supplies somewhere, and i am saddened of the fact after i do it and try to make amends
learn what the word "intent" means, and how it should inform judgment (but obviously doesn't inform yours) and then get back to me
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
in a world where 9/11 is possible, we are already at rock bottom
you correctly point out the risk of us actions in iraq of creating madmen
i say to you in reply that the risks are still palatable, because you have to consider the alternative: inaction
and inaction carries probably even more risk of madmen being created instead of doctors and lawyers
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
> "What have you lost, little men? Two suitcases of clothes and a digital camera???"
- Four childs lost their parents.
- One man lost his wife and his four year old doughter
- One newly married man lost his pregnant wife.
Here in Sweden theese kind of reports goes on and on. Still 1600 swedes are missing, and if you live here there is a good chance that you know someone on vacation in Thailand. They say about 20.000 swedes were on vacation there, thats about 0.2% of our population. On every office and workplace now we are counting in: Are those we know there safe or are they still missing.
In Sweden everybody has been chocked by this, it could well be one of the largets disasters that has hit us.
This will not dimish the sufferings of those who live in the disater areas, they have har times now and hard times to come, but even turists will mourn the loss of loved ones.
For a nice date: Call strftime(3C)!
I forget the exact details, but there is a MASSIVE mountainside in the canaries, which are just the sticky out above the surface bits of FAR larger undersea mounts, that is very unstable and waiting to slip.
This slip is in a sense like the NASA tracked 2004 MN4 in that nobody knows WHEN it will happen, but unlike it in that it WILL happen as there is no way for it to miss.
From my recollection the waves, when they hit the eastern US seaboard, will be much higher than the indian ocean event, due to the mass of water displaced by the falling mountainside, I believe wave heights of 100 feet were mentioned, and flatlands like florida being scoured as far inland as orlando etc... deaths would probably total millions, not tens of thousands.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
You will notice that in my previous post I did mention the people that lost their loved ones. That was a part of the list of people I mentioned:
What irked me was this ONE man (you can probably see him in the report on Euronews if you have it available in Sweden) that was complaining about his lost belongings. This is the "little man" I was talking about.And in proportion, even 20,000 Swedes or 10,000 British or 10,000 Germans that were in the region (and by reports about 10% of those are not yet reached), even though tragic stories, are puny to millions of natives present, tens of thousands killed, million displaced, whole nation of Maldives sweapt, risk of desease for numerous natives that will remain there, and the whole livelyhood of people, the whole economies destroyed in matter of minutes.
The tourists will be found, evacuated to their home countries, and by next Christmas forget about the whole thing. But people will stay there to cope with the devastation and try to rebuild their lives in the years to come.
And I commend Sweden for the prompt and heavy donation to the relief funds. Unfortunately, some countries with similar numbers of their nationals involved, but with much greater interest in the region than Sweden (and I am not talking about US) have yet to measure.
Amazing how some posters always manage to find some angle to blame the US. This thime "Americans don't give a shit!"
Yet, I saw on the BBC that the USA is the country that's giving the most money to help out with that disaster (way more than all EU). Go figure...
Come on slashdotters, what are your good flood stories?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
well in my homedown, the house i grew up in was in a depression. rain kinda puddled around my house. my dad did an EXCELLENT job of waterproofing the walls and stuff so that wasn't a problem.
The City of Abingdon, Illinois, doesn't like rainwater in their sewers, so they pump it out - and right into customer's homes. since my house was the lowest in town, all the rainwater from the sewers (and sewage that was carried with it) went into my basement. the entire town's turds and femine hygene products wound up in our basement after every heavy rain. The city would not stop pumping, even after legal action was taken. Apparently a city can do whatever it wants to protect city assets. Such is the case in Abingdon, Illinois, anyway.
My father took an old tire inner-tube, cut it from an "O" shape into a "C" shape, rubber cemented and wirewrapped the ends, waterproofing and airproofing them. then, we waited for a rain. when it began to rain hard, we shoved this tube down into the main house drain. in the basement, where the drainpipes left the house, there was a drain grate - we took the grate off, shoved the innertube down into the pipe that led outside, and inflated it. no more of my city's sewage found its way into our house! Yahoo! no more weekends spent hosing toilet paper off our basement walls... But the story does not end here.
When we blocked our sewer, we just diverted the problem. someone else had to deal with it now. then that person figured it out, and the next had a problem. eventually everyone connected to that pump blocked their sewage drains somehow, and the next time it rained, the city's pump kicked in, but that sewage had nowhere to go. The pipe outside our house (which later we learned had been cracked by a nearby tree root) failed, and our front yard erupted with the same familiar sewage. Since the pipe was between our house and the street the city declared the problem to be ours, and went on their merry way. our sewage made it out through that pipe okay, but when it rained, and with the route into every other house blocked, the sewage piled up in our front yard several times a month.
Legal action proved fruitless. My father started attending city council meetings and raising a "stink" about the problem. The city asked him to stop attending city council meetings. He did not comply. He would pull cops over (!) and ask them when the pipe would be patched. He would knock on the mayor's door and ask about the pipe at least once a week. He would bring the issue up with his dentist (also the mayor). He basically performed a very gentle and 100% polite campaign to annoy the decision makers into doing the right thing. None of that worked. This went on for 10 years.
I don't know the rest of the story, but from what I've heard he got a little help from some organization who had a lot of members in the city council. Next day the pipe was dug up, replaced, dirt put back on and new grass planted. My guess is that the Freemasons helped him but I don't know.
A year later, after all that work, my father died.
That's my flood story.
With all the hand-wringing going on we have to ask this question: why hasn't the governments of Indonesia and New Guinea instituted a tsunami warning system that covers the entire Indonesia Archipelago and the Indian Ocean?
People forget that the Indonesian Archipelago sits on one of the world's most geologically-active areas, the Indonesian Subduction Zone just south of the archipelago. As such, Indonesia is very prone to earthquakes and is home to some of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in recorded history (Tambora in 1815 and Krakatoa in 1883) and prehistory (the Toba supervolcano eruption about 75,000 years ago).
The Indonesian and New Guinea governments should have put a tsunami warning system in place after the 1998 tsunami that killed 2,500 people in New Guinea after an undersea earthquake.
The AC is right.
Deltas are what are important with currencies, not relative unit sizes. (well, deltas and how they reflect a whole complex mess of loans in the form of currency, bonds, stocks, confidence in a country, mortgages etc etc)
If the USD and the INR stayed perpetually at a ratio of 1:44 what would matter is how much you can buy with that currency.
If 1 USD will buy a loaf of bread, but 44 INR will buy the same loaf of bread, it makes no difference and the INR could not be considered "weak".
But yeah, there *are* economic gradients.
If I moved from the area where I live (where a single bedroom apartment is between $1000-$1500 a month) to some other part of the U.S. where it is only $250, then sure I'd be saving money.
Helluva commute though.
So, anyway. I totally agree that sending money will help. Just that it doesn't matter whether you send it in USD or INR - and if the INR is stable, who cares? What matters is where your particular area is in the economic gradients. Just like someone in a city in india probably has way more INR than someone in the country.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
the main thrust of my argument is that people essentially mean well in the world, and that all human beings are, or should be, equal
that is a statement of faith, not of logic: i am illogical, indeed
and if that is the faith which will fail me in this world, so be it: i would rather go down with that ship than sit in some ivory tower of negativity and inaction and lack of faith in mankind as some do, casting criticism and blame down on the heads of those of us slogging in the mud, actively trying to make things better
i am, indeed, as you suggest a "true believer": i honestly believe in the essentially sound, liberal and progressive nature of fighting fascism and fundamentalism in the middle east, with force, if necessary, as something which will uplift a region mired in socioeconomic, geopolitical, and theohistoric difficulties which make boys who would otherwise be doctors and lawyers, become madmen instead
i honestly believe that american blood and lives are being spilt right now so that someday iraqis can be free, and i am DAMN proud of that
and i have heard all the negativity, all of the cold war recriminations, all of the conspiracy theories, all of the tenuous chains of cause and effect and blame, whereby 9/11 is the fault of americans and we should just shut up, and take it
and i have plowed through mountains of that crap here, and on kuro5hin, for years now, and my faith has not budged, one inch... no in fact, after digging to the bottom of every rationale i have encountered counter to what i think, my faith has only been bolstered and reinvigorated by the essential hopelessness of those i argue with
and that no matter what bullshit wmd reasons bush the moron (bush really is a moron) gives the world for his actions, the effect of his actions is that an entire country moves from fascism to political freedom under his tutelage
so yes, bush is a "useful fool", as bin laden might say
i am a useful fool myself
so all of you who despise me, all of you think i am a deluded fool, a pawn, then understand this about the part of america you just can't understand: one well-meaning fool means a million times more in this world than a hundred million geniuses who use their intelligence to do nothing but trap their morality and their compassion and thier human conscience in a wall of inaction
human history is not a series of predetermined trends as laid out in a dry textbook
human history is populated with human beings, who have free will, and CHOOSE their destiny and the shape of their world
and that is EXACTLY what america is doing when confronted with the carnage of 9/11
i am, indeed, a well-meaning fool
and i am damn proud of it
and i know i mean so much more to history than all of you smart, negative, doubting useless criticizers who cannot offer one tiny shred of any superior workable plan of aciton in this world
i am a fool who believes in the essential goodwill of mankind and the equality of all mankind
and who are my rhetorical enemies here and elsewhere?
those who believe in negativity: no action can actually improve the state of the world, and those who believe in the immoveability of inequality: iraqis, for example "just aren't ready for democracy"
BULLSHIT
what kind of condescending, patronizing, soft racism is that?
iraqis are my equal, and i am honored that my fellow americans are dying for their future: out of the horror that is 9/11, let a tie be born between two people to reassert the basic goodwill of all mankind... that some of your demented brethren from the middle east should kill my brothers and sisters, add i respond by freeing you from political tyranny
and that makes me more cosmopolitan, and more liberal, and more progressive in thought and action than a million of these so-called punitive useless so-called liberals in this world, liberal in default classification, but not in spirit, like me
history is watching,
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAi d.asp#ForeignAidNumbersinChartsandGraphs
According to the 2004 national budget (in Norwegian) , the main strategic aid partners in 2004 were: Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Others were Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, South-Africa, Afghanistan, Indonesia, China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam og East-Timor, Guatemala, Nicaragua and the Palestinian areas.
There seems to be a connection between suicide in whales and earthquakes. Around two weeks ago, an Indian Doctor had predicted this earthquake on Princeton's mailing list based on whale behaviour in Australia. Interesting...