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Quake Changes Earth's Rotation, Moves Islands
kernel panic attack writes "This week's deadly Asian Quake and Tsunami may have been so powerful,
that it changed the rate of Earth's rotation. In a Reuters article,
a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough
to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds. A second
article
says the quake moved undersea tectonic plates by up to 98 feet, shifting
islands near Sumatra out to sea an unknown distance. Also, a
USGS team wants images from commercial satellite operators to
help pinpoint coastline damage. Lastly, an interesting article from the Australian Spaceguard Survey about the need for a Tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves." The current estimated death toll is now nearly 70,000; Amazon and Google, among others, have added front-page links to simplify donating to the disaster relief effort.
Probably not as much traffic as Amazon or Google, but Apple also has also modified their front page to offer multiple relief links. Even the four boxes at the bottom have been changed to different organizations.
I would not think a quake, even of this magnitude could have that much effect on rotation. Then again, the speculation is that there could never be enough energy for a 10.0 quake, so 9.0 is pretty high up on the list. It is impossible to comprehend, but an 8.6 earthquake has enough energy to equal 60,000 hydrogen bombs. Amazing.
I have 3 friends which were supposed to be in Asia at the time. 2 have come back before the desaster happened and on had some water around his feet, not realizing the dramatic extend of the desaster. He's safe home now.
Lucky day for my friends, but other people are far from that. I'll donate this evening.
In Korea, all your base are Only For Old People
but it doesnt make it fact
it changed the rate of Earth's rotation. In a Reuters article, a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds
What will be the impact of this on geostationnary satellites?
On the measuring of time?
On the GPS?
Iraq: war to save the U
Earthquakes can't change the Earth's orbit anymore than you can fly by pulling your hair upwards.
Does this mean we are going to switch to that guy's alternative calendar now?
I thought Quake was set on Mars, not Earth.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
3 microseconds faster! 3 microseconds!? That quake is robbing me of SLEEP. I want a 25 hour day dammit, so I can sleep in ONE HOUR extra each day... although, I might not get into the swing of resetting my watch.
Article is useless, and indeed meaningless without the _what_ filled in...
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.
"a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds."
Thats alright, it all works out in the end. You see everytime we launch a explortion vehicle we loose a nanoscopic amount of rotation speed.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
"Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth's center during the quake on Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or 3 millionths of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis."
3 millionths of a second faster...per year? Per day? Per second? It would seem that that would be critical information left out of this and all other articles I've seen mentioning this change.
the wiki is here and some amazing videos are here
Absolutely amazing, the death-toll is reaching 69,000. I don't mean to be pessimistic, but would a warning system really have helped, though? I mean there are accounts of entire villages just being swept out to sea. Any life, obviously, is worth saving, but in the future I wonder how you could warn villages without power/communication systems. Very tragic.
Sig it.
But of the circumference of the earth is now smaller because of a large shift in mass, the rotational period will alter.
Its like the effect figureskaters have when they tuck arms in when spinning.
liqbase
Scientist warns of Atlantic tidal wave
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5652141/
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I seem to remember seeing something a few months ago about the earth's rotation slowing a bit -- something that the scientists can't seem to explain. Any chance this sort of thing could be related or a partial explanation?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
...oh, and earthquakes certainly don't change the orbits of asteroids.
It is interesting the Quake speeds up the earths rotation. Because there are factors like the moon that actually slow down the earths rotation. I don't know the rates of average earthquake will speed up the earths rotation vs. the rate the gravitional effect of the moon slows the rotation. So I guess in some ways earth quakes are a good thing in the long term. Because the earth having a 672 hour day would probably be more desasterious to life.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
espo
Only a fool would try to fly by pulling their hair upwards. Everyone knows you have to throw yourself at the ground and miss to fly.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
OK, let me rephrase that question, largest natural disaster to affect mankind?
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it is.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
There is a nuclear power station in Kalpakkam, India on the coastline that got hit by the Tsunami. The reactor was shutdown automatically. There was some flooding in the unit. The authorites claim it is safe. I wonder if these nuclear power station has any safegaurds for earthquacks.
0.000003 seconds * 365 days = 0.001095 seconds per year
0.001095 sec/yr * 1000 years = 1.095 seconds
You're all bastards!
A 10.0 earthquake has energy equivilant 1,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT. It would create a fault that circles the earth. A 12.0 on the other hand, with 160,000,000,000,000 tons of tnt energy, would break the hearth in half. Comparatively, the Northridge, CA quake of 1994 was "only" equal to 5,000,000 tons of emergy.
It's still hard to wrap my mind around the extent of the disaster.
It also is amazing just how much information we have at our fingertips from cell phones, cameras, the internet, and more. Had this happened twenty years ago, the sense of it would be different.
It's amazing seeing the global impact, and being aware of the global impact. The world is much smaller these days.
I am also heartened to see how the internet has given people information on how to help out. That, too, is different than what we would have faced twenty years ago. Let's hope it makes a difference.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
While it is important to have a warning system, if you look at the historical impact of tsunamis you will see that they don't happen that often. Aid money could be used for better things at this point in time.
w ave/surge)
For those interested in historical data, check out the em-dat database
http://www.em-dat.net/disasters/profiles.php
(
As if there wasn't too little time in the day already.
You're right. Earthquakes didn't change the earth's orbit, they changed the earth's rate of rotation, which is a completely different animal.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Think of all the electric I will save when I use them 3 microseconds of extra sunlight in the evening! I could save a whole seconds worth of power before I die! I don't even feel guilty for running 2 PCs all day long now!
I like muppets.
Point taken. So, the asteroid that was about to hit the Earth will now probably miss us, since the Earth's diameter is now, what, 1.5 meters less than before? Thank goodness, we're saved!
Uhm.. silly, but that's not the point I tried to make. If the asteroid changes the earths speed by 3microseconds, would this have the slightest impact on the calculations on which the NASA scientist and others are trying to make. Trying to find out which path the asteroid will take. 1/41 hit probabibility anyone? Or was it 1/39 now?
Just cause it wont or may not happen doesn't mean it's not worth investigating. "No, the earth has got less then ~2% chance of getting hit, lets just forget about scanning for asteroids.. it wont happen anyhow!".
How could the Earth shift it's rotation?
It always revolved around me before...
Amazon.com's front page has a 1-click donation link available. The money goes to the Red Cross.
-jls
Techno-pagan
But of the circumference of the earth is now smaller because of a large shift in mass, the rotational period will alter
True, but that will have no relevance to the gravational field generated by the earth's mass, which did not change (and is the only thing that matters).
NASA will have to account for the change when communicating with deep space satellites, but that should be the only real apparent effect.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
will this force Fox to rename threir show previously known as 24 Hours
I myself donated $500 to AmeriCares which seems to be a fairly reputable charity, and I'm only a poor graduate student.
Those of you who are well off enough, please, donate as much as you can to your favorite charity.
I quote John Donne:
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
I, the rotational inertia, is calculated different ways for different geometries. A long stick held by the end has a larger I than the same stick held by the center, for instance. Another example is a sphere, like the Earth, rotating on an axis. If it suddenly puts out a long arm, that's going to increase its rotation inertia considerably, decreasing its angular velocity. Lifting up a whole region by a few inches could easily do that.
What kind of global climate changes could be experienced due to the alteration of the Earth's axis by one inch?
Will that cause more or less light to strike particular areas heating/cooling the air, thusly altering the jet stream enough to manipulate the weather in a good/bad for us fasion?
BTW, the speed up of the Earth's spin is referring to the 24 hour cycle of days on Earth.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
If the asteroid changes the earths speed by 3microseconds, would this have the slightest impact on the calculations on which the NASA scientist and others are trying to make.
The speed that was affected was the speed at which the earth ROTATED on its axis.
The speed at which the earth REVOLVES around Sol in its orbit remains unchanged by this event.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Network TV news keeps saying it caused Earth to "wobble on its axis." It already does that, which is where climatic seasons come from. If it did wobble more/differently, how might the seasons be impacted, if at all?
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Yea, tell that to an ice skater.
this article at BBC News
states that a cyclone in 1970 killed up to 500,000 people in Bangladesh.
Also China suffered similar losses when an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.3 almost obliterated the north-eastern city of Tangshan in 1976. The official number of people killed was put at around 250,000, although some said the figure was more like 750,000.
And not much over 100 years ago In 1887, about 900,000 people died when [China's] Yellow River burst its banks in the worst-ever recorded flooding
Or, in terms of real catastrophe that *might* be human-created/contributed
The droughts that swept across sub-Saharan African in the 1980s led to the starvation of an estimated one million people. They are threatening to do the same again
The only change it could possibly make is WHERE on Earth it would strike if it were to actually hit us. This changed the Earths rotation, not it's orbit. This means that whatever part of Earth's surface which would be in a specific 3D coordinate in our solar system in whatever time of impact would be different, but Earth will still be there. Our mass didn't change, just the average density (and then only very slightly).
I keep hearing reports that there were actually two or three tsunami waves hitting the affected areas? Is this normal or does this indicate multiple earthquakes?
As a general rule, if you evacuate an area due to a tsunami, should you expect several waves several hours apart?
Imagine that you are sitting in a spaceship in soalr orbit holding a nice long-range rifle. You aim the rifle at the Earth. Would the speed with which the planet rotates around it's own axis affect your aim? Nope. If the planet got smaller, that may make a difference, but we're probably talking a couple of feet in changed diameter, which is not much considering the size of teh target.
What you seem to be missing is that the speed with which the Earth orbits the Sun is not what has been affected. No mass has been ejected into space, just redistributed within the Earth, so no change in the Earth's orbit around the Sun has happened. Basic physics, really. I seem to recall something about forces in opposite directions that some Englishman discovered a few hundred years ago.
TFA is sketchy.
No mass was added or taken away from the planet, so how exactly could its rotational speed have changed?
Is it analogous to a figure skater spinning with arms extended, then pulling them in, making them spin faster?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Pulling hair is not the same...
A better example would be sitting in one of those tilt-a-whirl's at the carnivals. Imagine it spinning around at a constant rate... now what do you do to make it spin faster or slower? Shift your weight.
Same principle applies here... the weight of the earth's crust shifted in a new direction. We are talking about billions of tons of rock movement from this quake, so it is entirely realistic that the rotation changed ever so slightly.
There is now a lot of speculation on other scenarios as well. One that I heard today which seemed entirely feasible is if the plates keep shifting and move down too much they just might punch a hole and let lava burst out causing under-sea volcanic eruption which could trigger off tidal waves. Andaman is having so many earthquakes now that it doesnt seem like the plates have found stability yet. Also reg. the wobble - are they sure its not due to the 8 something in Antartica - being at the pole it really should shake things up.
Loathsome Cthulhu rose then from the deeps and raged with exceeding great fury against the Earth Guardians. And They bound his venomous claws with potent spells and sealed him up within the City of R'lyeh wherein beneath the waves he shall sleep death's dream until the end of the Aeon.
The Earth is modeled in Physics classes as if the density is consistent throughout, so that they use a simplistic geocentric model as if all of the mass were at the center. This is not how The Earth is actually configured. For doing satelites one must models The Earth with micro-gravity elements, where masses are charted and denser areas have different effects based upon their sizes and locations. It is well known, for example, that under the South Atlantic Ocean there is a larger force of gravity.
And so if there were a shift in some dense part of the mantle or the core where it went farther into The Earth (or farther away) it would change the rotational speed because of the conservation of angular momentum. Think of a child spinning on a swing. When the child pulls in his arms, the child spins faster. When the child puts her arms out, she spins slower. Same with The Earth.
I wonder what effect this has had on insolation from the sun? Given that a lot of people use past insolation as an explanation for ice ages and such, I wonder if larger events than this have had effects in the past.
Lastly, an interesting article from the Australian Spaceguard Survey about the need for a Tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves.
Should we nominate those that do this for a mass Darwin award?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Anyone looking for the tsunami videos can also now find them on edonkey/emule:a ryinsanity.org.wmv
a nity.org.wmv
n sanity.org.wmv
i nsanity.org.avi
tsunami_asia_261204_patong_beach___from_contempor
tsunami_asia_261204_phuket___from_contemporaryins
tsunami_asia_261204_srilanka___from_contemporaryi
tsunami_asia_261204_zeebeving___from_contemporary
I was amazed that the NASA scientists name wasn't mentioned in the /. blurb, but then I started reading the article and realized why it wasn't. It's just Gross.
I wonder if anyone ever called him by his last name, then first in school.
because now i have to reset my watch to account for the correct time. DAMN YOU!!! DAMN YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
*sigh*
The change from the earthquake had an effect on the spin of the earth, much like your ice skater example; the mass of the earth did not change, and therefore there is no effect on its orbit.
The last fucking thing you want is my undivided attention...
Does this mean leap years are gonna go away?
Everytime I see "Quake" on /. I think of the game.
Skyscrapers, all else being equal, yes. But human activity hasn't just been increasing Earth's moment of inertia, it has also been decreasing it. Cutting down millions of trees, for instance.
That may have been true in the past, but you can bet that after this event, for years to come every time someone on a tropical beach hears the word tsunami, they're going to b-line their way as far away from the water as they can!
The U.S. will donate $35 million. Let's see...
$35000000 - amount committed to help victims
100000 - conservative death toll
= $350 - spent to aid each victim
$147000000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
17000 - rough number of Iraqis killed
= $8,647,058 - spent to kill each Iraqi
I'm ashamed to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but these numbers are sickening.
The length of a day fluctuates two milliseconds, or a thousand times more, over the course of a year. Most of this attributed to the annual pattern of ocean storms.
DigitalGlobe have the satellite image before and after the tsunami in Sri Lanka.
You are confusing rotation with orbit. And the person who moderated you post probably does, too.
Yes, the planet may very well spin a bit faster. But no, that does not affect its orbit around the Sun.
Pick up your old physics boook and check out Newtons third law of motion: "For each action there is an equal and opposite re-action." Unless the earthquake ejected a large mass into space, the Earth's orbit hasn't changed due to the quake.
If quake changed the earth's rotation, what will Doom do? Throw us out of the solar system?
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
And speaking of poor journalism, has anyone else noticed that Fox News has the epicenter of the quake totally wrong? They put it down near the bottom of Sumatra. I saw this on the first day and discounted it as early guesswork, but then I just saw it again last night (12/28), same graphic. I guess they just don't care.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Technically, if you took off your shoe and threw it at the ground with enough force, the 'kickback' from this action would cause you to 'fly' for a short time. (So says Newtons' Third Law of Motion.)
"The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves."
The author is essentially right. Growing up in hawaii, the tourists are our number one source of income, and our number one source of stupidity. Everytime Japan had earthquakes, especially the last one in Kobe a few years ago, the whole coastline was evacuated around the islands. Hotels, businesses, schools, residents along the beaches were forced to move inland toward higher ground. Yet, there were the few tourists, standing on the reef walls, video cameras in hand, waiting to FILM the tsunami. Although that tsunami turned out to be only a foot tall (the local geological surveyists and warning systems calculated the exact time the wave would have arrived), the tourists were still in great danger had the tsunami been 20+ feet tall. Unfortunately it takes an event on a scale such as this to make the general world realize the need for education on such natural disasters, so that maybe now an early warning system would be effective in saving lives, rather than losing the amount we have in the last week.
I love the American news media.
What's most important is that they let us know that, out of the (now) 67,000 people who died in the catastrophe, hundreds of them were Americans. If 200 Americans died as a result of the quake, that accounts for about 0.2% of the total. Does that statistic really make the disaster all that more horrible?
Second, it's important that we know that many celebrities were affected by the disaster. I was really relieved when I found out that Jet Li survived, but I felt saddened when I learned that a friend of Nate Berkus, a regular contributor on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," is unaccounted for.
Please, give me a break.
The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves.
..bruce..
Robert Heinlein noted that human tendency in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress--when the rebelling Lunatics drop a large rock on Earth in a relatively isolated spot (somewhere in Kansas, if I recall correctly) to demonstrate their ability to fight back, large numbers of people flock to the location to watch--and are killed.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
In a Reuters article, a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds.
...though, who am I kidding? They'd just add 10 hours to the work day, and I'd be worse off than before. *sigh*
As if the day weren't short enough as is. My work tells me that that extra 3 s are coming out of my freetime - NOT out of the company clock.
Why couldn't it have been slowed down by, oh, say, 8 hours or so? The extra 6 hours/day I'd have to put in might even be worth the extra 2 hours I'd have off.
That green slime had it coming.
The guys over at India's department of Space, National Remote Sensing Agency posted a link to an 8MB powerpoint slide of satellite images of the affected areas which effectively crippled their server due to the demand. Some of us readers over at Tsunamihelp.blogspot.com mananged to get some mirrors up here and here. I also created a .torrent which includes the images(in a PowerPoint presentation) as well as a bunch of footage of the tsunami that has been going around bringing down servers. Grab the .Torrent. Please grab the .torrent unless you're really lazy, the other mirrors will probably be tried first by those who really need the data. More seeders needed for that .torrent, leave your BT clients running please.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
http://www.mikemars.com/video/tsunamiphuket.wmv
h ttp://www.mikemars.com/video/sri_lanka_tsunami.wm v
http://www.mikemars.com/video/patong_beach.wmv
I was thinking about something the other day...
Had this event happened ~3000 years ago, it probably would have become a major chapter in some religious text, if not the foundation for a completely new religion (ocean worship?).
The article in BBC gives more details on it. The interesting thing in that article about the Pacific warning system in place...
The Pacific system gives advance notice to coastal areas and low-lying islands that floods could be on the way, so that emergency plans can be activated.
US seismologist Harley Benz said a basic system of seismic sensors and tide gauges could be set up within two years in the Indian Ocean but that, he warned, was only one element.
"Putting in the sensors is the easy part," he told AP. "The difficult part here would be coordination between emergency response agencies in the region."
Has it been used even once? When was the last time a warning came intime and people were actually rescued. It's not a burglar alarm anyway.
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
...is coming from my working time, not my sleeping time.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
I don't think that the earth is any smaller than it normally would be. I think that the result of the earthquake may have been normal subduction that takes place due to the increase in mass from the atlantic ridge. This is just a guess though, since all of my knowledge of plate tectonics comes from Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Perhaps a disaster like this gave birth to such legend...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
and even as far away as Somalia and several other countries in Africa, 4,500 km (2,800 mi) or more west of the epicenter.
The wikipedia article also has the estimated dead in Somalia in the hundreds. Unreal.
itadakimasu
Another estimate for the time change here.
1 22 80221dec28,1,6119845.column
/day
/day difference.
/year) / 12 months = 4.63 (ft/month)
.1829 ft * 12 inches = 2.195 in/year
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-04
(some useless registration required). I quote from the article.
"Incredibly, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck off Sumatra on Sunday morning caused a vertical displacement of so much material that the rotation period of the Earth has been permanently altered. By a tiny but measurable amount, the Earth is now rotating more quickly on its axis, and the 24-hour day is now one ten-thousandth second shorter.That's the result of calculations based on preliminary data made by Oak Park astronomer Dr. Leslie M. Golden. It's analogous to the increase in rotational speed that a twirling ice skater experiences when he or she draws in their arms. It is estimated that during the Sumatran quake, a block of material roughly 600 miles in length and 100 miles in width fell 30 feet closer to the Earth's axis of rotation. The planet has responded by rotating more rapidly, albeit ever so slightly, and our 24-hour days are now one ten-thousandth second shorter." by Tom Skilling.
If it is one ten-thousandth of a second then it works out to have more effect.
Doing the math for 1/10,000 of a sec/day:
so 10,000 days = 1 second
10000/365 = 27.39 years
So in 27.39 years we loose a second.
Diameter of earth 12,756 km or circumference 24,902 mi or 131,482,560 ft (appox at equator)
One second of the day means a radial distance of
24hr * 60 min *60 sec = 86400 seconds
131,482,560 (feet / day) / 86400 (sec/day) = 1521.79 feet/sec
at the equator (old 24 hour day)
or is what the eath turns in one second
or if there is change of 1521.79 feet of alignment in 27.39 years. or 55.56 feet / year.
or:
55.56 (feet/yr) * 12 in/foot = 666.72in/yr(bad omen here)
or 666.72 (in/year) / 365 days (aprox) = 1.8 in
55.56 (feet
This is a different estimate than Nasas but might be thought of as an upper bound until things
can be calculated more precisely.
Satelite's orbits will not change their period because of the change in the earths rotational speed. Geosynchronous satalites will slip out of synchronisity and need to use fuel to change their orbits, reducing their effective life as we have no way of replenishing fuel in geosynchronous orbit (around 22k miles out I think).
This will be devistating for GPS and will require immediate upgrades/repossitioning to those systems.
Can you imagine a year from now a precision guided missle landing 55 feet to the left. and each day
an additional 55 feet more. Frightning. I image the military has stopped using GPS guided weapons
until that can be corrected.
Now if you correct those numbers for the Nasa estimate.
3/100,000 instead of 1/10,000 then the
or 3,000,000 days to get one second then.
or 8219 years
1521.79 (ft/sec) / 8319 (years/sec) =.1829 (ft/year)
much less of an adjustment or a threat to satelite's positions or positioning satelites.
(check the math, who knows if I did it right)
Just an intellectual exercise to assess the effect. Enjoy
Doesn't Amazon take the biggest cut of any online payments processor for donations? I'd be personally hesitant to donate through Amazon after reading what shareware authors have had to say about them. Amazon should put its money where its mouth is and provide the payment processing for the tsunami relief commission-free.
I wonder if these nuclear power station has any safegaurds for earthquacks.
Earthquacks? You probably mean ducks that can't swim, right?
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
Since the Earth's rotation is slowing down, and will eventually reach an absolute stop, anything which keeps us spinning a little longer can only be a good thing.
Duke Nuke'em Forever will throw us out of the solar system!
... but terribly uninformed (I used worst descriptions initially, but insults will not make you change...).
A tsunami of these caracteristics has not been seen on those regions for more than 100 years, thus the local population did not necessarily have knowledge about how dangerous this could be.
Also the waves move at speeds comparable to a commercial airliner, people may get into a false sense of security since the waves could appear far away but will get to the observer's position in no time at all (a wave 10 km away would be drawning you in areound 40 sec if they move at 900km/hour)...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
(and yes, this is a deliberate troll... but bear with it for the humor, please!)
;)
Yup, NASA's the only agency that'll have to account for the change. ESA, NASDA, the Israelis, Russians, and Brazilians don't have to worry about it at all
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
nitpicking correction - earthquakes cannot change the orbit of Earth's center of mass. An explosion powerful enough to eject some matter in space, while probably nearly impossible, will effect the orbit of the remaining earth (however slightly).
Just like a grenade's center of mass follows the same orbit(trajectory) before and after the explosion (ignoring air resistance). But the explosion does change the trajectory of all the little shards.
make world, not war
...that you would have preferred that 420,000,000 Iraqis were killed, to bring the cost per kill down to a commensurate $350 level? I guess you'd really be complaining if only one Iraqi died in the whole war. After all, we'd have spent $147 Billion to kill that one Iraqi, right?
So it looks like Amazon.com is not only giving this front-page billing, they are also personally paying the credit card transaction fee, in effect losing at least a couple pennies for each dollar contributed.
In other words, they can't be faulted one iota.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
oh yeah - I forgot to say.. checked out your profile - looks like every comment you post is a worthless piece of shit you troll fucker - no one bothers replying apart from to tell your your a prick
Four hurricanes in Florida is nothing compared to this.
Imagine if this happened just off the Eastern U.S. coast during June or July. It would wipe out Miami, Daytona, Jacksonville, Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Wilmington and Norfolk. It would kill 100,000+ and possibly destroy the economies of three or four states.
Geez, and the reason the U.S. has building codes and early warning devices is because we're RICH. Most people in these countries would kill to make 10,000 a year.
It seems like this problem would take care of itself, darwin style, after a tsunami or two.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
MOD PARENT
AC has posted links to video footage of Tsunamis around the world.
Live forever, or die trying.
THe UK is donating 15 million dollars (after much pressure of the media and the general public).
This is the amount that football teams have paid for some top players in recent years:
Manchester United for Wayne Rooney: 54 million US$.
Manchester United for Rio Ferdinand: 58 million US$.
Real Madrid for David Beckham: 41 million US$.
Something is horribly wrong with this.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When you say "never" how far back does that go? Is it as far as anyone can remember, or through all of the regions recorded history, which for India is several thousand years, unless I'm misinformed.
If it's the latter, and this is something that only happens every several thousand years, a warning system is clearly not a useful investment.
Typhoons in Bangladesh and eartquakes in China have been much worse.
In regards to geographic extension it is difficult to think about something this devastating and widepread (there have beenn people killed as far as Somalia and Kenya).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In Florida, uncontrolled water consumption causes some ridiculous sinkholes. I remember when living in Tampa that an entire intersection was swallowed. Houses periodically make the news when a sinkhole takes the thing under.
This suggests to me that the water pressure holds up a good deal of what we consider to be solid ground.
Can anybody speculate that oil might do the same thing? Indonesia is a non OPEC country that exploits all they can out of the fossil liquid. Perhaps oil acts as a shock absorber against activity occurring on the crust closest to the mantle?
Laws are for people with no friends.
But then it seems Mr Bush has said more is to come, let us wait and see.
As an Indian citizen, in the middle of these dark days of our own, I do feel a tiny bit of pride on reading that the Indian government, poor and 'third world' that it is, is providing assistance to Sri Lanka & Maldives while coping with its own disaster at the same time. That is logistical aid as well as money, some USD 20 million to Sri Lanka and USD 1 million to Maldives, see http://us.rediff.com/money/2004/dec/29tax.htm. (a 'crore' is 10 million, and some 45 rupees make a dollar at today's rates).
Yes, I too intend to get out and donate tomorrow. And happily pay the 'Tsunami cess' in my taxes next year. It is our corner of the world, and we are all in it together.
Sad to say, it's already happening on the Xian message boards.
For every genuinely concerned individual who is praying for the welfare of the survivors, there's some idiot going "Wow, what a great opportunity to spread our message!" and some other sociopath going "Woohoo, Rapture coming!"
but one has to wonder if anything would've helped reduce the loss of life. warning systems can help but what does one do when one lives on an island that is at sea level? even the tallest buildings would be susceptible if anything happens to one of their supports. this is truly a horrific event and my heart and prayers go out to all those affected.
Is it 5:30 yet?
And how much money have you donated?
"In November 1970, for example, a tropical cyclone, combined with a high tide, struck southeastern Bangladesh, leaving more than 300,000 people dead and 1.3 million homeless. In May 1985, a comparable cyclone and storm surge hit the same area. "This time," according to IDNDR Director Dr. Olavi Elo, "there was better local dissemination of disaster warnings and the people were better prepared to respond to them. The loss of life, although still high, was 10,000 or about 3% of that in 1970." When a devastating cyclone struck the same area of Bangladesh in May 1994, fewer than 1,000 people died."
"The dramatic difference, according to Roundtable participant Mohammed Saidur Rahman, Director of the Bangladesh Disaster Preparedness Centre, was a new early-warning system that allows radio stations to alert people in low-lying areas."
source
All the more reason to have tsunami warnings.
I mean really, deathmatch was cool and teamfortress was probably the greatest mod ever written, but "speeds up the earth"? C'mon. I don't believe that.
In another note "The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves."
Ah, Darwin moves in mysterious waves.
-Styopa
The first time I read this I though it said "Bash" not "Bush".
I knew the shell was powerful, but that would be pretty impressive.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Your statement was off by a power of 10^5. That is a very large error.
Your correction was off by a power of 10^2. That is a very large error.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I guess you equate death, fear, and misery with freedom. Now they can write letters to the editor of the local paper from the rubble that used to be their home (assuming the US doesn't shut the paper down). Lucky them!
"$147,000,000,000..."
I hope you don't bitch about your taxes come April. Don't complain about run down national parks, your grandma's medicare, rotten VA hospitals, and everything else that money could've gone to. For someone so patriotic you seem to put more importance in Iraq than you do in the US.
"but at least I know my country _did_ something"
Taking pride in pointless violence! Good for you! Sometimes the "solution" is worse than the problem.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Actually, a change in the earth's shape/composition can alter its orbital trajectory around the sun.
That's because of tidal effects: planets are soft and deform due to the gravitational forces they exert on eachother. Those plastic deformations result in friction, i.e. the gravitational energy is being converted into heat and orbits are modified.
For example, the distance between the moon and the earth is slowly decreasing (in a distant future we will no longer observe solar eclipses!), and a similar effect exists between the sun and the earth.
So a big change in the earth's tectonic plates could in theory affect tidal effects, hence the earth's orbit around the sun (but the effect is probably tiny).
A change in the earth's inner composition could also modify its magnetic field, but I don't think that would affect its orbit around the sun.
Most companies donate money to charity. Big and Small, doesn't matter. However they only have so much money to work with. Microsoft may have billions on paper, but if they tried to turn that into cash today it would be worth a lot less.
I haven't seen anyone make the obvious joke yet:
"I told her I was going to make the earth move last night, and I sure did baby!"
Ba-dum-dum!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Actually, the 3 microsecond effect (the Earth is now spinning a bit faster, shortening our day by about 3 microseconds) will have no long term effect. Our Moon has the drag effect on Earth anyway, continuously prolonging our days - about 15 microseconds per year.
r thquake
Aha, here is a bit about that from Wikipedia[1]:
"The moment of inertia of Earth decreased a bit due to the earthquake. Because the angular momentum is conserved, this results in an increase of the angular velocity of Earth's rotation. In other words, the earthquake shortened the length of a day by as much as 3 s. However, due to tidal effects of the Moon, the Earth's rotation slows by 15 s per year. So any rotation speedup due to the earthquake will have no long-lasting effect at all."
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_ea
Simpy
how long it will be before I get my first "Help the victims of the tsunami, forward this mail to everyone you know and $company will donate $0.10 per person to the relief fund" chain email? Nothing is sacred to those shitheads.
"Any similarity between the hooting of a million eager monkeys and Slashdot is purely coincidental." -THEFLASHMAN
God!
Your post made me mad, really. I've had to make a serious effort to remind myself that I should not fall to easy generalizations. No, most Americans are not like you. Most Americans are actually decent and caring people.
Most Americans just happen to live in the same country as you. I don't even think that the proportion of selfish bastards is higher in the US than in other countries. It's just that, for some reason, selfish bastards are more vocal in the US than elsewhere.
It's OK now, the burst of anger has receded. My faith and respect in the American people is unharmed. I'm even willing to consider that you didn't really think before posting and that you don't really mean that. But do you realize how hard you make it not to hate the US? Do you realize that you're a liability to your country?
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
http://news.google.com/news?q=stingy&hl=en&lr=&sa= N&tab=wn
Nobody's making fun of the situation, it's a jab at a dope from the UN who called the US stingy, along with the rest of "the West." Hardly an appropriate label for one of, if not the most generous nation(s) on the planet (yes, even per capita).
I suspect people will use this as a springboard to say, "yes, but the US is so terrible because of x, y, and z" since this is Slashdot, after all - but that has nothing to do with charity.
I'm not making fun of the "cause". I'm just pointing out the huge outpouring of genorisity from the supposedly "stingy" Americans.
It's always acceptable to make fun of the idiots in the UN.
Question to U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center, sedas [-AT-] neis.cr.usgs.gov: I haven't seen this discussed anywhere. Why didn't the NEIC call the U.S. State Department, so that they could warn people about the Tsunamis? The earthquake position and magnitude was known 6 hours before the waves arrived in Thailand, I understand. Wouldn't almost every person's life have been saved if Thailand, for example, had had warning? It is easy to find the telephone numbers of newspapers in beach cities in Thailand, for example, by searching with Google.
Actually, the Red Cross has been asking for cash more than goods. It's quicker and easier to ship money (done electronicaly) and they can buy the goods closer to the catastrophe. It costs them money to ship out clothing et al, and it's slower.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Sorry refered to 55 ft/day that is per/year but 4.63 ft month or about 1.8in/ day. So you have a month or two to move from next to ground zero to not be mistaken for a terroist bomb factory by a GPS weapon (if the GPS system is not updated).
If you do want to help, donate clothing/water purifiers like Brita more than cash. They atleast go the victims directly.
DO NOT DO THIS!!! Donate cash. Legitimate organizations can spend your money far better than you can. They'll have (access to) locals who will know what's needed. The $10 you spend on a filtered water pitcher (which won't help with bacteria) could go toward a real purifier that several people could use.
Things are cheaper over there, and they'll usually negotiate deals on bulk purchases anyway. Plus, rather than a few bits in a bank's computer, you've caused them to deal with physical items...they have enough logistical problems.
Now, if you (general "you", not freedom_india specifically) are local to the area, quit reading Slashdot and start helping!
You are completely right.
Whatever people say about big businesses, it's still easier to trust Amazon.com with a donation than it is to trust the government with anything.
Cool.
I never got troll points before!
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
In fact even India is asking for Goods help and refuses cash help as it is more susceptible to theft.
My 2 bits...
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Umm, I think the person... err... Idiot who wrote this apparently is too busy with their head up in some part of their body to comprehend the reality here. Oh, and not to mention that the earthquake in CA (I happen to be in SFO then), was in the middle of nowhere with a total population of the area in 100's (and not thousands and millions). I think the person again forgest the devastating effects of the Tsunami in Hawaii in the 50's (or 60's - something like that I forget). Given his/her state of mind, I think we can have pity on him/her.
I could be wrong but I believe america sends out more foreign aid than any other country in the world.
There hasn't been anything like this in the Indian Ocian the last 300 years (longer than history, for you, mr. A.C.) which is partly why they don't plan for things like this.
.. and you tell them to fend for themselves? wow!
As of now, 78.000 people have been confirmed dead in the area. Officials expect the number to reach (100.000) one hundred thousand, from several different countries.
...and will do no good. Brita filters, as anyone who's read the label knows, are only good for water that is already safe to drink.
Which goes to the point under discussion: send money to those who know what to do with it.
Mind the Gap
http://www.big-boys.com/articles/tsunami.html
My guess is, absolutely none.
So, if this mega-tsunami happens sometime after midnight eastern time, the evacuation is going to be something like "wake the neighbours".
I'm not sure even I have the solution to this. Should you create an alarm system for something that just may never happen or take hundreds of years possibly? On the other hand, if you don't, you've got millions of deaths going to occur.
Best thing is probably to blow the thing up.
Unfortuantely most people just don't look at the two oceans, especially their underwater attributes.
Both the Pacific and Indian Oceans have very small if non existant shelves. There is simply deep ocean and then land rising up very quickly.
The Atlantic Ocean has a large shelf that protrudes well out to sea on the east coast of the US. This can significantly reduce the effects of Tsunamis (which are the displacemnt of water). Think of it this way, the Tsunami will "break" hundreds of miles out to sea and then flow in to the east coast of the US.
This may mean extremely high tides and localized flooding, but very unlikely to create the situations seen commonly in Japan and this week in SE Asia.
Go do some *BASIC* research and get back to us, eh?
actually it's 15 million pounds not 15 million dollars. That's about 28.7 million dollars.
I don't think this really affects the good point you are making though.
The northern hemisphere is heavier, and as such, forces all continents to move "downwards". It's called gravity.
Why else would all the continents have tips on their upper part, as if the mass was dripping down? (turn your maps upside down to see this!).
Happy Holidays!
http://www.origamy.com.br/xmas2005
Not any more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000102&si d=ash4iKmCSW6Y&refer=uk
And from http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html:
U.S. is the world's Scrooge
"The United States is not stingy," Colin Powell said on CNN this morning. "We are the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world."
Powell was responding to comments yesterday by Jan Egeland, the United Nation's emergency relief coordinator, who suggested that wealthy countries' initial pledges of assistance in response to the Asian disaster had been insufficient. "It is beyond me, why are we so stingy, really," Egeland said. So far, the U.S. has pledged $35 million in relief aid for victims of the earthquake and tsunamis, and Powell insisted today that the U.S. will give much more -- possibly into the billions -- as the scope of the disaster becomes better known.
Let's hope so, because as it is, despite Powell's assurances, the rest of the world regards the U.S. as a heartless Scrooge -- and for good reason. A couple weeks ago Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist who heads the United Nation's Millennium Project to reduce poverty, hunger, and disease in developing nations, stopped by Salon's offices to discuss how the United States was shirking its responsibilities to the world's poorest people. In much of the world, Sachs told us, there remains the impression that the U.S. is interested in helping people only when it has something to gain -- and these days we only engage with the rest of the world on anti-terrorism policy, more often than not through war. The United States contributes about a tenth of one percent of its income in aid to poor countries -- an abysmal rate that falls below that of all industrialized nations, and is dwarfed by the giving rate of Canada (0.26 percent), Germany (0.28 percent), the United Kingdom (0.34 percent), and France (0.42 percent).
What's worse, this situation doesn't seem to be improving. Indeed, in just the past two months, the Bush administration has quietly reduced its commitments to global anti-poverty programs, cutting its contributions to groups like Save the Children and Catholic Relief Services by as much as $100 million. The move prompted the New York Times to ask in an editorial: "The administration can conjure up $87 billion for the fighting in Iraq, but can it really not come up with more than $15.6 billion -- our overall spending on development assistance in 2002 -- to help stop an 8-year-old AIDS orphan in Cameroon from drinking sewer water or to buy a mosquito net for an infant in Sierra Leone?"
When the state of Florida suffered four hurricanes this summer, the Bush administration quickly and admirably pried open the federal wallet, and so far Floridians have received more than $3 billion in federal and state disaster assistance. Nobody's saying that Floridians didn't deserve that aid; they surely did. But what happened in Asia over the weekend may turn out to be one of the worst natural disasters in human history. More than 40,000 people are now believed dead, and officials fear that the toll may surpass 60,000. A good test of the Bush administration's generosity -- not to mention the generosity of all Americans -- is whether our government can now muster as much money for far-off foreigners as we could for Americans in an all-important swing state.
But did you really expect more out of the French?
I pay enough in taxes already. You can send them the check for the services to monitor other countries problems such as this. Nothing is free.
Even less time between shifts at the office!
VD
By your logic it's actually far too much. Since the countries we are sending aid to now send zero aid to us, and could likely never afford to send any amount that would be really useful there will be no return on our investment. If we really want to make sure we'll be taken care of when we are in similar need, we'd be better off investing the money we use for foreign aid.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
That depends on the way you calculate .. as a percentage of the GNP, America isn't doing that well in spending money on foreign aid..
Sorry, doesn't the DoD regularly recallibrate known GPS satellite positions against the "fixed" stars anyway to check for ephemeris errors? I don't think we have to worry about this from a GPS perspective very much at all.
I found this incredbily useful:
Trimble's tutorial on GPS.
> >$147000000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
> > 17000 - rough number of Iraqis killed
> > = $8,647,058 - spent to kill each Iraqi
> >I'm ashamed to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but these numbers are sickening.
>
>$147,000,000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
>25,000,000 - number of people freed from dictator
>= $5880 - spent to free an individual
> I'm proud to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but at least I know my country _did_ something.
Suppose we drop a cheap ($10M) set of nukes across Baghdad and in doing so, kill 1,000,000 people.
$147,010,000,000 spent.
1,017,000 Iraqis dead.
24,000,000 Iraqis liberated.
That comes out to:
$1,445,526 - spent to kill each Iraqi, and
$61,204 - spent to free an individual.
In short, the nuclear annihilation of 1,000,000 civilians would cut the cost of each preventable civilian death by 85%, while simultaneously boosting per capita humanitarian spending per capita by 20%. And somehow both of you would regard this as an improvement?
I'm ashamed when Americans attempt to optimize the wrong metric. Call me a QA weenie if you want, but at least I know something about process engineering!
Here it is converted to a .pdf
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
The 'wobble' known as Chandlers wobble can be measured using a Laser Ring Inferometer.
2 68
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?ObjectID=3504
It's pretty cool tech actually, a rediculously precise table with a laser split at a corner travelling around the corners via mirrors reflecting back to the source. The slight phase difference in the beams is measurable. This phase difference is actually how your 777 flies from A to B with 3 laser ring gyros one for each axis.
Hedley
I would actually say it's higher stakes not safer.
With government they will use it for good with a lot of waste, or use it to rape you up the ass with a lot of waste.
With Big Corps they will do either with efficiancy.
If I am to be raped up the ass I want it minimized as much as possible with inneficiany.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Yes, that's why when spinning skaters pull their arms and legs in they spin so much slower.
And yes, your velocity will only ever change if your mass does. This explains how swingsets (kicking your legs) and rocking chairs work. Obviously shifting your center of gravity has no effect.
If more slashdot geniuses like yourself would speak up more often you could really straighten out the so called experts.
i believe the earth's rotation already varies slightly from year to year and day to day as a result of weather patterns and normal seismic activity. so while this may be a larger than usual one time change, there is nothing to say that it won't reverse itself due to other eartquakes or volcanic eruptions sometime in the future.
i'm also pretty sure that the gps satellites are regularly repositioned slightly, and that they carry enough fuel to last some time, besides which, they would only have to be adjusted once to make up for the change, not continually. all they have to do is move a few feet (or maybe even less- to lazy to do the math at the moment) closer to the earth, and they will speed up appropriately to match the new period of earth's rotation.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Using Skype.com software, and a broadband connection, it would have been possible for a single person in the U.S., using SkypeOut, to call telephones in Thailand for an hour for just a few U.S. dollars. Would you save the lives of 5,000 people if it cost only $20 and an hour of your time? Of course!!!!
It is VERY easy to find the phone numbers of hotels and newspapers in Thailand, for example, using Google. Just tell everyone that, if they see the water receding, they have just a few minutes to get to safety.
I would hope so. I would hope they do that update soon as we undoubtedly are starting to slip.
Even funnier is all this talk about detection and warning systems. How about we just not start wars instead? Can even use the saved money for aid and warning systems for natural disasters.
Yes but a catostrophic event like this may translate to a larger than planned orbital correction which would reduce the lifetime of the satalite. More likely a software correction would be made. I don't whether the handheld devices "know" where satalites are supose to be, or whether the satelite tells the devide where it is. I the former then orbit correction needed, the later, just prgramming change.
The Geosycnronous satelites have more of a task as they need to re-position to maintain station. Their lifetimes have just been shortened.
No, we only got to where the earth would have been at that time in its rotation 3 mircoseconds faster. Drat!!! Now I've got that much less time today!!! The fact that this happened when we did NOT have daylight savings time in effect makes it worse. This is undoubtedly a plot to steal time from us. Now to counter-act this we have to get everyone to wind thier watches at the same time. . .
My brand new GPS system is now going to be off too, THAT's why I couldn't find the car keys!!
Seriously, how much shift would it take for the GPS satellites to be affected? My brain is in low gear today, I suspect an alteration in the rotational axis would have more of an effect than a 3 microsecond alteration in the time of rotation.
Don't mind me, I have more fun this way!
No, they recalibrate to a ground station.
The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves."
Call it the Darwinian Warning System
Table-ized A.I.
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/041217/b121706.html/
Rather than reporting on the disaster, Fox News have been harping on about how the world hates America. I wonder if they ever had a "memo of the day" about this story.
147000000000 / 25000000 Iraqis SAVED from a brutal dictator and his crazy sons (who took freshly married women from their husbands to have sex with them, and who threw people into plastic shredders for fun; head first for a quick bit of fun and feet first for loads of fun -- ie SCREAMS) = $5880.00 per life SAVED! Money well spent. The amount we give is the amount we give. It is ours to decide. And it is usually (almost ALWAYS) more than the combined giving of all others, so back the fuck off. And I don't see anyone lined up to aid us when we have problems (911). We seem to be able to handle ourselves. And I hear Sri Lanka turned DOWN aid, because it was from Israel. Oh, to have that luxury! By the way, I'm ashamed that you are an American too! Your numbers are sickening, and biased. If you don't like it here, I believe Canada is accepting applications...
Its odd though that you leave out the fact that our "stingy" 0.1% equals more than all the other countries you listed. So what if we are not giving as much as the UN; who has said that devolped contries can/should give 1% of their income we are still the largest donator. And thats not counting the cost of the military units out there helping. Like the carrier group that is moving into the region to help and the P3 Orions based from Japan that are right now flying recon for surviors. If that is not enought shall we go into the ammount of money that is raised and given out privately? You can take your stacked and meaningless stats and go troll else where.
Plus it helps the devestated economy.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Are you kidding me???
Sit in a stool that spins. Give it a whirl, pull your legs in, and then push them out. You spin much slower with your legs out. Basically, a wheel is a lever. The fulcrum is the pivot point and the load is the radius of the circle. The further the load is from the fulcrum, the greater the force is needed to move the load the same speed. The force is is provided by momentum so no additional force can be added. It's a trade off, the greater distance traveled, the less effective the lever, and vice versa.
Sounds like you need a lesson in physics...
http://www.sirinet.net/~jgjohnso/simple.html
VD
"The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves."
Call me crazy, but isn't it these very type of people we DON'T want living with us?
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
What you said does not seem right to me.
Any magnitude 9 earthquake at sea, 10 KM down, can be presumed to cause Tsunamis. If I had known about it in time, 10 of my friends could have called 10 of their friends, and we would have had 100 person-hours of calling. We could have notified hundreds of thousands of people, assuming a little cooperation from the people in the nations we were calling.
It is easy to show that such a call is not a hoax. Tell anyone who will listen that, when the water recedes an unusual amount, there is only a very short time to get to safety. It doesn't take much to get to safety from a 20-foot wave, assuming there is higher land nearby, or a strong building behind other strong buildings.
Darn. This means the days are getting even shorter. I hoped the change was for the better.... (walks off to pour another cup of coffee)
Maybe video games really do desensitize the masses to terrrible events, violence and death.
Awww... poor little eurotrash. You seem to think that the only organization fit to distribute funds are governmental orgs and that the only funds that count are ones that are gathered through coercion (taxes).
Noticeably absent from the anti-american salon article are numbers for private charitable giving (which dwarf any country no matter how you slice - Hell, between 1992 and 1998 the US sent almost $2.9 billion in PRIVATE AID to CUBA!) and US military expenditures (no, we're not discussing Iraq) that are solely for humanitarian purposes.
We're moving a f'en carrier group into the region for support and search and rescue, you think that's cheap?
With 300 million people you donated ODA $6.9 billion in foreign aid in 1997.
http://www.usaid.gov/fani/ch06/privateaid.htm
The actual total of official development assistance and private giving was $44.5 billion, or 0.45 percent of U.S. gross national income - and that still doesn't account for military humanitarian spending
LOL: In 2000 U.S. universities and colleges gave more to developing countries in foreign scholarships than Australia, Belgium, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland each gave in ODA.
What were you saying again?
And, btw, the current numbers for ODA funding are:
Australia - $1.2 Billion
France - $7.3 Billion
US - $16.2 Billion (a 23% increase over last year under the evil Bushilter!)
All statistics you quote are government-donated funds. They do not take into account donations made from the private sector, companies and individuals. If you take those into account, America dwarfs everyone and leaves France far behind. Some countries tax their citizens more than others. Having grown-up in France, i know for a fact from both my parents that companies and individuals get taxed into oblivion.
Having built my professional life in America, I know I can easily donate to relief organizations without straining my budget too much, and most of the time, write it off on my U.S. taxes, which means money that would otherwise go to the U.S. government now goes to Red Cross, with Uncle Sam's benediction.
In the end, what matters is how much money relief organizations get, and which countries it's coming from. Let's see who's ahead in terms of income percentage.
I gave $250 to redcross via amazon as soon as it went up.
We're not martyrs. We're setting the record straight. And we're here to help.
Salon is here to slander and make sensationalistic headlines. That's what sells. Use grains of salt and don't take everything you read at face value, and most certainly not anything I write. Do your own research.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
This is not an international dick-waving contest to see who can 'contribute' the most. How about we just help them, OK?
And to my French "friends", I only wish you had
war dead buried here whose graves I could desecrate
the way you did the graves of the brave Americans
who helped free your land from the Nazis! Of
course if there were such graves, I wouldn't do
anything because unlike you fuckers I have class.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but... No, you obviously don't have class.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Hmm, I've got mod points but there's no "-1 wrong" on the pulldown. mt
mt
As so many others I fully agree: A tsunami warning system should be put in place. It ought to be fairly simple given the amount of satelites in orbit.
Those who flock to see the killer waves - well - www.darwinawards.com will take care of those. The rest of us can only applaud their stupidity and lack of presence on the roads leading away from disaster.
In a report the day after the quake I saw a number of tourists stating "we are going there and we are fully confident that the travel agency has everything under control".
What a tribute to Darwin.
Not to examine your analogy too deeply, but
an efficient ass rape would be quick
an inefficient one would not be
The fact is that the original (and meaningful) quote was "May have shortened the day by 3 microseconds" and was misrepresented in the dicussed Reuters article.
It looks bad when you say someone is "joking or stupid" just because you don't understand something that is immediately obvious to many others. If you would have taken a second to answer the "3 microseconds per __???__" question you were responding to, you may have realized that the article didn't support any answer you would have given... and you'd be taking your first steps toward anylitical thinking. ;)
If you want to help, donate cash. That is the best way to do it. Donate it to something like the international response fund of the American Red Cross (if you're in the US), or some other very well-known charity group. They can use cash to leverage very cheap buys of massive numbers of goods. And, more importantly, donating goods is great, but while doing so, perhaps you could also donate some free technology to teleport it over there. Getting the supplies to where they're needed is a significant part of the cost of relief. If a government like that of India is requested donations of goods and not cash, then let the Red Cross do the conversion in the most effecient way possible -- it's not like they're taking your cash and driving it around in trucks on the islands. In fact, the Red Cross doesn't even take donations of goods. http://www.redcross.org/article/0,1072,0_312_3877, 00.html
I don't have a credit card but I'm sitting on a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate that someone gave me. I was hoping to be able to use THAT to make a $25 donation to the American Red Cross (Or, frankly, ANY organization providing relief!) through Amazon.com. After some searching I can't find any way to do it...
So I'm going to use Slashdot to see if I can do the next best thing: I'm willing to give my validation code for a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate to anyone who is willing to MAKE a $25 donation. Seriously. No stings attached here and I suppose, ultimately, that I'll never have any verification that it worked but cynicism is worse than inaction. I'm just a guy with bad credit who still wants to find a way to help.
If you are willing to make that donation, just send me an email (to my email address listed above) and I'll send you the code to the Amazon.com gift certificate -- it is good through 17-Nov-2005.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Whatever difference is made by donations via the information age will be sucked up by the red cross for their salary just like they did during the 9/11 attacks.
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
When you are attacked, you defend. When attacked by someone who is clearly an idiot, facts and numbers sometime help.
Another note: the US donated 40% of the funds, worldwide, for relief from natural disasters (and no, that number does not include funding for our domestic natural disasters).
I donate, but I don't feel the need to let everybody know how much. It stops being charity for OTHERS and starts being all about YOU.
So, what is it when you bitch about how much you ignorantly though others donate? What is that exactly?
That's the reason they're so high on the list. The government simply pockets the money, has absolutely nothing to do with it, so instead of giving it to it's citizenry (like it should) it just gives it away.
The current number for the US is $16.2 Billion, btw. Strangely during the end of the Clinton numbers the funding dropped significantly.
An anonymous coward claiming to have a half-million dollar income is now a fact? Get real! I think the odds are rather good that was simply an anonymous liar.
I provided the facts and figures earlier. The US donates less per person than France, and significantly less in total than just the Scandanavian countries.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Idiot, indeed. You just don't like hearing the truth.
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
Actually, a change in the earth's shape/composition can alter its orbital trajectory around the sun.
That's because of tidal effects: planets are soft and deform due to the gravitational forces they exert on eachother. Those plastic deformations result in friction, i.e. the gravitational energy is being converted into heat and orbits are modified.
For example, the distance between the moon and the earth is slowly decreasing (in a distant future we will no longer observe solar eclipses!), and a similar effect exists between the sun and the earth.
So a big change in the earth's tectonic plates could in theory affect tidal effects, hence the earth's orbit around the sun (but the effect is probably tiny).
A change in the earth's inner composition could also modify its magnetic field, but I don't think that would affect its orbit around the sun.
An anonymous coward claiming to have a half-million dollar income is now a fact? Get real! I think the odds are rather good that was simply an anonymous liar.
I was referring to your "typical american" line. Who knows if he actually donated that money...
I provided the facts and figures earlier.
Which were old, dated, and just plain wrong.
The US donates less per person than France, and significantly less in total than just the Scandanavian countries.
Incorrect.
Clearly you haven't read my other post
Here are the highlights, maybe you'll read it this time
--------------
Noticeably absent from the anti-american salon article are numbers for private charitable giving (which dwarf any country no matter how you slice - Hell, between 1992 and 1998 the US sent almost $2.9 billion in PRIVATE AID to CUBA!) and US military expenditures (no, we're not discussing Iraq) that are solely for humanitarian purposes.
We're moving a f'en carrier group into the region for support and search and rescue, you think that's cheap?
With 300 million people you donated ODA $6.9 billion in foreign aid in 1997.
http://www.usaid.gov/fani/ch06/privateaid.htm
The actual total of official development assistance and private giving was $44.5 billion, or 0.45 percent of U.S. gross national income - and that still doesn't account for military humanitarian spending
LOL: In 2000 U.S. universities and colleges gave more to developing countries in foreign scholarships than Australia, Belgium, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland each gave in ODA.
What were you saying again?
And, btw, the current numbers for ODA funding are:
Australia - $1.2 Billion [oecd.org]
France - $7.3 Billion [oecd.org]
US - $16.2 Billion [oecd.org] (a 23% increase over last year under the evil Bushilter!)
--------------
ughh... responded to the wrong post - see here
And assuming two other things -
A quick search on google for more information shows that the information was misquoted in the Reuters article and that the original quote was that this event "May have shortened the day by 3 microseconds" which IS a meaningful statement.
Judging by the responces your post has garnered, it seems that far too many /. readers have a fairly difficult time with analytical thought. ;)
Sorry, but I have to disagree in two points.
I DO agree that charity should not be a publicity stunt, but I am pretty much sure that neither Apple nor Dell nor Amazon nor any other major player in the market made a quick and direct donation to help the victims of the flood.
I disagree on the point that charity should be local. These companies are global players. They thrive on the globalization effects. Thus their donations on charity should also be global.
Right now USA companies make big money on all markets, on all peoples, on all societies, but only the american people benefit from the charity donations. That might be nice for you if you are a USA citizen, but ROW is ignored once again.
Yes of course, they can absolutely spend their money in any way they choose. But this is exactly the kind of behaviour that make other peoples hate you. You may call it envy or greed, I'd call it comprehensible. No one likes to be dominated, no one likes to be ripped off.
I also disagree with the 'Microsofts not liquid cash' argument. First of all I never even mentioned Microsoft, I was talking about those companies who put up links to donation sites on their front page. These companies are in the consumer market. They have liquid cash income. You don't pay your book at Amazon with hedge fonts options or real estate. You pay them with money. Per definition this money is liqid. It has flown to them just a few days ago.
And one afterthought to that marketing stunt argument. If for example BP would donate one months profit (~ 1 billion $) to the flood victims instead of shoving it to the share holders, then I would happily fill my car up at their station the next time.
-silence
Dyslectics of the world, untie!
Normally when a person or entity uses the amazon honor system for donations/payments amazon takes a nice cut of the pie. I emailed them today to check if they did the same thing for the disaster relief and apparently they aren't!
I included both emails below:
TO: Amazon
FROM: Urgo
I have a question about the disaster relief donation page that you have setup on amazon.com. I know normally with the amazon honor system amazon gets a cut of all the donations. Is amazon taking a cut of the money in this case or is all of the money people donate going right to the red cross?
FROM: Amazon
TO: Urgo
Thanks for writing to us at Amazon.com.
Please rest assured that all the donated money will go to the Red Cross to help victims of tragedies in southern Asia, India, and Africa.
Please know that Amazon.com is waiving its usual fees.
Belive in Technology and AMAZE yourself. -- RIP ZDTV/TechTV
Cool!
I think that are good news and that is the right way.
Setting up a link to a donation sites is something the weblog community should take care of. Those who have little money but a lot of web site hits to offer. Those who have the money or the goods should rather donate that directly.
-silence
Dyslectics of the world, untie!
Not to mention the boon for the economy. We need to outlaw earthquakes so we can have longer days...
It's the only way to save social security!
Old and dated mean the same thing, so you repeat yourself. I wrote the years anyway so there was no chance for confusion. Your accusation of "just plain wrong" is simply a lie. The figures are not wrong. You just don't like the way I presented them because you agree that the US ODA figures are terrible and you want to discuss US private donations instead. Accusing my figures of being "just plain wrong" is dishonest of you.
Actually I haven't yet, I was reading some other stuff.
Alright. If you want a figure fight, you've got one.
Here is a rather good article on ODA by country. You'll see USA has the stingiest "1st world" government offering with only 0.14% of GDP.
Looking at total ODA the US only beats other countries because of its huge population. The European total absolutely dwarfs the USA total and is a fairer comparison for populations.
Yes, private aid is greater - apparently the US citizens are nicer than the US government - but read further into that same article. The problem with private donations is special interests.
And further...
That's one of the larger problems with private donations; they're not necessarily charitable.
Your turn.
Which is why I donated to Doctors Without Borders.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Guys, stop arguing. This catastrophe changed the earth's rotation for fucks sake!
http://www.commaecho.com
Maybe he posted anonymously because he didn't want personal recognition for his donations.
Who knows, just a thought.
no comment
I did some calculations earlier and found that the Geos would have to move less than a centimeter. The GPS satellites reposition relative to ground stations anyway, though I am not sure on what period. At any rate, they would only have to correct course once, and not by much. Remember, we are talking about a change on the order of 10**-11 relative to the current length of the day.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I think it would be wrong for the United States to decide which needy people to send my tax dollars to. I believe that I should be allowed to decide to whom and how much aid I should send. The government should not be involved in humanitarian issues. That is what humans are for.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
If you do want to help, donate clothing/water purifiers like Brita more than cash. They atleast go the victims directly.
Your post is an excellent example of why you should donate cash to organizations who have a good idea what the immediate needs are, rather then donate goods when you don't understand what the problem is.
People have immediate needs for food, medicine and clean drinking drinking water. Clothing comes afterwards. Brita filters are useless against raw sewage, bad chemicals from the flooded factories, and salt water from the ocean.
Clothing may be helpful, but it is more efficient for the clothing to be shipped from the unaffected areas in Asia, where the vast majority of clothing is manufactured anyways.
Even if some of the money is stolen due to corruption, it's better then shipping a ton of plastic water filters to people who can't use them.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
In an effort to connect images of the tragedy with sites that allow people to make donations to the relief effort, myself and a number of friends have posted a list of mirrors to my weblog. Please use this to take some of the load off video.contemporaryinsanity.org and help get the word out.
Join Tor today!
That seems small, but remember these huge satelites are out at 2 * 10**5 miles or 1 * 10**9th feet aprox. and given the tonnage of the satelites, there would be a real measurable change in energy to make the correction.
Your centimeter change, is that a centimeter closer orbit to make that adjustment?
I would be interested to see your calculations.
One article I read said the change would be about 1/10,000 of a second / day which is on the order of 10**-5 which is certainly an upper bound for the effect. I await things settling down and a new reading on the actual new length of day being discovered. I guess leap seconds will become a much more common occurance.
Or get everyone to move away from coastlines and fault zones. One Problem solved. (flood planes are next).
Actually, the US has helped move towns out of flood plains before -- on the Mississippi River.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
Okay, that is about the 50th post on Darwinism I've seen. But come on now, we've had how many million years to syphon these traits out of the gene pool, and people still do dumb things like this? Something is wrong with the theory.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Amazon and Google, among others, have added front-page links to simplify donating to the disaster relief effort.
Perhaps Slashdot could do the same? After all, 80,000 dead and counting definately counds as "Stuff that matters."
OK, so all you tourists in the area with GPS units should take some readings so rescue workers can make adjustments. Post them in the Discuss page on Wikipedia for the earthquake.
Here is a rather good article on ODA by country. You'll see USA has the stingiest "1st world" government offering with only 0.14% of GDP.
And, once again, that figure only counts money/aid given. It does not count military humanitarian expenditures, of which the US does a ton of, and most importantly it does not cover private donations, most of which are not in the form of large donations from Gates (which gain the most headlines), but in small, individual donations, which carry no crazy conspiratorial connections.
The fact is, with private donations which total over 200% of what the government gives, the US is extremely charitable. We are the most charitable per capita in private donations. It's a fact. If you want to get hung up over the low public funding, that's fine, and there would be a problem with it if there wasn't the massive amount of private giving that takes place.
The European total absolutely dwarfs the USA total and is a fairer comparison for populations.
European population: 729,966,641
Even if you take out Russia you're still at about 600,000,000, roughly twice that of the US. With that taken into account Europe puts out roughly $42 billion in public funding, the US puts out roughly $16 billion (or 38% of Europe's total, with 48% of the population - and this is with Russia removed). Now, if you compare the European public funding with American private funding, some other numbers appear. American private funding is roughly $28-$30 billion which is about 70% of the European funding with the US again only have about 48% of the population.
American's, on average, donate 2% of their income to charity (both domestic and international), or roughly ~$800 per person. The figures for 2003 are at roughly $236 billion.
Some EU examples:
UK: ~$150 per person
Germany: $50 per person
Netherlands: $251 per person
So, take those numbers, add them to the number for per capita giving by their respective governments, and the US is clearly on top. By a large amount. I would like to be able to split all of the above data into international and domestic giving per capita, but I don't have the data for the UK, Germany, or the Netherlands. For the US it would be ~$150 a person, or a little under 20%.
based on: Private Donations for International Development and Europe Population
If you want to continue harping on low public funding, you can, but then we might as well just be done.
Both of the seconds times are actually microseconds in the wikipedia article. A great reason why you shouldn't spend your time looking through character maps to find obscure mu symbols and just use a u for microvolts, microamps and microsoft. This formatting issue has caused problems in many published papers, which which often don't get corrected.
If you aren't close to the relief efforts, then you have no idea what needs are already fufilled and which are not. Giving money is more useful because it lets the relief agaencies portion it out to what is needed, as opposed to, for example, getting 10,000 water purifiers and 1,000 generators when what they needed was 10,000 generators and 1,000 water purifiers (made up exmaple).
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Like hell! USA contributes 0.1% of income to foreign aid.
?
The government - yes. the individuals - no. Next time try reading the preceeding posts first. If you add the private donations of citizens within countries to the government donations made by those countries, then the US is not stingy in the slightest. It ends up outdoing all the European countries, for example.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
My calculations are based on:
G= 6.67259E-11 m**3/kgs**2
Mass of Earth (Me)= 5.9742E24kg
Current rotation period(w) in Seconds=86040
Although these are estimates, they are close.
For Geosync orbit:
Radius=((G*Me*w**2)/(4*pi**2))**1/3
For current Geosynch, I get 42124855.2417033 meters. This may seem large, but remember that most people report Geosynch above the radius of the Earth, so they are in the neighborhood of 36000 Kilometers.
Then, since I don't have a good high precision calculator, I was able to only go to the precision of subtracting 10 microseconds instead of only 3. With this calculation, I got 42124855.2414383 meters. This makes a difference of less than a millimeter in fact, and the time change was still three times larger than it should have been.
It seems like the difference should be more, but remember that 3 microseconds is less than 1 in 10**11 of the total time in a day. And although we square the orbital period, we then take the cube of the whole thing because gravitational attraction goes down with the cube of distance. So in all, we are talking changes 11 or more decimals out.
I know I didn't follow scientific precision principles. If I did, I would have had to cut off at five digits, which would mean I couldn't calculate any time differential less than a second. This calculation is not accurate, but the order of magnitude should be right on.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Don't you love how Americans have to TELL everybody how much they donated. Felling a little bit of guilt there, eh?
Yeah, how dare us for correcting a fucking liar. When someone lies about us we're supposed to say nothing.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Remember relativity? Where are you measuring from? What is your perspective or how are you relative to the measurement? If you stick your feet out, the speed at which your feet are moving is actually faster than if they were retracted. Your eyes, on the other hand, are at the center or axis and move slower. Your feet actually move at a greater distance per unit of time than when they are tucked in, despite your perception. The measurement at the axis of spin, IS going to be slower. Try it and measure it yourself.
I will remind you that we live on the outer crust of the earth, not in the mantel or core. So our perspective on the speed, at the crust's surface, is going to be different than that at the core.
Try to remember your University physics! It really doesn't matter. The dude is speaking out his butt, because he really doesn't know if the earth compressed, expanded or simply burped. There is currently no way for measuring the result definitavely, so the point is mute and wasted to begin with.
Remember relativity? Where are you measuring from? What is your perspective or how are you relative to the measurement? If you stick your feet out, the speed at which your feet are moving is actually faster than if they were retracted. Your eyes, on the other hand, are at the center or axis and move slower. Your feet actually move at a greater distance per unit of time than when they are tucked in, despite your perception. The measurement at the axis of spin, IS going to be slower. Try it and measure it yourself.
I will remind you that we live on the outer crust of the earth, not in the mantel or core. So our perspective on the speed, at the crust's surface, is going to be different than that at the core.
Try to remember your University physics! Oh, sorry I forgot you failed that course!
So if that ever happens to you, don't hang about, run inland as fast as your little legs will carry you. You life depends on it.
Slashdot moderators please help get that message out, you will save lives.
You have a point to some extent. But you should also make your research properly. It is not uninterrupted contiguous barrier. It has everything from shallow banks to deep gorges that go all the way to the shore. While the banks will protect the shore, the average depth is deep enough for the wave to reach the shore in plenty of places and actually get focused by the gorges in others to way above the 10m average.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I don't see the point of criticising the Bill Gates donations. The Gates foundation has donated almost $4B to global health programs to date. Yet, because MS has made investments to increase market share all of that is somehow bad? Seriously? Criticising Bill Gate's business practices is fine, but to do it to his charitable organization, (which gives more money than most countries!) is ludicrous.
Q.
So the Earth's rotation is theorized by one NASA geophysicist to have sped up by 3 microseconds.
Is that 3 microseconds per minute? Per hour? Per day? Per month? Per year? Per century? The importance of this figure depends on the unit by which we divide.
If it's 3 microsec/minute, then that's 525,600 microsec/year *faster* that we rotate to reach 1 year, or, 525.6milliseconds/year, or 0.5256 seconds/year, or 52.56 seconds/century (ignoring leap-years).
But if it's 3 microsec/century, well -- clearly that's of far less significance. Still arguably important, but not nearly as much so. Personally, I wouldn't lose sleep over it even if it is 3 microsec/minute, but for timing purposes in physics, and quite possibly for keeping time in-sync in world financial markets, among other examples of relevance, that could be well worth considering.
My gripe in all this is as follows: this is Slashdot, not USA Today. I expect at least a fundamental grasp of science and math here - is that asking too much? We learned about the importance of units in elementary school; have we already forgotten that lesson?
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Hmmm... I think the Peace On Earth idea is probably a much easier plan ;)
Nah. I'm sorry. You're wrong. The only real worthless people around here are ones that find it OK to waste money--that could be spent on aid--to intentionaly do things that waste human lives.
Surely you can see the irony of the whole situation?
I would think a big concern is that marine maps and charts of the area are probably all off. Not only from the movement of the plates and position of where stuff sits on that plate, but quite often the quake causes underground sluffing and rock slides where there were once cliffs to essentially underground hills (mountains) will change position. So where a deep draft vessel could once run... They saw a lot of this in Alaska after the 1964 quake here.
Has this issue been addressed by anyone? This big of a quake could affect things thousands of miles away.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
USA contributes 0.1% of income to foreign aid. That's one quarter of what France donates! How does it feel to be stingier than France.
Even more important is who this "aid" goes to. The worst form of aid appears to be that given by governments to other governments, especially that which goes to rich and/or corrupt governments.
IIRC the US has recently cut the amount of money given to NGOs. But not that going to questionable governments.
Yes, private aid is greater - apparently the US citizens are nicer than the US government - but read further into that same article. The problem with private donations is special interests.
"Private donations, especially large philanthropic donations and business givings, can be subject to political/ideological or economic end-goals and/or subject to special interest. A vivid example of this is in health issues around the world. Amazingly large donations by foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are impressive, but the underlying causes of the problems are not addressed, which require political solutions."
Thus it is perfectly possible to waste huge amounts of money. Whilst appearing to be a good doner, in addition to getting a tax write off. A cynical position would be that the last thing these people would want to do would be to fund anything which would in any way be a "solution".
Another example is pharmacutical companies dumping drugs as "aid". Not only can they reclaim tax they also don't have to pay storage/disposal of useless drugs.
That's one of the larger problems with private donations; they're not necessarily charitable.
Much the same can apply to donations made by governments.
Simply listing amounts is meaningless without some criteria of which donations make things better, which change little and which actually make things worst. Some "aid" is actually worst that useless especially that which is used to buy weapons.
That is likely because your government takes your money so you don't get to decide what to do with it. The US leaves the money in the hands of the citizens... who donate more privately than your government does.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
That is the preferred way for the United States. It's different than how some other countries handle it, but the numbers, when compared on a "total assistance" basis, rather than being skewed, are certainly favorable to the United States.
Consider this - many people in the United States want *less* government support of even domestic disasters. The private sector handles such events quite capably, with both sufficient funds and resources.
It is not that "US citizens are nicer than the US government" - that distinction is not something that the United States is based on. The citizens *are* the government... our founding documents dictate that the government is "of the people, by the people and for the people". Many citizens prefer that the government take an absolute minimum in taxes and allow the individual to decide how to spend their individual income. Thus, the US government *cannot* match the EU's disaster aid - they aren't taking in the income to be able to. I would guess (and would appreciate somebody checking this) that the EU has a larger available budget to give aid with than the US federal government. The population of the US, however, has more money and gives that in aid.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I don't see the point of criticising the Bill Gates donations. The Gates foundation has donated almost $4B to global health programs to date.
The amount of money is often rather less important than the how and to whom...
It is perfectly possible to give money in ways which have marginal, even negative results. Thus a better metric would be how many people have had their health improved by the Gates Foundation?
Deformation is being modeled with techniques recently developed. Maximum of 20 meters of slip on the fault plane. They did not mention the dimensions of the plane yet, but it is likely to be 100's km long, but 10's wide along the subduction zone.
;)
I would expect that some portions of the Indonesian coast went down, and will be permanently flooded. Other portions went up.
These will be the portions where navigation is effected (get out those proposals to to hydrographic surveying
In Alaska and Peru, the subsidence was 2-3 meters in places, and the uplift was up to 10 at faults with surface rupture.
The way I see it, different countries need different forms of aid when disasters like this happen. Cash to purchase basic necessities is most useful in poorer areas like SE Asia.
If there were a similar disaster in the States, throwing cash at the problem would be somewhat redundant.
I recall after 9/11, Australia sent firefighters to back-fill for their American colleagues who had left their own areas to help in NYC.
Serving Suggestion: Defrost
Australia: $1.2bn
p/capita: ~$60
%GDP(PPP): 0.2%
France: $7.3bn
p/capita: ~$120
%GDP(PPP): 0.4%
USA: $16.2bn
p/capita: ~$60
%GDP(PPP): 0.15%
Define 'help'. Reducing the total bodycount? Maybe the net effect of warnings would not budge this statistic. Increasing the Darwinian fairness by letting smart people out of harm's way while letting people with smaller frontal lobes take their place by jockeying for a front seat? I call that helpful.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
You didn't read my post, or try to get phone numbers, using Google. It's very easy. Every hotel has a phone number. Put Phuket into Google.
It's shocking how easily the people who have replied in this thread accept the death of tens of thousands of other people.
I'm curious how they update all the maps when a large earthquake moves a big chunk of the Earth's crust by many meters. With modern navigation systems like GPS, it's a significant change. If you were an airline pilot landing in bad weather, you might want to know if the runway had moved 10 meters to the left and down.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Great research, finding out that there are millions of phones in Sri Lanka. Just use Google to find a hundred or so.
WELCOME TO THE GALADARI HOTEL
The Businessman's Home in Sri Lanka
64, Lotus Road,
Colombo 1.
Sri Lanka.
Tel : 94-1-544544
Fax : 94-1-449875
E-Mail : galadari@sri.lanka.net
"The Galadari Hotel is in the heart of the city in Colombo, over looking the beautiful Indian ocean."
Presumably there is a staff of at least 200. Tell one, everyone else will know soon. They don't want their friends and neighbors to die, and they know how to reach them.
WE (people) don't do anywhere near the damage to this planet than the planet does to itself!
So because Hitler killed millions, it makes it OK for me to kill 1 since it is not anywhere near the damage?
Damn. I ended my own argument.
It's people like you who ruin all the best social activities. House-fire parties, mudslide-surfing, blasting-cap biting. Suck lemons, ass.
We're moving a f'en carrier group into the region for support and search and rescue, you think that's cheap?
Does that *really* cost anything extra?
For a vehicle that measures fuel efficiency in gallons-per-foot I would say the answer is yes.
Australia's $1.2B and Americas $16.2B when worked out based on population is roughly the same per person (although australia is better).
o s/ us.htmlb ook/geos/ as.html
US $16.2B / 293M = ~$55 per head
AU $1.2B / 19.9M = ~$60 per head
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ge
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/fact
Sure. Off by a factor of 2.5. It's fairer than the earlier comparisons that you Americans were making where there were ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE difference in population size. I didn't say it was equal. I said it was fairer.
I don't know where you're getting your figures from. They're in disagreement with OECD.
I agree with the private flow of $30 billion and the ODA flow of $16 billion for the US. That's $46 billion or about $150 per head. About the same as UK, France and Australia and less than the Scandanavian countries. That is in agreement with everything else I've read.
So where did this $236 billion figure come from? That looks to me like the total WORLD figure for private flows. You're not perhaps counting the whole WORLD's private flows just for the US, are you?
Oh yes, let's look at private flows. They're an interesting lot.
The OECD lumps them all together as a single private flow for the world. Presumably because the nature of international charities makes it far too difficult to tell which country actually funded which charities. The OECD won't even provide private flow figures for most countries. The US and Japan seem to be the only countries with private flow figures and their own governments had to supply the figures. Maybe because US and Japan rank 22nd and 21st on the list of stingiest countries by ODA of GDP and they need some form of positive spin.
But what is very interesting is what counts as private flow. The OECD points out that bonds and bank loans count as private flows. Those figures are for 1998 (it's incredibly difficult to find recent figures) but they show that of the $234 billion of private flows for the entire world, $156 billion was "strings attached" investment. Loans and bonds. Not charity.
So I'm deeply suspicious of anybody quoting "private donations" to try and dig the US out of its stingy hole. The US agreed in 1970 to provide 0.7% of GDP as ODA. They're currently providing a mere 0.14%. The US government is spinning that they provide 3x as much foreign aid if you factor in private donations. But as we've seen - from these figures above and my earlier example of the $400 million "donation" of Microsoft software to India - those donations don't seem to be entirely charitable.
Your turn.
No, it still doesn't. Including private flows it seems the Netherlands tops the list, beating the US by a factor of 1.8x.
See my other posts for the darker side of private flows. They include investments and loans by companies. Not benevolent acts, but ways of gaining a foothold in a foreign country without paying US taxes. The majority of private flows are from this insidious form of "charity".
No, they still don't. See other posts. You can keep telling yourself "we're more generous, we're more generous" but repetition doesn't make it true. You're still a stingy lot.
Yes, Bill Gates' goal in life is to throw billions of dollars at ineffective organizations so that they will cause more pain and suffering in the world, he is just that evil. Go read the foundation's website if you want to know what they are doing and some of the organizations they are helping. Sorry to break it to all the slashbots, but Bill Gates isn't the devil.
Q.
funny, but i thougt when earthquakes were invented, the oil industry didn't perform these tests yet. do you really think that plate tectonics stopped and let the oil industry toke over earth quake production?
...and be defensive to the detriment of the strength of your arguments, but I have to agree with you on that last point.
Billy Boy's pet drug company has also acted (based on patent claims) to completely block proposed donations of low-cost generic anti-AIDS drugs to Africa from Brasil.
Paul Allen doesn't overtly fight as dirty as Bill does, and in fact in many ways he's the Compleat Modern Gentleman, yet his donations still reflect his ideology. I wouldn't be able to make much sense of the situation if they didn't.
And now for something completely different.
It may be coincidence, but I only know of two organisations which routinely ship 100% of public donations to the front lines, and they're both Christian. I had a chat with a local who collects donations for Retinosis Pigmentosa research, and because he collects a lot he personally got to keep 45% of whatever he collects.
I imagine that by promising to pass 100% through, Amazon has considerably upped their own donation referrals. Perhaps they should consider making that feature a permanent fixture?
And perhaps a few secular organisations could try asking separately for donations from secular humanists (or whoever, really) to support the organisation itself, so that they too can guarantee to pass 100% of what is donated on through. It might help to remove one more excuse for stinginess from the equation.
Do you have enough of your own background/contacts to comment creatively?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Pork-barrelling (to win an election in SA, in that case) is never pretty.
They've got an Oberon stuck up in the dry at Fremantle, if you want to see a sub that used to work. In fact, the Yanks borrowed them a few times when their own subs weren't up to snuff.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A friend of mine who works for ADRA was relaying first-hand reports to me from there. 100% of what you donate to them goes to the front lines, no matter what your religion, or the religion(s) of the disaster victims.
I don't know of any Atheistic organisation which can come close to that. Christian donors just seem to be more generous. Moderate Islam ain't so bad, either, but tends to fatalism.
Madalyn and her grand-daughter (nice girl, used to chat with her on FIDO and our last conversation went unfinished because of that) were murdered by their manager over a matter of a few tens of thousands of $. If that's the leaders, even the "television evilangelists" aren't so bad. I guess it helps to have a future focus.
As an Atheist, you're either responsible for just yourself, or for everybody depending upon your viewpoint. I'm very glad to hear that you're shooting for "everybody" because in practice very few do.
The only logical ground I can see for being an Atheist, as I once was, was if evolution actually worked. But it doesn't and it can't. Reknowned ex-Atheist Antony Flew hasn't quite gone so far as top profess anything resembling Christianity, but to his credit he is following observations to their logical conclusion.
OK, I guess we can let the flamewar rage, now. It's been months since I was modded anything but up anyway. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The best comment in this thread was YrWrstNtmr when he said "This is not an international dick-waving contest to see who can 'contribute' the most. How about we just help them, OK?".
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
... seeing as I've never met you, I'd rather you didn't address me by first name. Use my nick as is the custom for blogs.
That is true, but it really annoys me when Yanks get this holier-than-thou attitude. It's so entirely undeserved almost all of the time.
In this case I think the evidence is pretty clear cut. The US isn't living up to their ODA obligation. Yet instead of admitting this simple indisputable fact we get a bunch of apologists making excuses. Is it so difficult for a single Yank to say "yeah, you're right, our government doesn't do enough to help other countries". What is the big deal to Americans?
I'd criticise my government in a heartbeat. I think you'd do the same. That's the Australian way :-)
My only comment is that I don't donate to charities based on their secular or religious backgrounds. I think any charity that proclaims its ideology is doing so for political reasons and I find that distasteful.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Dude, lighten up. Maybe you lied about having a sense of humor. :)
I din't say private flows. I said individual investments.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
GPS satellites are constantly monitored from ground observation stations (Navstar's land segment). These observations are used to create and later update the ephemeris information. Your GPS receiver uses its most recent ephemeris to convert ranges to the satellites into a geodetic coordinate (lat/lon).
/geodesy geek
Really, GPS should be able to deal with a minor change in rotation speed without any glitch. The land-based observations are used to adjust the ephemeris for the sat's actual position relative to ground control -this is typical. This information is then sent to the receivers from the satellites.
What we will see is that datums that people have been equating with their GPS obervations (ie: the WGS 84 ellipsoid) may become obsolete more quickly. Software developers are going to have to make the jump to a more correct GPS datum (ITRF?).
Of course, for the geosychonous satellites (of which, GPS is not) there may be issues.
speaking of helping, i put together this handy page to place an amazon donate badge on someone's site.
please spread the word. and donate.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
"sunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves" -Article
Sounds like a fair way to clear out the gene pool.
Look for torrents on isoHunt. Search for tsunami.
$400 billion defense budget. to kill people./
dont run off at the mouth about the good you people do when you spend far more doing ill.
Oh, shut up. If you think we're a sick country for having a well-funded military (ha!) then you should perhaps read some history.
Note that I didn't say I agreed totally with what our Wise and Benevolent Leaders are doing with our military, just that I think that anyone who criticizes military funding in this day and age is a shortsighted idiot.
Happy New Years,
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Couldn't ignore this. Theres lots of Cuban exiles in American who send money back to their families in Cuba. I'm guessing this is what you consider 'private aid' in reaching your $2.9 billion total? You probably also realise that this total is dwarfed by the cost to Cuba of the sanctions the US continues to impose on Cuba - sanctions repeatedly condemned by the UN every year for the past dozen or so years.
Note I'm not a communist or even defending Cuba's regime or anything - just want to correct any misimpression your statement might cause.
Personally it makes me sick when we rich countries cause unmeasurable damage to poor countries by our farming subsidies / tarifs (both Europe and US at fault here) (or sanctions as in the case of Cuba) and then claim to be helping them by throwing a few million in 'aid' at them - aid which often causes more harm than good (I just got back from a trip to Africa and its depressing to see + hear what our 'aid' achieves). The sad thing is that these subsidies / tarifs are of very dubious benefit to our economies - thus the cost to us to remove them would be little if anything, and the benefit to poor countries immense. Yet everyone from anti-globalisation leftists who are supposed to have the poor country's interests in mind to government lobbyists to politicians looking for the populist vote ensure this never happens.
... donors can state where they want the money used. The Red Cross has rules about how it uses the money it receives.
F 60 F1EF63B580C7A8CDDA80994DC404482&incamp=archive:sea rch
n wo rk/myths.html
And the 9/11 victims families are already millionaries.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=
families or loved ones of civilians killed on Sept 11 received, on average, $3.1 million in government and charitable awards; families of uniformed personnel received average of $4.2 million
The Red Cross says
Between September 11 and November 9, the Red Cross has provided direct assistance amounting to $143.4 million.
All money that Americans have donated to the Liberty Fund is being used for its intended purpose: to help everyone across the country touched and impacted by these tragedies. Millions of dollars in financial assistance is going to families who lost a precious breadwinner. Facilities that are open 24 hours a day are helping the rescue workers with important needs such as food, shelter and emotional support. As well, countless volunteers are helping thousands of individuals and families who lost their living environment.
http://www.redcross.org/news/ds/0109wtc/donatio
Exactly my point...when the Earth is compressed, the radius decreases...you are closer to the mantel but with the same total mass, just like pulling in your legs on the spinning stool. This will cause your revolutions/unit of time to increase. We are not measuring the speed of a point on the outer edge of the sphere, but the rate of revolution.
Try this yourself on the spinning stool...count how long it takes to make 1 revolution with your legs out, then count how long it takes to make one revolution with you legs in. And with this measurement, it doesn't matter where your point of perspective is.
Feel free to fire back if you still think I'm wrong.
VD
I feel older already.
Yes, in Anchorge, Alaska there is a park called earthquake park (which my sister lives near) and the effects of the quake are quite apparent. For example my sister lives in a house that is say maybe 500 feet from the ocean. Before the quake it was half a mile or more from ocean. What happened is that say 300 feet from her place all the land past that point dropped down and everything past 500 feet now is under the inlet. When the tide is out, you can still see debri from the concrete houses that were destroyed (foundations even).
I also have to wonder what happened to ships at sea. True, the waves of Tsunami are supposed to be quite a bit less due to no shallow water, but still it would have been a big (rouge) wave from and unexpected direction. How many ships in that ocean out at sea saw damage or were destroyed?
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
If you are measuring degrees turned per second that is right. I was countering the charge that the speed, feet per second at the surface would be faster. That would be false. The speed that the surface of the sphere is actually moving at less feet per second that before. There are a lot move formulas that need to be considered when trying to determine if the surface of the earth actually sped up or slowed down. The big one is determining if the core sped up or slowed down, as it actually turns at a different rate than the surface. The second is to find the new apparent center of the mass and figure out a change in gravity has resulted in the change in the denisty and position of the center of the mass as it relates to the center of the axis it is spinning on. There can then, and only then, be some calculations done to figure out how the revolutions are effected as the fulcrum of the new mass center versus the axis center has changed. You then can reverse the equations and determine if the speed at the surface of that sphere has sped up or slowed down as a result of the compression.
It simply is not as easy as taking a simple experiment as spinning on a stool and drawing in your legs. The two are similar, but not completely relational. The arguement seems in conflict with the common sense answer, but the physics of the whole set of equations, taking into account how a possibly denser mass would effect the gravity of the sun we revolve around, (or more simply, but more incorrect, how the suns gravity effects us with a change in mass), is much much more complex. It's almost the same arguement as a flat earth and a round earth. You have to look at the bigger picture. The rotation of the earth is actually a result of the sun's gravity, not the other way around. I know it seems wrong to a lot of people, but it really isn't. The deep set of equations proves, (or really thoery), that out.
Here is an experiment you can do to understnad what I am driving at. It is much more representative of of reality than the simply stool trick. Take a bed sheet suspend it by it's four edges and put a heavy sphere in the middle. Now find two sphere's of the same weight but substantially different diameters. We only want the different diameters largely differnt so you can see the effect of a compressed mass as opposed to one that is not compressed. Roll the larger shpere around the dimple or depression that is made by the larger sphere in the middle of the sheet. Take the smaller mass and roll it in exactly the same way as the larger mass of the same weight. observe what happens to the rotation of the smaller mass as it travels forward.
My arguement is based on more forward science that 1940's grade school physics here. It based on the theory that the earth spins as an result of an outside force, not it's own, and revovles around the suns as a result of the gravitational effects of the sun's mass, not the earth's. This is standard accepted astro physics. The earth is not the center of the cause and effect equation. The sun is to is. The smaller mass with the same has a different result based on that than if you only accept the earth in the equation and forget why the earth spins in the first place.
I feel like a lone sane person in an insane assylum trying to explain this. I know that it is right, but I am not sure how to explain it on a simple enough level so that it is understood. I am flabbergasted and astounded that some 'scientist' today would have the lack of understanding to make such a statement and not take into account the larger cause and effect picture that you must to determine the outcome. It's quite frustrating and annoying. I keep trying though. Maybe some day someone will look back and say, "Yea he was right! Poor soul got laughed out of the public forum, but he was right."
1 rotation ~= 24 hours + 3 microseconds
My apologies for not being able to find a proper aproximation sign. I'm also having trouble copy and pasting symbols I have stored elsewhere.
Does this mean we'll be having a leap second in 333,333 years? That will throw my schedule all off.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
That would be a leap second every 333,333 days.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
I do not now, nor will I ever care what you think.
Tinfoil hat? Naa, I long since replaced it with a reinforced titanium alloy.
OMG, you are so right. I was starting to get into the financial arguments until I saw this. Comparing the amount of money sent by different countries solves nothing.
Can't see the forest for the trees.
> Whilst appearing to be a good doner, in addition to getting a tax write off.
I get sick of people insulting companies for taking a tax writeoff on donated money. How can someone claim they donated money with personal business motive: THEY LOST MONEY ON THE DEAL! They may have gotten a $5,000 break on their taxes, but they gave away $20 million!!! Let's see...
Net loss of $19,995,000 means they were doing it for business reasons? No. Good Press? Bad press goes so much further than good press, that they'd be better off spending HALF of that money to make shit up about their competitors.
> I just got back from a trip to Africa and its depressing to see + hear what our 'aid' achieves
I'm curious: could you be a bit more specific?
> They get paid anyway and if the carrier fleet's budget gets cut next year I'll understand.
Well, I doubt that will happen. Government inefficiency dictates that if they used their entire "gas" budget this year (wisely or not) they must need more for next year. So the management-type beurocrats want that thing to move as much as possible, to up their budget projections for next year, to get more money to waste in even more imaginative ways.
Which is not to imply this event is a "waste," but how is an aircraft carrier going to help people who lost their homes? What, are they going to give them shelter there? Those things have plenty of space, but I don't think that will happen. Housing thousands of civilians on a military craft seems... unlikely.
Thanks for the explaination. Admittedly, I did not major in Physics in college and the only classes I took were the required physics (mostly basic physical sciences) and Electromagnetism. So Astrophysics is not my background. Can you post a URL that describes this in mathematical terms? I swear if this string theory, I'm not going to bother, but oh well.
I actually have a brother who is getting is doctorate in physics so I'll aslo run this by him. Not that I'm saying you're wrong or that what he says will be right, but I will look into it.
Ultimately this yet again proves you can not trust what other people say or publish (again, not that either is right or wrong, just trust). But again, you've sparked my interest and I would like to learn about how this article is wrong.
Look forward to your post!
VD
In following my last post, I came across this. Granted it is from a BA in Physics, but it backs up my point. http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae201 .cfm
I will surely like to get your references before I make a personal judgement.
On a side, this is an example of good use of this forum. Not just ripping on people (even though I started that way in my infite wisdom), but explaining and provided information for one to come to their own conclusions.
Thanks!
VD
> I don't know if I've ever seen such unbelievable indifference to the value of human lives
:)
Am I supposed to shed a tear every time a person dies in this world? Hell, half the population of my town could die right now and it wouldn't affect me too much (except that I work at a hospital), as long as it wasn't something contageous or directly threatening to me in some other way.
It's not just Slashdot, it's all over the world. Slashdot just happens to have a younger-than-average population that isn't going to have a pity party for every family that loses someone. Take notice every time someone dies and take a few seconds of your day to give a moment of silence for them. Might want to do some of them consecutively, though, because 150-200 people die every minute, worldwide.
Or are you saying that these people's deaths are more important because they happened all at once? If everyone affected died (IE, the population of an entire country GONE) you might find us a bit more willing to be awed. This was a natural event, we had no control over it. It's a shame to someone when anyone dies, but please don't expect me to take it personally every time.
If one person dies, it's a tragedy. If a million die, it's a statistic. Still true.
Oh and in case you are worried about a person like me working at a hospital, don't: I don't deal with patients.
...then why did you reply? You obviously care that somebody knows that you supposedly do not care what I think... or something like that. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Hmmm. I wonder how annoyed they are by your own HTTA? (-: Or my own overwhelming self-righteousness, for that matter; welcome to the wonderful world of human nature
How about the ones who are doing so to help people avoid making mistakes?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Maybe he mentioned them because he doesn't donate to ease the sufferings of others, but to raise his own status.
In any event, his logic is flawed. A single individual's generosity can not redeem an entire country's general stinginess.
Can't blame me for telling the truth. You and your ilk proclaim the USA's great worth to the world - "World Police", "Benevolent Providers", "Bringers of Democracy" - but the reality is so harshly different. The US is called stingy by the UN, by truly charitable organisations, and by the facts and figures. Yet your response is to call me a "fuckstick". Why? For pointing out the harsh truth? That the US isn't as wonderful as you keep telling us?
The reality is that you don't like being told the truth. Wake up. The rest of the world doesn't buy the US spin anymore. Only the US sheeple seem to believe it now.
> This week's deadly Asian Quake and Tsunami may have been so powerful, that it changed the rate of Earth's rotation. In a Reuters article, a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds.
This is nothing more than media sensationalization; it is not significant in any way, shape or form other than passing as news to the average joe, in turn selling more newspapers/products/ads. Nothing here to see, please move along (maybe to redcross.org?).
Must-not-watch TV!
GPS does not use geosync orbits - they are in a fairly low orbit, and a given satellite probably is only overhead for maybe an hour or something like that. The important thing is that the satellite knows where it is at all times, and it transmits that info which GPS receivers use in their calculations. All satellites drift naturally due to tides, etc, therefore there was already a need to periodically reassess the GPS satellite orbits and update the satellites idea of where it is located...
Aircraft carriers can proccess many many gallons of sea water and turn it into drinking water. This might be a bit helpful when drinking conditions are comparable to the ganges river.
You mean peace on eathquake dont you?
My supposition is based on M theory, (better known as string theory). M Theory has been heralded as the 'unifying' theory of all of the different 'string theories' that have been published. There are those who strongly disagree that M theory is any better than any other supposition and is a wild stab in the dark. I think that it is an elegant explaination of all of the different theories that are currently out there and even explains why those different theories may all be right in their own regard. It is not something that I can explain in a reply and I am not sure where there may be a decent write up of it on the web. M Theory, as stated, is a unifying strategy for the other String Theories that are out there. Here is a simple overview of them, http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/qg_ss.ht ml and http://www.benbest.com/science/standard.html . The largest point within the theory that I am standing on is the gravitron. No, not the ride at the midway, the particle (if we can really use the word particle here).
The hardest thing for people to understand today seems to be that we do not yet have ANY understanding of the cause of gravity. We know it's effects via Newton's observations and subsequent theories, but nothing exists on the causal side of the equation. the gravitron is a proposed theory for that causal side, but still just a theory. I, for one, think that it is by far the best explaination that we have to date and stand by it, so far. Where does our understanding of gravity go from there if we were to suppose that it were truth? No one really knows, again. Probably CERN's new collider will give us some insight here if it can really detect those heavy 'particles' that are thought to drop out of the current collection areas.
The basis of my frustration is this; the prediction of the 'wobble' and speed change is based on the old set of theories without regard to string and/or particle physics and the possible existence of the gravitron. If that one point is ever found to be true, then this prediction most probably would prove to be false. Why? That might take a document on the scale of several hundred pages to explain. Stated as short as possible understanding that it will inject suppositional errors? Well, that would have to be that a change in the position of a portion of the earth's mass, while equally displacing other portions of mass, will not effect the overall distribution of gravitrons being cause to pass through our dimension(s). It would litterally take an outside addition or subtraction of mass or energy to produce the effect that they are proclaiming has happened.
I am frustrated trying to put this into layman's terms, as you can possibly tell. I would be interested in your brother's take on this too.
Sorry for the confusion. He originally had questions about both GPS and geosynchronous satellites. I answered both in the same paragraph, but should have been more clear that I was answering two different questions.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I don't know of any specifically Atheist relief organizations, nor do I see why any organization would want to exclude people with religious beliefs who are otherwise suitable. There are *non-religious* organizations who do great work, such as MSF.
What you seem to miss is that disbelief in supernatural beings does not imply an absence of ethics.
The only logical ground I can see for being an Atheist
Here's one: if God exists, he's a total bastard.
...so technically, you're correct.
Speaking to your point rather than your words, the known alternative is much worse.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You need to do a bit more research before putting up straw-men. If objections seem too easy to knock down, perhaps it's because they're not real targets, did you think of that?
Do you have kids? If so, has there ever been a time when they simply Will Not Be Told? When you have to go ahead and let them hurt themselves in some degree, in order to prevent them from totalling themselves and/or hurting others? What you're looking at here is in part a scenario like that.
Have you ever run across a military situation in which a few troops had to go through absolute hell in order to spare many troops and/or civilians a bad experience? You're also looking at a situation like that.
If God had created a set of automata, completely incapable of doing anything wrong, we would not have these problems, or anything like them. We would also be essentially unaware of ourselves in any way that mattered. Why does God need self-aware creatures? I haven't been told. Certainly not to - you should pardon the phrase - lord it over them. But stop and imagine for a while, would you rather have responsive children or a house full of machinery? If your SO doesn't always do what you want, do you destroy them on the spot? Would you want to?
RT.org, BTW, are reknowned more for their flexibility than for any attachment to logical rigour.
But we digress. If Atheism exists, and it does, it must see Theism as an abberation. Agreed? You're certainly reacting like that so far.
Given a responsible Atheism ("since I am essentially the ultimate authority I am also ultimately responsible for what happens around me and after me") - call it Altrusitic Atheism even though that's not really correct - such an Atheist is duty-bound to promote their position in order that the people around him react in a way which (s)he sees as most responsible. Which is a long-winded way of saying that a responsible Atheist would work to most completely undermine the assertion "only Theists operate charities" where the opportunity existed, by operating or contributing an Atheist-bannered charity. Any problems with that so far?
The other, sadly popular pole of Atheism could be typified by the assertion "since there is no afterlife, no accounting, I should grab for as much as I can get out of this life, and damn anyone else" (or possibly, "apres moi, le deluge") - call it Selfish Atheism - couldn't care less about charity unless it needed some itself, and therefore has no rational motivation to operate or contribute to charities. Yes? No?
The vast majority of real-life Atheists exist somewhere along that spectrum. This picture is muddied by labelling issues: the practical observation that many who think of themselves as Christian (this applies to members of other religions, but I address Western society) are for all practical purposes Atheist, and many who call themselves Atheist are really Agnostic.
However, the vast majority of Atheists, effective or declared, hew to the Selfish Atheism end of the spectrum. What you are living amongst is a society driven by Selfish Atheists with some echoes of what might be called "habitual Protestantism" and a sprinkling of Altruistic Atheists and others to give it a veneer of responsibility.
Take away that echo and the dilution by others and what you're left with looks very much like the French Revolution. Babies being passed from pike-head to pike-head and the kind of stuff you read about in the Jesuit Oath (plough through all of the Black Masses to the core of the Black Pope's army and what you'll find is - surprise - more Selfish Atheism and might-makes-right).
Now we pass again from observation to speculation, but it bears upon one of many possible existential options beyond the two you posited.
If you want the whole planet to look like that, just wait, it's scheduled to happen. When it does happen, remember this conversation. This tsunami is but an apertif of disasters to follow, and an faint echo of disasters which have already been.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing