Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Rename it to "24hrs + 3ms of junk propaganda" maybe?
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
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.
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
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.
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.
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."
"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.
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
Days since disaster hit: 3
Days since Iraq war began: 653
Don't let those facts get in the way, either.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
If you think about it, two to three tsunamis in quick succession (in lessening degrees for each one) might not be out of the question... When the first tsunami is created, it leaves a vacuum behind it. The water being pushed out leaves a "hole" behind it, that needs to be filled... And would likely cause a backsplash effect. The second (and/or third) wouldn't be as drastic as the first, but could still do some hefty damage.
Ripples in a pond. Big ripple, big pond.
I dislike bush more than most, but you 'sir' are living proof that being 'left' doesn't make you 'right'.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
I'm ashamed to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but these numbers are sickening.
I'm ashamed that you are an American too. Stop your pointless off-topic trolling. It is truly sickening.
What you're leaving out is the detail:
The U.S. GOVERNMENT will donate $35 million.
It's very likely more will be donated as time goes on. Already they have increased this from the initial $15M pledged on the day of the disaster. The size and scope of this is still coming in. One of the things the U.S. Government has already done was to send three P3 Orions to better survey and asses the damage so we'll know what is needed and how much.
Also, that is completely ignoring/not counting donations from the private sector (i.e. You, me, companies) and food donations. I would guess that also doesn't count costs to the U.S. Government for the costs of the manpower we are sending to that area to aid relief efforts.
Me, I'm proud to be an American. In spite of what others may say, our nation is full of compassionate and caring people.
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.
Bayu Pranata was sipping tea shortly after starting his 7am shift at the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency in West Sumatra, Indonesia, about 500 miles south of the quake's epicenter, when he was disturbed by a "tak, tak, tak" sound. It was so loud he thought mechanics had started working in the garage next door. Then he realized it was the pen on the seismograph. He hurriedly called the National Earthquake Center in Jakarta, but ended up spending more than an hour trying to contact Indonesian disaster officials in vain.
The quake was detected in Japan, and Australia. Austrailian seismology officials (knowing that it would likely create a Tsunami) notified some overseas embassies , but they did not pass on the info because it might overstep diplomatic protocal.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
I would suggest that many Americans would benefit from a more thorough study of history. Napoleon offers a good example -- you can't free people who don't want to be free, or who don't consider themselves captive to begin with.
It will take a decade to determine whether Iraqis were better off with Saddam vs the US 'liberation' effort. I'm cynically guesing the result will be a wash...
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
The separate waves likely resulted from the aftershocks produced from the initial earthquake. I believe they are called P and S waves, for Primary and Secondary.
Live forever, or die trying.
"$35000000 - amount committed to help victims
100000 - conservative death toll
= $350 - spent to aid each victim"
So all the money is going to aide the dead victims?
" $8,647,058 - spent to kill each Iraqi"
You do realize the purpose of war is not to kill as many people as we can.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
...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?
The earth orbits the sun. Imagine there is an axis through the centre of the sun around which the earth is orbiting the sun.
The earth also rotates. The axis of rotation of the earth does not point in the same direction as the axis of the orbit. This is why we say that the earth is tilted.
The tilt keeps pointing in the same direction throughout the year, ignoring the fact that it wobbles.
This means that in summer, the axis in your hemisphere will be pointing towards the sun. The sun will be high in the sky and the energy from the sun will fall directly onto the land so there is more energy per unit area and is hotter.
In winter, the axis in your hemisphere will be pointing away from the sun. The sun will be low in the sky and the rays will strike the earth at an angle and so have less energy per unit area and is so colder.
The seasons vary between these extremes.
It also explains why Australia has summer when the UK has winter as they are on opposite sides of the globe.
As an example of how the angle of the rays striking the earth varies the energy, shine a torch at a piece of paper from straight on. The torch gives out a particular amount of light and energy. Now tilt the paper - the circle of light will elongate into an oval of greater area than the original circle. The torch is still giving out the same amount of energy, it is just spread over a greater area. This means that each particle of the paper must be getting less energy.
I hope that all makes sense!
Now, on top of the tilt, there is a wobble. This is just a change to the tilt. If the tilt increases due to the wobble, the seasons will become more extreme (that is, the difference between summer and winter will increase). If the tilt decreases then the difference between winter and summer will also decrease. If there was no tilt, we would have no seasons.
Cheers,
Roger
Do you have any better hostages?
Freed from a dictator, and thrown into a brutal warzone with no safety, no infrastructure (water, sewer, power) worth speaking of, etc. We did more to destroy Iraq than to help it. Perhaps with a thorough plan, and some more international help, we could have removed Saddam without decimating the country.
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.
Remember that .02% of GDP is what the government provides. This does not include all the money that individuals and private organizations will contribute.
Why does everyone expect the government to do everything? They are very inefficient, especially when it comes to distributing money. If you don't like how much money your government is giving, then start your own fundraising campaing. I have - I tell everyone I talk to about it to give to the Red Cross. It takes about 5 minutes and if only 1 in 10 people in this country gave $10, you are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.
Spread the word and _do_ something. Don't just sit there and complain.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
And how much money have you donated?
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
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.
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!
...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
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?
They did contact the State Department. The State Department also could not find contact information for disaster warnings.
My guess is that now they know who to contact, perhaps even for all countries in the world.
Fellowship 9/11
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.
> >$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!
Not since the 1800s, when the hall of records was mysteriously swept away.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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.
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?
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.
> An athiest donating to the Red Cross... WOW!
The Red Cross has never been a religious organization. The emblem is a color-inverted swiss flag. The Red Crescent and Red Shield exist because the cross may have extra unwanted connotations in especially religious countries. Moron.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
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.
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
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.
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
Seasons have nothing to do with the earth's elliptical orbit and everything to do with the tilt of the axis. The perihelion (the nearest the earth gets to the sun) of the earth's orbit occurs in January, in the middle of the northern hemisphere winter.
From the perspective of the northern hemisphere, winter occurs when the earth is nearest the sun and summer when it is furthest. This is obviously reversed in the southern hemisphere.
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.
How can you say that Apple, Dell, and Amazon haven't made a donation? You have absolutely not support and nothing but your hatred of America as evidence.
I strongly disagree with you on the local charity front. Charity should always start at home. Of course, they should give globally but when you take from a community I think it is important that you give back. By take I don't just mean by selling your products to them but by using the resources of the community such as police, fire, ambulance, road maintenance, etc. Many of these companies don't pay proportionately in taxes what they use. Sure there are some huge companies that should give to more communities than others but they number only in the dozens. I should also point out that the US is in a trade deficit which means that more of our money goes overseas than comes in. Perhaps you should attack Japan instead.
What people hate me? They haven't even met me. I gave what I could to the relief effort just like I volunteered my time after september 11 which affect my community directly. Our country gives FAR more per capita than any other country in the world. You are barking up the wrong tree if you thinks that people hate the US because it doesn't give enough to charity.
I mentioned Microsoft because the other poster mentioned Microsoft. Other companies would be the same. And I don't pay Amazon with cash. I pay with credit which they then get charged a percentage to process, lose a part to cost of goods sold, taxes, etc. and some of the rest is used to pay their employees and other overhead costs. Obviously they end up with money at the end of the day but the law requires that most of that has to go back into the business or to the shareholders. In no country can a company donate its entire profits to charity. Remember that a company is owned by its shareholders not the board. That isn't US specific either.
And if you donate to a charity and make a big stink about it then it isn't charity. It is advertising expense. I would also be wary of those companies that say they donate a percentage of profit. Make sure you find out what percentage and what they define profit as. Also see my comment about shareholders rights.
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/
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
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?