Slashdot Mirror
Earthquake In China
Several readers sent in links on the earthquake that hit 10 hours ago near the Sichuan city of Chengdu in China. The Telegraph focuses on the citizen journalism that got word on the quake out on the Net instantly (the first report was via Twitter). Science magazine speculates that deaths from this event could exceed the 240,000 killed in the Tangshan quake in 1976, though the estimated death toll is below 10,000 at this writing. Hundreds of videos are up on YouTube, including this footage from a security camera — keep your eye on the goldfish.
The instant an event happens anywhere in the world you have hundreds of cameras on it. This is a very, very good thing. Reporters and ground crews are no longer necessary to capture footage, you can get it de novo, unfiltered, unbiased. Of course, this only happens in a sufficiency advanced nation that has ubiquitous means of recording and means of transmission.
Which is interesting because I could swear China had a Youtube block to prevent such uncontrolled proliferation of footage.
I shudder to think how many lives could have been saved if only they had spent less time on chinese fire drills and more time on chinese earthquake drills.
You remember "the stuff that matters" part?
Seriously.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I don't know if it's possible for the youtube link to get /.'ed but the shaking starts almost 5 minutes into the video and lasts for about 90 seconds. I have never been in an earthquake and certainly not sure how I'd feel about one that lasted so long.
In fact, nothing even fell over. This one at least has stuff falling about, and a clipped British voice giving hard facts.
is covering how technology and internet is changing the way we used to face those tragedies.
the faster the world knows about it, the faster help can be sent for the victims.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
I think they just wanted an excuse to use the Quake game icon...
You know, it made me smile more, when I saw "Compare prices on Quake" in the related links.
hilarious
http://www.chinareviewnews.com/doc/1006/4/3/1/100643181.html?coluid=45&kindid=0&docid=100643181&mdate=0513002548
Early warning from toad migration on May 10.
The initial 4:40 is to give you time to find your bottle of Ritalin.
I hate printers.
I always have a tough time getting my mind around the numbers bandied about in these human tragedies, but just imagine if 5,000 people died in the United States from something like this.
The 1989 quake that hit Northern California caused a lot of economic damage and freaked the hell out of people. It took years for the areas hit to fully recover from it. That incident killed 67 people.
I really do hope that the numbers turn out to be lower than expected. Major suckage.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
because it is a disaster that has been instantly covered visually by new generation gadgetry and posted up to net. behind a repressive regime that censors everything, to boot.
Read radical news here
Hey, guess what.
We just discovered that humans tend toward violence and oppression.
Wow.
Maybe someone should write about this.
Then we can study it.... maybe we could call it....
history.
And then we might learn from it.
But that would be too much work.
sigh.
Hundreds of thousands of toads the size of factories crushing vehicles? That makes the earthquake seem like a minor inconvenience...
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
As an man interested in earthquakes, I have been watching the aftershock pattern over there and I think that there might be a small chance (or large, depending on things) of an aftershock that is Mw7.0 at least. But it also appears that the stress in the crust in this area has moved east and west of the current epicenter.
The reason for the current massive damage due to this earthquake is because it did happen at only 10 km depth. If it had happened at 40 or 80 km depth, there would have been less damage as less energy from the earthquake would have reached the surface.
There are going to be many, many aftershocks in this area for the next two months or more. Most of them from mb4.5 up to Mw6.5. Creating more damage to already badly damaged houses in the nearby area.
Good list of aftershocks can be seen here, along with information on the main quake.
http://www.emsc-csem.org/index.php?page=current&sub=list
"did chinese have a heart when beating down tibet protesters just 2-3 weeks ago, and locking them in to prisons for life ?"
Stop judging a nation's people by it's government's actions and the world will make a lot more sense.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You have to consider two things:
1) The 9/11 attacks were entirely malicious, whereas an earthquake is an accident of nature. An earthquake sucks, but it happens every now and then. Some douchebags hijacking planes and crashing them into tall populated buildings doesn't fit into most peoples' view of "usual happenings".
2) You're sampling the US's reaction based on a couple of comments made by trolls within the first 10 minutes that this post has been up. Give moderation a chance.
I was surprised that the US is willing to do more for the Burmese than they were their own citizens; although it came as no surprise that no one in the Bush administration seems to have realized the irony.
Too much time on my hands I guess. Here's my personal translation:
According to sources, omens appeared before the earthquake in Mianzhu, Sichuan: large scale migrations of toads. When some citizens commented that these were bad omens, the local forestry department explained that this was a normal phenomenon.
According to reports by wccdaily, there are always indications before earthquakes, some animals react more strongly than humans. Large scale migrations of toads appeared in Sichuan Mianzhu city: hundreds of thousands of toads marched on a highway near a pharmacutical factory, and were rolled over by many passing vehicles, or crushed by pedestrians. The appearances of large numbers of toads led villagers to speculate that something bad will happen.
==Toads crossing roads in flocks, frightened pedestrians take alternate routes===
"Too many, too frightening, flocks and flocks, as if they were taking their families to a carnival" villager Zhou said, "At early dawn, I went to the market to buy something, and I didn't get far before I saw toads strolling on the streets, and I was too frightened to put my feet on the ground. So I decided to take another route. When I went back home at noon, I saw a few toads remaining, and because some cars passed by, a number of toads were already killed under their wheels.
The toads appeared near a pharmacutical facility. Mr. Liu who lived next to the facility said that he saw a black mass of toads crawling on the ground, "a lot of them had already been killed by cars and pedestrians at that time, lying bloodily on the floor. We never had such phenomenon here before."
==Was it a foreword for disaster? Forestry experts dismiss doubts==
Many villagers expressed worries, "Isn't this a bad omen for some natural disaster?", as the news spread people got unsettled and worried.
When the local forestry deparment received report and arrived at the scene, the head of the department said that large numbers of young toads grouping on shore to migrate is a normal phenomenon, unrelated to the natural disasters claimed by citizens, and the toads will not affect the living of people, their arrival would also reduce the number of mosquitoes and pests, so villagers need not worry.
De-yang Forestry workers said that these massive migrations are good signs, they show that Mianzhu's wildlife environment is getting better and better.
Please do.
Here's the link to the first 9/11 story on Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold=-1&mode=nested&commentsort=0&op=Change&sid=21541
Be sure to browse at -1.
It's chock full of idiotic jokes, complaints about this not being 'tech', ignorant nonsense about politics.
I guess not that much has changed.
I grew up in China and am insulted by how people have such simplistic concepts of China and of the Chinese people. There are ignorant people everywhere. The only difference is that in China there are more people who are willing to see their government as something distinct from themselves; as something that doesn't necessarily have legitimacy. The greatest trick ever played on the American people is convincing them that the U.S. government is the way it is because they want it to be that way. (Read Democracy in America -- it's been true for 200 years.)
Is America the country where I'd rather be a citizen? Yes. Does America have flaws galore? Absolutely. But understand that the Chinese people are smart. They understand the flaws of their government. But they also understand that they have had unbelievable growth over the past 30 years, and that this ascendancy is going to cause some problems.
The problems that China faces are the same as those in America: people care more about whether they can buy the next cool thing. So long as they can, and the government keeps the economy growing so they can, they don't care what the government does. The same way we don't care what abuses our government commits so long as we get our cheap oil, food, clothes, etc. The only difference is that we have a different government system, so the abuses are done with (slightly) more caution.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
If you are looking at images of a Chinese man trying to pull his wife out of the rubble, or a mother searching for her baby, and all you can think of is what political system they have, then you need to get a life.
You ought to be embarrassed to think that way.
I don't think Chinese rescuers are thinking about chairman mao any more than US rescuers think about George Washington. I think they are more likely concerned with digging out as many wives, husbands and children so that husbands, wives and parents can have their loved ones back.
I don't see these images of destruction and desperate hoping a story of politics. Instead, I see incredible suffering, and I feel for them. I imagine how I would feel if it were my wife, or my son, smashed up inside my crushed house, if that earthquake happened to me. Thank god it didn't.
This is my sig.
Imagine having your legs pinned under 18 tons of concrete. You are laying in the dark under the rubble of a multi-story apartment complex. Next to you is the body of one of your children, below you is your other child, who is suffering yet refuses to die. As the rest of the world is in a warm bed or on a comfortable couch or sitting here being crass, drinking coffee and taking this in as some sort of sick Romanesque spectator sport.
Yet here you are under the rubble watching your last child suffer away and you are wishing and hoping that if you die maybe a higher power will be placated and spare your child. The pain isn't so bad anymore, except for the cries coming from under you in the rubble. The cries of people who had dreams that will likely never be realized. The cries of pain and anguish. You hope for some relief before the dark comes, but only rain water dripping down on you. The darkness comes the cries continue. The pain continues. You watch your child draw his last breath.
Those of you without sympathy for the suffering are the ones that need to be lined up and shot on sight.
Just 2 cents from a red blooded American!
Remember that scenario is happening now....
Actually I believe the point I was trying to make was that the video was needlessly long for the amount of action that it was supposed to contain, coupled with the fact that if I had never seen an earthquake before this video would ill prepare me for it. I'm sorry if you think I'm desensitized to it, and perhaps I am, but the fact that tragedies like this happen in third world countries is beyond the scope of my ability to change. I'm fortunate enough to live in a part of the world where building codes are not only enforced, but actually exist in the first place. I'll leave you to cry about every tragedy in the world that's out of proportion due to economic advantage.
Bread and circuses. The stuff works, and it has been refined over the course of many years. Maybe one day you tell people that they have to follow your rules so they can have life after death and the next day you dangle their credit score in front of them, but the process is the same.
Shut up, do your work, and you get to buy stuff.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State