I am sure quiet a few people who could have done something stayed quiet.
Realize that, like yourself, many did not associate the earthquake with a tsunami. CSI Miami (a US TV show) had a tsunami hit Florida in the program. So right now, when I hear "earthquake" and "water" my brain's primed to think "tsunami."
I imagine that a lot of earthquake people have the knowledge and training that they, too would think "earthquake." But they still may have been caught by surprise. The places that were close by could not be warned, and how many would have thought "hmmm - Sri Lanka's gonna get it?" It's a thousand miles away. Again, it may not have occurred to everyone.
For those it did occur to, there's the question "What do you do?" There may have been an assumption - "someone's got the job to issue the warning." If there is an appropriate "responder," often you can make things worse by trying to get involved and tying up resources as a result. So some may not have bothered because they thought that it would be handled. Others may simply not have known who to call.
I'm sitting here wondering. Let's say I'd been online looking at an Earthquake page when the 8.9 quit. Who would I have called to warn about a tsunami hitting Sri Lanka? I don't think I'd have thought my calling would do any good, first off. But let's say I put it all together and decided to start making calls. Who would I call? The Sri Lankan embassy? 911?
I have no freakin' idea.
This is why public safety organizations have emergency drills. Stuff like this happens and you do what you do every day. Who's job is it every day to warn the people of the Indian ocean if there's a tsunami? No one. So everyone did in the emergency what they do every day, which turns out to be just that - nothing.
The more I think of it, the more this looks like one of those events you learn from. At this point the question is, how much do you learn?
BTW is it just me, or does it seem in poor taste for News outlets like FOX and CNN to focus on possible American casualties when these kind of natural disasters happen?
For some reason, the human mind categorizes things according to how the object is related to the individual. If something is near, it's far more impactful than if something is far away. If you can see it, it has more impact than if you can't. If you are somehow related to the individual, the event makes a greater impression.
News organizations know this. By focusing on some aspect that relates to their viewers, they're more likely to draw in the viewer's interest.
Look at the readers of Slashdot. They immediately related to Arthur C. Clarke living in the area. It's how our brains work.
As far as numbers, on a cognitive level, we all know that 7000 is larger than 3000 is larger than 10. But our brains don't really grasp numbers over 7 too well. We might have a general feel for 100, and there's some indication that the largest natural human groups wind up around 160 or so. Beyond that, we don't connect to the numbers on a primative level. It's just big numbers.
As a human, it helps if you understand how your brain works, so that you can compensate.
Me? I like to snorkel. Reading about the scuba divers that probably got wiped out caught my attention. Through those scuba divers, my brain can now emotionally link to the tragedy. Stupid, but it works.
You think MS Windows is buggy? Look at the home-grown software your brain's running.
I heard that in Krabi (Thailand) people notice the sea withdrawing uncharacteristically about 5 minutes before the first wave hit. Anyone can explain that?
As the wave approaches shore, the speed changes and the amplitude increases markedly. The water had to come from somewhere - as the wave approaches, the "tide" appears to pull back - but it will be replaced.
There's a Japanese story (don't know if it's true or a legend) about a man near his grainery on a hill who saw the water rushing out. The only way to warn the people below was to set fire to his grainery. Everyone came running to put the fire out....
I hear if Canary Island (The one ready to fall into the sea and wipe out the east coast) would cause a tsunami that could travel across the Atlantic Ocean in 45 minutes, and I read on the BBC that this most recent tsunami was going 2,000km/h, which seems to be roughly the same speed.
Nah. 500 mph seems to be a bout top speed quoted on the net. That's only about 800 kph - and Sri Lanka is about 1000 miles from the epicenter. There was time. Not much, and apparently not enough.
What kind of time delay are we talking about between when the earthquake strikes and when the tsunami forms/hits the coast?
In deep water, a tsunami goes about 500 mph. Not much time for folks in Sumatra, but the people of Sri Lanka might have been warned.
As near as I can figure out, all the tsunami warning efforts are focused on the Pacific rim. There simply aren't enough tsunamis elsewhere to make it worth the effort. Or at least so the theory went.
Why someone with a seismograph didn't look at the 8.9, look at a map, see the Indian ocean and go "Ya know, maybe we should warn someone" is beyond me. I guess 2 hours isn't that long when you don't have set procedures in place. Still....
Yes, I know that all the effects of it will be enough to kill off the human race.
Not so. We're talking regional devastation. Besides, given that it's in 2029, one woul hope that with a concerted effort, this disaster could be avoided.
...you would think, after enough of these stories, something will actually hit the Earth.
Don't worry. Scientists have a two-pronged approach to detecting asteroids that might hit the Earth.
First, there are many astronomers (both professional and amateur) that are looking for these asteroids.
Second, there are many seismometers around the world that are just as likely to be the first to warn us of an asteroid hitting the Earth.
Of course, there's no guarantee the first will give us much more warning than the second.
(Gomer Pyle Voice) Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!
I wonder what kind of asteroid this is. If it's not a pile of rubble and if it's high in metals, it might actually be worth manuvering it into Earth orbit. The bulk of it would provide shelter during solar storms, with mines providing both living space and manufacturing materials. Even non-metalics would be useful - there's got to be some way to use them as reaction mass.
Now, there would be some problems. First, as you change the orbit, there's the chance that you'll chage the target country from Outer Bleen to Inner Bleen, upsetting the inhabitants. Then, as you manuver the rock, you're going to probably annoy someone else. The ability to direct such a rock would constitute a "weapon of mass destruction."
I'm guessing positioning the thing for "aerobraking" in the Earth's atmosphere would make some folks nervous, too.
Ok, so this wouldn't be a project where you'd want to mix up your feet and meters or have someone say "oopsie!"
The shame is, humans don't have the brains or organization to take advantage of this opportunity. If this hunk of space junk is going to hit the Earth, I'm not sure we will move it in time. We certainly can move it. I just don't think we'll get our act together.
I wonder who'll be the first to suggest that an impact will be a good thing since the dust may greatly reduce global warming?
"My babies bottom is typically surfaced in an unidentifiable brown pitted substance, and is far from smooth."
I thought they taught people to change diapers before they were allowed to take the baby home from the hospital!
I hope this link helps! Please, for the sake of your kid, check it out. Also, you'll find the kid doesn't smell as bad if you clean them up and change the diaper regularly.
BTW: The part about keeping something over a boy's penis while you change the diaper? They're not kidding! The little b******s will wait until your face is within range before they turn into little yellow fountains.
These paradoxes have not been answered to by modern science types.
Actually, they have.
The first is a simple application of the continuity equation. Mass in minus mass out equals the mass retained. During planet formation, the amount lost by "evaporation" (material outgassing into space - mass out) would be a function of temperature. If there's more material available to accrete to the planet (i.e. mass in), the net change in mass can be positive for any size planet (mass accumulated). The trick is to have enough material available in the first place. There's some fascinating astronomical pictures available of the debris fields surrounding some new stars. (Of course, I can't find them in a prefunctory search on Google - anyone help me on this? I'm too busy to scan something in from a back issue of SciAm, post it to the web, and then finish this post.)
Given the temperatures involved in stellar processes, planets cannot form. Even if you had some bizarre process where they could form, the planets would be destroyed during the stellar explosion. The results would be the same that are actually seen as the result of stellar explosions: dust.
The question of the formation of a hot core in planetary bodies has been addressed elsewhere.
Claiming that a planet might form inside a star and be ejected is simply not a viable theory, especially since there are far better theories already available.
My reasonable suggestion would be to take some basic astronomy courses to learn more about some really interesting stuff!
"On systems where there's built-in feedback, that would be one way to combat the spam, just train the search engine crawlers to ignore comments with poor scores."
1. Google should punish URLs with negative feedback!
2. Or Google should ignore URLs in comments.
Dang, I'm still shaking - Steelers 33, Giants 30. Great game.
"Trojans killed my business," he said, noting that many of his customers have recently migrated to "cracked" (pirated) versions of spamware programs such as Dark Mailer, for which they purchase lists of Trojaned proxies from hackers.....
Comments on Send-Safe's discussion forum appear to confirm that the company has had trouble providing users with sufficient proxies for sending spam.
There's irony in this guy's complaint, and (assuming he didn't write SoBig) at least a little justice.
"My heart bleeds for the Snicker-Snack Company" - Linus (the character from "Peanuts," not the software guy)
Read up on string theory. Neither GR nor QM must "break down" to join them together.
There's areas where the current equations no longer work as they are currently formulated. That's "break down" in the same way that Newton breaks down at high velocities and in other places.
I've done a bit more than "read up" on string theory. I've actually worked with some of the equations to get a feel for what one model was proposing. I do wish I'd paid more attention in the post-calculus math classes I took.
Combine that with the fact that poor people with no health insurance use the emergency room for their personal health clinic, because they cannot be refused care. They can't pay, they have no insurance, the hospital eats the bill. Hospitals eat the bill on an IMMENSE amount of treatment.
The data seem to indicate otherwise. Wired has this story about a recently published study indicating that the poor don't use the emergency room at any different rate from anyone else.
When I was a paramedic, I tended to see more poor patients, but then again, the areas I worked with tended to have more poor people. Looking back on it, our patients probably represented a fairly accurate cross-section of the community.
Another "urban" myth bites the dust.
It's just that it is easier to observer the phenomenon around blackholes owing to their massive nature.
The problem with the black hole observations is that a number of guestimates need to be made. The guestimates are probably valid, but there's enough wiggle room that it's hard to say the effect is really there.
The gravity maps that were used for this latest release are far more accurate than previous attempts to do this with the 11 years of data, and it seems to have confirmed that frame dragging does occur as per relativity.
The Gravity B experiment will be one more proof of frame dragging - although no one really expected frame dragging to be disproved. There's too many other things about General Relativity that have been confirmed.
Somewhere, General Relativity must break down so that it can match up with wherever Quantum Mechanics breaks down, permitting the two theories to be joined in some coherent fashion. But there's no way that frame dragging could be the place where General Relativity gives out.
It's an experiment that needed to be done. It's dotting the i and crossing the t. But it's not worth much. That's the real debate. Should all the money have been spent on Gravity Probe B to prove something everyone accepts, or should other ways (like digging up 11 years of satellite data) have been used and the money spent on something that might actually give a bang for the buck?
> Excellent. Then you won't have any interference
> when you need HAM radios for emergency purposes.
Horrible - because then you won't have amateur radios when you need them for emergency purposes.
Who's going to spend the money on equipment they can only use during a disaster? Even the government doesn't want to do that.
Anyone that still has the equipment won't be able to use it effectively. In disasters, you do what you do every day. Trying to follow new patterns on top of the stress has been shown to not work. The amateur radio chit-chat and contests ensure that the operators have equipment that works, that they know how to use the equipment, and that they know basic communications protocols.
The idea that we can just trash the spectrum for amateur radio operators and still expect them to help out is absurd.
If amateur radio is destroyed, then the government will have to step in and take up the slack. That's more taxes they're going to ask you for.
Hmm, there's been quite a few high-profile accidents in NASCAR and there hasn't been any overregulation response.
TPTB had simply missed this, until you went and pointed it out. There will probably be regulations put out by the end of the week mandating that NASCAR speeds be kept under 20 mph.
Gee, thanks. Way to go.
This is a joke, but part of me fears it won't be for long.
the discountrocketry.com has some really anoying spyware.
I did not realize at the time I posted my message that Kevin Funk, the owner of Discount Rocketry, had passed away. I chose Kevin's site because he'd been a fine person to deal with. I have not been able to contact whoever is taking care of the last business of Discount Rocketry, but I doubt that Kevin would have used spyware on his site.
On the other hand, it would surprise me that someone would take advantage of his passing to sneak something malicious onto his site.
Again, I apologize to anyone who was attacked because of my posting the URL.
the discountrocketry.com has some really anoying spyware.
I buy from them occasionally. I just reran Ad Aware and Spybot - neither reports that I have anything.
Two questions: what spyware do they have and what do I need to detect it? (I'm running Firefox for a browser - it may simply be that I didn't see it as a result.
Slashdot Mirror
Realize that, like yourself, many did not associate the earthquake with a tsunami. CSI Miami (a US TV show) had a tsunami hit Florida in the program. So right now, when I hear "earthquake" and "water" my brain's primed to think "tsunami."
I imagine that a lot of earthquake people have the knowledge and training that they, too would think "earthquake." But they still may have been caught by surprise. The places that were close by could not be warned, and how many would have thought "hmmm - Sri Lanka's gonna get it?" It's a thousand miles away. Again, it may not have occurred to everyone.
For those it did occur to, there's the question "What do you do?" There may have been an assumption - "someone's got the job to issue the warning." If there is an appropriate "responder," often you can make things worse by trying to get involved and tying up resources as a result. So some may not have bothered because they thought that it would be handled. Others may simply not have known who to call.
I'm sitting here wondering. Let's say I'd been online looking at an Earthquake page when the 8.9 quit. Who would I have called to warn about a tsunami hitting Sri Lanka? I don't think I'd have thought my calling would do any good, first off. But let's say I put it all together and decided to start making calls. Who would I call? The Sri Lankan embassy? 911?
I have no freakin' idea.
This is why public safety organizations have emergency drills. Stuff like this happens and you do what you do every day. Who's job is it every day to warn the people of the Indian ocean if there's a tsunami? No one. So everyone did in the emergency what they do every day, which turns out to be just that - nothing.
The more I think of it, the more this looks like one of those events you learn from. At this point the question is, how much do you learn?
For some reason, the human mind categorizes things according to how the object is related to the individual. If something is near, it's far more impactful than if something is far away. If you can see it, it has more impact than if you can't. If you are somehow related to the individual, the event makes a greater impression.
News organizations know this. By focusing on some aspect that relates to their viewers, they're more likely to draw in the viewer's interest.
Look at the readers of Slashdot. They immediately related to Arthur C. Clarke living in the area. It's how our brains work.
As far as numbers, on a cognitive level, we all know that 7000 is larger than 3000 is larger than 10. But our brains don't really grasp numbers over 7 too well. We might have a general feel for 100, and there's some indication that the largest natural human groups wind up around 160 or so. Beyond that, we don't connect to the numbers on a primative level. It's just big numbers.
As a human, it helps if you understand how your brain works, so that you can compensate.
Me? I like to snorkel. Reading about the scuba divers that probably got wiped out caught my attention. Through those scuba divers, my brain can now emotionally link to the tragedy. Stupid, but it works.
You think MS Windows is buggy? Look at the home-grown software your brain's running.
As the wave approaches shore, the speed changes and the amplitude increases markedly. The water had to come from somewhere - as the wave approaches, the "tide" appears to pull back - but it will be replaced.
There's a Japanese story (don't know if it's true or a legend) about a man near his grainery on a hill who saw the water rushing out. The only way to warn the people below was to set fire to his grainery. Everyone came running to put the fire out....
Nah. 500 mph seems to be a bout top speed quoted on the net. That's only about 800 kph - and Sri Lanka is about 1000 miles from the epicenter. There was time. Not much, and apparently not enough.
As near as I can figure out, all the tsunami warning efforts are focused on the Pacific rim. There simply aren't enough tsunamis elsewhere to make it worth the effort. Or at least so the theory went.
Why someone with a seismograph didn't look at the 8.9, look at a map, see the Indian ocean and go "Ya know, maybe we should warn someone" is beyond me. I guess 2 hours isn't that long when you don't have set procedures in place. Still....
Not so. We're talking regional devastation. Besides, given that it's in 2029, one woul hope that with a concerted effort, this disaster could be avoided.
Make sure there's a world for your son!
This guy has done some interesting analysis and I'm hoping he's on to something!
If you don't round, you get 1:42, which might make the HHGG fans happy.
At least the energy (in MT) has gone down from 2210 to 1490.
Doesn't that make you feel better?
...you would think, after enough of these stories, something will actually hit the Earth. Don't worry. Scientists have a two-pronged approach to detecting asteroids that might hit the Earth. First, there are many astronomers (both professional and amateur) that are looking for these asteroids. Second, there are many seismometers around the world that are just as likely to be the first to warn us of an asteroid hitting the Earth. Of course, there's no guarantee the first will give us much more warning than the second. (Gomer Pyle Voice) Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!
Now, there would be some problems. First, as you change the orbit, there's the chance that you'll chage the target country from Outer Bleen to Inner Bleen, upsetting the inhabitants. Then, as you manuver the rock, you're going to probably annoy someone else. The ability to direct such a rock would constitute a "weapon of mass destruction."
I'm guessing positioning the thing for "aerobraking" in the Earth's atmosphere would make some folks nervous, too.
Ok, so this wouldn't be a project where you'd want to mix up your feet and meters or have someone say "oopsie!"
The shame is, humans don't have the brains or organization to take advantage of this opportunity. If this hunk of space junk is going to hit the Earth, I'm not sure we will move it in time. We certainly can move it. I just don't think we'll get our act together.
I wonder who'll be the first to suggest that an impact will be a good thing since the dust may greatly reduce global warming?
"My babies bottom is typically surfaced in an unidentifiable brown pitted substance, and is far from smooth."
I thought they taught people to change diapers before they were allowed to take the baby home from the hospital!
I hope this link helps! Please, for the sake of your kid, check it out. Also, you'll find the kid doesn't smell as bad if you clean them up and change the diaper regularly.
BTW: The part about keeping something over a boy's penis while you change the diaper? They're not kidding! The little b******s will wait until your face is within range before they turn into little yellow fountains.
Actually, they have.
The first is a simple application of the continuity equation. Mass in minus mass out equals the mass retained. During planet formation, the amount lost by "evaporation" (material outgassing into space - mass out) would be a function of temperature. If there's more material available to accrete to the planet (i.e. mass in), the net change in mass can be positive for any size planet (mass accumulated). The trick is to have enough material available in the first place. There's some fascinating astronomical pictures available of the debris fields surrounding some new stars. (Of course, I can't find them in a prefunctory search on Google - anyone help me on this? I'm too busy to scan something in from a back issue of SciAm, post it to the web, and then finish this post.)
Given the temperatures involved in stellar processes, planets cannot form. Even if you had some bizarre process where they could form, the planets would be destroyed during the stellar explosion. The results would be the same that are actually seen as the result of stellar explosions: dust.
The question of the formation of a hot core in planetary bodies has been addressed elsewhere.
Claiming that a planet might form inside a star and be ejected is simply not a viable theory, especially since there are far better theories already available.
My reasonable suggestion would be to take some basic astronomy courses to learn more about some really interesting stuff!
"On systems where there's built-in feedback, that would be one way to combat the spam, just train the search engine crawlers to ignore comments with poor scores." 1. Google should punish URLs with negative feedback! 2. Or Google should ignore URLs in comments. Dang, I'm still shaking - Steelers 33, Giants 30. Great game.
If lunar colonization were the result of the people of the world fleeing the second W. presidential term, it might be worth it.
There's areas where the current equations no longer work as they are currently formulated. That's "break down" in the same way that Newton breaks down at high velocities and in other places.
I've done a bit more than "read up" on string theory. I've actually worked with some of the equations to get a feel for what one model was proposing. I do wish I'd paid more attention in the post-calculus math classes I took.
The data seem to indicate otherwise. Wired has this story about a recently published study indicating that the poor don't use the emergency room at any different rate from anyone else. When I was a paramedic, I tended to see more poor patients, but then again, the areas I worked with tended to have more poor people. Looking back on it, our patients probably represented a fairly accurate cross-section of the community. Another "urban" myth bites the dust.
The problem with the black hole observations is that a number of guestimates need to be made. The guestimates are probably valid, but there's enough wiggle room that it's hard to say the effect is really there.
The gravity maps that were used for this latest release are far more accurate than previous attempts to do this with the 11 years of data, and it seems to have confirmed that frame dragging does occur as per relativity.
The Gravity B experiment will be one more proof of frame dragging - although no one really expected frame dragging to be disproved. There's too many other things about General Relativity that have been confirmed.
Somewhere, General Relativity must break down so that it can match up with wherever Quantum Mechanics breaks down, permitting the two theories to be joined in some coherent fashion. But there's no way that frame dragging could be the place where General Relativity gives out. It's an experiment that needed to be done. It's dotting the i and crossing the t. But it's not worth much. That's the real debate. Should all the money have been spent on Gravity Probe B to prove something everyone accepts, or should other ways (like digging up 11 years of satellite data) have been used and the money spent on something that might actually give a bang for the buck?
Horrible - because then you won't have amateur radios when you need them for emergency purposes.
Who's going to spend the money on equipment they can only use during a disaster? Even the government doesn't want to do that.
Anyone that still has the equipment won't be able to use it effectively. In disasters, you do what you do every day. Trying to follow new patterns on top of the stress has been shown to not work. The amateur radio chit-chat and contests ensure that the operators have equipment that works, that they know how to use the equipment, and that they know basic communications protocols.
The idea that we can just trash the spectrum for amateur radio operators and still expect them to help out is absurd.
If amateur radio is destroyed, then the government will have to step in and take up the slack. That's more taxes they're going to ask you for.
Rob, N3RTR
...the part of the spacecraft running the AI is the piece that goes bad?
TPTB had simply missed this, until you went and pointed it out. There will probably be regulations put out by the end of the week mandating that NASCAR speeds be kept under 20 mph.
Gee, thanks. Way to go.
This is a joke, but part of me fears it won't be for long.
I did not realize at the time I posted my message that Kevin Funk, the owner of Discount Rocketry, had passed away. I chose Kevin's site because he'd been a fine person to deal with. I have not been able to contact whoever is taking care of the last business of Discount Rocketry, but I doubt that Kevin would have used spyware on his site.
On the other hand, it would surprise me that someone would take advantage of his passing to sneak something malicious onto his site.
Again, I apologize to anyone who was attacked because of my posting the URL.
I buy from them occasionally. I just reran Ad Aware and Spybot - neither reports that I have anything.
Two questions: what spyware do they have and what do I need to detect it? (I'm running Firefox for a browser - it may simply be that I didn't see it as a result.
My apologies to all.
The Canadian Arrow is a great rocket, but availability will be a problem if they hope to win the X Prize. Hopefully they already bought theirs.