Quake Changes Earth's Rotation, Moves Islands 917
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.
Apple Too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple Too (Score:5, Informative)
Amazon Donation... (Score:3, Insightful)
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. Se
Re:Amazon's donation page (Score:3, Informative)
100% goes straight to the Red Cross (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:100% goes straight to the Red Cross (Score:5, Informative)
I doubt this -- the Red Cross has never earmarked funds for specific disasters before, refuses to do so now, and the government has absolutely zero power to tell the Red Cross what it can do with its own funds. They are a private agency, and they are absolutely fanatical about their independence.
The Red Cross has also never paid out directly to victims. The only direct assistance they do give is in the form of vouchers for food, clothing, shelter, and related items.
So you don't recall anything except what some other very wrong person made up or just repeated from some other mistaken or lying individual.
Re:Apple Too (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apple Too (Score:4, Insightful)
Private donatins and charity and campaigns like this are the kind of feel-good actions that do very little overall. They are usualy short-term campaigns tha collect a few millions than fade into obscurity within a week and bring little long term benefit.
Fast forward a week or two. Amazon may have collected $5-10 million then everyone forgets about the whole deal. It's a perfect setup. Those that give a few bucks get the feeling that they contributed "enough", some people got some help, politicans can take the populistic "sure we are helping through private aid", the private NGOs get they paycheck and got the chance to help _some_ and off couse promote their agenda. And everyone in the western world is happy.
So yes I think private charity like this is insignificant comapred to large initiatives, long term work and state based aid.
So yes I do think Americans are stingy, together with the rest of the rich world. I know because I'm a stingy person myself on this area*. But then again I'm honest enough to admit it.
*For the record I gave less than $100 to the Red Cross yesterday. Should/Could have given much more.
Re:Apple Too (Score:3, Insightful)
If every American gave as much as you did then you'd have collectively raised $30 billion for the relief effort. The UN is estimating they'll only need $5 billion in total.
The problem isn't with you, so don't feel guilty. The problem is with the billions of people worldwide who will donate nothing.
At the risk of sounding socialist (I'm sure I just caused a few Americans to faint from shock) this is
GODDAMMIT (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple Too (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple Too (Score:3, Insightful)
if you think that immed
Re:Apple Too (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Let's not make fun.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let's not make fun.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 purchas
Re:Let's not make fun.. (Score:3, Insightful)
...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.
Re:Let's not make fun.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Let's not make fun.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not any more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000102&si d=ash4iKmCSW6Y&refer=uk [bloomberg.com]
And from http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html [salon.com]:
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 em
Re:Let's not make fun.. (Score:5, Informative)
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 [usaid.gov]
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!)
Re:Let's not make fun.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Stingy Americans? Here's One... (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Stingy Americans? Here's One... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 dishones
Re:Stingy Americans? Here's One... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 cert
Rotation (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rotation (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Rotation (Score:3, Informative)
-9mm-
Re:Rotation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rotation (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that doesn't mean that the quake can't have changes just because larger recent quakes didn't do anything. In fact we know that massive changes in the Earth have happened before in the more distant past, and I seriously doubt they were from SUVs polluting too much, so it is perfectly possible that there is something special about this quake (other than just its magnitude) that will cause major changes.
Re:Rotation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Rotation (Score:3, Insightful)
And I hardly see anything in that post that justifies SUVs in there, in fact the only mention of SUVs was a claim that they did not cause the major changes in the Earth's climate millions of years ago. If thats what you call a justification, you have serious problems.
Re:Rotation (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Rotation (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't the mass of earth still the same?
When a figure skater doing a spin pulls her arms in toward herself to speed up, her mass is the same also, but it still works. This is the same principle.
Linear momentum depends just on the mass. Angular momentum depends both on the mass and on the radius of that mass.
Re:Rotation (Score:2, Interesting)
read the article here [aljazeera.net]
Re:Wobble (Score:3, Informative)
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 sk
It's all about angular momentum (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:It's all about angular momentum (Score:3, Funny)
still, i'm going to lose some weight, so i can help the earth pick back up some spin.
Re:It's all about angular momentum (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's all about angular momentum (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it is neglectable. AFAIK one of the few works of man that have changed the angular momentum to some degree are the great dams, e.g. the Hoover dam. Keeping all that water at an higher altitude matters a lot more than a few skyscrapers.
Of course, that too pales in comparison to an earthquake, which moves the tectonic plates themselves. Falling or raising plates moves thousands of meters of rock up and down, creating mountains and oceans. Anything man has built is neglectable compared to that.
Kjella
Re:Rotation (will have no long term effect!) (Score:4, Informative)
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
What is the impact? (Score:3, Interesting)
What will be the impact of this on geostationnary satellites?
On the measuring of time?
On the GPS?
Re:What is the impact? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What is the impact? (Score:5, Informative)
No more than usual perturbations, I suppose: geostationary satellites already tend to drift a little and need stationkeeping.
None. The second is defined relative to quantum levels in the caesium atom, that won't change. As for keeping up with the calendar, the Earth's rotation already has small variations; since 3 microseconds is roughly 1/300 second, we might have to subtract a leap second next July or December. (E.g. straight from 2005-12-31/23:59:58 to 2006-01-01/0:00:00 UTC.)
Don't know, but don't think the resolution is that precise.
Re:What is the impact? (Score:5, Funny)
You press the degauss button. It'll look funny for a few seconds but then it'll click and be fine.
3 microseconds per _what_? (Score:2, Insightful)
Phil
Re:3 microseconds per _what_? (Score:2)
Equalizes out (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Over what time? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Over what time? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Over what time? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which would be great if the article had actually said that the 3 milliseconds was per rotation (which it didn't).
As was mentioned yesterday (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:As was mentioned yesterday (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:As was mentioned yesterday (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that this region has never seen Tsunamis before, and most people were just curious to see what the hell was happening. That made it only worse - a lot of them were morning walkers who were wondering what's up with the sea.
If erudite urban folks are this naive, what can you expect off villagers? Actually, there is a story making the rounds of a guy from Singapore who called up his village and warned them about this, and they all moved to safety and nobody in the village was affected.
The problem is that, it is not enough if you had a warning system -- you would need to know what to do with it. It's not sufficient to warn people, you need to tell them where to go and what to do, too.
Re:Never? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:As was mentioned yesterday (Score:3, Interesting)
It is noted that Sumatra was devastated by the 9.0 earthquake, followed twenty minutes later by the worst of the tsunami. In addition, parts of the Indian subcontinent were flooded up to several miles inland, making the visual warning inadequate. On the hillier isla
Indian ocean isnt the only place one is needed (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5652141/ [msn.com]
Re:Indian ocean isnt the only place one is needed (Score:5, Informative)
I have been on that island (it is worth visiting while it lasts). Nearly killed myself aquaplaning in a tropical rainstorm on a road with 400+ meter cliff going into the sea on the right and 400+ cliff going up towards the volcano in question on the left.
Anyway, on subject:
It has a US Geological Survey run GPS station network every several hundred meters or so in some places do detect any movement and try to predict the next eruption. There will be a fair warning on this one. It is a question if anyone will dare to use that warning wisely which I doubt.
That is the good bit.
The bad bit is that compared to a worst case La Palma scenario the tsunami from 2004 Christmas earthquake will be a child's game in a puddle. The predicted worst case tsunami for La Palma is 800m at the start, 100+m at Marroco and Capo Verde, 30+m at Lisbon, Rio and the Caribean, 10+ m along the entire East Coast of the US including New York and Ireland and 5+ at the South coast of the UK. The death toll if there will be no evacuation will be in the tens of millions if not hundreds. That is the worst case scenario which is if it slides the same way it slid 1+ million years ago when the current north caldera has formed (it is the largest volcanic caldera formed by a landslide on the planet - 30km+ diameter). Even if it is a fraction of that it is still really scary.
Just to make things worse is that current models are that a landslide is likely to follow one of the next 3-5 eruptions and it erupts every 20 years on average.
And worst part is that it has not erupted for nearly 33 years now so the next eruption is likely to be bigger then usual.
Re:Atlantic Ocean -vs- Pacific Ocean (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Atlantic Ocean -vs- Pacific Ocean (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Indian ocean isnt the only place one is needed (Score:3, Funny)
Clearly, this is a job for Skynet!
slowing rotation (Score:5, Interesting)
Micro gravity (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Interesting. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Interesting. (Score:3, Insightful)
UTC (Score:2)
Nuclear power station affected (Score:2, Informative)
More information about earthquakes (Score:3, Informative)
Just the SCOPE (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
3 microseconds less? (Score:5, Funny)
Donate some money! (Score:5, Informative)
I myself donated $500 to AmeriCares [americares.org] 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 [wikipedia.org]:
"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."
Re:Donate some money! (Score:5, Funny)
But if one were, he'd be about 100 feet farther away now.
tsunami videos also on edonkey (Score:3, Informative)
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
mass hysteria setting in... (Score:4, Funny)
weather changes rotation 1000 times more (Score:5, Informative)
Sensationalist Title (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Satellite Images (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Satellite Images (Score:3, Informative)
Another estimate and what that means for Satalites (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Another estimate and what that means for Satali (Score:3, Informative)
Amazon waiving normal honor system fees (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Front Page Link? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps Slashdot could do the same? After all, 80,000 dead and counting definately counds as "Stuff that matters."
Run, Run, As if your life depended on it. (Score:3)
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.
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:5, Informative)
-Jesse
Re:Makes me wonder (Score:2)
Re:Donations (Score:5, Insightful)
I dislike bush more than most, but you 'sir' are living proof that being 'left' doesn't make you 'right'.
Re:Donations (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Donations (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Donations (Score:4, Insightful)
"$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?
" $8,647,058 - spent to kill each Iraqi"
You do realize the purpose of war is not to kill as many people as we can.
So, you're saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well spotted. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the amount that football teams have paid for some top players in recent years:
Manchester United for Wayne Rooney: 54 million US$.
Manchester United for Rio Ferdinand: 58 million US$.
Real Madrid for David Beckham: 41 million US$.
Something is horribly wrong with this.
Re:Well spotted. (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, you are a troll. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Donations (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:Donations (Score:3, Insightful)
Per Capita: Wrong metric (Score:4, Interesting)
> >$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!
Re:India Plans Psunami alert system (Score:3, Informative)
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 con
Talk about a moronic post (Score:3, Insightful)
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 o
Re:NEIC: Why didn't you warn about the Tsunamis? (Score:3, Informative)
My guess is that now they know who to contact, perhaps even for all countries in the world.