Pakistan Earthquake Raises New Island 88
schwit1 writes with news that a recent 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan killed 45 people and caused a new island to form a few hundred meters off the country's coast. The island is roughly 35 meters long, and 7-14 meters high. "Seismologists suspect the island is a temporary formation resulting from a "mud volcano," a jet of mud, sand and water that gushed to the surface as the temblor churned and pressurized that slurry under the ocean floor." Long-time residents of the area say a similar island formed in 1968 after another earthquake, but disappeared a year later. "It is clear that 'the islands are not created because the ground was ... pushed up by the earthquake,' [said geophysicist Paul Earle], but more likely it was a secondary effect of shifting sediments. He also agrees the formation appears to have been caused by a mud volcano, but added that they don't need an earthquake to set them off. There are 'mud volcanoes in Yellowstone that have not been triggered by earthquakes,' he said."
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wow, (Score:5, Funny)
PRC Will Claim the New Territory (Score:2, Funny)
Because Pakistan has given in to the People's Republic of China (PRC) territory claims in the past [wikipedia.org], I am sure the PRC will claim this island as theirs!
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Nope if you watch this video, [youtube.com] you can see it being claimed by about a hundred Pakistani fishermen simultaneously, which killed my excitement for a new country instantly :-(
Presumably the last one with his hand on the island gets to keep it.
Priorities (Score:2, Insightful)
45 people died, but the news story is about a new not-island less than the size of a football field. Nice.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Much more than 45 people died somewhere during the time it took you to write that post and you failed to even mention them. Nice.
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People die every single day, 107 people die every single minute [hebrew4christians.com] of every single day. Earthquakes also happen fairly routinely in certain parts of the world. When they are large they are covered by the news, in particular their death tolls are well covered to the point many are saturated.
I understand you may not care for what I say, but just try to get the TV or major newspaper to cover an average person who died in an average way after they have died. The bottom line is that people simply don't care about p
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Death only becomes newsworthy when the person is (in)famous or dies in a notable way.
However the creation of a new island from an earthquake if far from an everyday occurrence.
s/(in)famous/known to them/
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People die every single day, 107 people die every single minute [hebrew4christians.com] of every single day. Earthquakes also happen fairly routinely in certain parts of the world. When they are large they are covered by the news, in particular their death tolls are well covered to the point many are saturated.
I understand you may not care for what I say, but just try to get the TV or major newspaper to cover an average person who died in an average way after they have died. The bottom line is that people simply don't care about people they don't know - it's not newsworthy. Death only becomes newsworthy when the person is (in)famous or dies in a notable way.
Excellent! You're only about 3 steps of logic away from solving the Fermi Paradox.
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The Fermi Paradox isn't.
It's based on the tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of a fraction of the universe we have explored,
It assume interstellar travel is possible
It assume other civilization didn't expand and then die.
It assumes it takes less resources to get to the next star is less then available resources
It assume other species would want to expand.
Until we ahve :
A) Sent people to another planet around a different star
B) those people are able to be self sustains and thrive
C) Invent materials that will last m
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Absolutely correct.
Are we also not supposed to talk about the economic outfall as a result of the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami that killed many more?
If not for this new island, that recent earthquake would not have made it to the Slashdot: News for Nerds blog at all.
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And while you were writing this, another 45 people died for various reasons. You forgot to mention this...
Yeah but I didn't just post a news story about the thing that killed them, and focus on something that is non-unique, trivial sience instead.
The guy above this post though is 100% right..it would never have made it to slashdot, and it would have been better that way. It does say "news for nerds" not "nerd news for nerds" though. It's not like nerds (at least most of them) literally only care about tech
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I spelled science wrong since it's 3:20a. Not trying to margianalize scientific discovery...the significance of that island just seems considerably outweighed (as far as news is concerned) by nearly any criterion you would care to use.
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Did it occur to you that a post to a science and technology news site might be directed towards the scientific issues for reasons other than the profound inhumanity you have ascribed to the author?
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I just thought it was a hilarious case of weird priorities. I honestly am desensetized at this point since you know, the news.
It would be kind of like reading an article that says "bomb goes off in boston during marathon, yields new insights into ballistics physics"
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You say that as though they haven't emphasised the humanitarian impact in literally the first sentence of the summary. The author's priorities are in the right place. You don't have to ignore everything but the humanitarian consequences to be showing compassion for them.
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*A four-alarm fire in Downtown Moscow clears way for a glorious new tractor factory*
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Yes, but wouldn't it be nice to have a site where we can talk about the interesting events and science.
There are media outlets galore that have in depth look at the dead people.
Far less with any decent discussion about the geological events in detail.
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You are right, but that is not news for nerds and stuff that matters.
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"News for nerds" and "stuff that matters" are completely subjective. Sit the fuck down.
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I for one found the story of the new island quite interesting. I found about the people dying from BBC well before it came to Slashdot. Why should Slashdot repeat what the mainstream media has already told me?
What's interesting in this case is not that Slashdot is repeating what the mainstream media already told me (first I heard about the earthquake was a story about the island in the national news), but that Slashdot is repeating what the mainstream media already told me without a 24-168 hour lag, and is only reporting it once.
Slashdot used to be great because it would have stories in it that the mainstream media might decide weren't interesting to their audience. The problem now is that the mainstream media t
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If only there was some other site on the internet, where one could read about the non-scientific issues surrounding the earthquake. We could link to such a site in the summary even as we respectfully highlighted the important humanitarian issues. What a brave new world that would be.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Funny)
45 people died, but the news story is about a new not-island less than the size of a football field. Nice.
Big pile of mud -> Elbonia -> Dilbert -> Tech -> Stuff that matters. ;-)
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Big pile of mud ->
Stuff that splatters -> an insensitive clod.
American Units (Score:2)
" a new not-island less than the size of a football field."
Whats the size in cricket pitches? After all we are talking about Pakistan, cricket is their national sport.
Maybe this will put it in perspective for you (Score:2)
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Yes, becasue geological events are interesting.
Death of people that far removed from ones personal experience, while tragic, doesn't exactly make people pause with their day.
If it did, we would all go crazy.
Sandy Island (Score:2)
Re:Meanwhile (Score:4, Insightful)
No they're really not. No more than the US is a place you can get shot for just walking down the street -- you can make the case that it's true, but there's a lot of hyperbole in it that other people won't pick up on. If you haven't been there, or don't know people from there, stop trolling. It perpetuates myths about the world that just aren't true.
Complete rubbish. Things like politicians being shot for opposing blashpemy laws [wikipedia.org],Kidnapping of Christian [www.news.va] and Hindu [asianews.it] girls for forced marriage and conversion don't happen in the West. I suggest that unless you have never lived in an Islamic majority country you shut up about "it being just the same in the US".
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You're the guy who made the dubious rhetorical move of dubbing two entire nations "hell-holes".
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You're the guy who made the dubious rhetorical move of dubbing two entire nations "hell-holes".
believe me they are
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Where exactly is this nation of Palestine you speak of?
I apologise for repeating the original poster's inaccurate terminology of the original poster, I should have corrected it to "Palestinian territories"
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Yep, that doesn't happen. Politicians aren't shot for opposing blasphemy laws. By the way, as your link so elegantly mentions, Shahbaz Bhatti was not killed by the government, but a terrorist organization -- and government declared three days of mourning in response. It's not like there haven't been assassinations of politicians in other countries.
In the US, instead, tourists get shot for walking down the street [nydailynews.com], because some people were bored. Let us now condemn all bored people in response!
It's not th
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Kidnapping of Christian and Hindu girls for forced marriage and conversion don't happen in the West
Girls most certainly are kidnapped to be forced into marriages in the West. But then they pack them off to the East for the actual marriage. But lots of other girls go missing too. Where do you think they're going? Some of them are being killed, some are going into slavery...
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I'm not big on bashing religion (or religion bashing non-believers which is far more common), but that is a funny damn joke why are people downvoting it?
Re:Dregs of journalism (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel sorry for your inability to get excited about geology. You know that it's a fool that plays it cool by making his world a little colder.
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Don't make it bad. Take a sad song, and make it better.
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Nahhhh nahh nahh nah nah nah nah!
Uh oh. (Score:5, Funny)
Tensions are rising between Ankh-Morpork and Al Khali
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+1 for Leshp reference :D
SHHHH!!!! (Score:2)
Any day now ... (Score:2)